2014 is like so
last year already! But for my own benefit more than anything else,
here's all my mini-reviews I published on my Twitter account for films released last year handily gathered together in one place. This is by no
means every film I saw, but just the titles which I felt
compelled to post a succinct '140 characters or less' verdict upon. For my latest Twitter reviews you can follow me here: @M_R_Movie.
In Alphabetical Order:
After:
An intriguing mystery unravelling in the subconscious with deviations from
expected plot & sensitively handled central relationship.
X-Men
DOFP: A surplus of characters & a plot that doesn't hold up to close
scrutiny, but delivers its core man v mutant theme on a grand scale.
3 Days
To Kill: An awkward mix of violent espionage thriller & maudlin family /
fatherhood drama. Tonally vague, listless & misjudged. Poor.
12 Years A Slave: Flawlessly performed, elegantly
composed, but bludgeons viewer with relentless misery to trigger a guilt
reflex. Overrated.
13/13/13: A barely there plot & strictly
amateur hour acting compensated for by sundry violence & black humour in a
Crazies/Signal variant.
20,000
Days On Earth: Documentary, drama, archive, art project. A profile of Cave
as unique, idiosyncratic & maverick as the man himself.
ABCs Of
Death 2: Remains a cool concept but execution as erratic as before. Fewer real
turkeys this time but equally few memorable letters.
Afflicted: Uses the Chronicle template to document
a horrific physical transformation. A cut above the usual found footage genre
offerings.
After:
An intriguing mystery unravelling in the subconscious with deviations from
expected plot & sensitively handled central relationship.
Alien
Abduction: Not quite 'Dire In The Sky', but fails to capitalise on initially
eerie build-up & camcorder FF conceit rapidly wears thin.
All
Cheerleaders Die: Tonally ramshackle, entertainingly madcap subversion of high
school horror, even if it's essentially Jennifer's Bodies.
All Is Lost: A minimalist, purely cinematic tale of
endurance, works as intense character study - dignity & stoic physicality
against odds.
Almost Human: Invasion Of Bodysnatchers meets Fire
In The Sky with a slasher mentality & emphasis on shocks & splatter.
Crude but effective.
American Hustle: Amusing study of manipulation with
fine period authenticity. Its greatest con-trick is its note perfect Scorsese
forgery.
Among Friends: An 80s themed party of dark
revelations, duplicity, depravity & dismemberment. It's The Loved Ones
meets Would You Rather.
A Most
Wanted Man: Less war on terror, more snore on terror. Talky & tedious, a
thriller devoid of thrills but rife with wayward accents.
Antisocial: Subliminal social network messages infect
users in a nightmare of technological dependency which echoes core Cronenberg
themes.
As Above
So Below: The Da Vinci Code meets The Descent. Claustrophobic & creepy in
parts, milking primal fears amidst chimerical mythology.
At The
Devil's Door: Slow burn Satanic shocker, switches focus between leads & has
some mood & menace, but drags its cloven hooves terribly.
Automata: Stylish but hugely derivative dystopian sci-fi. It's debt to I,Robot &
Blade Runner in particular, borders on blatant plagiarism.
A Walk
Among The Tombstones: Set in 90s, feels like 70s, with its prowling,
oppressive, grim atmosphere. Cliched, but Neeson is impressive.
Bad Country: Above average cast in a fairly average
southern fried crime drama, which is a convoluted attempt at portraying real
life events.
Bad
Neighbours: I laughed twice. Both those moments were in the trailer. The latest
spin in the downward spiral of mainstream U.S. comedy.
Bad Turn
Worse: Texan neo noir with teens in over their heads. Has a simmering intensity
but the plot doesn't go anywhere you don't expect.
Big Bad Wolves: Brutal torture, graphic child
murder & broad black comedy make for a queasy mix in a gripping but tonally
asymmetrical film.
Blood Glacier: Retro Alpine creature feature is an
entertaining monster-mash with admirably icky practical FX & eco agenda.
Throwback fun.
Blue Ruin: A searing, savage revenge thriller
simmering with pain & anguish, bristling with rage, tension & tragedy.
One of the year's best.
Boyhood:
A sprawling, meandering slice of life. Ambitious, but low on dramatic content.
Like watching someone's home movies for three hours.
Captain America - Winter Soldier: Bigger, bolder,
brilliantly choreographed. '70s espionage & NWO paranoia in state of art
blockbuster. Huge fun.
Cheap Thrills: Blistering brutal black comedy of
credit crunch cruelty. It's a downward spiral into dares & depravity
through desperation.
