{"id":5825,"date":"2014-12-30T00:51:09","date_gmt":"2014-12-30T05:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=5825"},"modified":"2015-01-24T20:48:01","modified_gmt":"2015-01-25T01:48:01","slug":"brad-avery-top-10-of-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/brad-avery-top-10-of-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Brad Avery’s Top 10 of 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"nightcrawler\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s obligatory. Top 10 lists have become a staple of film writing. Web content producers have long known that humans have an innate psychological attraction to lists, and what causes it I can\u2019t exactly say. Is it the compartmentalization of ideas? An enticing sense of exclusivity? Regardless, I love them. I can\u2019t get enough of seeing what everybody\u2019s favorites are, even when they start looking more and more like the same list repeatedly.<\/p>\n

So, why not throw my hat in the ring with the rest of \u2018em? I saw 54 movies this year (55 if you split Nymphomaniac<\/a>) and out of those I liked about 30 or so. There\u2019s still a lot of big ones that I either missed or haven\u2019t been released in my area yet (namely Inherent Vice<\/a> and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night<\/a>) but I\u2019ll give you what I\u2019ve got. And because we all love the suspense, it\u2019s in countdown format:<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"badturn\"<\/a><\/p>\n

10. Bad Turn Worse<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t have seen this if John D\u2019Amico hadn\u2019t recommended it so highly. <\/span><\/p>\n

Tight, independent, Southern Fried crime thriller about a Texas teenager who steals $20,000 from his mob-affiliated boss and blows the money in a weekend getaway with his best friend Bobby and his girlfriend Sue. When they get back to town, the boss finds out what they did and enlists them to rob a local kingpin in order to make up for their crime, even though Bobby and Sue had no idea they were spending stolen money.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tense, sweltering directorial debut from the Hawkins brothers, with a Coen-styled noir influence, and a dash of the cruelty of Killer Joe<\/a>. Surprisingly simple, it\u2019s a refreshingly straight-forward, well-made crime story\u2014the kind we don\u2019t see enough of these days.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"enemy\"<\/a><\/p>\n

9. Enemy<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Jake Gyllenhaal for MVP of the year. This one took awhile to sink in, but I kept coming back to it and thinking about the different pieces. It\u2019s a dark, enigmatic story that\u2019s gone almost as quickly as it comes, leaving more questions than it answers. It\u2019s mindfuck cinema done right.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"gothickingcobra\"<\/a><\/p>\n

8.\u00a0Gothic King Cobra<\/a><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Youtube has turned out to be an astounding refuge for outsider artists. Posted in February, this hour-long documentary following cult vlogger\/metal musician Josh \u201cKingCobraJFS\u201d Saunders is a crude, spellbinding look into what it\u2019s like to live with autism in suburbia. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s full of those depressing middle-America touchstones like drinking outside of liquor stores and wandering along train tracks at night. Saunders attempts to make up for his insecurities by drinking, bragging about the women he\u2019s had, and cracking crude jokes for the camera. Sometimes it feels like a Harmony Korine film (a scene where a group of twelve year old boys start rapping and take their shirts off inside the mall food court feels like it\u2019s been ripped straight out of Gummo<\/a>) but it carves its own nook by managing to reveal the loneliness and misery Saunders attempts to downplay with his constant boasting.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"interstellar\"<\/a><\/p>\n

7. Interstellar<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Never thought I\u2019d see the day where I put a Christopher Nolan movie in my Top 10, but lo and behold. Interstellar delivers on the outer space spectacle without ever forgetting that characters are the heart of drama. <\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to the excellent performances, Nolan does world building right. Visual touches like the \u201cWorld Famous New York Yankees\u201d banner at the baseball game tell us everything we need to know about this future America. It\u2019s massive, hopeful, and stunningly gorgeous. This is what blockbuster filmmaking is capable of, and the standard we should hold it to.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"whiplash\"<\/a><\/p>\n

6. Whiplash<\/a><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Last year there was a lot of hubbub about the streak of movies that focused on the vicious personal toll of the American dream (Pain & Gain<\/a>, The Wolf of Wall Street<\/a>, etc.) but Whiplash may be the best of them. It\u2019s a story about a jazz drummer who wants to be the best in the world, and the psychotic, monstrous extremes you would have to go to in order to actually achieve that goal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Miles Teller plays a student who destroys his relationships, well-being, and humanity in the pursuit of success\u2014what could be more American than that?
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"warethebest\"<\/a><\/p>\n

