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Ranking the Movies of 2014: #s 78-71

January 6, 2015March 4, 2021 Jeremy BeckFeatures

The Manifesto is ranking every movie we saw in 2014. If you missed it, here’s what we’ve covered so far:

Tier 10: Second-Rate Sequels, and Other Disappointments

78. Muppets Most Wanted (directed by James Bobin, 79% Rotten Tomatoes, 61 Metacritic). I loved the first Muppets movie, and the general formula—sly meta gags, ironic cameos, enjoyable songs—remains in place the second time around. But this one just doesn’t click. The story is pitiful, which wouldn’t matter if the movie were funny, but too many of the jokes land with thuds, and the songs, while functional, never spark. Ty Burrell steals the show as an epically lazy French detective, but he’s the only memorable character. The Muppets gleefully recalled the wide-eyed wonder of childhood. Muppets Most Wanted just made me feel old.

Ranking 2014’s Movies: #s 92-79

January 5, 2015March 4, 2021 Jeremy BeckFeatures

George Clooney and Hugh Bonneville in The Monuments Men

According to the calendar, 2014 is over, but the Manifesto tends to operate on its own time. Ideally, this would be the point where we’d unveil our top 10 list, highlighting the very best that the prior year in cinema had to offer. The problem, however, is that 2014 hasn’t really ended yet, at least not in moviegoing terms. There are still a number of high-profile releases that technically came out last month (making them eligible for the upcoming Oscars) but that have yet to screen near me, including Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, Ava DuVernay’s Selma, Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, and J.C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year. Given that these movies are all receiving considerable acclaim, it would be premature for me to present a finalized top 10 list without giving them a chance. So instead, I’m going to present a list of… everything else.

What follows is a ranked list, in ascending order of quality, of every 2014 theatrical release I’ve seen. I need not remind you that this exercise is profoundly ludicrous. Certainly, some movies are better than others, but just as certainly, attempting to slot different works of art into an inflexible hierarchy is absurd. But it does provide me an opportunity to go on record with my thoughts on all of the movies I saw last year, and unlike the Manifesto’s foolhardy Review of 2013, it allows me to do so in a matter of days rather than months. Just remember that these rankings are highly amorphous, and that if I re-made this list a week from now, the specific order would be highly jumbled, even if the general shape remained the same.

Fear Wins Out: Why theater owners and Sony shouldn’t have pulled “The Interview”

December 18, 2014March 4, 2021 Jeremy BeckFeatures

James Franco and Seth Rogen in The Interview

Movies are supposed to be vehicles for escape, but every so often, the real world roars into view. Such was the case yesterday, when Sony Pictures canceled the planned Christmas release of The Interview, Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen’s comedy in which two media honchos (played by Rogen and James Franco) conspire with the U.S. government to assassinate North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un. Shortly before this announcement, America’s major theater chains—including AMC, Cinemark, and Regal—declared that they would not screen the film, citing safety concerns for their patrons stemming from a threat by Guardians of Peace, an anonymous group of hackers.

Given the current climate of geopolitical turmoil and overall anxiety, these cancellations were somewhat predictable and are, all things considered, explicable. But they are also wrong, and they paint a deeply disturbing picture of the movie industry’s relationship with both its talent and its audience.

The Best Movies of 2013: Honorable Mention (Part II)

September 25, 2014March 4, 2021 Jeremy BeckFeatures

Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street

We’re recapping the movies that made honorable mention for the Manifesto’s top movies of 2013. If you missed Part I, you can check it out here.

Phil Spector. HBO’s most celebrated quasi-theatrical feature in 2013 was Steven Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra. I liked that movie just fine (even if I preferred another Soderbergh picture—see below), but I’m somewhat disappointed that critics lavished such praise on it, especially when television’s preeminent network released another, superior film about a troubled celebrity. David Mamet’s Phil Spector may lack the glitz and glamour of Soderbergh’s effort, but it’s nevertheless a lean, hypnotic glimpse into the psyche of an unhinged protagonist, as well as a fascinating exploration of the American legal system.

The Best Movies of 2013: Honorable Mention (Part I)

September 4, 2014March 4, 2021 Jeremy BeckFeatures

Amy Acker and Jillian Morgese in Much Ado About Nothing

And finally, we arrive at the best of the best. Well, almost. Over the past several years, the Manifesto has taken a rather flexible approach when setting the upper bound of its annual “best of” list. Back in 2010, 20 films made the cut. In 2011, a particularly fertile year at the movies, we expanded the field to 25. And for 2012, we narrowed things to a sweet 16. Essentially, the vintage of the particular cinematic year has influenced the length of the list. But this elastic methodology has also saved me from making agonizing choices, sparing me the sheer pain—the metaphysical agony one incurs from settling on a group of 10 titles to officially represent the year’s best—of such a hopeless, arbitrary task.

But that pain is really what list-making is all about. It’s supposed to be difficult, even if it’s also, as a ruthlessly quantitative exercise, rather stupid. Top 10 lists function as de-facto time capsules, a window into the author’s opinions of that particular moment, even if those opinions inevitably mutate with age. They also, if compiled properly, can inspire debate, which is always a healthy consequence of web-based discourse (even if such debates occasionally decay from robust argument to hateful mud-slinging). Perhaps my favorite part of publishing my own top 10 list—an undeniably personal exercise—is having people tell me precisely where I went wrong. And so, going forward, the Manifesto will only be featuring 10 titles on its official best-of list at year’s end.