Boyhood (2014)

Filmed during a 12-year period, Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” follows a Texan child (Ellar Coltrane) from 6 to 18, from mishaps with pencil sharpeners to flirtations with marijuana and leaving for college. This has never been done before, not with one child, growing, maturing, faltering, and excelling in one motion. Stunt? No. The beauty of Linklater’s astounding film is how small it remains, this is not Gandhi, nor is there was or revolt. Mason plays Wii, watches movies, gets a car, a crappy job, and leaves for college. Mom (Patricia Arquette) struggles to better herself, for herself and her children (the director’s daughter, Lorelei Linklater, plays Mason’s sister), while dad (Ethan Hawke) takes decades to mature. Mistakes are made as mom remarries, and sees those relationships unravel fast, while dad quite can’t nail child interaction. Mason photographs. If there’s any “enemy” here, it is alcohol. Addiction, as empty escape. Linklater has Mason realize that trap on his own, observing, tasting for himself, observing, realizing. Coltrane’s performance is so natural, you buy him as Mason, unsure of where fiction and reality divide, and one cannot help but get swept up in Linklater’s ode to ordinary family life, drama, and love. A

P.S.  I'll revisit this film again and again, as I feel I will react to as I did “Tree of Life.” It is that good. That mind and soul altering. 

Ida (2014)

Polish-made “Ida” is quiet, brief at 80 minutes, and shot in a square black and white format that predates widescreen thrills, with only two main characters, mostly in a car. But it’s powerful, and settles in slowly. Agata Trzebuchowska is Anna, a young woman living inside a nunnery, about to take the oath that will “marry” her to Christ. Before commitment, Anna visits her only living relative, an aunt (Agata Kulesza) who only just now has acknowledged the relation. Wanda, drunken, aloof, a Stalinist judge on her way down, tells Anna three truths: Her name is really Ida, her parents were murdered in World War II, and she is Jewish. The words rock Anna-now-Ida, who commits to finding the graves of her family to bless them. In the name of Christ. Shredding road-trip cliché, “Ida” is emotional and harsh, without judgment or cruelty. The ending is beautifully realized as Ida finds balance between the life she ought to have had, the life she was given, and the life she wants. Pawel Pawlikowski films his characters at the very bottom of the frame with a vast sky or ceiling looming above, as if the weight of the world is crushing everyone. A-

Snowpiercer (2014)

Bong Joon-ho’s “Snowpiercer” is a gonzo action-thriller that marries “Runaway Train” to “1984,” with Captain America himself Chris Evans as a last-car rebel inside a train that holds the last of humanity, circling a world sunk into permanent freeze after scientists pulled a major FUBAR trying to undo climate change. The train is wealth-segregated, “Great Gatsby” upfront, stragglers in back. When two back-car children are taken at gunpoint, Evans fights his way to the engine. To God. Bong’s film is a train onto itself, gleefully barreling off the tracks, belching smoke, ash, and noise, slashing through drama/action/satire and horror, no scene more bizarre or tense than a bright yellow elementary classroom. This film is bloody fun, if not too daft for anyone’s good, but note that everyone in the forward cars is white and police brutality is common, and our rulers know that war is necessary to thin the populace. Post-Ferguson, this movie is scarily now. As the train’s governess, Tilda Swinton riffs and looks like – no shit -- Thelma from Scooby Doo, possessed by a demon, high on meth. In fur. The end is perfectly WTF indescribable. A-

