The Movie Year in Review, 2014

It’s end-of-year list-making time!

The Lists

Favorite New Movies on Video, 2014
Favorite New Movies in Theaters, 2014
Favorite Older Movies on Video, 2014
Favorite Retrospective Screenings, 2014
Favorite Shorts of 2014
Some 2014 Movies I Missed
Previous year lists

Letting the new/video list sit on top this year. The new/theater list is what people think of as the “movies of the year,” and those top three picks were important to me, but since the blog was moving to Nebraska I didn’t make it out to the theaters too often, and on video I had a wider variety of movies available, so I feel the video list is more representative of my taste.


Movie Memories

Other viewing experiences that stand out:

Watching 99 minutes of The Clock from comfy couches at the Walker with Katy and Aaron.

Babette’s Feast long-distance with Katy (texting) on Valentine’s Day during an earthquake.

Getting into the stories from Breadcrumb Trail, spending the next month listening to Slint-related albums.


Television

Most enjoyable shows:

Dollhouse s2 and The Prisoner in the wacked dystopian drama department

Comedies Veep s2, Girls s1, Futurama s6, Important Things s2 and The Day Today.


The Year In Bad Movies

I try not to make “worst movies” lists, since I try not to watch bad movies (or to pick on Katy’s occasional bum pick), but I saw a few that deserve special mention – Bastards, The Maze, Poto and Cabengo, Witch Hunt and The Handmaid’s Tale were all foul in their own way. And usually I leave shorts alone, since they don’t waste much of my time, but The Legend of Hallowdega and Festi were pretty terrible.


SHOCKtober

Horrors watched in October rarely make the end-of-year lists, so sometimes I give ’em their own lists just so they can feel special. This year brought the Polanski movies and Possession, so horrors don’t need an entire consolation page, but these were very good:

The Abominable Dr. Phibes
Antiviral
Metamorphosis
Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell
Kiss of the Damned


Rewatches

Watched/enjoyed for the first time in years (in no order):

A Man Escaped
Scanners
Brazil
Hellraiser
Dead Man
The Thin Red Line
Eyes Wide Shut
Minority Report
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
Batman Returns
Princess Mononoke


Viewing Projects, Lists, Etc.

Added some directors to the sidebar: Bong Joon-ho, Jean Cocteau, David Fincher, Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick, Satyajit Ray, Tsai Ming-Liang.

I made a to-watch list for 2014 (which I didn’t share online because it overlaps most of my already-online lists) and only ended up watched 15% of those. No big deal… not getting hung up on any one list or project as long as I’m watching good stuff, just going with whatever catches fancy at the time. That said, I could stand to have a Criterion Blu-ray month… or year, since they keep putting out gorgeous editions of new movies that I act excited about then never watch. And I’ve created a way of keeping track of about a hundred movie lists, so when I complete any of those, whether by concerted effort or by accident, I plan to do an Inventory write-up like this one.


Happy New Movie Year 2015