Chocolate
Strawberry Vanilla: Melancholic & darkly comedic, turns into Taxi Driver in
an ice-cream van for a finale which goes full retard.
Code Red: Never lives up to impressively gory WW2
prologue, this Bulgarian based zombie opus descends into a generic Nightmare
City clone.
Coherence:
Labyrinthine lo-fi / high concept mind-bending sci-fi, cultivates a warped
reality of escalating paranoia & cryptic perception.
Crawl Or
Die: Micro-budget creature feature throwback. 90 mins of monotonous crawling
about in dark confined spaces. Tedious tunnel-vision.
Dallas Buyers Club: Routine issue movie mixes
bitterness & tenderness. Greatly elevated by powerhouse performances from
McConaughey & Leto.
Dark House: Starts out as catalogue of cliches
& turns increasingly strange & surreal. Lacks cohesion or logic, a
madcap surplus of ideas.
Daughter
Of Horror: A bizarre beat generation oddity, a surreal psycho noir which felt
like Mulholland Drive directed by Ed Wood.
Dawn Of
Planet Of Apes: Perfect mix of story & spectacle, character & cutting
edge FX. A blockbuster with brains, heart & soul. Monkey magic.
Dead
Snow 2: Far more comedic than previously. A cavalcade of creative cadaverous
carnage & inspired comic-book splatter. An absolute blast.
Delivery:
Rosemary's Baby for the reality TV era. Nothing groundbreaking, but manages to
raise a few shivers & the climax genuinely shocks.
Deliver
Us From Evil: Gritty mix of hardboiled cop movie & demonic shocker throws
up solid scares but stretches credibility. Bana on form.
Edge Of
Tomorrow: Source Code as a shoot 'em up. It's slick, stylish & rattles
along with enough spirit to disguise its nonsensical science.
Enemy:
Disturbing doppelganger drama fuelled by an air of escalating dread &
unease, with abstract arachnid symbolism. Unsettling & exceptional.
Extraterrestrial:
Alien greys in generic kids go to cabin in woods & get slaughtered fare.Scenery-chewing
Michael Ironside is the highlight.
Found:
Raw & rough edged, this controversy-baiting indie pulls no punches with
its grim vision of a psychotic sibling & copycat violence.
Frank: A
fictionalised account of a fictional alter-ego. Uses the Sidebottom character
in a tangential musical journey into mental illness.
Fury:
Visceral & grim. A vision of mud, blood & thunder. Captures the
intensity of warfare, but has little substance beyond the brutality.
Godzilla: Great moments too widely dispersed. No focal point with characters,
much of action takes place on periphery / aftermath. A letdown.
Gone
Girl: Deception, duplicity, performance & perception. Gripping from start
to finish with a sly satirical bite, the attraction is fatal.
Grand Piano: Technically audacious &
outlandish, stylish & absurd. It's a genre-savvy concerto of Hitchcock,
DePalma & Argento's best tunes.
Grudge Match: Predictable, overly sentimental, a
dull ode to former glories which reminds you just how long ago Rocky &
Raging Bull were.
Guardians
Of The Galaxy: An 'awesome mix' of humour, charm, engaging characters,
invention & stunning visuals. Cooler than Kevin Bacon.
Gun
Woman: Heroically deranged & depraved orgy of cartoonish sex, sleaze &
splatter with a hardcore taboo-busting agenda. Gloriously extreme.
Her: Electric Dreams for the iPhone era. A
glacially-paced slice of shoegaze sci-fi with irksome indie romance trappings.
Wishy-washy whimsy.
Heretic: A crisis of faith in the guise of a
funereal fright film. Solemn, subdued & serious in tone, but with
convincingly creepy moments.
Honeymoon:
An intimate relationship decays in a genuinely creepy portrait of paranoia
& emotional isolation. Cultivates real sense of unease.
Horns:
Uneven & unusual, a lovelorn murder mystery which switches from religious
allegory to full-blown horror with oddly puritanical streak.
Housebound:
Gloriously chaotic, never really settles on tone or style, but it's an
enjoyable, well engineered blend of horror & humour.
In Fear: Employs primal fear, paranoia &
disorientation to great effect, chilling rural nightmare with escalating sense
of dread & despair.
Inside Llewyn Davis: An elegiac, emotionally
fractured character study, set to the tune of melancholic soul-searching folk.
Classic Coens.
Interstellar:
Nolan reaches for stars but fails to get into orbit. Intimate moments work
best, but adrift in 3hrs of time & relativity twaddle.
