A-List: Top Ten Movies of 2014
By J. Don Birnam
January 22, 2015
9. Beyond the Lights
What Nightcrawler tells us about the nastiness of the media and the press, and our collective obsession with smut, Beyond the Lights showcases even more disturbingly and realistically regarding stardom and fame. Starring Minnie Driver and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, it tells the story of a ridiculously famous pop singer and her controlling, conniving mother. Sound familiar? The women in this film are complex characters, evil at times. They are driven by ambition and fed by the opium of the love of the masses, much like a lot of our celebrities today. Driver and Mbatha-Raw are perhaps the most overlooked actresses this year, as they chill with their respective ambition, suffering, and ruthlessness. I was happy to see Beyond the Lights land a surprise Best Original Song nod for Diane Warren’s “Grateful,” but it really deserved a better fate than a single nomination, and it was one of my most surprising likes of the year.
8. Love Is Strange
One of the many reasons I was in awe of this Alfred Molina/John Lithgow vehicle, which explores issues relating to sexuality and aging, is that it represents what I believe is the new trend in movies in the 2010s: “Life/Reality Movies.” In the 1980s the dramas were real but contrived and in the booming 1990s they were epic. Today, as movies struggle to compete with television, a lot of which is based on the (mostly false) notion that we are watching humans in reality, “Reality Movies” abound. Indeed, Boyhood will likely be crowned victorious in February as the quintessential example of a “Reality Movie” gone wild - reality to the point of 12 years of filming. Love is Strange, then, tells the seemingly real story of an old gay couple struggle to make ends meet in New York. The whole point of a Reality Movie is that when you are watching it you feel like you’re just peering into someone’s life - the dialogue, characters, and situations are mostly realistic, believable, and even common day. Their power comes in that they touch us because any of it could happen to us or even be us.
Love is Strange accomplishes this by blending themes of economic struggles faced by today’s aging middle class and baby boomers, discrimination that gay men and lesbians encounter, and the love and societal support that weave and keep groups together, of all ages and creeds, helping us to survive. Molina and Lithgow give touching performances, and you do not feel like you are watching a movie at all. Most of all, however, it was refreshing to see a movie that catered not to the usual tween or fanboy but to a mostly neglected sector of the population.
7. Two Days, One Night
Speaking of “Reality Movies,” and movies that are relevant, and movies that tell another tale aside from the usual male, struggling hero, the Dardennes Brothers Belgian entry (and snub) into the Best Foreign Language Film has it all. It tells the story of a woman (played by the nominated and astounding Marion Cotillard) who has 48 hours to convince her 16 coworkers to give up their lucrative bonuses so that she may keep a job she desperately needs. What follows is a heartfelt narrative of human endurance, greed, selflessness, and valor.
You would think you are watching a documentary given how easy and nonchalant the entire movie feels. Even better, the piece has infinitely subtle meanings regarding the struggles of today’s middle class, income inequality, the struggle of women to be mothers, wives, and providers at the same time, and the overall oppressive forces that stifle the average worker today. It also touches upon issues of class, immigration, and - believe it or not - pharmacodependency. All of this in 90 minutes. I don’t normally fall this hard for films that exhibit little in the below-the-line crafts, but the story and lead acting of Two Days is that good.
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