Entertainment year in review: My top 10 movies of 2014

If you’d told me at the beginning of the year that a sci-fi movie about a talking, trigger-happy raccoon and a walking tree would wind up being the highest grossing movie of the year, I probably wouldn’t have believed it. However, not only did Marvel’s long-shot “Guardians of the Galaxy” turn out to be a surprise summer blockbuster, it became the highest grossing movie of the year, even beating out the well-received “Captain America” sequel.

2014 was an interesting year at the movies. Summer, normally the time when studios roll out their biggest blockbusters, didn’t seem to drive as much buzz as in seasons past. Some of my most highly anticipated films at the start of 2014 turned out to be a little bit of a letdown (though five of the seven did end up making my “best of 2014” list, just not in the order I expected). And I was also (pleasantly) surprised by a number of films this year. Here’s the list of my top 10 favorites from this year.

10. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The reboot/prequel “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” was a surprise hit in 2012, and its sequel, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is even better. Humankind is now living on a post-apocalyptic Earth, while apes grow more intelligent and begin forming their own society. The always-great Andy Serkis has a riveting motion-capture performance as ape leader Caesar, and I liked how the movie portrayed both sides of the conflict without choosing a side.

9. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

I still believe “The Hobbit” would have been better as a two-parter than stretched into a trilogy, but Peter Jackson certainly goes for broke in the final chapter of the saga based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” prequel. Elves, Dwarves and Humans are forced to put their differences aside to fight together to defeat an Orc army, and Dwarven king Thorin Oakenshield must overcome his greed for the treasure inside the Lonely Mountain. The film kicks off with a tense set-piece involving the dragon Smaug’s attack on a village, and ends with Bilbo returning home to his beloved Shire, setting the stage for the events of the “Lord of the Rings.”

8. Arrow and The Flash

Technically, these are TV shows, not movies. However, I couldn’t resist including them in this list, due to the great characters, intriguing plot lines and close-to-cinematic quality. These two CW superhero dramas, both based on DC Comics characters, are some of my favorite currently running shows on TV. “Arrow” returned for a third season this fall, and Stephen Amell continues to turn in a strong performance as the conflicted vigilante Oliver Queen. Grant Gustin joined the fun this fall in a new spin-off, “The Flash.” More light-hearted than “Arrow” but still with plenty of suspense and interwoven mystery, “The Flash” has been a lot of fun so far.

7. Interstellar

“Interstellar” is a big, ambitious, flawed and beautiful piece of science fiction, from director Christopher Nolan. Faced with an Earth that is dying, a brave team of astronauts venture into deep space to find another planet that is capable of supporting life. The film stars Matthew McConaughey, who continues his surprising career renaissance. With echoes of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the more recent “Gravity,” “Interstellar” is gorgeously shot and thought-provoking. A few of the themes are perhaps communicated with too heavy a hand, but it’s still a must-see for sci-fi and Nolan fans.

6. Edge of Tomorrow

This movie didn’t seem to receive a lot of attention when it was released — which is a shame, because it’s a clever, fast-paced sci-fi thriller. A sort of mash-up of the concepts of “Saving Private Ryan” and “Groundhog Day,” Tom Cruise plays a PR officer in the military who turns down a risky assignment. His reward is being demoted to the rank of private and sent into battle. It’s not a spoiler to reveal Cruise’s character dies — because he ends up coming back … again and again and again. The key to the mystery will also be the key to saving the earth from a race of invading aliens. Cruise uses the film to subtly poke fun at his own action hero persona, and Emily Blunt is great as the steely soldier who helps him.

5. The Fault in Our Stars

I didn’t expect to like this movie, or even that it would end up on my “best of the year” list. However, it’s far more than just another film in the “teen romance” genre. The movie stars Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort as two teenagers with cancer who fall in love despite the realization their story isn’t likely to have a happy ending. It’s a movie about learning to appreciate the small moments and recognizing the truth in the phrase “it’s better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” I’m not ashamed to say this movie made me cry in the theater, and then again when I rented it at home. It’s a beautiful, mature love story.