5. We Are the Best!<\/a><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

The third movie on my list about musicians and easily the sweetest and finest of the bunch. Boyhood<\/a> may be the better movie about growing up, but We Are the Best! is the finer story of adolescence, centering on three twelve-year old girls in 1980s Sweden who form a punk band. It\u2019s about the anarchy and joy of creating, and the pains of growing up when you\u2019re entering those \u2018no one understands me\u2019 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s also one of the best films out there in capturing what it\u2019s like being in an amateur punk band while having no real musical talent. The songs have a strong Shaggs quality<\/span><\/a> to them. In a way, it\u2019s the anti-Whiplash, a movie about having fun and playing music that comes from the heart rather than from a place of destructive perfectionism and narcissism.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"nightcrawler2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

4.<\/strong> Nightcrawler<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking of the American Dream, Dan Gilroy\u2019s directorial debut is a bitch slap. Utterly relentless, Nightcrawler is one of the most terrifying films about sociopathy there is. Gyllenhaal delivers the performance of his career, looking like a fucking boogeyman. Between this and The Babadook<\/a>, it\u2019s been a good year for monster movies.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"calvalry\"<\/a><\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> Calvary<\/a><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Gyllenhaal\u2019s turn in Nightcrawler is magnificent, but the real Best Actor award ought to go to Brendan Gleeson for his legacy-defining performance as Father James, a bitter and cynical priest who is destined to die in seven days at the hands of one his parish members.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not Catholic, so I feel that I perhaps can\u2019t properly comprehend the entire weight this film is carrying. It\u2019s beyond me to do this work justice in two paragraphs, so I\u2019ll just leave you with an exchange between Father James and his daughter:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think we put too much focus on sin, and not enough on virtue.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat kind of virtue?\u201d
\n\u201cForgiveness.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"under\"<\/a><\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> Under the Skin<\/b><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Hypnotic, ethereal, upsetting. Under the Skin is a quiet and queasy drive through the British country as Scarlett Johansson cruises for men to consume. It\u2019s as if somebody took the nightmare atmosphere of The Shining<\/a> and metastasized it into its own unearthly being. Somber and haunting, it\u2019s the best fictional film of the year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"citizenfour\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> Citizenfour<\/b><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The past few years, I feel like each year I\u2019ve seen a documentary that completely blows me away with how grim, powerful, and I\u2019ll say it\u2014important it is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last year it was The Act of Killing<\/a>. The year before that it was The Invisible War<\/a>. This time, it\u2019s Laura Poitras\u2019 documentary-meets-thriller about Edward Snowden and the leak of the NSA operations that confirmed everything aluminum hat conspiracy theorists had been telling us for decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mostly set in a hotel room, Citizenfour is a spy movie filled with the paranoia of Robert Ludlam, the sadness of John Le Carre, and the stark reality of what life has become in post-9\/11 America. Moreso than Nightcrawler, The Babadook, Under the Skin, or Enemy, this is the scariest film of 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"nightcrawler\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s obligatory. Top 10 lists have become a staple of film writing. Web content producers have long known that humans have an innate psychological attraction to lists, and what causes it I can\u2019t exactly say. Is it the compartmentalization of ideas? An enticing sense of exclusivity? Regardless, I love them. I can\u2019t get enough of seeing what everybody\u2019s favorites are, even when they start looking more and more like the same list repeatedly.<\/p>\n

So, why not throw my hat in the ring with the rest of \u2018em? I saw 54 movies this year (55 if you split Nymphomaniac<\/a>) and out of those I liked about 30 or so. There\u2019s still a lot of big ones that I either missed or haven\u2019t been released in my area yet (namely Inherent Vice<\/a> and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night<\/a>) but I\u2019ll give you what I\u2019ve got. And because we all love the suspense, it\u2019s in countdown format:<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,4517],"tags":[4553,4552,4545,4546,4336,104,4551,4550],"class_list":["post-5825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-brads-lists","tag-10-best-films-of-2014","tag-10-best-movies-of-2014","tag-best-films-of-2014","tag-best-movies-of-2014","tag-brad-avery","tag-smug-film-2","tag-top-10-films-of-2014","tag-top-10-movies-of-2014"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5825"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5844,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825\/revisions\/5844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}