Tom Tangney’s favorite films of 2014

As 2015 begins, KIRO Radio film critic Tom Tangney is taking a look back at all the great films that came out in the past year.

10 (tie) – “Under the Skin” and “Interstellar”

“Under the Skin” and “Interstellar” are very, very different sci-fi films, one a puzzling and disquieting
outsider’s look at ourselves, the other a special effects extravaganza with effects that are truly special, but they both do honor to the granddaddy of sci-fi films, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

9 – The Internet’s Own Boy

The Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour is getting all the accolades but I prefer this profile of Internet prodigy Aaron Swartz whose tragic demise is an equally powerful example of government overreach. The film is informative and infuriating.

8 – Dear White People

“Dear White People” is a smart, funny, and refreshing take on contemporary race relations, played out on a fictional Ivy League campus. In this surprising film debut, director Justin Simeon skewers not only black/white relations but also the divisions among African-Americans.

7 – Whiplash

There have been countless teacher/student movies made over the years, but none quite like this one. Miles Teller plays a young drummer with huge ambitions, and J. K. Simmons his maniacally hard-driving jazz band leader. At times straining the bounds of credulity, “Whiplash” saves itself with a blistering finale.

6 – Nightcrawler

“Nightcrawler” is a lurid satire of local TV news. “Nightcrawler” stars a “possessed” Jake Gyllenhaal who turns ambulance-chasing into an art-form. This ethically challenged freelance videographer may make our King 5 partners’ eyes roll, but the hyperkinetic filmmaking is exhilarating.

5 – Locke

“Locke” features the versatile English actor Tom Hardy in a tour-de-force performance. Virtually a one-man show, “Locke” is about a man who manages a series of crises, both personal and professional, all on the phone, in his car, during a long overnight drive. Low-key but “showy” in its originality.

4 – Big Eyes

“Big Eyes” is quite possibly Tim Burton’s best film. “Big Eyes” is about fraudulence, both in art and one’s personal life. Burton seems to both cherish and mock the real-life married couple behind those phenomenally popular big-eyed, sad face paintings.

3 – Force Majeure

“Force Majeure” is a brilliantly unsettling film about a family on a skiing vacation, whose lives are turned upside down by an avalanche in the French Alps. The damage done is not physical but psychological, and the repercussions are quietly devastating.

1 (tie) – The Grand Budapest Hotel and Boyhood

“The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Boyhood” – the two best films of 2014 happen to be mirror opposites. Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is the height of artifice, with more than a dozen name actors playing comic character exaggerations. But at the heart of all that artificiality is a fully conceived, multidimensional hotel concierge, played brilliantly by Ralph Fiennes. It’s a comedy of manners with an unexpected ethical backbone.

Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood,” on the other hand, prizes authenticity over artificiality. Although a fictional film, it has the feel of a documentary, tracing the 12 years of a boy’s life (from 6 to 18) over the course of an actual 12 years of filmmaking. Radical in concept, “Boyhood” is also radical in its aesthetics too, choosing to focus not on the high points of a boy’s life, but on its usually overlooked moments.