Every movie we see 2014: the final accounting
127. The Theory of Everything. Eddie Redmayne is spectacular, the movie not so. Reviewed here.
128. Maratabat. Reviewed here.
129. Stolen Kisses 130. Bed and Board. Sequels to The 400 Blows. They don’t live up to The 400 Blows, but we like them all the same.
130. Starter for 10. While organizing our DVDs (we wish), we came upon this lighthearted British movie about a team representing their school in the University Challenge quiz show. The stars all went on to bigger things: James McAvoy, Dominic Cooper, Rebecca Hall, Alice Eve, and a hilarious Benedict Cumberbatch, who has always played nerds with poor social skills.
131. North by Northwest. Hitchcocks are our comfort movies, even the grisly ones.
132. Cutter’s Way. A criminally underrated masterpiece by the Czech director Ivan Passer starring Jeff Bridges, John Heard and Lisa Eichhorn as three people in California who drink too much and try to piece together the American Dream detonated by the Vietnam War. It was abandoned by its own studio and ignored by the audience, but genius finds a way to survive. The cast is magnificent. Read an appreciation.
In December we avoided the horrendous traffic by staying home and rewatching movies. 133. Magnolia. 134. Atonement. 135. That Uncertain Feeling (written by Preston Sturges). 136. Dressed to Kill.
137. Lifeboat. One of the last Hitchcocks we hadn’t seen. Survivors of a ship torpedoed by a Nazi submarine debate on whether to kill the Nazi on board, and end up letting him run things. One of many movies made when America was trying to sit out the war. Reminds us of a Monty Python sketch:
138. The Earrings of Madame de. One of our favorite movies of all time (FMAT). 139. (We got an Eric Rohmer 6 Moral Tales boxed set) The Baker Girl of Monceau (FMAT). 140. Suzanne’s Career. 141. La Collectionneuse.
142. The Devil’s Backbone. Guillermo del Toro’s heart-rendingly beautiful ghost story set in an orphanage towards the end of the Spanish Civil War. (Should be seen with Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth and Victor Erice’s Spirit of the Beehive.) As always, it’s not the dead who should be feared but the living, in this case the handsome handyman (star of Abre los ojos) who is ugly on the inside.
143. Sullivan’s Travels. FMAT.
144. The Guest. Cousin Matthew (Dan Stevens) shows off his newly-ripped torso in this action movie with a very 80s feel, down to the soundtrack.
145. The Palm Beach Story. FMAT.
146. The Riot Club. The film adaptation of the play Posh, about over-privileged young men at Oxford behaving very, very badly. A wasted opportunity, we remember it as a beauty contest between Sam Claflin, Douglas Booth, and Max Irons. Rising stars Natalie Dormer, Holliday Grainger and Jessica Findlay Brown are in the cast but have little to do.
147. The Interview. Reviewed here.
148. Letter From An Unknown Woman. FMAT. 149. Ninotchka. FMAT.
150. English Only, Please. Reviewed here.
151. The Apartment. A New Year’s Eve movie. 152. To Be Or Not To Be. Wonderful silliness.
Total number of movies seen in 2014: 152, of which 139 were seen for the first time.
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January 5th, 2015 at 07:53
In a partnership with the Weinstein Co., the BBC will do a 6-episode adaptation of War and Peace this year, with Paul Dano as Pierre Bezukhov, Lily James (Downton Abbey) as Natasha, and Stephen Rea as Prince Vassily. Interesting choice, Dano. Does not quite have the physicality of Tolstoy’s portly Bezukhov. I guess his acting will more than make up for the lack of fleshy heft.