Year in Review: Best & Worst

I am the kind of person who tends to see the negative first. I have no problem admitting that, and I live a fine, happy life, but the negative is what jumps out at me. So, in pouring over the events that defined 2014, the list of the bad was markedly easier to compile. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized the joy is in the details.

How bad a year could it have been with so many great films and so many vital stories being told? How gloomy could I be about a year in which important new voices made themselves heard and some of the great voices from our past screamed out once again? There is good to be found, and yet, if you want the morose and the bitter, skip on down to the second half of this article, and you will find that, too. For better and worse, here are the trends and moments that defined 2014 for me.

 

Four best things

 

1. Music at the movies

Music and movies go hand in hand, really. From the earliest days of the form, when “silent” cinema meant no dialogue, all music, the two arts have been inseparable. However, when movies try to depict the art and artists behind the music, at best, the results have been mixed. For every truly brilliant The Commitments or Coal Miner’s Daughter, there is a Beyond the Sea or Get on Up to push the form back to its blandest biographical inclinations.

Not so this year as three great films about music and musicians (four if you count the well-regarded God Help the Girl, which I have not seen) graced cinema screens. From the insanity of Whiplash to the sublime We Are the Best! to the sublimely insane Frank, musicians had their day at the movies all year in 2014. In one way or another, each of these films strikes at the heart of why making music, or any art, matters. It is something one feels. One must do it. There is no other choice, and these films understand that.

2. Cinematography

My favorite film craft is cinematography. As a purely visual art, it is the one thing filmmakers hold over other storytellers. In lighting, composition, and movement, cinematographers can create great work without a word or a sound. The best find ways to push the medium forward and expand what we think of when we think of movie visuals. Others work to perfect the old ways, while still saying something fresh and interesting.

Emmanuel Lubezki turned Birdman into a cinematic magic trick, making the film appear as though it were shot in one unbroken take. Fabrice Aragno made 3D a valid form of artistic expression with the innovative, baffling, and always intriguing Goodbye to Language. Dick Pope took audiences inside the mind of a painter by filming the world the way an artist might see his work in Mr. Turner. Each of these artists deserves praise for refusing to settle for good enough and pushing the boundaries of what we should expect at the movies.

3. Triumph of the cult masters

Fresh blood is integral to the world of cinema. New ideas and new ways of looking at the medium help prevent stagnation and promote growth. However, there is something to be said for the artists who have stood up against the stale since the beginnings of their careers, the filmmakers for whom the ordinary was never an option. They may not be heavy hitters at the box office, and audiences may not be able to make heads or tails of their films, but the cult masters of cinema are as vitally important as the household names and their ilk.

Since his first feature came out in 1960, Jean-Luc Godard has made the reinvention of cinema his primary goal, and he is at it again with Goodbye to Language. Similarly, the far less prolific Alejandro Jodorowsky returned to screens this year after a 23-year absence with the daffy and brilliant Dance of Reality, making one wish he does not stay away for that long again. Finally, Lars von Trier, that prickly Danish provocateur, unleashed his epic sex drama Nymphomaniac to audiences who probably were not ready for it but who needed it none the less.

4. Actors taking chances

About those household names, though, those shining stars of the cinematic universe – sometimes, they take chances, too, and when they do, the results can be electrifying. There is satisfaction in celebrities unconcerned with vanity in their work, willing to look ugly or weird or repulsive. Jake Gyllenhaal transformed into a slithering, creeping creature of the darkness for Nightcrawler, revealing sides of his persona previously untapped. Michael Fassbender, usually so still and so expressive, donned a giant paper mache head and became the embodiment of artistic exuberance in Frank.

Marion Cotillard shed the glamor of some of her previous roles and tackled the part of a clinically depressed mother of two fighting for her family’s livelihood in Two Days, One Night. The always adventurous Charlotte Gainsbourg joined forces once again with von Trier, and in their third collaboration, Nymphomaniac, she goes farther than she ever has before to depict a woman who has degraded and destroyed herself her whole life but still deserves and demands respect. If only more actors took risks such as these, we might have a much more interesting film landscape overall.

