2014 Movie Reviews, Speed Round

Below are the 2014 movies that I have seen so far (not including the ones previously reviewed in my earlier post), reviewed in one paragraph or less (minus a couple tangents). Movies are rated as Terrible, Mediocre, Average, Good or Great.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
The least essential of all the theatrical Jack Ryan films*, yet still an entertaining enough popcorn thriller that it's not a waste of time.
Rating: Average

*For the record, my ranking of the major Jack Ryan films, from best to worst, are The Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears**, Patriot Games, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

**The Sum of All Fears is the most underrated of the franchise's films, and plays much better today than it did upon its original release. It had unforeseeably bad timing, coming out when audiences had become sick of seeing and hearing about Ben Affleck, and having a plot that's rooted in deep tensions between the U.S. and Russia less than a year after 9/11 when Americans didn't give a damn about Russia anymore. It's well worth a revisit.

Oculus
A clever horror movie that plays up its creepy atmosphere, distorts the characters' (and viewers') sense of time and place, and knows how to use jump-scares (usually the laziest of horror movie tactics) in a non-gratuitous way. I really liked it.
Rating: Good

A Million Ways to Die in the West
Has the same hit-to-miss joke ratio as all of Seth Macfarlane's projects. Though with this movie in particular, it seems like the intensity of the scale is higher. When the jokes hit they are really hilarious, and when they miss they are painfully unfunny. So it's a mixed bag.
Rating: Average

The Lego Movie
What could have been a giant toy commercial turns out to be a fun and poignant story about individuality. And the pseudo-stop-motion CGI is fantastic.
Rating: Good

Under the Skin
I liked it, but I can see why it alienates (no pun intended) a lot of viewers. Everything the viewer needs to understand the film is on the screen, but it requires a lot of inference and interpretation on the audience's part. And the scene with the family on the beach is probably the most harrowing I've seen so far this year.
Rating: Good

The Raid 2
In contrast to its critical consensus, I hated The Raid. So I was surprised to find The Raid 2 so enjoyable. The plot, filmmaking and action sequences have all improved dramatically from the first film.
Rating: Good

Beneath
I had hoped this film would amount to something more than a knock-off of The Descent. While it tosses out a few interesting ideas (including introducing the concept of the unreliable narrator near the start of its second act instead of the third, shading all subsequent events with doubt as to whether or not they're real), it's not enough to salvage the movie. The Descent did it better.
Rating: Mediocre

Jodorowsky's Dune
As a cinephile, it's fun to watch this documentary about an ambitious film project that never came to be (and the subsequent influence it came to have directly (Alien) and indirectly (Star Wars) on other now-classic science fiction films). As a realist, there's no way to take seriously all of the claims that the film would have been some kind of masterpiece. Jodorowsky's version of Dune was always too insane to live, but it's still fun to hear its tale being told by a bunch of people who are really good at telling tales.
Rating: Good

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
A tragically true story of a boy genius who rose to the top, rejected his position in order to pursue what he felt was right, and was then disproportionately punished as a warning to others, the stress of which eventually drove him to suicide. It's an infuriating story of what sometimes happens when good people try to do the right thing instead of falling in line.
Rating: Great

Sabotage
Writer/director David Ayer makes movies where the masculinity is cranked up to 150%, occasionally to the film's benefit (End of Watch), but usually to its detriment (Harsh Times). This film falls firmly into the latter category. An interesting vanity-less performance from the talented Mireille Enos and a standout action/suspense sequence that reveals itself to be playing out over a split timeline are not nearly enough to justify spending 110 minutes watching this movie.
Rating: Mediocre

I Know That Voice
A self-congratulating hagiography of voice actors, produced by a voice actor. It's kind of neat getting to see some really talented actors who usually go unseen, but the film tries to fit in so many different voice actors that it doesn't spend much time with any of them (save for the film's executive producer, John DiMaggio, aka Bender Bending Rodriguez). The documentary has no depth, and not much new is learned about the craft.
Rating: Mediocre

Whitey: United States Against James J. Bulger
Documentary virtuoso Joe Berlinger (the legendary Paradise Lost films) brings us another court case that goes deeper than it initially appears. Ruthless Boston crime boss "Whitey" Bulger* is on trial, and doesn't have any expectations that he'll be found innocent (as his defense lawyer admits early on, Whitey knows that his chosen court strategy will result in a guilty verdict). Instead, he wants to use the trial as a platform to salvage part of his reputation and expose corrupt elements within the F.B.I and U.S Justice Department. The film watches as three powerful forces try desperately to rewrite their own narratives, and the result is as fascinating as any of Berlinger's other works (except for the Paradise Lost films, which may never be topped simply due to their comprehensive and evolving nature).
Rating: Great

*: Bulger was the inspiration for Jack Nicholson's character in Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning The Departed.

