Sidewalk Chats About 10 Movies I Saw in 2014 (Part 1)

Editor’s Note: I mistakenly thought David wanted me to write mini reviews for all these movies. Turns out he just wanted a list. Well I had already started, and I thought I’d share. I really want to share ‘em too. Here is part one of this series, which I’ll finish up over the holidays. Cheerio.

David Davidson is the best damn film writer I’ve ever met. Maybe the only one I ever met, but still: a good one, too.

So when he asked me to provide my top ten movies of 2014 for his blog, I got a little antsy.

It’s not that I don’t have film critic-y type stuff to say about the movies I saw. I do. It’s just that, I’m not sure I’ll come off sounding like an asshole, one of those fatsos in the museum talking up a storm to the pretty girl on his arm about the Van Gogh on the wall. I hate those guys. Unfortunately, I am those guys. And I could blather on about these movies I saw, just like I could about those Sun Flowers, digging deep into my First Year Film 101 lexicon, for hours.

Which is basically what I am going to do. But to avoid being overly arrogant (this whole fourth-wall-breaking intro has likely already gone past that quota), I’m gonna do it this way. I am going to list 10 great movies I saw in 2014, and pretend like you and I, pale reader (pale from all those movies you’ve been watching) have just been on a date. And now that movie is over, and here we are walking outside, maybe a crisp snowy Parc ave in Montreal, or that massive and loud corner outside the Scotia in Queen West, now that things have settled, these are the things I’d have likely said about the film we just saw. You ready? You wanna go get a drink, or walk around a bit?

In no particular order, save for the one the red wine and holiday spirits have brought, or imposed, on this writing, as they always, and inexplicably — but tangibly, like boiling rocks in the belly — do.

FURY

A claustrophobic film with a war-porn finale, the thing I like almost about this film is how dirty the actors were. Starting with Shia.

There’s so much I love this year about Shia LeBoeuf. I love the stories he told on some late night show about being smashed drunk in New York, and carousing with strangers at a midnight vaudeville act, getting dragged out by the collar on his neck when he got too rude. I love the sadness, real sadness, when he talked about being raped in that performance-art Marina Abramovic thing he did. I love the weird Youtube video. His beard. And in this movie: I love his smell. His passion. His method.

I know he became an Evangelical Christian for it. I know he cut up his face. Stopped showering. I know he took on the film in a way that deserves credit. Because, Shia is attempting to do that thing I’ve noticed in the last few years, that these big Holywood guys (and they seem to mostly be guys) are doing. Which is to be a real artist, to question whatever it means to be that thing, to do something meaningful even in the plastic halls of Hollywood. Like Franco’s poetry, like Phoenix’s experiment with falling apart in I’m Still Here. Here is Shia at the height of his Megan Fox fucking poster boy pop, a man with the blood of virgins bubbling down his chin, and he throws it all away to smoke cigarettes in a Times Square theatre with a no-name, get too drunk and sad, and be chased out of the mainstream’s arms for it all. To be rude and happy, and sensitive.

He is Brando now. Brando with the butter on his fingers or the shreds of glass in his chest. I don’t know what it is. But I love Shia these days, very, very much.

There was another thing about this movie. Two things actually. The crampedness. It’s a tank movie and the whole time you feel the claustrophia right alongside the players. No room in there for anything but character. Character all the way through. And what characters, what scary animals we are. That nervousness, the tenseness, in that scene with the pretty farm girls up in their apartment, with the eggs cooked, the last dinner, as the tanker animals barge in on that last speck of civilization, speck of being human, and love making, and fucking behind the piano, just before the bombs came again.

And jesus. That final show down. Somehow this movie hit all the beautiful, war movie loving notes, felt like an action movie, but had depth. Left you feelign chaste and intelligent even though you just gorged on war porn for a few hours. It had Shia at his best. And Brad Pitt beautiful and godly and manly as he had to be. A film that stuffed you full of character and then finishes you off with that SS massacre, and then, with the dust settled, that overhead zoom out to reveal the massiveness of the gory/glory for the first time in the whole movie. A breath of holy air and perspective. What a set up and take down. Awesome.

BIRDMAN

Speaking of Hollywood artists struggling to be artists, Inaritu’s casting of Batman playing a washed up Batman trying to doing something artistic, and not another damn Batman movie, was enthralling. It was also damn depressing, for reasons I’ll get into in a minute.

The characters in the movie, especially the actor/ Birdman, vacillate between reaching two opposite conclusions (as opposing as Keaton’s character’s multiple personalities). First: it is bullshit to make blockbusters, and only worth doing something with spirit, with true meaning, with art. Second: why waste your time on art, on this fool’s quest for meaningfulness? Don’t you get enough enjoyment, sense of importance, from the fawning masses, the power of having power, the lust and sex of it all? Isn’t that what you really want, motherfucker? (Say that last part in the Batman voice).

The question is do artists really care about the art they strive to make, or are they just looking for some big ego boost — if so, why not just appeal to the lowest commons, and leave the hard work to the salad eaters?

I don’t know where the film concludes. I don’t think there’s a definite answer. But the truth in it is this idea that there is something deeply wonderful about artists making great art, and there is something excruciating about trying to take on that task your self. You’ve got to be a god (or a levitating skitzo) to actually come through with it. You’ve got to blow your brains out. Only then are you worthy.

There are no more Victorians, no more dusty illusions about the Artist anymore. No more Wordsworths and poetic license (handed down by the angels). I don’t know. I am rambling (remember, we are chatting, walking around outside, so that’s to be expected).

What I really wanted to say was how shitty this movie made me feel about my own aspirations. How long I’ve suffered with this idea of one day doing something “great.” And the misery of not knowing if I’m good enough. The undercut knock out blow to my ego is just how glorious and wonderful it is to watch this movie. God — the style. The style is another chat all together. The fluidity, the beats of the film, the feeling that it is all one big long take. The fantasy and disbelief, the drummer, the use of the stage.

And damn — wasn’t Ed Norton just incredible? Where has that guy been all these years? More of him. More of all of this, please.

Next Up:

Ukraine is not a Brothel

The Writer with No Hands

Interstellar

John Wick

Boyhood

Mommy

Guardians of the Galaxy

Grand Budapest Hotel