Warning: The following contains MAJOR SPOILERS for several movies from 2014. Read at your own risk!
18. 22 Jump Street
The post-credit sequels sequence
What is better than one self-aware movie sequel of an adaptation of a bygone '80s TV show? How about a credits sequence that previews, that’s right, 21 more sequels, including 25 Jump Street: Semester at Sea, 31 Jump Street: Ninja Academy, 39 Jump Street: The Electronic Game, and 43 Jump Street: Mariachi School.
Yes, that is definitely better.
17. Guardians of the Galaxy
Howard the Duck returns to the movies
There is much about Marvel Studios' latest film that runs counter to expectations. This is, after all, a summer blockbuster — the highest grossing movie in the U.S. this year, in fact — that features a foul-mouthed raccoon and a talking tree who can only say "I am Groot." But director James Gunn saved his strangest twist for the movie's post-credits scene, when we learn that Taneleer Tivan (Benicio Del Toro) has been keeping a talking, drinking, cigar-chomping duck named Howard in his vast collection. It's a nod to Marvel's cult comic Howard the Duck — and a small helping of cinematic redemption after the character's infamous 1986 live-action flop. After so many Marvel Studios movies with post-credits scenes that point to the next step in their vast cinematic universe, it was an unexpected delight to see Guardians wrap things up with such a cheeky lark.
16. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
The fate of Gwen Stacy
In a way, this is almost the anti-OMG moment. Gwen Stacy’s death is regarded as one of the seminal moments in modern comic book history, and paparazzi photos of Emma Stone on the set of the film wearing Stacy’s iconic coat from that 1973 comic book issue had long since primed fans to expect her untimely demise. Still, this death stung, in no small part because Stone had made Stacy into such a vital character, and her undeniable chemistry with Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man was the best thing about the darker, grittier, and ungainly second go at the Spider-Man movie franchise. Killing her off was a genuine, gutsy loss.
15. Boyhood
Mason discovers his mom in the garage
As we watch Mason (Ellar Coltrane) grow older before our eyes in writer-director Richard Linklater's cinematic exploration of what it means to grow up, things start out seeming more or less like a typical childhood. Mason's parents had long since divorced, but his mother (Patricia Arquette) was going back to school, and had found a new husband (Marco Perella) who could provide a bigger, better home for Mason and his sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater). Sure he could be a little controlling, but nothing could quite prepare Mason, or us, for the day he came home to discover his mother sobbing on the floor of the garage, his stepfather standing over her, saying she had just had an "accident." It was, pardon the expression, like a slap in the face — exactly how this kind of explosion of violence would have felt to a young boy so wrapped up in his own life that he couldn't see this coming, and wouldn't know what to make of it.
14. The Lego Movie
We meet the man upstairs
Chris Miller and Phil Lord did a delightfully thorough job creating an imaginative and immersive all-Lego world for their animated feature, which followed everyman Emmet (Chris Pratt) struggling with his friends against the oppressive control of Lord Business (Will Ferrell). And then, for its third act, they abandoned that world completely and plunged Emmet into the real world, where we learned Emmet's fight was really a struggle between a young human boy (Jadon Sand) and his grown father (Ferrell), aka "the man upstairs." It's the kind of revelatory storytelling risk that isn't taken often enough, but more importantly, it provides the entire film with a surprisingly deep emotional resonance.
13. How to Train Your Dragon 2
Toothless bears down on Hiccup’s dad
After falling under the command of an “alpha” dragon controlled by the power-mad Drago (Djimon Hounsou), Toothless bares down on Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) to kill him, until his father Stoick (Gerard Butler) intervenes at the last minute and is killed instead. It is so upsetting, and so heartbreaking after Toothless snaps out of it and realizes what he’s done.
12. Interstellar
Cooper enters the fifth dimension
After spending more than two hours dropping through wormholes, escaping giant wave planets, and debating with a scientist (Anne Hathaway) about the immutable power of love, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) slips past the event horizon of a black hole and enters the fifth dimension. The fifth dimension! Which is represented by every possible moment in his daughter’s bedroom back on Earth as seen from behind her bookshelf! Because, love! It is a visually dazzling and altogether bonkers attempt to represent a complex theoretical concept that also makes almost zero dramatic sense. Science!
