Important Movies

Son of a bitch, you're right. My memory is fading.

The Interview was pretty important. I can't think of another movie that almost got us nuked.

Plus it helped reveal just how full of shit Sony is.

Interstellar cuz it's awesome and love is the ultimate obv. Gone girl because love is the ultimate obv. Edge of tomorrow cuz tc still had it. Birdman because editing. Guardians because soundtracks were back.

I wouldn't say no to Birdman. I like Whiplash too. I don't know what's important about it, but I like it.

I will still push The Interview. The movie was crap but the freedom of speech political discussion it sparked was hardcore.

EDIT: On Boyhood, the filmmaking experimentation is commended by me, but I haven't watched it. No matter how fascinating I found this idea of a film I couldn't convince myself to sit through a three hour movie about puberty. Fucking teenagers.

2014 is tough. Lots of movies I like a lot from this year but the immediate influence of a lot of these is hard to really trace. My picks:


1. Guardians of the Galaxy: Still hugely popular, massive soundtrack, and most importantly, helped comic book movies get weird. How long this trend will last remains to be seen but this is one of the few films from this year to have an immediate impact.

2. Boyhood: Instant classic that I'm pretty confident will hold up over time. The film is also a fascinating time capsule of 2001-2013 and that's worth preserving. And then there's the fact that not only critics loved this, but so too did filmmakers, and that suggests we'll see its influence all the more moving forward.

3. Birdman: Rarely does a film open itself up to such literary interpretations and analysis whilst simultaneously grossing over $100 million dollars and generally working well for wide audiences. Birdman's ability to function as both entertaining drama with great performances and lots of comedy while also giving a lot for critics and academics to dissect will most certainly give it a long shelf life. Beyond that, the film's observations of superhero obsession and the fudging of high and low culture do speak well to the times which produced it.

4. Winter Sleep: Probably a long shot, but it's worth considering. One of the best explorations of income inequality and specifically how the rich and poor are implicitly divided by structural barriers not easily overcome, as well as how the wealthy often live in a sort of bubble that prevent them from grappling with the issues those in poverty face realistically. Poignant messages given issues of wealth inequality and the delusionally rich don't seem to be going away any time soon.

5. Selma: Blistering portrayal of civil rights struggles coming in the midst of "Black Lives Matter" and a great document for how to fight for civil liberties. I suspect this will be a worthwhile example as we face several fundamental rights being rolled back. Beyond that though, the fact that a black woman helmed a movie of this scale and the success it achieved (which has thus far launched Ava DuVernay as a major player in Hollywood) should probably also be recognized.

Honourable Mentions

Interstellar - A struggled with this one. Clearly ambitious, and I don't doubt it's the kind of movie that can inspire a great many (we've seen Deexan's mania first hand), but so much of what makes it great stems directly from the influence of 2001 and beyond that the film just hasn't had the same lasting legacy as something like Inception.

Gone Girl - I love it, but it's really more of a pot-boiler than a great work in and of itself. It's focus on media frenzy, accusations, and abuse of women do make it somewhat timely, but it isn't too prophetic all the same.

American Sniper - One of Eastwood's few succeses of recent memory and a pretty unique blockbuster all things considered. But the movie itself is basically your standard war movie cliches.

Whiplash - Surprise hit that launched Damien Chazelle, but it feels more like a Reservoir Dogs or a Shallow Grave than a true triumph in its own right.

Foxcatcher - I just have a weird hunch this movie is gonna be remembered. Not really sure why.

The hack is only a quarter of the reason why I mentioned The Interview. The only real importance of the hack is that it snowballed into everything else. What really made the film one of the most noteworthy of the year is that it was a lightning rod for a nationwide free speech movement/protest/debate. When Sony pulled the movie because of terrorism threats there was a massive explosion of reaction, most saying pulling the movie was against our constitutional rights to have this movie no matter what it's political content was. Even President Obama urged Sony to reconsider their position, and when the President of the goddamn United States is putting his opinion forth on a Hollywood issue you know it has sparked something.

Is The Interview the ideal candidate? Probably not. I guarantee most who supported the "release the film" cause probably never saw it, unless it was on Netflix. Those who did were pretty lukewarm about it. Is there any important content in the movie? Not really. It's just a nutty satire of US tensions with North Korea and Kim Jong Un's fascination with US pop culture in spite of that, but it's not really stating anything about it really. If there is an argument against the film it's that the film itself is purely incidental to the outrage it accidentally sparked.

The big question about this is the definition of "important." If we're talking film content, then the movie isn't anything special. But then again I'm looking at lists in this thread that say John Wick and Guardians of the Galaxy, of which both are good movies but I wouldn't say there's much importance to them except that they're well liked. I could even make the same argument for Whiplash. Even Selma is a great depiction of an important historical event, but it also feels like it's in a long line of many.

The Interview got the entire nation talking and arguing. No other film of 2014 can make that claim. And hell, I don't even like the movie, but boy do I remember the ruckus it caused.

Yeah, but again, it's really everything around the movie that caused it to be important rather than the actual movie. Like, there was a movie in the 70s called The Message which became infamous because it caused a violent hostage situation, but that doesn't make it one of the most important movies of 1976, most people today have never heard of it and I don't see The Interview being much more than a footnote for similar reasons even though I rather enjoy the movie personally.

Well, my philosophy with this thread when it came to these recent years was always to try to envision which movies would really stand the test of time and be influential and talked about in the decades to come.  When we were debating out 1976 we had that benefit of hindsight and knew which movies really had those ripples in culture.  Even in 2018 we already know The Interview isn't one of those movies, it's already unimportant, even the brief bit of controversy around it ultimately amounted to basically nothing going forward. 

I agree with Boyhood and Guardians

Still highest selling movie on Google play. Still haven't seen it and have no interest in seeing it, and had no idea it came out in 2014.

Still murcky what happened with that one too.

Literally a shit hole of a movie from all reports though. Nobody remembers that shit. Except you.

100% with Drac on The Interview. Like Ian, I'm also potentially open to American Sniper. But it's just such a cliched movie and beyond that I don't know if it'll really stand out in Eastwood's oeuvure in the future.

I think Birdman will have staying power. The fact that it's so rich for analysis while also still working as general entertainment will likely give it legs.