The Best Movies of 2014, Nos. 4 & 3: Interstellar; Gone Girl
In the penultimate post of our year-end rankings, we’re looking at the fourth and third-best movies of 2014. If you missed previous installments, check out the following links:
Nos. 10 & 9: Locke; The LEGO Movie
Nos. 8 & 7: Nightcrawler; Boyhood
Nos. 6 & 5: Guardians of the Galaxy; The Imitation Game
4. Interstellar (directed by Christopher Nolan, 72% Rotten Tomatoes, 74 Metacritic). Nobody makes movies like Chris Nolan. He is the world’s brainiest blockbuster auteur, developing stories of extraordinary depth and originality, then telling them in the grandest, most evocative way possible. Interstellar is so packed with fascinating ideas, and so overflowing with narrative and technical ambition, that it often feels as though it’s about to burst. But even if it cannot entirely maintain control of its enormous plot and epic scale, its monumental effort is its own glorious reward. This is a bold, triumphant saga of intergalactic space travel that also happens to double as an exploration of the human condition. It doesn’t always succeed, but even when it fails, it fails marvelously.
Can a computer have a soul? Can a movie? Her, Spike Jonze’s breathtaking, devastating film about a lonely man and his sentient operating system, spends a good deal of time pondering the first question and, in the process, answers the second. But let’s not bury the lede here: This is a movie about a man who falls in love with a machine. No matter the miracles science has provided in the new millennium, this is a tough sell. Yet the unique genius of Her—beyond its remarkable and vast imagination—is that it acknowledges the absurdity of its premise while simultaneously committing to it with the utmost sincerity. The result is a film that’s often uproariously funny, playfully mocking its gorgeous self-made universe with wit and good humor. But Her also, through a combination of sublime technique and heartfelt storytelling (Jonze also wrote the script), offers acute insight into the dynamics of modern relationships: what it means to be alone, to be loved, to be depressed, to be happy. It’s a movie about machines that affirms our very humanity. And it makes resoundingly clear that even if computers may not have souls, some movies surely do.