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Dec 30, 2014
Vampires. Growing pains. Groundbreaking documentaries. Way, way too many cooks.
It was a terrific year for moving images, as evidenced by the variety and depth of our Film/Video team’s picks for their favorites of 2014. You’ll see some “best of” mainstays in the mix, such as the mighty Boyhood, which had its area premiere—with director Richard Linklater providing an introduction—here last July (watch Linklater’s post-screening conversation here), and more than a few surprises (including a potent and timely BBC series).
One caveat: Most of these are titles that were released/screened in the 2014 calendar year in Ohio (with a couple of exceptions for festival, sneak preview, and/or repertory screenings), so if you don't see a few things that are making appearances on other top 10 lists, that's why.
David Filipi, director of Film/Video
Top 15 Films
Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
Manakamana (Stephanie Spray, Pacho Velez)
Citizenfour (Laura Poitras)
Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski)
Life Itself (Steve James)
Hateship Loveship (Liza Johnson)
Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch)
Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard)
Gone Girl (David Fincher)
Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
Abuse of Weakness (Catherine Breillat)
Young and Beautiful (François Ozon)
Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
Joe (David Gordon Green)
Love is Strange (Ira Sachs)
Dave Filipi's Top 15 Repertory/Restoration Screenings (alphabetical order; not restricted to Columbus screenings)
Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965) – Wexner Center for the Arts (WCA)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920) – The Reel Thing, Los Angeles
Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971) – The Reel Thing, Los Angeles
The General (Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1926), live music by the Alloy Orchestra – WCA
Je t’aime, je t’aime (Alain Resnais, 1968) – WCA
Life Begins Tomorrow (Werner Hochbaum, 1933) – il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna For more il Cinema Ritrovato, read Dave’s take here.
Maciste all’Inferno (Riccardo Freda, 1962) – il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna
Monument Film (Peter Kubelka, 2012) – il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna
The Most Wonderful Evening of My Life (Ettore Scola, 1972) – Il Cinema Ritrovato
Nosferatu (Werner Herzog, 1979) - WCA
Oklahoma! (Fred Zinneman, 1955) – Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, and WCA
Pier Paolo Pasolini Retrospective – WCA
Polyester (John Waters, 1981) – with Odorama cards, WCA
The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler (James Hogan, 1943) – il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna
A Summer’s Tale (Eric Rohmer, 1996) – WCA
Mike Olenick, video editor in the Film/Video Studio
Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (Thom Andersen, 1975) This is the best film I saw all year – a fascinating documentary about the influential photographer who studied motion. I caught a restored print at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, here’s hoping it comes to Columbus soon.
The Manitou (William Girdler, 1978) One of the craziest movies I’ve seen in a long time, and I loved every minute of it. Words cannot accurately describe how insane it is. I caught a 35mm print at Shock Around the Clock! at the Drexel Theatre.
Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie, 2013) A creepy sun-drenched thriller with no end in sight. Screened at the Wex.
Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014) I thought this was Anderson’s best movie since Magnolia and I look forward to seeing it again soon.
Too Many Cooks (Casper Kelly, 2014) Without a doubt I viewed this more than anything else this year. It starts out as a pitch perfect homage/parody/deconstruction of TV sitcoms and ends up validating all those hours I wasted watching TGIF in the 1990s. YouTube it now.
33 Yo-Yo Tricks (Panther White, 1976) While this film features 33 mesmerizing yo-yo tricks, there are also awesome zooms, vintage outfits and it has an amazing score. Screened as part of Zoom at the Wex.
Deleted Scenes from Fire Walk With Me (David Lynch, 1992/2014) As a Twin Peaks fan I was eager to revisit old friends. As an editor this became a fascinating look at why scenes get cut out of movies and how editing them down makes them better. While I don’t miss most of them, one scene could make the cliffhanger ending to the series even more tantalizing than it already is. Available on Blu-ray.
A Million Miles Away (Jennifer Reeder, 2014) Disclaimer: I edited this film so I might be biased—but it’s the only film I’ve ever seen that has transformed a Judas Priest song into a feminist anthem for a group of teenage girls and their unstable substitute teacher. Screened at the Wex.
Chris Stults, associate curator of Film/Video
More new films than ever opened in Columbus this year, yet many of my most significant 2014 moving image experiences took place outside the cinema. No, this isn’t another re-hash of the silly Cinema vs. The Golden Age of TV argument. Nor a variation on the eternal black box vs. white cube binary. What’s more interesting to me is that, with so many viewing options on so many platforms, media has become white noise. Always there but rarely cutting through. When so many perfectly fine or even very good viewing options are available, it takes an even more active and informed viewer to find the works that rise above the din. Most of the works below take advantage of the unique properties of their form, production history, and delivery method (cinema, gallery, Netflix, etc.). High Maintenance, for example, may be the closest thing get ever get to a Balzac-style Human Comedy of Brooklyn in the early 21st century, a feat that’s possible only through the flexibilities of online viewing. So even if they didn’t get much attention in local press or Facebook feeds, all the works below were available to resourceful Central Ohio viewers and open up new possibilities within shifting media landscapes.
The Visitors (Ragnar Kjartansson) [on view in Ohio again soon]
Service of the Goods (Jean-Paul Kelly)
Manakamana (Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez)
The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and 27 Years Without Images (Eric Baudelaire)
High Maintenance (Katja Blichfeld & Ben Sinclair)
Housemaids (Gabriel Mascaro)
Too Many Cooks (Casper Kelly)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)
Black Mirror: “The Entire History of You” (Brian Wilson)
Policeman (Nadav Lapid)
A Million Miles Away (Jennifer Reeder)
Let Your Light Shine (Jodie Mack)
Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
Flawed but essential: Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard), Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
Actresses: Isabelle Huppert (Abuse of Weakness), Jennifer Estlin (A Million Miles Away), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep)
Actors: Ralph Fiennes (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Philip Seymour Hoffman (A Most Wanted Man), Jude Law (Dom Hemingway)
Supporting Actresses: Patricia Arquette (Boyhood), Lorelei Linklater (Boyhood), Elizabeth Moss (Listen Up Philip)
Supporting Actors: Adam Driver (What If?), Ethan Hawke (Boyhood), Peter Sarsgaard (Night Moves)
Scenes: The safe wager (Dom Hemingway), The whoring bed (Nymphomaniac), Baby on the beach (Under the Skin)
Most Fun I Had in a Cinema in 2014: Rerelease of That Man from Rio (Philippe de Broca)
Adam Vincent, program assistant in Film/Video
Top 10 Films of 2014 (that could be seen in Columbus)*
Ida (Paweł Pawlikowski)
Stranger By the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy)
The Babadook (Jennifer Kent)
Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman)
Nymphomaniac (Lars Von Trier)
*One special note: I most regrettably missed Laura Poitras’s Citizenfour when it was in town, and I suspect it deserves a place on this list.
The 10 Best Nights I Spent “At Work” (in alphabetical order)
Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014) – followed by a conversation with Richard Linklater
Je t’aime je t’aime (Alain Resnais, 1968) / Nosferatu the Vampyre (Werner Herzog, 1979) (special prize for Double Feature of the Year)
Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
Let the Fire Burn (Jason Osder, 2013)
Polyester (John Waters, 1981) – presented in Odorama!
Rare Basketball Films – followed by a conversation with Bill Hosket Jr.
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) – Wex Drive-In
The Wicker Man: The Final Cut (Robin Hardy, 1973)
Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis, 2001)
Twenty Years Later (Eduardo Coutinho, 1985)