Four worst things

1. Sony cancels The Interview

 

As if anything else could top this list, Sony’s handling of the debacle around The Interview was the worst mismanagement of a crisis in the film industry in recent memory. The company made wrong decision after wrong decision every step of the way, and by the end, it was so shrouded in failure that even the eventual release of the film could not erase the stink of the situation.

So, yes, the movie has been seen now, possibly by even more people than would have seen it had no controversy been stirred, but the facts remain: Fearing for its own reputation and stock, Sony failed to support the artists who make the products that keep its film division humming. I have yet to see the film but plan to do so. It is apparently only OK, which it has every right to be. It is just a shame we had to go through all of this just to exercise our right to find out for ourselves.

2. Deaths of icons

Apologies to the great talents who will not be mentioned in this section, but a couple hundred words is too few to express the loss and regret of a year’s worth of departed icons. Every year, we lose countless talented people – stars, innovators, and journeymen – but 2014 seemed to hit particularly hard on that front, beginning in February with the death of one my all-time favorite actors and one of the all-time greats, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

If it had just been Hoffman, it would have constituted a rough year, but death was unrelenting over the last 12 months, claiming Robin Williams, Lauren Bacall, Gordon Willis, Ruby Dee, Richard Attenborough, and a host of others. It is always sad when an icon dies, but it felt like we bombarded with such notices over the last year. Here is to hoping 2015 is kinder to our poor hearts.

3. Science at the movies

When I wrote about Godzilla back in July, I said it is unfair to criticize an entertainment spectacle for its failings in the science and nature department. These are not documentaries, and they should be given license to create inspiring new worlds. However, if a film – and Godzilla is a prime offender – wishes to engage debate about its science, then by all means, let us have that debate. Godzilla and Interstellar, two of the worst movies I saw this year, leaned on their science as the basis for story, then forgot to consider what it was they were selling. Pseudoscience in fiction is fine unless you are selling facts.

On the flipside of that coin, two movies about real-life scientists, brilliant men whose accomplishments in their respective fields continue to inform the ways we live today, seem to have forgotten their main characters were learned scientists. The Imitation Game reduces Alan Turing to an autistic savant whose genius we could not begin to understand, so the film does not even try. Meanwhile, The Theory of Everything finds the love story between Stephen Hawking and his long-suffering first wife of greater intrigue than the history of time or the origins of our universe.

4. Good intentions

It is nice to be nice, and it is good to be good, but no one ever made history that way. World-changing events are always messy, revolutionary leaders are often prickly, and endings are rarely sunshine and happy days. It is fine to depict an ideal world, since many of us go to the movies hoping to escape the harshness of everyday life, but artists who take harshness as their subject have a responsibility to emotional honesty that was sorely lacking in several major films this year.

Pride, about the movement for gay rights and union solidarity in 1980s England and Wales, Dear White People, about antiquated racial attitudes being alive and well in modern America, and Unbroken, a hagiography of U.S. Olympian and war hero Louis Zamperini, all had the best of intentions with mixed or offensive outcomes. Unbroken is the worst of these, but each failed in its own specific ways to champion the cause it meant to and instead fell back on clichés and stereotypes, not exactly the best way to move the world forward.

Check back tomorrow as Last Cinema Standing’s Year in Review continues with the Top 10 Quotes of the Year.

New movie review: Dear White People

Tessa Thompson (center) stars as Sam White in Justin Simien's Dear White People.

It is provocative. It is a discussion starter. It is an important topic. It means well – but the road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions. Justin Simien’s debut feature, Dear White People, has all the makings of a message film filtered through the sensibilities of a satirical comedy-drama. That it mostly succeeds at comedy and mostly fails at drama is beside the point. The goal of this feature is to hold a mirror up to the culture and show us where we have gone wrong. What appears in the reflection will say more about the viewer than the film.

Race remains a lightning-rod issue in all corners of society. Polite conversation can devolve into uninformed political rhetoric and outright anger just by bringing race into the discussion. Most people would rather avoid the topic altogether and tuck it away with their talking points about religion and politics until they find like-minded folks with whom they can just nod their heads.

