Favorite of the Year: Captain America-The Winter Soldier

It’s been quite a year. I got married. My wife and I put together a little home together. I directed one play, I’m currently in rehearsals for another. I wrote a new book that — God willing — will be available relatively early in 2015. And in the meantime, I managed to see a few movies.

Not all the movies, mind you. There are still several 2014 releases I haven’t seen yet, often because the aforementioned activities got in the way of my movie time. I still haven’t seen Boyhood, for instance, and I’m dying to. I’m delinquent in keeping up with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, and despite all my efforts to the contrary, I’ve yet to get around to The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

So consider this list highly incomplete. These are all the films from 2014 that I have seen, in order of my favorite to my least favorite. This includes direct-to-video and made-for-TV movies. I’ll leave comments for the ones where I have comments to leave.

• Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Marvel has had a good year — a good couple of years, actually — but this to me was the movie that really elevated their universe beyond simple superhero action into something with greater depth and meaning.
• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Similar to Captain America, this film took what Rise of the Planet of the Apes began and ran with it, creating a larger world and a highly intelligent, powerful science fiction film.
• Guardians of the Galaxy. This was just pure fun.
• X-Men: Days of Future Past. Easily the best X-Men film to date, and so good that it actually erases some of the sins of the previous films.
• The LEGO Movie. Again, pure fun, but with a surprising amount of heart to it.
• Gone Girl. Incredibly tense and engaging.
• Interstellar. One of the most engaging, entertaining pure sci-fi films in years
• Godzilla. Fantastic reboot of the franchise.
• Edge of Tomorrow. Great movie hurt by atrocious marketing.
• Big Hero 6.
• Stripped. Fine documentary about the comic strip form.
• I Am Santa Claus.
• St. Vincent.
• Doc of the Dead. Interesting documentary about zombie fiction.
• Stage Fright. Little seen but actually entertaining musical horror comedy about a slasher killer attacking a theater camp. It’s on Netflix streaming right now. Meatloaf is in it.
• A Merry Friggin’ Christmas. One of Robin Williams’s final performances, alongside Community‘s Joel McHale.
• Son of Batman.
• Justice League: War.
• Mr. Peabody and Sherman.
• Big Driver.
• Chilling Visions: 5 States of Fear. Okay anthology, but the premise holding the segments together is paper-thin.
• JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time.
• Maleficent. Could have been a great remake from the villain’s perspective, but a horribly invasive voice over and some poor performances really hurt.
• Print the Legend.
• Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.
• Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. The original remains one of my favorites. This film seems like further proof that Frank Miller has lost his mind.
• Robocop. Unnecessary, lifeless remake.
• Lucky Duck. Treacle-filled animated kiddie film I watched with my niece. Just because a movie is targeted for children is no excuse for making it bad.
• The Amazing Spider-Man 2. After a first movie that I thought was just as good as — maybe better than — the Toby Maguire films, I couldn’t believe how utterly this one fell apart.
• I, Frankenstein.
• Happy Christmas. “Hey, you know all those dull, unscripted movies about obnoxious people who can’t get their lives together? Let’s make one at Christmas. And put Lena Dunham in it.”
• Sharknado 2: The Second One. In fairness, they weren’t trying to make a good movie. They succeeded.
• Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever. All I can say is that the title was accurate.