4. X-Men: Days of Future Past

My favorite of the X-Men films is still the prequel “First Class,” but “Days of Future Past” is a fun, stylish “Avengers” style round-up of X-Men, including past and future versions of the main characters. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent back in time to alter history, thereby saving mutants from destruction. The highlight of the film for me was seeing both the younger and older versions of sometimes friends/sometimes enemies Magneto (Michael Fassbender and Ian McKellen) and Professor X (James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart). The movie also contains the best — and most fun — prison break scene I’ve ever seen in a movie: lighting-fast Quicksilver’s trippy rescue of Magneto from a holding cell in the Pentagon, set to “Time in a Bottle.”

3. The LEGO Movie

Yes, everything really is awesome about “The LEGO Movie.” No one expected this to be a blockbuster, but it turned out to be one of the most clever and creative movies of the year. Far more than just a shameless advertisement for LEGO products, the film is delightfully quirky, with original humor and a big sense of imagination. It’s also surprisingly moving, with a message that you don’t have to be super smart or extraordinary in order to be special. An all-star voice cast and fun cameos (hello, LEGO “Millenium Falcon”!) are other highlights.

2. Captain America: The Winter Solider

Proving to be a huge early year hit and one of the best in the line-up of Marvel’s “Avengers” tie-in films, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” succeeds as both a superhero action film and a taut political thriller. Chris Evans gives his best performance yet as the loyal but conflicted Steve Rogers/Captain America, struggling to adapt to life in the modern era and uncovering a secret that destroys the organization S.H.I.E.L.D. Rogers also had plenty of fun, flirty chemistry with Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, adding an unexpected will-they-or-won’t-they element to the Marvel-verse.

1. Guardians of the Galaxy

I thought long and hard about which film should end up at No. 1, and it was a tough choice. Technically, I think “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” was a better film, but as a movie-going experience, I enjoyed “Guardians of the Galaxy” just a little bit more. It’s been a long time since I had as much fun at the movies as I did when I watched “Guardians of the Galaxy.” It’s a quirky, irreverent space opera with a cast of colorful characters, led by a star-making performance from Chris Pratt. With a funky ’70s soundtrack and plenty of laughs, the film also had just the right amount of action and heart. I’ve watched it numerous times already, but I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. It’s the year’s unlikeliest hit, but one that’s well deserved.

Hits and misses: Summer 2014 in review

Predicting what movies will be blockbusters and which ones will be bombs can be a tricky business. You can have a film come from seemingly out of nowhere to be a huge hit, or a film that generates a high level of buzz but doesn’t live up to the hype.

However, the summer of 2014 has seemed to be a bit more unpredictable than normal at the box office. The release schedule wasn’t as packed with hits as it has been in recent years, and only one movie managed to cross the magic $100 million opening weekend mark (“Transformers: Age of Extinction”). There were some surprising under-performers, and what was arguably the best movie of the summer wasn’t even technically a summer movie at all — “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”

My friends give me some good-natured teasing about being a movie junkie, and during the summertime it usually seems like I’m heading to the theater every weekend for a new movie. However, I only ended up going to the theater a handful of times in June and July, simply because there weren’t as many big draws this summer. 2014 also seems to be a bit of a slower year overall, with “The LEGO Movie” being the only standout I can think of from early in the year.

Still, even though there were a smaller crop of movies, I did end up enjoying most of the ones I went to see. The movie that did disappoint me a little bit was “Godzilla.” It was one of my most anticipated movies of the summer, and had one of the best trailers of the year. There was a lot of buzz heading into this film, but I felt the final project fell short of what it could have been. The classic “monster movie” portions of the film were great, but the human characters didn’t really register on a deeper emotional level.

For me, the biggest surprises of the summer were “Edge of Tomorrow” and “The Fault in Our Stars.” “Edge of Tomorrow” wasn’t a huge box office hit, which is a shame because it was a fun, smart sci-fi movie. Its “Groundhog Day” meets “Saving Private Ryan” concept — about a soldier who has to relive the same battle against an alien army over and over — could have become repetitive, but the script is clever and witty enough to keep the film entertaining. “The Fault in Our Stars” isn’t the type of movie I normally watch, but this film about two teenagers with cancer who fall in love transcends the “teen romance” genre. It’s a mature, moving film with a bittersweet ending.

