Force Majeure

One of the absolute best films last year was Ruben Ostlund’s Force Majeure, a Swedish dark comedy dealing with marital dynamics. As with most great foreign films, the rights to Force Majeure have been acquired for a U.S. remake (insert eye roll), but there’s hope for this one yet: Julia Louis-Dreyfus is being sought for the leading role, and if you’ve seen Ostlund’s original, you’ll recognize this as some seriously genius casting.

Imagine what it must be like to make a movie. You pour your heart, soul, and several years of your life into it. It gets nice reviews, makes a little money. People tell you you’re an Oscar contender. Then people tell you you’re a major Oscar contender. Then you wake one day and watch the Oscar nominations live and they don’t call your name. And then you have to pretend that you’re not hugely emotionally devastated because everyone expects you to be a good sport and a gracious loser and to smile and applaud for your colleagues.

Yep, it’s that time of the year again. The 2015 Oscar nominations are here and it’s time for everyone to get outraged and cynical over which movies get the opportunity to take home statuettes of naked golden dudes. Sure, we always tell ourselves that the Academy Awards don’t really matter and that a film’s legacy will live or die for reasons beyond trophies, but we always end up getting angry about these things anyway. However, this year’s biggest snubs seems more egregious than usual and require slightly more yelling and stamping of feet.

I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: No one likes putting together a Top 10 list. Oh, don’t get me wrong; it’s fun at a party if someone asks you, “What were your favorite movies this year?” and you can just rattle off a list of titles in no particular order, not overly concerned if you accidentally left something off. But this list is formal. Published on the Internet. This will be my legacy. And that’s not something to take lightly.

It wasn’t a great year for critics in movies—see ‘Birdman’ (or ‘Chef’ [or ‘Top Five’ (or ‘Big Eyes’)])—but it was a great year for critics at movies. 2014 offered an tremendous variety of fantastic films: big and small; foreign and domestic; mainstream and indie. To anyone who says the overall quality of movies has declined, I call B.S. There are more good movies now than ever before. If you can’t find one, you’re not looking very hard. Take, for instance, these ten instant classics: