Under the Skin

Critics and general audiences don't always see eye-to-eye.

This sounds like an awesome idea.

This week sees the release of ‘Jupiter Ascending,’ the latest sci-fi adventure from Andy and Lana Wachowski. And while in all likelihood ‘Jupiter Ascending’ will not go down in history as one of the great works of its genre, the occasion of a new sci-fi epic from two of the modern masters of the form seemed like a good time to assess and celebrate the recent highlights of science fiction cinema, which has taken audiences from the furthest reaches of the cosmos to the deepest recesses of the human mind.

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:

Trailers are a huge part of the fabric of movies. They play before every film shown in theaters, and on every movie website around the world. They’re commercials, obviously, but they’re also more than that; miniature works of art that utilize the core elements of cinema—image, sound, music, action, editing—at their most pure and refined. And today at ScreenCrush we’re celebrating movie trailers by saluting the best sneak previews of 2014.

In the last year, Scarlett Johansson has voiced a sentient operating system in Spike Jonze's 'Her' and played an alien striving to understand humanity in Jonathan Glazer's jarring 'Under the Skin.' This week, she tackles a different kind of sci-fi with 'Lucy,' a film that carries some of the same thematic DNA as her previous roles, though it isn't quite as intellectual -- nor is it as brainy as its titular character. But thanks to Johansson, the film prevails, giving us a wild and delightfully weird entry in the Scarlett Johansson Sci-Fi Collection.

Director Jonathan Glazer's 'Under the Skin' stars Scarlett Johansson as an apathetic alien named Laura, who uses her earthly female body to seduce men and lead them to their death. The film is an oft abstract and unnerving experience (especially in the wonderfully bizarre first hour), and when Laura makes a surprising decision, 'Under the Skin' shifts from examining ideas of subjective and intangi

If you need to be sold on 'Under the Skin', we probably don't need to do more than to mention Scarlett Johansson and the "graphic nudity" in the film's R-rating. But, if you must know more, we've got a trippy (and sexy), new trailer to share for the upcoming sci-fi thriller.

Scarlett Johansson's performance in 'Under the Skin' is perhaps best known for one where she is naked frequently. And, while that might be all you really need to know about 'Under the Skin,' there is also this interesting tidbit. For the film, where Scarlett plays a beautiful-but-evil man-killer, the actress secretly went out, seduced regular guys walking down the street and lured them into a van.

From the center of a black screen a white dot forms into a sphere. Then, blue discs and then, finally, what looks like tar draining away from pure white. Mixed in with eerie music and some incoherent babble from a female voice. Even though I've seen all of 'Under the Skin' I still only have a vague, gut reaction idea of what these opening moments are meant to represent. And...I think that's exactl