Here´s the 1st ever The Macmahonian´s Year´s Top 10. 3 brief caveats:
1. The MacMahonian came into existence only halfway through last year and, being an amateur site, doesn´t manage to run the gamut of production reviewed by the mainstream media, so the list below will naturally be comparatively less comprehensive;
2. The list is based on impressions from first vewing, therefere consciously subjective and provisional. If I were to see the very same films today, the impact would probably be slightly different. Furthermore, if I was asked to reproduce the list from memory in a couple of months´ time, I probably couldn´t. So don´t take it seriously.
3. There´s one rule: what I enjoyed the most. No quotas for language, minority, gender, LGBT or what have you.
So as it happens (or maybe not, depending on how strict you are) all 10 best films of 2014 are spoken in English and all were produced by the „Hollywood system“ or fringes thereof. For the record, 3 directors are American, 2 British, 2 Australian (for the same movie) and 1 Canadian, Dutch, French and South Korean respectively. But they all work for or with Tinseltown. Some traditions die hard.
Genderwise, a subconscious preference for ScFi/fantastic means 6 out of 10 films could be thus categorized (and a further comes from a director whose main canon stems from those genres), 2 could be loosely described as showbiz-related dramas and 2 as thillers (one family, one political). As the man said, this proves nothing, but...
Also, maybe 4 of the films listed below feature in some of the main Top 10 lists published so far (I´m thinking mainly of the collective and individual lists published in Cahiers du Cinema and Sight and Sound). The remaining 6, seldom if ever. Now here´s how peer review functions in film criticism: if your choices match those of the majority, that proves you are a knowledgeable and authorised critic, attuned with the doctrine and trends of the times; if some of your choices are matched but by a small minority, that means your choices are excepcionally sophisticated and only an enlightened few are able to grasp them; if practically no-one selects the films you chose, that means your discenment is beyond the understanding of most mere mortals and you are clearly above and ahead of the pack and the times.
So without further ado and from the bottom to the Top, The MacMahonian´s Top 10 Films of 2014 are:
1. The MacMahonian came into existence only halfway through last year and, being an amateur site, doesn´t manage to run the gamut of production reviewed by the mainstream media, so the list below will naturally be comparatively less comprehensive;
2. The list is based on impressions from first vewing, therefere consciously subjective and provisional. If I were to see the very same films today, the impact would probably be slightly different. Furthermore, if I was asked to reproduce the list from memory in a couple of months´ time, I probably couldn´t. So don´t take it seriously.
3. There´s one rule: what I enjoyed the most. No quotas for language, minority, gender, LGBT or what have you.
So as it happens (or maybe not, depending on how strict you are) all 10 best films of 2014 are spoken in English and all were produced by the „Hollywood system“ or fringes thereof. For the record, 3 directors are American, 2 British, 2 Australian (for the same movie) and 1 Canadian, Dutch, French and South Korean respectively. But they all work for or with Tinseltown. Some traditions die hard.
Genderwise, a subconscious preference for ScFi/fantastic means 6 out of 10 films could be thus categorized (and a further comes from a director whose main canon stems from those genres), 2 could be loosely described as showbiz-related dramas and 2 as thillers (one family, one political). As the man said, this proves nothing, but...
Also, maybe 4 of the films listed below feature in some of the main Top 10 lists published so far (I´m thinking mainly of the collective and individual lists published in Cahiers du Cinema and Sight and Sound). The remaining 6, seldom if ever. Now here´s how peer review functions in film criticism: if your choices match those of the majority, that proves you are a knowledgeable and authorised critic, attuned with the doctrine and trends of the times; if some of your choices are matched but by a small minority, that means your choices are excepcionally sophisticated and only an enlightened few are able to grasp them; if practically no-one selects the films you chose, that means your discenment is beyond the understanding of most mere mortals and you are clearly above and ahead of the pack and the times.
