Five movies I enjoyed the most in 2014

With a lot of interesting releases, I think 2014 was a good year for film. (hoeveel films heb je gezien, Arjan?) Most notable was my two-week binch binge watching during the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

In no particular order, my top five of 2014:

Upstream Color

When I saw the trailer for this movie a few years ago (link?), I desperately wanted to see this on a real theatre screen. The opportunity never came until a few months ago. An art house theatre in Amsterdam had a few screenings.

It was the most beautiful yet weirdest cinematic experience I ever had. The beauty lies in its depiction of the urge to find each other as human (elaborate?). The weird part is why we do so in this movie. You’ll fall in love with the subtle things going on everywhere. What, why?

I like the way this curious movie shines new light on human life. Shane Carruth has such a huge role in almost every aspect, producing, writing and directing it, as well as acting a main part and composing the original score.

Gone Girl

Gone Girl was a very gripping experience. Not only the main character has no clue what to do next, as an audience you have neither a clue on what could happen next. Puzzling the whole movie is what I like about this excellent thriller.

Not only the story and characters are ace, the music and cinematography are stunning and support the story well. I hope Rosamund Pike will receive an Oscar nomination for her role.

The part that is best about this movie is the discussions about the movie. All of our reactions were „oh what the f about this scene…” experiencing the movie over and over after watching it.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Before watching The Grand Budapest Hotel I had only seen two movies by Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom and Fantastic Mr. Fox. I knew of his witty humour and visual style, but The Grand Budapest Hotel outperforms the previous two.

On this cinematic adventure with Wes Anderson, there are so many things going on. Jokes are made quickly and everything looks gorgeous. If you keep thinking too much about it, you’ll delay your own adventure with Mr. Anderson. The adventure ended too soon for my likes, I wanted to stay in this entertaining world for a while longer.

After this movie I watched various other movies by Wes Anderson, including the very nice Rushmore.

Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy

I saw this movie at the International Film Festival Rotterdam earlier this year. The abstract mentioned the way Twitter was used in this movie, and as a semi-early-adapter-Twitter-addict, I just had to watch this movie.

In the film several tweets are shown by the main character, and a few minutes of film shows what the tweet was about. The story follows a young girl at a boarding school with all the—sometimes unreal—experiences she has.

The little over two hours showed some new and very entertaining ways of generating humour in an absurd story. I laughed a lot during this screening.

Enemy

Around the end of last year I saw Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, one of my favourite movies of last year. Early this year I could watch his newest film Enemy. This batshit insane movie about a double identity—Jake Gyllenhaal in a double role—makes desperately waiting for more thrillers from Mr. Villeneuve.

There is no point in telling about the story, it gives away too much. Supported by the well crafted images and music, it is a true experience to see what the characters will encounter next. Altogether the movie feels a bit like walking through Salvador Dalí his brain.

The nicest thing I like about this movie, is the way in which the real world and the surrealistic world interact. If possible, I want to use a similar concept in one of my own film production one day.

Notable contestants for this top five were:

• Boyhood, for showing the pure form of cinema at its best.
• Aanmodderfakker, for a great addition to Dutch comedy cinema
• The Lego Movie, for an awesome way of presenting an entertaining story about my favourite toys.
• Venus in Fur, for showing me how interesting only two actors in one location can be.
• A Most Wanted Man, for allowing late Philip Seymour Hoffman to show what he did best.
• Concrete Night, for the mouth drops in had in cinema watching the beauty of its story and visuals.