Jessabelle:
Nothing new or innovative, but a decent southern Gothic horror benefiting from
lead by Sarah Snook whose star is in the ascent.
Joe: A
powerful character study of wounded souls on periphery of society, with dark
pasts & bleak futures. Cage's best performance in years.
Last Vegas: Sweet-natured if disposable. This
wrinkly wolfpack is far more agreeable & fun to be around than their
Hangover counterparts.
Late
Phases: Solid werewolf film with unusual location & mature cast, actually
works best as a character study of superbly grouchy Damici.
Life
After Beth: An indie-spirited Warm Bodies, with manic sense of absurdity &
surprising emotional depth. Enjoyably offbeat & affecting.
Lone Survivor: Eschews political context for gritty
realism of conflict, dropping viewer into the chaotic heart of battle at close
quarters.
Lucy:
For a crackers sci-fi cocktail add equal parts The Matrix, Limitless,
Transcendence & Enter The Void. Shake well & serve ice cool.
Maleficent:
Visually arresting fairytale updating, spruces up familiar story with flashy
optics & an impressive Jolie giving good cheekbone.
Mandela-Long Walk To Freedom: Elba & Harris are
dynamic in a respectful film which feels more like bullet-points of a life &
lacks real depth.
Maps To
The Stars: Scathing satire on celebrity, unhinged & acerbic it's Hollywood
as an incestuous psychotic pit of neurosis & toxicity.
Mindscape:
Absorbing psychological chiller of paranormal psycho analysis. Treads familiar
ground, but with assured footing & a classy cast.
Monsters
Dark Continent: Like first one, not a film about monsters. Here it's a loud,
long, mega-dull Band Of Brothers war film. Disappointing.
Mr
Jones: An oft-incoherent macabre mosaic of found footage, urban legend &
renegade art, turning increasingly surreal, strange & amorphous.
My Amityville Horror: Fascinating cathartic
testimony by edgy, confrontational Daniel Lutz. High on speculation, but draws
few conclusions.
Mystery
Road: Simmering, stunningly shot pseudo western. A slow-burn Outback noir awash
with corruption, bigotry, malaise & mistrust.
Nebraska: Wonderfully whimsical monochrome Midwest
odyssey. Bittersweet blend of sarcasm, cynicism & schmaltz in charming slice
of Americana.
Need For
Speed: Hot wheels & incredible non CGI stuntwork, but ludicrous plot,
risible dialogue & dire acting. And waaayyyy too bloody long!
Nightbreed
Dir Cut: Not sure new footage solves all flaws, but more than ever now is a
horror film of huge ambition & twisted imagination.
Nightcrawler:
The parasitic pursuit of sensationalist news through a moral & ethical
void. A biting satire of our times. Film of the year.
Ninja - Shadow Of A Tear: Routine revenge plot
boosted by bone-crunching Raid level fight choreography. Adkins makes an
immense one man army.
Nurse 3D: Single White Female with an ass-shot
fetish. A lusty slice of fervid exploitation, surgical splatter & a
laughably wooden lead.
Nymph: A
Serbian Fin, full of eye candy (scenery, locations, female flesh), but takes
eternity to reach its creature elements. A damp squib.
Oculus:
Confident,creepy,cleverly choreographed between sharply edited timelines &
warped reality. Confirms Flanagan as rising genre talent.
Oldboy: Has no real reason to exist & lacks
original's style & impact, but it certainly doesn't sanitise the violence
& Brolin is good value.
Only Lovers Left Alive: Sophisticated, cerebral,
sensual. Poetic & philosophical vampire tale of nocturnal nostalgia, music,
love & death.
Open Grave: From bleak opening, cultivates a sense
of clammy disorientation. Build-up is better than reveal but it's a solid
grisly mystery.
Open
Windows: Cleverly constructed cyber-thriller, big on suspense, voyeurism,
manipulation & conspiracy theory. Short on internal logic.
Outpost 11: Low budget lunacy - a surreal
psychotropic experiment of isolation & insanity with giant spiders,
exploding hares & wanking.
Out Of The Furnace: Downbeat & dirty, has
brooding brutality of classic 70's cinema. A simmering study of sibling honour
with a stellar cast.
Paranormal Activity Marked Ones: Sheds usual format
to be a sort of Hispanic supernatural Chronicle. Confusing & largely bereft
of scares.
Patrick (2013): Atmospheric & effective with
nice line in gruesome cruelty. Impressive cast - Dance & Vinson stand out
in this worthy remake.
Pompeii:
B-Movie with a budget, it's Gladiator from the Irwin Allen school of schlock.
