Ranking 2014’s Movies: #s 92-79

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.

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

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.

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