The Best Movies of 2014, Nos. 10 & 9: Locke; The LEGO Movie

Tom Hardy in "Locke"; Chris Pratt in "The LEGO Movie"

After having analyzed 95 different 2014 releases over the past month and change, we arrive at last at the top 10. We’ll be splitting these into five separate posts of two movies each, with the top two titles dropping on Friday.

10. Locke (directed by Steven Knight, 91% Rotten Tomatoes, 81 Metacritic).
He just can’t stop talking about the traffic. Ivan Locke is cruising down the motorway in his BMW late at night while chatting nonstop via his Bluetooth, and he has a lot on his mind. He’s hurtling at high speeds toward a hospital so he can be present for the birth of his third child, but the woman he’s meeting isn’t his wife, it’s his mistress, Bethan (Olivia Colman). He’s abandoning his lucrative position as lead architect on a high-profile project that’s about to break ground, and he needs to constantly provide instructions to his panicky associate. And he has to call his wife, Katrina (Ruth Wilson), to inform her that he won’t be home for dinner because nine months ago, he and a coworker split a bottle of wine and fell into bed. This is a man whose life is disintegrating as his Beamer flies past one mile marker to the next. Yet whenever he finds himself speaking with Bethan, he acts less like an expectant father than a news reporter. She tells him she loves him; he responds, “I should be there in an hour—the traffic is very good.”

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Ranking the Movies of 2014: #s 78-71

Keanu Reeves in John Wick

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

Nos. 92-79 (Tiers 12 and 11)

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.

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