Our pick of the films of 2014Here are our nominations for the best entertainment of the past year, plus a look at the year's worst.
Picking the year’s most worthwhile films is always a challenge. Here is a list of ten from a range of genres, with something for everyone.
The Drop Hollywood hasn’t exhausted the gangster genre, it seems. This entertaining film about murderous thugs in Brooklyn, with a great plot twist at the end, will keep your brain fully engaged. It was the last screen performance by James Gandolfini, the star of The Sopranos.
Guardians of the Galaxy This CGI-saturated spin-off from the Marvel comics universe is deliriously silly. What other film have you seen whose main star is a raccoon? (Do not call him a rodent. Ever.) With its attractive cast of super-hero misfits, this is easily the best of the Marvel franchise.
Interstellar Like all of Christopher Nolan’s films, Interstellar is a cerebral and visual treat. With global warming turning Earth into a desert, a team of astronauts is launched into space through a wormhole to discover a new world where mankind can seek refuge.
The LEGO Movie Emmet is an ordinary, rules-following, perfectly-average LEGO guy who is mistakenly identified as a superhero. He is drafted on an epic quest to stop an evil tyrant, a journey for which he is hopelessly and hilariously underprepared. Hilarious, satirical and ingenious.
Like Father, Like Son (Soshite Chichi ni Naru) Ryota is a workaholic Tokyo architect who has neglected his wife Midori and his six-year-old son Keita. When a blood test reveals that Keita and another boy were switched at birth, two very different families are thrown together and forced to make a difficult decision while Ryota finally learns what it means to be a father.
Locke This is a tour de force of acting and cinematography: all the action takes place inside a BMW X5 on the M4 highway to London and all the dialog is over the mobile. Locke is the foreman of a huge construction site who learns that a woman with whom he had a one-night stand seven months before is going into labour. He jumps into his car as 218 cement trucks queue up for a massive pour. On the road to London he takes one crisis call after another. A very interesting film about fatherhood, responsibility, work and work-life balance.
The Lunchbox Director: Ritesh Batra A mistaken delivery in Mumbai's famously efficient lunchbox delivery system connects a young housewife to an old man in the dusk of his life as they build a fantasy world together through notes in the lunchbox. Gradually this fantasy threatens to overwhelm their reality. A charming romantic comedy.
Next Goal Wins
Le Passé (The Past) This film is so realistic that it is almost too painful to watch. An Iranian man reunites with his estranged wife in Paris to finalize their divorce, so that she can marry her third lover. But her plans are upset by a shocking revelation from her teenage daughter from her first relationship. A deeply humane and moral examination of modern marriage.
The Wind Rises This splendid animation is a fictionalized biopic of Jiro Horikoshi (1903–1982), designer of the Mitsubishi A5M fighter aircraft and its successor, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, Japan’s World War II fighters. One critic described it as "Perhaps the greatest animated film ever made".
Winter Sleep Slow, but engrossing, Winter Sleep could be your first Turkish film. It examines difficult issues like the gap between the intellectual and working classes, older men and younger women, and believers and non-believers. And for something truly awful, check this out!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I couldn’t resist including this repackaging of the 30-year-old cartoon. It is arguably the worst movie of the entire year and contains all the key performance indicators for a truly awful entertainment. But on a budget of $125 million, it has grossed about $500 million, so who cares? Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.  This article is published by
Michael Cook
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