11. 300: Rise of An Empire
Artemisia and Themistokles get to know each other better
There's a lot in this sequel to 2007's 300 that we've seen before: men in homoerotic leather thongs, stylized slow-motion violence, and the outré decadence of Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and his empire. So, what's new? Eva Green as Xerxes' naval commander Artemisia, a fabulously over-the-top character, ruthless and cunning. When she meets her enemy Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton) halfway through the film, she attacks him, not with violence, but with a knock-down, drag-out sex session that leaves poor Themistocles dazed, unsure as to what exactly just happened to him. We know the feeling.
10. Whiplash
The car crash and its aftermath
The climactic jazz concert in which aspiring drummer Andrew (Miles Teller) finally confronts his bullying instructor Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) is certainly one of the most satisfying and unexpected endings this year. But our first understanding of just how desperate Andrew is to succeed comes earlier when, determined to make it to a concert, he drives so recklessly that he is hit by another car — and then goes to the concert anyway, bleeding from the head.
9. The One I Love
When they all meet in the dining room
In truth, this movie is really one giant OMG scene, because its very premise is presented as an unfolding series of surprising twists. Ethan (Mark Duplass) and Sophie (Elisabeth Moss) are a couple in crisis, and so their new therapist (Ted Danson) suggests they take a weekend at a getaway residence a couple hours out of town. It's a gorgeous, remote property with a pool, and, it turns out, a magical guest house where Ethan discovers a second, more permissive Sophie, and Sophie discovers a second, more agreeable Ethan. These mysterious copies of their spouses also can't leave the guest house, and Ethan and Sophie spend the film trading off exploring their time with their respective alter-spouses.
The twist that launches the film's final act, however, is a doozy: Just as Ethan's suspicions about Sophie falling for his copy are reaching a crisis point, they both enter the main house and find both their copies there, sitting at the dining room table, waiting for them. The old rules fly out the window, and the movie spins in even stranger directions.
8. Lucy
She reaches 100%
Throughout writer-director Luc Besson's gonzo sci-fi action spectacular, we watch Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) access an increasing percentage of her brain after inadvertently absorbing a magic blue drug derived from pregnant women. (It is best not to dwell on the scientific underpinnings for this movie, since they don't exist.) Accessing more of her brain bestows Lucy with near godlike power to control and access the world around her, but once she reaches 100%, things get much more magnificently weird. Lucy begins to transcend time and space in a hallucinogenic onslaught of cosmic imagery, until she winds up zooming back in time and standing in front of the famed Australopithecus Lucy. Then she becomes a noncorporeal being that is at one with the universe, or something. Co-star Morgan Freeman barely understood it either.
7. RoboCop
RoboCop sees himself
So much about this remake of the 1987 sci-fi classic is disappointing, especially the film’s third act. But before things start going downhill, we are treated to the scene between catastrophically wounded cop Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) and Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman) after Alex has awoken to discover himself trapped within his new RoboCop shell. I say “shell” and not “suit” because after Alex demands that Dr. Norton take the suit off of him, Dr. Norton obliges, and Alex’s RoboCop enhancements begin to pull away: first the legs, then the arms, and then the torso, until all that is left of Alex is his brain, face, lungs, and heart. And then what is left of Alex just sits there, debating his own death with Dr. Norton. If only the rest of the movie was as chilling as this one scene.
6. Nightcrawler
The worst first date ever
Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) crosses some major moral boundaries in Nightcrawler in his unyielding drive to carve out a successful career as a freelance videographer for local nightly news. But the scene that first has audiences gasping in shocked laughter is the comparatively low-key dinner date between Lou and Nina (Rene Russo), the producer who has been buying his footage. As Nina stares warily at Lou from her margarita, Lou lays out, with chilling precision, all the reasons why his ratings-grabbing footage means she needs to become his lover, trapping Nina by reminding her of her age and precarious employment circumstances. "Friends don't pressure friends to sleep with them," she finally hisses in resignation. "Nina," Lou counters with a crocodile grin, "a friend is a gift you give yourself."
