The Best Movies of 2014

Past the superhero franchise craze and tired sequels, here are the cinematic winners that we think are the best movies of 2014.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Just when you're ready to pop bottles over 2014's movie output, along comes an exceptional and alarming essay by esteemed film journalist Mark Harris. On Grantland yesterday, Harris, the site’s go-to awards season critic, wrote a lengthy, superb piece about how Hollywood’s overdosing on franchises, sequels, and reboots over the next few years could signal the end.

The end of what, exactly? Originality, it seems. Harris writes:

In 2014, franchises are not a big part of the movie business. They are not the biggest part of the movie business. They are the movie business. Period. Twelve of the year’s 14 highest grossers are, or will spawn, sequels. (The sole exceptions—assuming they remain exceptions, which is iffy—are Big Hero 6 and Maleficent.) Almost everything else that comes out of Hollywood is either an accident, a penance (people who run the studios do like to have a reason to go to the Oscars), a modestly budgeted bone thrown to an audience perceived as niche (black people, women, adults), an appeasement (movie stars are still important and they must occasionally be placated with something interesting to do so they’ll be cooperative about doing the big stuff), or a necessity (sometimes, unfortunately, it is required that a studio take a chance on something new in order to initiate a franchise).

In that same piece, Harris includes two infographics that list every single sequel, franchise picture, Marvel Studios release, and DC-produced superhero flick audiences will see from 2015 through 2020—the grand total is, *zoinks*, 99. That’s an average of just under 17 per year. As much as we all love a good comic book page-to-screen adaptation, oversaturation looms. By the time there’s a standalone Cyborg movie in 2020, will you even care anymore?

As for Harris’ comments, they’re spot-on. But, if anything, they’re also indirectly reassuring. As you’ll see on our list of The 30 Best Movies of 2014, the films we’ve honored are, for the most part, exceptions to Harris’ understandable disappointment. Granted, a few mega-budget blockbusters made the cut, but they’re the undeniably excellent ones, the ones that turned Chris Pratt into an A-list actor and made talking performance-capture apes emotionally poignant. The rest of the countdown, though, is dedicated to smaller character-driven films that only made the festival circuit and modestly budgeted popcorn entertainment with more brains than bucks.

The future may look like a barrage of Struggle Imagination™, but as long as filmmakers like the ones responsible for the following movies keep working, cinema lovers should breathe easy. Creativity isn't dead.

31. Obvious Child

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30. The Guest

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29. Snowpiercer

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28. Wild

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27. The Raid 2

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26. The Double

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25. Big Hero 6

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24. John Wick

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23. Whiplash

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22. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

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21. Ida

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20. Dear White People

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19. Nightcrawler

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18. Neighbors

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17. Enemy

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16. Gone Girl

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15. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

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14. Edge of Tomorrow

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13. The LEGO Movie

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12. Nymphomaniac

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11. Guardians of the Galaxy

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10. Only Lovers Left Alive

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9. Starred Up

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8. The Grand Budapest Hotel

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7. Selma

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6. The Babadook

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5. Citizenfour

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4. Under the Skin

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3. Boyhood

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2. Inherent Vice

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Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Katherine Waterston, Benicio del Toro, Owen Wilson, Martin Short, Jena Malone, Maya Rudolph, Joanna Newsom, Eric Roberts, Sasha Pieterse, Elaine Tan, Michael K. Williams, Serena Scott Thomas, Timothy Simons

If detective Philip Marlowe were a loveable, recovering crack addict, he still wouldn’t be as entertaining and insane as Larry “Doc” Sportello, the private eye in Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 novel Inherent Vice, now brought to you in a glorious new adaptation directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. This is the first time any Pynchon novel has been turned into a film, and Anderson does not disappoint, faithfully capturing the schizophrenia, the mayhem, the drugs, the sex, the politics, the crime, and the violence of Los Angeles in the 1970s.

But this isn’t an adaptation in the same way that the Coen Brothers adapt, say, a Cormac McCarthy book, or even in the way that Howard Hawks treated Raymond Chandler. You can’t just recreate the kind of world that Pynchon, one of the most notoriously reclusive American writers in history​, spins out in his post-modern novels. “I approached it in the most straightforward but laborious way I could come up with,” Anderson told NPR Fresh Air this month. “I transcribed the dialogue.”

That’s right. Anderson literally had to retype the book in order to get to know it well enough to turn this far-out stoner-noir into a movie. It also helped to enlist an all-star cast to act out the gags and spoofs that characterize the zany and hilarious universe in which Doc (Joaquin Phoenix​) operates. In other words, even if you’re too stoned to really follow the plot, there are plenty of laughs to be had while watching.

When you look at Anderson’s work—​notably, There Will Be Blood, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, and The Master—​it’s hard determine which is his best film. Whether or not Inherent Vice deserves that title is up for debate, but there’s no question that it's one of his most ambitious projects. It’s circuitous, chaotic, and often times it feels like you’re watching complete nonsense, albeit in picturesque 35 millimeter. 

The takeaway is this: Inherent Vice turns what was once considered to be impossible into something that's uniquely alive. “I remember thinking, I don’t know how to do this," said Anderson. "But really thinking, I’ve got to figure out how to do this.” It’s a very good thing that he did. —​Lauretta Charlton

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