“X-Men: Days of Future Past” and “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” were also highlights of the summer for me. Both had strong stories with thought-provoking concepts. “X-Men: Days of Future Past” had my favorite scene from a movie this summer: the Pentagon prison break, featuring a lightning-fast mutant named Quicksilver. It’s a delightfully trippy (and fun) sequence.

Although “Captain America: The Winter Solider” — which was released in April — is probably still my favorite movie of the year, if you don’t count it as part of the summer movie season, my favorite summer movie is “Guardians of the Galaxy.” It’s definitely the most fun I’ve had at the theater this year. It’s Marvel’s quirkiest, riskiest film so far, but it beat expectations and had one of the best opening weekends at the box office. Who would have thought that a talking, trigger-happy raccoon and a gentle-hearted walking tree would be some of the best — and most emotionally resonant — characters of the summer? The movie also is definitely worth splurging on to see in IMAX.

So, what was your favorite movie of the summer? What movie did you enjoy the least?

Movie review: Does ‘RoboCop’ successfully reboot 1980s classic?

Not as good as it could have been, but not as bad as it could have been, either — that seems to be the critical consensus on the new “RoboCop” film. It’s currently sitting at about 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics evenly split on whether it should be classified as “fresh” or “rotten.” It’s always risky to reboot a well-loved classic — does the new “RoboCop” manage to pull it off?

The remake, which is directed by José Padilha, plays the concept straighter than the original film, which is known for its hyper-violence and black comedy. Joel Kinnaman (perhaps best known for his role on the TV series “The Killing”) plays Alex Murphy, a Detroit cop who’s trying to fight corruption. His crusade for justice earns him several powerful, dangerous enemies, and he barely survives a car bomb meant to silence him.

With little hope for Murphy’s survival, Murphy’s wife agrees to allow multinational conglomerate OmniCorp to perform a risky and controversial procedure on her husband: turning him into a half-human, half-robot police officer. Murphy struggles to adapt to his new life, especially as he tries to come to accept the reality he is now part machine. He also discovers OmniCorp’s motives might not be as altruistic as they’d like the public to believe, and the existence of “RoboCop” inflames a national debate about the use of drones in law enforcement.

One of the things I liked best about this film was the way it dealt with the topic of drones in the military and law enforcement — a topic that becomes ever more relevant as technology advances. It’s certainly not a black and white issue. Robots and drones could save the lives of soldiers and law enforcement officers by putting machines into hostile situations. Machines don’t act out of prejudice or anger; however, they also lack compassion and empathy, which human responders have. Humans can process nuances in a situation that couldn’t be calculated by a robot. Would we really be safer by putting dispassionate machines on the streets?

There’s also the question of how ethical it is to combine humans and machines. In one heart-breaking scene, we see just how little really is left of the human Alex Murphy, and it’s disturbing how easy it is for OmniCorp techs to manipulate Murphy’s thoughts and actions, even though he still believes he is acting out of free will. Robot officers might be immune to bribery, but they can be controlled far more easily than humans can.

I would have liked to see Padilha devote more time to developing the character Alex Murphy before placing him inside the machine. Seeing more of him before he became RoboCop could help audiences to make a deeper emotional connection to the character and make the loss of his humanity that much more heart-wrenching. I also would have liked to see more of RoboCop working as a police officer on the streets of Detroit, and more about how Murphy’s transformation into RoboCop affects his friend and partner on the police force, Jack Lewis. The film has a relatively brief runtime for its genre, and an extra half hour or so may have allowed Padilha to flesh out some of the underdeveloped parts of the movie.

Still, the film is certainly stronger than another recent sci-fi remake, “Total Recall,” and there are good performances from Gary Oldman as a conflicted scientist and Samuel L. Jackson as an over-the-top commentator who’s trying to persuade the public that robotic law enforcement officers are good for the country.

So, what do you think? Did you see the “RoboCop” remake? Do you think it was a successful reboot?