This is particularly true if you find yourself among the white people in “mixed” company, whatever that means anymore. Maybe you try to steer the conversation away from controversy or just bite your tongue altogether. God forbid you should offend someone or, worse, be called a racist. Do you know who is most afraid of being labeled racist? Racists.

Dialogue is good. Discussion is good. Hell yes, debate is good. In one of Dear White People’s many “that is so true” moments, firebrand radio host Sam White, played by Tessa Thompson, announces on her show that white people who use the term “African American” because they are afraid of saying “black” should just go ahead and say “nigger” because that is what they want to say anyway.

The moment is played for laughs but is in reality an instance of bracing honesty. This film is speaking to a generation of 18- to 25-year-olds who want to ignore race, move past it, and pretend they do not see color. Their intentions are good, but those road signs you see point directly to hell. We will not get past issues by claiming we are above them. We will get past them by diving down into the mud and fighting. Controversy should be courted and confronted.

In this respect, Dear White People is a noble and necessary effort. Any film that fosters intelligent debate among people with differing views should be seen far and wide; however, I cannot say the conversations this film starts will necessarily be intelligent. The problem lies in the prevalence of the aforementioned “that is so true” moments, which are this film’s stock-in-trade.

It bears repeating that race is a tough topic to tackle on film. Most people just do not want to hear it, and when they do, it makes them defensive. “I would never say that” or “I could never do something like that” are the familiar refrains of moviegoers confronted with a reality they hoped not to acknowledge, but the oft-ignored fact is: It does not matter what you would do or have done; all that matters is that it is done.

Remember, we are living in the time of President Barack Obama and a generation of teenagers and young adults who vowed to be better about these kinds of things, definitely better than their parents’ generation and the generations before that. The president of the fictional Ivy League university featured in Dear White People even says at one point, “Racism is over.” And would you believe there are people, smart people, who believe this to be true?

The problem with Dear White People’s satirical approach to storytelling is that it gives audience members permission to laugh at themselves. Rather than challenge viewers to think critically about the roles they play in oppression, racism, and inequality, it lets them off the hook with its artifice of humor. As a result, people are most likely to leave the theater joking with their friends about how “that is so true,” sharing a chuckle, and wondering what they are going to get for dinner.

One of the biggest drawbacks of the film is that Simien tries to cram too much story and too many characters into an already bloated hour and 50-minute runtime. The radio host at the center of everything is Thompson's lived-in take on a mixed-race woman trying to embrace her essential blackness. There is Tyler James Williams as Lionel Higgins, whose identity crisis comes from the fact that he does not conform to typical black stereotypes. Kyle Gallner plays Kurt Fletcher, whose successful father bullies him into actively avoiding those same stereotypes. And Teyonah Parris is Colandrea “Coco” Conners, who wants notoriety and recognition any way she can get it.

Those are just the main characters. There are about a half-dozen side characters whose stories we are asked to follow and concern ourselves with, as well as a complex and contradictory web of motivations for all of them. Streamlining would have done Simien’s film a world of good. For all the interlocking plots and showy storytelling devices, the central theme of the movie boils down to this: How can a black person be the most honest version of himself or herself in a predominantly white culture?

It is a powerful thesis question, enough for a whole series of films on the black experience in America. That would be an exciting project, something I would be first in line for every time. Instead, Simien gives us a picture with so much to say that it is constantly tripping over its tongue trying to get it all out. I am glad this film was made. I am energized by the idea that people may ask questions about their prejudices and the prejudice they see. But Dear White People is better in its design than its execution, and I am sad to report this probably will not be the film that exposes the cracks in the broken veneer of social harmony.

Having already discussed movies like Pride and Gone Girl in this space, it is hard not to think we are in a year of movies with important things to say about the society we have built but with no idea how to get their messages across. They intend to provoke. They intend to start discussions. They intend a lot of good things, but it is not enough. We need to move beyond good intentions and embrace positive actions. If we cannot do that, then I guess I will see you in hell.

See it? Yes.