5. Snowpiercer
The most effed up classroom ever
There are so many unnerving scenes in director Bong Joon-ho's post-apocalyptic-train-as-metaphor-for-what-ails-society sci-fi thriller, in which Curtis (Chris Evans) and his fellow rebels work their way up to the front of the train. What Curtis discovers there — how the mysterious conductor (Ed Harris) has been keeping the train running, and the nature of his relationship with Curtis' mentor Gilliam (John Hurt) — makes for some truly head-spinning twists. (Then there's Curtis' monologue about the depths to which he sunk as a kid just to survive on the train, killing whatever appetite I had left in the theater.)
Before all that, however, there is the scene in which Curtis and his company come upon a whacked-out elementary classroom run by a scarily cheery pregnant teacher played by the incomparable Alison Pill (The Newsroom). Everything up to that point in the film had been soaked in bleak, dimly lit gloom, so to be greeted with a bright, airy classroom of singing children — and then have that classroom collapse into a hail of gunfire — is kind of like walking for hours through the desert, suddenly dunking your head into a giant bucket of ice, and finding a dead bunny inside it.
4. Gone Girl
Amy and Desi have incredibly messy sex
By the time this scene comes up in Gone Girl, we've known for a while that Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) is a dangerous person willing to go to outrageous lengths to get what she wants and destroy those she feels have wronged her. But no one suffers a worse fate than her old boyfriend Desi (Neil Patrick Harris), who "rescues" Amy, only to "trap" her within his elaborately posh lakehouse. And for his creepy possessiveness and materialistic generosity, Amy lures Desi into his bedroom, strips him naked, fellates him, and fucks him — and then slices his throat with a penknife. It is the bloodiest, grisliest sex scene in a major feature film in a very long time — maybe ever? — and I am still trying to get over it.
3. The Homesman
Mary Bee's sad fate
The first two-thirds of The Homesman remain squarely focused on Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank), a 19th century frontierswoman living alone in the Nebraska territory who volunteers to transport three mentally insane women back east across the plains. To help her, she more or less dragoons a drifter named George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones) to accompany her wagon and assist her with the women. The journey proves to be much harsher than Mary Bee had ever anticipated, and one night, out of total desperation, she propositions George — first for marriage, which he rejects, and then for sex, which he accepts. The next day, George wakes up to find that Mary Bee has hanged herself. I repeat: The lead character dies with roughly 45 minutes left in the movie!
2. Under the Skin
We find out what happens in the goo
Before this scene, we've witnessed Scarlett Johansson's seductive alien lure men into a home with an interior that is simply an inky black void. She undresses. He undresses. And then, as he follows her, hypnotized, further into the void, he sinks into the floor, and disappears amid some kind of goo.
Roughly a third of the way through the movie, we see what happens to the men in that goo. And what happens is that their insides get liquified until they are sucked out in one sudden gush, leaving just the skin, drifting in the goo, and leaving us with nightmares that will never cease.
1. Enemy
The final two shots
This one is going to take some time to explain. I happened to watch this movie on a plane, and when the moment in question happened, I screamed so loud that I startled everyone seated around me. It was that scary, and that embarrassing, and now I am sharing it with you.
Most of Enemy operates at a frequency of unnerving elision, of a sense that we are only getting glimpses into a far larger story. Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal), an anxious and lonely college instructor, discovers he has an exact double, Anthony (also Jake Gyllenhaal), a louche former actor with a lovely pregnant wife named Helen (Sarah Gadon). Anthony also has a secret life running an underground event of some kind that involves scantily clad women and… well… large spiders. After Adam arranges to meet Anthony, Anthony forces Adam to swap lives, so Anthony can sleep with Adam's girlfriend Mary (Mélanie Laurent). Instead, Anthony and Mary get into a car accident and die, and Adam finds himself in Anthony's apartment, with Helen, taking over Anthony's life. Helen seems to know Adam is Adam and not Anthony, and she also seems fine with it. She goes into the bedroom. Adam asks her a question. She doesn't answer. Adam goes to the bedroom door and finds… well… a massive tarantula the size of the room, which screams and cowers onto the back wall. The camera cuts to Adam, who just sighs. End of movie.
Still recovering.
