Bob Chipman - Top 10 Films of 2014 lyrics

Hey, it's that time of year again! So, let's get right down to it: 10. Under The Skin Scarlett Johansson had a really, really good box office year with Lucy and Winter Soldier, but she also reminded everyone of her serious chops and eclectic taste in roles with this bizarro arthouse sci-fi flick that...you know, I'd rather not reveal too much about it, actually. Suffice it to say, she's not quite human, it's not quite a thriller, but also not exactly a drama, partially improv, incredibly strange, and like nothing else you'll see this year. 9. Gone Girl Between Fight Club, the remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and now this, David Fincher has proven himself to be the best in the business when it comes to making good movies out of questionable source material of dubious merit. Gone Girl starts out like a grim, dramatic, nightmarish scenario of murder mysteries, duplicitous intentions and 21st Century trial-by-media, and then, like a magic trick, seamlessly reveals its true nature as a lurid, trashy and just a little bit cheesy bu*ton-pushing psycho-drama, without dipping in quality, balance, or directorial flourish. How good is this movie? Tyler Perry is in it...and he's f**ing awesome! 8. Snowpiercer Ok, here's the pitch: it's The Hunger Games, but instead of spending two movies knocking off Battle Royale and The Running Man, we're just going to start the ultra-violent peasant's revolution right away. And instead of the woods, all the post-apocalyptic civilization lives inside a giant train. So, it's just big, nasty, close-quarters, ultraviolent hand-to-hand combat from start to finish. And instead of Mystique, we got Captain f**ing America! Yeah! That sounds like a party, alright! And this movie kicked a**! 7. Inherent Vice Paul Thomas Anderson adapting a Thomas Pynchon novel? I'm surprised they didn't hand out mutton chops and artismal tote-bags at every screening. But movie/literary snob pedigree aside, Inherent Vice kicks a lot of a**. For all the build-up, it's a deceptively-simple idea. A seemingly archetypal Los Angeles detective story, complete with crooked land deals, sleazy celebrities, dirty cops, new age cults and enigmatic missing girls; except everyone involved is so high on so many different d** and stimulants that even the guys who know what's going on don't really know what's going on. How do you solve a crime in an environment like that? I'm still not sure, but it's damn compelling to watch them all try. 6. The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson's latest has his usual company of regulars, his usual handmade style, his usual obsession with immaculately-composed dollhouse worlds, but also a melancholy of times lost and nostalgia of the old-fashioned, genuinly tragic kind, that more than ever, gives his affectations and obsessions human depth. It's a movie about the kind of mindset that molds a person into...well, into Wes Anderson, with all the heartbreak, humour and whimsy that implies. 5. Captain America: The Winter Soldier I'm not a person who necessarily thinks that you need to forcibly reshape inherently simple superhero stories into sociopolitical metaphors in order to be worthwhile - The Dark Knight Rises thought it had all kinds of big, important things to say about terrorism and cla** warfare, and it was all kind of dumb. The Avengers was sharp as a tack, and that movie's idea of a profound message worth stretching over two-and-a-half hours was, "It's nice to make new friends!". But I also think that if the lead of your movie is going to literally wrap himself in the American flag, he'd better stand for something. And in Winter Soldier, the present superhero movie craze's ultimate irony-free icon of all that is good, just and righteous grabs the mic (Again, literally) and tells a generation of kids growing up on Marvel movies to question authority, look for the hard truth, and do the right thing even when it's hard, while still featuring in one of the best pure action films of the year. And that's why he gets to be called "captain"! 4. The Lego Movie Take it away, Benny. [plays clip] What can I say? Everything is awesome! 3. The Raid 2 (beat) Ahem... [plays clips] Everything is awesome about that, too! 2. Selma Most movies that aim to pull the halo off of lionized heroes of history do so in order to tear them down. Selma strips the hagiography away from Martin Luther King in order to show us that he was much more of a bada** than the safe, sanitized, secular saint vision of the man we usually get. Ava DuVarney's excellent civil rights drama paints a picture of Dr King as a clever operator activist whose pa**ion for justice and equality were matched by an ahead-of-his-time sk** for manipulating media sympathy to boost the power and influence of legitimate activism. It's a history lesson, but its also a timely reminder that the exploits of a historical figure too often framed today as the safe and non-threatening version of civil disobedience can still be very much a how-to guide for revolution. 1. Guardians of the Galaxy Why didn't the embarra**ing collapse of their relationship with geek god Edgar Wright over the Ant Man project ultimately stick to Marvel Studios? Because if you're running the most methodical, producer-driven, auteur-resistant top-down old-school studio-minimal factory system filmmaking operation in the business today, you can still turn out a movie as confident, individual and idiosyncratic as Guardians of the Galaxy, that's how you build trust with your audience. Guardians has one of the sharpest scripts, eclectic casts and nuttiest vibes of the year. It was the perfect kind of offbeat blockbuster - a modern-day successor to singular cult achievements like Big Trouble In Little China or The Fifth Element. Even if you were tired of or never cared about the Marvel Universe experiment, this was the one to beat in 2014. Well, that's this year's top 10! Happy holidays, everybody! Next week's show? Guess. I'm Bob, and that's the Big Picture.