Life Itself
A kind but fair look at the life of Roger Ebert, a man who was arguably the single biggest influence on modern film criticism (sorry Janet Maslin, you were amazing, but you wrote for elitists instead of the common viewer). Ebert lived too full a life to squeeze into a single film, but Steve James (director of Hoop Dreams, a small film now regarded as one of the best documentaries ever made, which found an audience in large part due to Ebert's championing of the film on his show and in his written columns) does an admirable and loving job of hitting the highlights, both good and bad.
Rating: Good

The Battered Bastards of Baseball
Perhaps the most amazing thing about this crowd-pleasing documentary is that its subject has not yet been the basis for a major motion picture. It has an underdog baseball team founded by a showboating yet devoted owner (actor Bing Russell), a line-up of eccentric characters (including Bing's son Kurt Russell, a pitcher who would go on to invent Big League Chew, a disgraced former MLB great trying to make a comeback and restore his reputation, a bat boy who would eventually get a Best Picture Oscar nomination, and professional baseball's first female general manager), a championship run, and a climatic legal battle against The Man. It's exactly what you'd expect from a Hollywood sports movie, except authentic.
Rating: Good (and really, really fun)

The Signal
A slow-burn, suspenseful, well-acted, visually rich sci-fi drama that builds to an M. Night Shyamalan-level twist that kind of retroactively cheapens the proceedings. It's supposed to be a rug-pulling, blow-the-audience's-mind moment, but it mostly just makes you wonder "So...what was the point of this?" Still worth a look, and bound to develop a cult audience.
Rating: Good

Cold in July
A solid thriller that changes course with each act, so that the film ends up in a place (and genre) completely different from where it starts. Sam Shepard and Don Johnson give strong supporting performances as opposite ends of the Texan stereotype spectrum (Shepard quiet and steely, Johnson swaggering and garrulous), and lead Michal C. Hall does a serviceable job despite his character being mostly an audience cipher. Also, co-writer/director Jim Mickle accomplishes in one act what Joel Schumacher spent the entire runtime of 8mm not accomplishing.
Rating: Good

The Expendables 3
There's a roving dialogue scene between Sylvester Stallone and Kelsey Grammer, with the two actors finding an easy, natural rapport that suggests an old friendship. I've just described the single element of this film that isn't a complete mess.

Edit: I completely forgot about Wesley Snipes, who gives the kind of fun, energetic performance he used to give in the pre-Blade days. It was nice to see the old Snipes again, and I hope to see more of him in other, non-shitty movies. So I guess the movie has two good elements, which is still not nearly enough to redeem it.
Rating: Terrible

Draft Day
A decent sports backroom drama that takes way too long establishing the various interests and stakes and way too little time in the game. The actors are all in fine form, and Ivan Reitman's direction is snappier than it's been in nearly 30 years, but it just takes so long for the story to get anywhere.
Rating: Average

Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Overhyped, but a nonetheless solid entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The story moves along briskly, there's a nice 70's espionage thriller vibe going on, and the film contains a lot more practical sfx than audiences are used to seeing from Marvel (watching a giant cgi Helicarrier crash into a tall building may be pretty, but seeing an actual truck barrel into an actual car will always have a more visceral affect on the audience). That said, there's some really clunky exposition scenes, and a couple seemingly-good characters are obvious as eventual villains from their very first appearance.
Rating: Good

The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Any time that Jamie Foxx or Paul Giamatti are onscreen, the movie is terrible. And actually, it gets pretty bad when an unintentionally campy Green Goblin shows up, too. So really, as long as there are no villains in the scene, the movie is fine. I guess what I'm saying is that you should watch this blockbuster superhero movie for the dialogue and characterization. Wait...that can't be right, either. I did not hate this movie, but I'm having a really hard time remembering why.
Rating: Mediocre