MovieManifesto

Ranking Every Movie of 2014: The Complete List

February 17, 2015June 30, 2021 Jeremy BeckTop 10 Lists

Back in January, the Manifesto resolved to rank every movie we watched in 2014. A month and a half later, that exhaustive and exhausting exercise is now complete. For recordkeeping purposes, what follows is the full list in its final form. If you’re interested in reading my thoughts on a particular movie, the hyperlink will take you to the post featuring that film’s review (ranging, depending on the quality of the movie, from 100 words to 1,000-plus). As with the individual posts, I’m providing the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic ratings for context, as well as the name of the film’s director.

And so, here lies the Manifesto’s complete list of all 2014 movies, ranked in descending order of preference:

The Best Movies of 2014, Nos. 2 & 1: Edge of Tomorrow; Whiplash

February 17, 2015June 30, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews, Top 10 Lists

And at long last, we come to the two best movies of 2014. If you missed the Manifesto’s previous installments in this series, you can find them at the links below:

Nos. 10 & 9: Locke; The LEGO Movie
Nos. 8 & 7: Nightcrawler; Boyhood
Nos. 6 & 5: Guardians of the Galaxy; The Imitation Game
Nos. 4 & 3: Interstellar; Gone Girl

2. Edge of Tomorrow (directed by Doug Liman, 90% Rotten Tomatoes, 71 Metacritic). Licking its wounds after Edge of Tomorrow barely scratched out $100 million at the domestic box office, Warner Bros. rebranded the movie Live Die Repeat for its home video release. It was a savvy marketing maneuver that also subtly tapped in to the film’s structural brilliance. Groundhog Day for the blockbuster age, Edge of Tomorrow is, in essence, the most ingenious videogame ever filmed. Its hero comes upon a particular level and loses countless times, constantly honing his technique and refining his strategy in the process, before ultimately achieving victory and moving on to the next level. It’s proudly (if originally) formulaic, but within this fundamentally blocky layout is a movie of remarkable surprise and wit, one that continually reshapes its identity and locates clever crannies of intrigue and humor. It repeats itself over and over again, and yet it always feels fresh and new. Read More

The Best Movies of 2014, Nos. 4 & 3: Interstellar; Gone Girl

February 12, 2015June 30, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews, Top 10 Lists

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.

The Best Movies of 2014, Nos. 6 & 5: Guardians of the Galaxy; The Imitation Game

February 11, 2015June 30, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews, Top 10 Lists

The Manifesto is wrapping up its rankings of all of 2014’s movies with its look at the best movies of the year. If you missed previous installments, check out the following links:

Nos. 10 & 9: Locke; The LEGO Movie
Nos. 8 & 7: Nightcrawler; Boyhood

6. Guardians of the Galaxy (directed by James Gunn, 91% Rotten Tomatoes, 76 Metacritic). It is so, so hard to make a good comic-book movie, much less a distinctive one. The genre’s myriad requirements—the commercial imperative for outrageous spectacle, the numbing obligation of fan service, the daunting duty to connect with installments from other franchises—all conspire to make comic-book productions feel more like prepackaged, interchangeable morsels of formula than actual movies. But despite its cutting-edge special effects and dazzling space-opera aesthetic, and despite a cameo from the mega-villain of The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy never once feels like it rolled off the blockbuster assembly line. This is partly due to what it lacks: It doesn’t feature any historic action sequences, it doesn’t conjure a particularly menacing antagonist, and it doesn’t even tell an especially original story. What it has, however, is something far more important: a personality.

The Best Movies of 2014, Nos. 8 & 7: Nightcrawler; Boyhood

February 10, 2015June 30, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews, Top 10 Lists

Jake Gyllenhaal in "Nightcrawler"; Ellar Coltrane in "Boyhood"

If you missed the first entry in the Manifesto’s Top 10 Movies of 2014, you can find it here.

8. Nightcrawler (directed by Dan Gilroy, 95% Rotten Tomatoes, 76 Metacritic). What’s the creepiest thing about Louis Bloom? Perhaps it’s how he looks, with his lank and greasy hair, skeletal frame, and bulging blue eyes that never seem to close. Or perhaps it’s how he talks, constantly spouting mind-numbing corporate rhetoric that he seems to have memorized from a self-help seminar. Most likely, it’s how he acts; an amoral creature, Louis has no use for other people except to bend them to his will, and to use them to slake his lust for power and control. I’d say he was born without a moral compass, but he probably just sold it for a better video camera.