Ahem.
Rollo productions present:
The Top 20 films I discovered in 2014
So, in 2014 I have seen 101 new films. By that I don't mean films released in 2014, I mean any film that I had not seen before.
So, how about I make a top 20 of those?
But first, let's see the repartition by decade and by nationality of the movies I have seen!
20s: 7 films
30s: 12 films
40s: 11 films
50s: 20 films
60s: 22 films
70s: 12 films
80s: 7 films
90s: 2 films
2000s: 2 films
2010s: 6 films
US: 30 films
Japan: 23 films
UK: 22 films
France: 16 films
Soviet Union: 3 films
Sweden: 2 films
Denmark: 1 films
Germany: 1 films
China: 1 films
Italy: 1 films
Korea: 1 films
And now, on to the top!
#20: Doctor Zhivago (David Lean, 1965)
David Lean's epic drama doesn't fail to deliver, these 3 hours go on really fast, conveying the uncertainty of individual human existences within a quickly changing and chaotic period of history.
#19: Round Midnight (Bertrand Tavernier, 1986)
Bertrand Tavernier's fictional biopic about a jazz musician inspired by Lester Young and Bud Powell sets itself appart from other jazz biopics (like Clint Eastwood's Bird) by having real jazz musicians instead of professional actors play the different part, and only following a few months at the end of a musician's life, instead of trying to cover his whole history.
The result is a very laid back, very authentic film about jazz, which might not be very accessible for those who do not like the genre, but is a must see for those who do.
#18: The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovski, 1975)
I used to think I didn't like David Lynch's Inland Empire because its plot was absolutely impenetrable. After seeing The Mirror, I now realise an obsfuscating plot is not a problem at all —it's just that Inland Empire looks like crap as a movie, whereas The Mirror, for its obfuscating plot, is an absolutely gorgeous film that every director should see at least once (plus, the plot makes a lot more sense once you realise it's just a series of dreams and memories of a man reflecting back on his life).
#17: Assassination (Masahiro Shinoda, 1964)
A historical film set in Japan during the bakumatsu (a period of heated political conflict and near-civil war during the mid 19th century), but directed in the experimental style of Shinoda, with heavy use of shadows and an eerie soundtrack by Toru Takemitsu, this feels more like a mix of film noir and fantasy than like a historical drama.
#16: Samurai Assassin (Kihachi Okamoto, 1965)
Another historical film set during the bakumatsu (they made a lot of those in the 60s), yet in a completely different style from the previous one, with a more classic, more realistic look (paradoxically with a more fictionalised story), staring Toshiro Mifune in a powerful performance; a film about the extreme cruelty of politics and war.
#15: Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda, 1964)
You know what would make Woody Allen's or Federico Fellini's movies a lot better in my opinion? If instead of being about rich idle bourgeois and their cultural life, they were about yakuzas and their night life. This is this movie. This is a dark, psychological drama, but about yakuzas and gamblers, again filmed in the powerful, shadow-heavy style of Shinoda.
#14: Fanny (Marc Allégret, 1932)
This is the second movie in a trilogy of romance-comedy-drama films set in the port of Marseille and adapted from a series of plays by Marcel Pagnol. Although all three movies in the trilogy (which I have seen in its entirerity this year) are really good, I found this one was particularly just in its tone and representation of daily life; it's a film that shows how, in a time period where society had rather rigidly enforced public morals, people will neither completely abide to the rule, but will not outright rebel either, instead finding small arrangements in order to keep living more or less happy.
#13: Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)
Here's a movie I really didn't expect to like that much. It turns out that, in spite of its clichés and dated tropes, this film remains an example of particularly well mastered storytelling, quickly and seemlessly introducing the premise and the characters, and solving satisfyingly all its plot threads in just under 100 minutes.
#12: High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
Kurosawa's films set in contemporary Japan are less well known than his samurai films, and this is a shame, because the former include several noir gems like this intense police procedural drama about cruel choices and revenge.