So without further ado and from the bottom to the Top, The MacMahonian´s Top 10 Films of 2014 are:
10. A Most Wanted Man – Anton Corbijn (reviewed November): an author close to the MacMahonian´s heart (though not mainly for his films) produces a perceptive and gorgeously photographed political thriller, which also happens to be Philipp Seymour Hoffman´s swansong. 9. Predestination - Michael and Peter Spierig (reviewed December): unassuming and underrated scifi thriller which went largely unnoticed, mixing elements of Phillip K Dick and Robert Heinlein and dealing with time paradoxes in slow pace, around a one-on-one dialogue scene in a bar. 8. Maps to the Stars – David Cronenberg (reviewed October): no-FX no-gore Cronenberg classic, maybe more popular on the eastern shores of the Atlantic, et pour cause… 7. Maleficent – Robert Stromberg: I always knew the Wicked Fairy Godmother wasn´t wicked for no reason! Maleficent provides the Freudian background to the Sleeping Beauty myth so magisterially I actually thought it was a rendition of the Brothers Grimm original. And who would have thought Angelina Jolie had the range! Only a little less CGI flights of fancy (possibly targeted at the computer games market) and it´d have been perfect! But nobody needs perfect. 6. Snowpiercer – Joon-ho Bong: delightfully insane crypto-marxist dystopia. If civilization was wiped out form the face of the earth, how did they manage to build such a train anyway? And what was the point of the upper classes oppressing the lower classes if they didn´t need them for work or anything else? Never mind. Joon-ho Bong is matchless in originality, each new film a complete departure from what he did last. Snowpiercer looks like what a Terry Gilliam film would look like if Terry Gilliam could direct (a bit bitchy, this remark, Terry Gilliam´s last film, Zero Theorem, is actually rather watchable). And great art direction. And it´s got Tilda Swindon. |
5. Gone Girl – David Fincher: maybe his most personal effort, David Fincher throws caution to the wind and presents a family drama cum thriller cum suspected wife murder that´s incongruous and inconclusive but downright Shakespearean, with easily the best overall performances of the year. 4. Lucy – Luc Besson (reviewed October): arguably the most exhilarating film of the year and further proof, if proof were needed, that formulas don´t get exhausted, only talent does. 1 out of 4 Top 10 best films to deal literally and adequately with matters of cosmic reckoning, and 1 ouf of 2 to feature Scarlett Johansson, who gets The MacMahonian´s Best Actress of 2014 Award. 3- Under the Skin – Jonathan Glazer (reviewed July): the only certified critic´s darling movie of this year´s MacMahonian list and felicitously so. Let´s hope we see more from Jonathan Glazer in 2015. 2. Jersey Boys - Clint Eastwood (reviewed October): A film nobody seems to appreciate but that´s their loss and The MacMahonian´s gain. Clint unashamedly plagiates Scorsese, doesn´t even bother to disguise it and tops it up with a Bollywood ending! Now thats entertainment. |
...and the winner of The Macmahonian´s Best Film of 2014 Award is...
1. Interstellar – Christopher Nolan (reviewed December): the emerging consensus seems to be Chris Nolan bit more than he could chew on this one. The metaphysical pretentions of Interstellar weren´t to everyone´s liking. Maybe, but I can´t shake off the effect it had on me when I first (and last) saw it. Of very many, I´d recall the sequence in that umpteenth dimension where all times meet and Cooper (thinks he) has a chance to right past wrongs, to available avail.
1. Interstellar – Christopher Nolan (reviewed December): the emerging consensus seems to be Chris Nolan bit more than he could chew on this one. The metaphysical pretentions of Interstellar weren´t to everyone´s liking. Maybe, but I can´t shake off the effect it had on me when I first (and last) saw it. Of very many, I´d recall the sequence in that umpteenth dimension where all times meet and Cooper (thinks he) has a chance to right past wrongs, to available avail.
As a final point, and as everybody hopefully noticed by now, The MacMahonian generally prefers praise to blame and would rather be on the minority defending works that go unnapreciated (of which I think the list above may have a few) than the opposite. However, to avoid polemic when some films receive accolades we find misguided would be dereliction of duty, so below a few jabs at a couple of works that, to me incomprehensively, recieved general praise:
So here´s the ...
2014 not 10 best list (consisting of only 2):
So here´s the ...
2014 not 10 best list (consisting of only 2):
- Grand Budapest Hotel (GBH) – Wes Anderson: Wes Anderson doesn´t rank too highly in The MacMahonian – entertaining he certainly is, and that´s certainly something (btw The MacMahonian rejects the critical concept of “guilty pleasure” as so much protestant humbug; like it´s akin “interest failure”: if it´s a pleasure it doesn´t matter if it´s guilty and if it´s interesting it isn’t a failure!). But for all the elaboration, imagination and captivating performances by Ralph Fiennes, Harvey Keitel etc. GBH is but a vacuous collection of cockamamie shenanigans playing out tongue-in-cheek art school wise-ass stuff for its own sake so that´s typical of a certain half-baked US pseudo-euro-culture-philia that´s so full of itself that, that what, that nothing, this sentence is already too long… Enjoyed it, forgotten it. The fact that GBH made it to so many top 10 lists just goes to show how direly in need of a good MacMahonian education so much of the critical establishment is. - A Touch of Sin: Jia Zhangke: a film perhaps more worthy than GBH, but still a rather gauche incursion into Tarantinoesque territory to describe unsubtly the woes of contemporary Chinese society. I might add that I reside in China so I can relate to much that´s shown in the film, which I however find incarnates more than denunciates the excesses it purports to portray. Fun factoid: the is banned in mainland China but is available in pirate DVD practically in every corner! |