Michael Medved's Best and Worst Movies of 2014

Medved Website ^ | 12/31/14 | Michael Medved

[L.A.Justice]

BEST: 1. American Sniper

2. Boyhood

3. Chef

4. Magic in the Moonlight

5. The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies

6. Guardians of the Galaxy

7. Locke

8. The Lego Movie

9. Mr. Turner

10. Big Eyes

WORST: 1. Snowpiercer

2. Sex Tape

3. Tammy

4. Transformers: Age of Extinction

5. The Other Woman

6. Tusk

7. Dumb and Dumber Too

8. Atlas Shrugged: Who Is John Galt?

9. Robocop

10. Inherent Vice

[L.A.Justice]

I remember the TV ad for Dumber and Dumber Too...It didn't look too good.

[Boogieman]

I’m disappointed he didn’t include “Joe” on the best list.

A bit of a dark film, but excellently done and very moving.

Also, it proved that Nicolas Cage can still turn in a good performance, when he isn’t just doing junk scripts to pay the tax man.

[RC one]

the battle of the five armies is the only one of those movies I bothered to go to the theater for last year. I believe the desolation of Smaug was the last movie that that I went to the theater to see before that. I saw Guardians of the Universe at home and, when it was over, I immediately watched it a again.

[Aria]

Big Eyes was wayy better than I expected. Wonder why he didn’t like The Imitation Game that much?

[fwdude]

You’ve got to be kidding? The Hobbit?!

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Saw The Imitation Game the other night. Boringly earnest biopic. Cumberbatch was good, if a little tic-heavy. The only time it got interesting was when it dealt with the moral dilemma of allowing men to die to keep it secret that you’re reading the enemy’s mail, but that passed quickly. There just wasn’t much story there, basically it was “nerd builds machine.”

[Celtic Conservative]

I sat through “The Other Woman” at a family get together. It was O.K. There were some funny scenes. But the Hollywood Liberal Feminist meme of “women good, men bad” was up front and in your face. they’re not even trying to be subtle anymore.

CC

[Prole]

Where is “Unbroken” in all of this? That film was incredible!

[fwdude]

Meth-head sees way too many movies if he is reviewing “best of’s”.

[867V309]

Mudhead: Fake conservative, fake intellectual, genuine idiot.

[Vendome]

Not a bad list.

I highly recommend “Chef”.

It will seem like a Foody show but, it’s about passion and ultimately you’re a winner when chasing your dream and the very act and outcome are visceral parts of your being.

Some very funny moments as well.

[fwdude]

Mudhead: Fake conservative, fake intellectual, genuine idiot.

That pretty much says it all.

[Vendome]

The story was incredible but, the film was good.

I came out of the theater telling all my friends to see it but, be prepared “It’s a bit plodding, has a long tempo and a few moments that are just dumb because you could it coming a mile away.

Still a very good movie but, it doesn’t stack up against the others.

I think Jolie did a very good job for her 1st time and look forward to other products.

[jonrick46]

I would have included Interstellar in the top 10.

[kidd]

The last installment of the Hobbit was good:
- If you like watching 90 minutes of computer generated animation,
- You don’t mind the movie tripping over itself to connect itself to the Lord of the Rings trilogy,
- If it doesn’t bother you that the movie doesn’t follow the book very well,
- If you can tolerate the over-emphasis on the evil of greed,
- Ridiculous battle scenes don’t bother you

[Cincinatus]

I have a slightly higher opinion of it. One aspect that I found interesting was the role of the "Eureka" moment in research. They labored mightily to get the machine to break Enigma, but the slowness of mechanical relays meant that it still took too much time. When Turing realized that each day's first message (the weather report) ended in the phrase "Heil Hitler!", he was able to devise an algorithm that by-passed thousands of irrelevant solutions, allowing them to quickly converge on the answer.

All that from a momentary flash of intuitive insight. I liked that -- it showed how major breakthroughs really happen.

[Caipirabob]

Snowpiercer was one freaky stinker. I can't imagine high school kids churning out a worse story line.

[Dr. Ursus]

The ny times book review has an interesting article about the movie. The true story is more interesting. Check the story on the post office engineer Tony Flowers.

[kearnyirish2]

Same here (with Battle of the Five Armies and Desolation of Smaug); the last two movies I saw in a theater (with the wife/kids). I actually wasn’t thrilled with “The Desolation of Smaug”, and thought they had stretched what at best should have been two movies into three, but wanted some closure.

It is amazing looking at the list of movies how I recognize the names from decades past (RoboCop, Dumb & Dumber); I see producers really appealing to middle-aged people (instead of the prized young audiences of years past). They seem to have their eyes fixed on the pockets of an older, often childless generation with the time, money, and interest in such re-treads.

[rbg81]

I didn’t think “Snowpiercer” was that bad. You just can’t take it literally. Certainly, it was better than “Transformers: Age of Extinction”.