Without providing the root link, Awards Daily has posted the Ten Best Films of 2014 list by Time critic Richard Corliss. Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel is a ballsy #1 and Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s Birdman is #10. Boyhood is #2 (fine), followed by The LEGO Movie at #3, Goodbye to Language at #5, Jodorowsky’s Dune at #6, Citizenfour at #8 (approved) and Wild Tales at #9 (ditto). But Corliss calling Luc Besson‘s Lucy his #4 film of the year is a problem. There’s no right or wrong way to look at any film, of course, except in the case of a soul-less, faux-Asian piece of CG-driven jizz whizz like Lucy.
An uptown know-it-all from way back, Corliss chose to single out Lucy, I suspect, in order to to demonstrate that he can be as louche and loosey-goosey as the next guy. A simple way to do that is to embrace a crappy film or two. A line in “The Film Snob’s Dictionary” states that the film snob can sometimes be “willfully perverse in his taste.” Check.
From my 7.23.14 review: “Trust me, Besson doesn’t care about anything except providing a 2014 version of the standard adrenalized rush that the apes often pay to see. He spent a lot of money on this thing, and the idea, obviously, is to make a lot of money back. Just call him Luc ‘looking for a payday so I can put money into my film school’ Besson.
“Lucy is an ambitiously designed, stupidly thoughtful cranked-up wank. But is it a tank? At least it’s not a total blank.”
Once again, HE’s Top Twelve: 1. Birdman (d: Alejandro G. Inarritu); 2. Citizen Four (d: Laura Poitras); 3. Leviathan (d: Andrey Zvyagintsev); 4. Gone Girl (d: David Fincher); 5. Boyhood (d: Richard Linklater); 6. A Most Violent Year (d: J.C. Chandor); 7. Wild Tales (d: Damian Szifron); 8. A Most Wanted Man (d: Anton Corbijn); 9. The Babadook (d: Jennifer Kent); 10. Locke (d: Steven Knight); 11. Nightcrawler (d: Dan Gilroy); 12. The Drop (d: Michael R. Roskam).