Utterly generic nonsense, but oddly entertaining.
Predestination:
A slow burn until its main reveal then becomes truly mind-bending time travel
conundrum with two fantastic lead performances.
Proxy:
Funereal-paced miserablist, melancholic psychological shocker with turbulent
changes of tone & direction. A bit of a slog.
R100: A
fetishistic fantasy, grief & guilt manifested in a series of increasingly
perverse & surreal encounters as the fourth wall shatters.
Rigor
Mortis: Jiangshi revival / supernatural portmanteau set in gloomy apartment
block. Beautifully shot, visually rich, but erratically paced.
Robocop (2014): A film about the illusion of
freedom, crisis of identity & ethics of automation in age of drone wars.
Surprisingly not bad.
Sabotage:
The plot is ludicrous, the twists are telegraphed. It's empty overt machismo,
first person gun fetishism & extreme violence. Terrible.
Sanitarium: Well acted if rather overwrought &
unremarkable horror anthology of escalating dementia. Very much Tales Of
Ordinary Madness.
Saturday Morning Mystery: Fails to make most of its
inspired Scooby Doo derived shtick. Some effective material but an opportunity
wasted.
Savaged: I Spit On Your Grave meets Scalps with
sun-scorched, grim grindhouse aesthetic of The Devil's Rejects. Gloriously
gory, trashy fun.
Scarecrow:
Starts as Breakfast Club meets Jeepers Creepers & becomes a more generic CGI-heavy
creature feature. Its TV movie roots run deep.
Sin City
2: Stale, limp, languid retread of the first instalment. Feels like a film
which has arrived at the party after everyone has left.
Soulmate:
Low key & leisurely, an old fashioned, mournful, melancholic ghost story
more concerned with character & mood than cheap scares.
Stage Fright: A song & dance Sleepaway Camp
with the emphasis on camp. Musical mutilation, equal parts tongue in cheek
& blade in throat.
Stalled: Horror / comedy literally full of toilet
humour. The premise is stretched to breaking point at feature-length, but has its moments.
Starred
Up: Hardly groundbreaking, but excels in gritty authenticity & bruising
bare-knuckle brutality. O'Connell is a force of nature.
Starry
Eyes: Emotionally & physically brutal. Plays in crude metaphor, Hollywood
as Satanic cesspit, ambition as a cancerous curse. Superb.
Stretch:
After Hours in a limo. Joe Carnahan returns to Smokin Aces territory for a
manic cameo-laden crackpot crime caper. A mess.
St.Vincent:
Bittersweet dramedy, Murray on fine cantankerous form, but syrupy nature of
material at odds with world-weariness of character.
The Amazing Spiderman 2: Too long & tries
juggling too many elements, but central motif of fathers, sons &
generational consequence is well done.
The Art
Of The Steal: Kurt Russell's charisma aids this disposable but fun heist caper
which is punchy, pacy & has a cool comedic streak.
The
Babadook: Genuinely eerie & unsettling, a fearytale which reflects grief
& paedophobia in the form of a truly creepy boogeyman. Superb.
The Borderlands: Extends lineage of classic rustic
folk horror, cultivating an escalating dread & paranoia with a genuinely
unnerving climax.
The
Canal: Crimes of the past haunt the present in effectively creepy & solidly
acted blend of psychological decay & supernatural mystery.
The
Congress: Strange satirical fantasy, scathing of studio systems &
technology. A brave performance from Robin Wright in multiple guises.
The Counselor: Great cast set adrift in an
incoherent plot devoid of direction or structure & sunk by crass cod
philosophising. Garbage.
The Den:
Ingeniously merges current online & horror cinema trends to form
suspenseful & sinister zeitgeist grabbing cyber-stalk & slasher.
The
Drop: A trio of fine performances (& a cute dog) help disguise a fairly low
key crime drama which largely gets by on brooding menace.
The
Equalizer: B-movie masquerading as A-list thriller. Overlong, but delivers
crunching brutality & Denzel excels as ice cool killing machine.
The
Expendables 3: Slicker & less self-mocking than previously, but overlong
& overstaffed & midsection with the younger team drags fatally.
The Grand Budapest Hotel: A magnificent
multi-layered cinematic tapestry. Nostalgic, playful, a charming, cheeky,
lavish feast for the eyes.
The
Guest: Highly entertaining genre mash-up with authentic retro style &
soundtrack. Stevens a magnetic mix of charisma & brooding menace.
The Hobbit - Desolation Of Smaug: Less exposition, more
momentum & better than first, but textbook example of a film carrying
excess baggage.
