Favoritest Movies of 2014

"You're Welcome!"  Marvel is that at the top of their game!

So back in 2012, I conducted an experiment with the movie Prometheus; I avoided the trailers, commercials and most promotional images.  Though Prometheus eventually only placed 41st out of 87 movies at the time of being listed, the experiment was a success.  I enjoyed the theatrical experience more than if I had seen the trailers.

Going into this year of movies I avoided trailers and commercials to every movie I wanted to see: 300: Rise of an Empire, Batman: Assault on Arkham, Winter Soldier, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Dracula Untold, Edge of Tomorrow, Godzilla, Guardians of the Galaxy, Hercules, How to Train Your Dragon 2, Interstellar, Jupiter Ascending, Justice League: War, Maleficent, RoboCop, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For*, Son of Batman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, Transcendence, Transformers: Age of Extinction, and X-Men: Days of Future Past. An asterisk is by Sin City since I can't remember avoiding it's trailers, I would of though if I'd ever encountered any.  I used to devour trailers as soon as they hit the net, and analyze each and every frame, now I wait until after I've seen the movie.  The experience of each movie is more pure without the trailers guiding my level of expectation only to result in the movie being disappointing if the trailers have already shown the best stuff.  It especially saved me from this crime...

This is the last shot of the trailer AND the movie.
So, you're sold an epic fight between Spider-Man and Rhino and get... nothing.  I enjoyed Amazing 2 enough to joke that it was the best Spider-Man movie ever, merely horrible.  Spider-Man is a relic of comicbook movies before Marvel Studios showed how it was done with their formula of loving the source material and making that love contagious.  Audiences can now tell when a movie has the stink of being made by people who think comics stink.

Many think the current comicbook movie surge is fleeting, but it's box office dominance is guaranteed until the R rating becomes palpable again.  Expendables 3 proves how the action movies we used to enjoy can't exist in a PG-13 movie world.  When Captain America is in a bloodless brawl, it's expected, he's a superhero.  When Jason Statham stabs, or machine guns someone in a PG-13 way it's less satisfying... no wonder the Web critics went crazy for Raid 2.

This year also represents the changing of the guard of my favorite movie franchise form the /Star Wars saga to:

I've been into Marvel comics since I was 10 years old, and their run of movies is like reading a stack of comics...

But when Captain America The Winter Soldier retconned the hell out of the MCU, transforming things as subtly as Obadiah Stanes speech to an entire subplot in Iron Man 2 it showed Marvel was playing at a different level.  The fidelity to which characters, locations, themes and story are being translated to the screen are impressive, and what readers have always clamored for.

Moreover, Star Wars finalized the albatrossization of the prequels with:

More tearjerking than anything in the cinematic prequel era.

Clone Wars gets Star Wars, so does Rebels



But this blog and these lists are about movies, not television.  We'll skip the pontificating on what is television currently, though the lines are being more and more blurred.  I watched The Interview as a rental on YouTube.  The MCU has Agents of Shield,  and in 2015; Agent Carter, Daredevil and AKA Jessica Jones.  Rebels and retroactively Clone Wars are canon with the movies.  As for the Prometheus experiment,  and the most anticipated, most unlikely certainty in the history of cinema.  I knew I couldn't avoid the first trailer,  that I'd have to drop off the planet to avoid it, so I just hope to avoid the next trailer...

On to the list:

1. Guardians of the Galaxy
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3. X-Men: Days of Future Past
4. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
5. The Lego Movie
6. Justice League: War
7. Godzilla
8. Edge of Tomorrow
9. Maleficent
10. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
11. Batman: Assault on Arkham
12. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
13. The Interview
14. 300: Rise of an Empire
15. A Million Ways to Die in the West
16. How to Train Your Dragon 2
17. RoboCop
18. Transformers: Age of Extinction
19. Son of Batman
20. Interstellar
21. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
22. The Monuments Men
23. 22 Jump Street
24. Vampire Academy
25. I, Frankenstein
26. Hercules
27. The Raid 2
28. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
29. Dracula Untold
30. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
31. The Purge: Anarchy
32. Transcendence
33. Muppets Most Wanted
34. JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time
35. Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher
36. The Pirate Fairy
37. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
38. Mr. Peabody & Sherman
39. The Fault in Our Stars
40. Chef
41. Divergent
42. The Expendables 3
43. Rio 2
44. Pompeii
45. Non-Stop
46. The Legend of Hercules
47. Noah
48. The Nut Job
49. Annabelle
50. Sex Tape
51. The November Man
52. Grand Budapest Hotel
53. Earth to Echo
54. Neighbors
55. Jersey Boys