#11: Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)
A quiet Danish drama about religion, directed in a very sober and restrained style and adapted from a play written by a lutheran priest? Yeah, I wasn't really enthusiastic either… It turns out that with extreme attention to detail, very minute pacing, very strong actor performances and overall a sense of strong perfectionism and pertinence, this movie is a delight for anyone who likes classic films.
#10: Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
A weird tale that navigates between social drama and fantasy, directed in a very fluid, very flowing style, which avoids spectacular effects, instead relying entirely on subtle montage and staging ideas, completely different from the movies of Kurosawa.
#9: The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998)
Too often there's this idea that mature and realistic, particularly for a war film, means gore, crude and violent. Malick opts for a completely different approch, showing the cruelty, the atrocities and the absurdities of war in a much less voyeuristic maneur, avoiding the oozes of fake blood, instead simply letting things happen. The dialogues are awesome, it's really refreshing to get a war film were the soldiers aren't just stringing cliché line over cliché line, even if this isn't strictly realistic.
#8: Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa, 1975)
A film by Kurosawa directed in the former Soviet Union and produced by Mosfilms. I tend not to like much Kurosawa's latter films, when he started to direct in colors, but this one is a major exception. This is a biographical account about Russian officer and a Siberian hunter at the beginning of the 20th century. It's about friendship, survival and mutual respect, but it's played in a lot more subtle and interesting way than "those kinds of films" usually are.
#7: Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra, 1944)
Not only it was hillarious from beginning to end, but the sudden and frequent direction changes made the movie very interesting —you know you're watching a comedy, but you're never quite sure what kind of comedy you're watching.
#6: The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa, 1960)
Another of Kurosawa's contemporary noir films; this one is a rather free adaptation of Hamlet, keeping the general plot ideas but creating an original story with them with its own very dark atmosphere; the film has several very powerful scenes, and lot to say about the corruption of the elites.
#5: Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné, 1945)
A period, romantic-drama set in 19th century Paris; while the historical reconstruction is impressive for the time, and the plot is certainly not bad, although a bit complicated due to the number of main characters, what really carries this film are the delightful dialogues written by French poet Jacques Prévert. The movie is 3 hours long, but I could have easily watched 3 more hours of it just for the dialogues.
#4: A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956)
We've all seen prison-break drama films. This one, however, is a true story. Set during the occupation of France by the Nazis, this minimalistic film tells a simple but powerful story, without any attempt at romanticising or embelishing the events, but without voyeurism either, avoiding the pitfall of emotional manipulation that is so easy to fall for in these kinds of movie —which doesn't mean the movie is devoided of any emotion either, on the contrary.
#3: Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962)
Oh boy, this movie… it starts like it's going to be a quiet drama mostly told retrospectively, a laid back story about honor and resignation, and then, progressively, subtly at first, it goes in a completely different direction… I will not say anything more for fear of spoiling it, but let's just say that if you don't like cruel and twisted stories, you should probably avoid this movie. But otherwise, you're in for quite a ride!
#2: Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
Here's a movie writers should definitely watch: in less than 90 minutes, it introduces a plot device, it explores every possibilities that this device offers, it even manages to subvert it, and still gives us an acceptable ending. Or how to tell the same story four times in an increasingly dark and cynical fashion, while still bringing the audience closure at the end!
#1: Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)
If I had been told in 2013 that one of my favorite movies for 2014 would include a French film about the occupation of France by the Nazis, I would not have believed it… so of course two such films ended up in my favorites of the year.
This one is probably the most realistic film about the French Resistance that exists outthere. Although it is based on fictionalised accounts, both the director and the author of the book it was based on were former members of the Resistance, and so they knew, first hand, what they were talking about.
This is not a happy, heroic film. It's a grim, disjointed story that shows just how desperate the cause of Resistance fighters was, how little hope of success they had, and how they were pretty much terrorists in their time. The film doesn't attack the resistance, it is still sympathetic to it, but it portrays it in an unromantized manner, close to the moral complexity and ambiguity of what resistance movements actually are.
I could write tons of things on this film, it was really an excellent surprise, and I recommend it to everyone who likes classic films or French films.