The
Homesman: Bleak, austere, windswept, uncompromising. Top notch performances
& Jones has a firm grasp of the harshness of frontier life.
The Human Race: Intriguing twist on Saw-patented
games of survival & sadism, mixing sci-fi, faith n' theology & multiple
exploding heads.
The Last
Showing: Obsolescence turns to psychosis as embittered Englund goes One Hour
Photo in cat & mouse multiplex manipulation & murder.
The Lego
Movie: A sugar rush of technicolour visual invention, boundless imagination
& inspired surreal humour. Awesome indeed.
The Machine: Visually & thematically nothing
new, but works wonders with modest budget, forging sinister undercurrent. Caity
Lotz impresses.
The
Purge - Anarchy: Expands on social / political / class themes of original in a cross between The Warriors & The Most Dangerous Game.
The Quiet Ones: Generic & far too reliant on
jump scares & sound FX shocks, but at its core is an intriguing science v
supernatural conflict.
The Raid 2: Bloated & baggy at first, but once
it hits its stride has all savage intensity, blitzkrieg pace & bone
crunching brutality of Pt1.
The
Rover: Bleak, brutal, barren, a sparsely plotted, scorched fable with flickers
of humanity in a nihilistic near future of dust & despair.
The Sacrament: Expertly builds a spiralling sense
of paranoia & threat beneath a benign exterior. A chilling vision of
control & conformity.
The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty: Well-meaning
whimsy, it's a feather-light fantasy comprised of stray vignettes &
greeting card sentiment.
The
Signal: Like an X-Files episode conceived with surreal dream logic. Drip-feeds
moments of abnormality & is frequently visually stunning.
The
Taking Of Deborah Logan: Alzheimer's as a disturbing supernatural catalyst - a
terrific central performance & a genuinely chilling film.
The Town
That Dreaded Sundown (2014): Works as both a meta slasher cleverly riffing on
the original & a superior remake with a harder horror edge.
The Wind
Rises: A beautiful dream of flight & romance. Nostalgic, wistful,
heartbreaking. If it's Miyazaki's swansong he goes out on a high.
The Wolf Of Wall Street: Excess all areas! A
hedonistic hit of pure cinematic vivacity in a capitalist vision of Sodom &
Gomorrah. Essential.
The Zero
Theorem: Obtuse existential odyssey, a poignant pondering of the human
condition in a garish, cartoonish companion piece to Brazil.
Torment:
Formulaic home invasion fare, essentially You're Next minus genre-savvy smarts.
Katherine Isabelle in scream queen mode is a bonus.
Transcendence: Unsure if it's weighty study of the
human condition or man v machine cyberpunk action. Not great - an
opportunity wasted.
Transformers
4: Underwritten & overlong. Less puerile than previously, but still just a
series of set-pieces in search of a coherent plot.
Tusk:
Genuinely twisted & perverse, somewhat diluted by Smith's trademark puerile
humour, but still plenty of warped body horror insanity.
Under
The Skin: Moments of brilliance adrift in a bland, repetitive, sparse
storyline. As cold, clinical & detached as ScarJo's seductress.
Vendetta: Rubbish obviously, but as far as Danny
Dyer films go it's a cut above - a mean-spirited slice of reactionary urban exploitation.
We
Are The Best: Outsiders united through youthful rebellion & punk. Terrific
chemistry, utterly infectious. "Hate the sport", love the film.
What
We Do In The Shadows: Sharper than a bloodsucker's fangs, consistently
hilarious throughout, a brilliant spoof of vampire folklore.
Wer:
The werewolf myth as explored via forensic procedural & criminal
interrogation. An offbeat & original twist on a classic horror staple.
Willow
Creek: Follows the Blair Witch template to the letter. Surprisingly conventional,
uneventful & irony free. Utterly unremarkable.
Witching
& Bitching: Agreeably barking mad supernatural battle of sexes, bit ragged,
but inspired lunacy & visual flair prevail. Bitchin'.
Wolfcop:
Very uneven in terms of balance between horror & comedy, but it's
entertaining nonsense & hard to hate a film so knowingly absurd.
Wolf
Creek 2: This has transformed from an Outback slasher to a furious, full-on
action epic, akin to Duel with gallows humour & butchery.
X-Men
DOFP: A surplus of characters & a plot that doesn't hold up to close
scrutiny, but delivers its core man v mutant theme on a grand scale.
Zombeavers:
Gory, goofy, knowingly ridiculous monster movie spoof. Intensely annoying teens
become beaver bait. I was definitely Team Beaver!