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Peter Weir’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock” is a mystery with no answer. It’s 1900 Australia and a group of girls from an elite finishing school leave for a picnic at Hanging Rock, a chunk of mountain with a near-supernatural magnetism. It looms as a god, setting visitors in a daze. Watches stop. People sleep. Four girls wonder for no reason but curiosity. Three disappear, one returns panicked. The vanished girls drop the perfect façade of the school and town into hysteria, order and etiquette shattering. People don’t fear the girls’ deaths, they fear their “violation.” The unknown expands. Weir uses glowing cinematography and pan-flute music to portray the perfection that we all desire to build us for the fall. Life is unanswerable, we cannot escape it reciting poetry or meeting dinner time. The only innocent free girl throws herself to death. The grand head mistress (Rachel Roberts) loses her glory to reality, her fate leads back to that Rock. Honestly, “Picnic” is perfect, as defined as what we are not shown, by as what we are. It is art that cannot be explained or crunched into a few sentences, it must be seen. On repeat. Endlessly fascinating. A+

Seconds (1966)

John Frankenheimer serves another perfect thriller with “Seconds” after “Manchurian Candidate” and “Train.” This is a “Twilight Zone”-like sci-fi-horror about that foolish notion we all wonder: What if I zagged left not right? Moved there not here? You get it. What if’s never end. This is the hell-pit answer. John Randolph is banker Arthur -– bored empty nester pissed at the capitalist lie he swallowed from birth –- who finds himself with a crazy proposition: He can fake his death and get a new identity in the form of Rock Hudson. Newly renamed, Antiochus joins a hippie commune. Sex. Freedom. Is liberalism as much a mirage as white-shirt conservatism? Beautifully played with a barrage of warped lenses – the cinematography is by James Wong Howe of “Sweet Smell of Success” fame -- this movie is a true deep shocker that left me breathless long after the credits. As a man with a new body and voice who cannot shake old gestures and hesitations, Randolph and Hudson pop brilliant, actors who could have shared a Best Actor Oscar. Frankenheimer is my favorite director and this is another hit in a series of paranoid-heavy movies that crack men’s psyches open, baring dark truths. A+

The Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

“What are you … doing?” That’s what evil alien Ronan (Lee Pace) asks of Han Solo-type hero Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) toward the end of “Guardians of the Galaxy,” a funny, thrilling action film from Marvel Studios that is self-aware and comes packed with the kind of rock-heavy soundtrack not heard since 1980s heydays. “Footloose” is named-checked. “Cherry Bomb” is played. This is as fuck-it gonzo flippant as Marvel’s “Captain America 2” was dead serious against Bush/Obama NSA insanity. Earth-born Quill goes by Star-Lord, a thief who gets mixed up in a universe-stretching battle Skywalker-style after he nabs a device that looks like a baseball, joining other thieves and fighters –- including a walking tree (Vin Diesel) and his raccoon pal (Bradley Cooper) –- along the way. Director/writer James Gunn serves epic gut-busting comedy first, superhero tales second. “Why would you to save the galaxy?,” asks Rocket the Raccoon. “Because I live in the galaxy!,” is the genius reply. Everything about “Guardians” is perfect, right up to the credits stinger that winks at Marvel’s once abysmal track record of movie making. Pratt is fast becoming a major film star, having played lead voice in another 2014 favorite, “The Lego Movie.” A

Divergent (2014)

Dystopian future youth dramas are getting as much cinema attention as comic book movies, so watching “Divergent” will give you nothing no one has not seen in “Hunger Games” -– good films -– and “Host” –- terrible, awful flick. “Divergent” takes place in a post-war Chicago where humanity has been divided up into factions according to dominant virtue -– smart, giving, war-like, servant, you get the idea. To have multiple virtues, being divergent, is a mark of death under the city’s queen bee (Kate Winslet, all cold). Our heroine is Beatrice (Shailene Woodley, star of near every movie this year), who is from a servant family, but cops multiple traits, mostly warrior. This makes her No. 1 target, assuming she can survive the hand-to-hand and gun/knife combat training of her new war tribe. Does she? Of course, she does. This is film 1 in a series. Woodley is great in the role, going from young and unsure to a survivor of tragedy, so she more than makes up for the ehh side-characters and an odd lack of true horror. I might be playing unfair as no one here carries the menace of Donald Sutherland leering at Jennifer Lawrence. B