Year in Review: Zach's Top Ten Films of 2014

            2014 began with Jonah Hill being nominated for an Oscar in a Martin Scorsese film and ended with Steve Carell likely being nominated for an Oscar wearing Nicole Kidman’s nose from The Hours, while Seth Rogan and James Franco have become ambassadors to liberty, free speech, and democracy around the world.  Meanwhile, Emma Stone is also an Oscar shoo-in and Don Draper still has unresolved feelings for Lindsay Weir.  The lesson?  Trust Judd Apatow.  Even when he’s not tapping into the great acting talent of the 21^st century, he’s producing hit TV shows and routinely becoming one of the most entertaining late night TV guests.  Even his teenage daughter is big.  Let’s face it: Judd Apatow owns Hollywood and most of the non-North Korean planet.  Right now, he is to America what Heisenberg was to the Czech Republic in Season 5 of Breaking Bad.  Let’s just be grateful he was prescient enough to have never cast Bill Cosby in any of his films.  In the words of Walter Cronkite, once you’ve lost Apatow, you’ve lost the American people. 

            Sadly, Judd Apatow did not direct any films in 2014 (although the jury’s out on whether he clandestinely went to France and directed Stranger by the Like), meaning that this year’s top ten list may look a little incomplete.  Fortunately, 2014 boasted some high quality, mature, original films although you would never guess it from looking at the highest-grossing films of the year (in case you’re counting, 12 of the top 16 movies were either sequels or remakes, while three of the other four were meant for children and family audiences).  That doesn’t mean that the future for movies isn’t bleak, as Mark Harris expertly articulated a few weeks ago.  Is it possible that when Newton Minow called television a “vast wasteland” five decades ago, he actually instead meant motion pictures?  And once again, this is where you can insert Apatow into this tragic milieu: Although “mature” may be a bit of a stretch, he undoubtedly makes high quality, original films that aren’t franchises or sequels (sort-of) or meant for kids.  In spite of his seeming ubiquity across multiple entertainment platforms, somehow 2014 still needed Apatow’s personal authorial stamp more than any previous year.

            Anyway, on to the business at hand: The ten best movies of the year.  In a year where going to movie theaters has become so irrelevant that Snowpiercer grossed less money at the American box office than Legend of Lemurs: Madagascar (IMAX) and something called Meet the Mormons, I’m proud to say that nine of these ten films were first seen at a theater.  Yes, the tickets probably cost too much and the people who talk uncannily always found a way to swarm around my seat, but I can’t deny that the experience of going to the movies is still worth it.  That opinion may change in the next few years, but for now I can reflect on the films that give me hope for the future.

Total 2014 films seen: 62

“Thumbs up” percentage: 59.67 percent

Movies I haven’t seen that could potentially make this list: A Most Violent Year, Selma, Inherent Vice, In Bloom, Mommy, Two Days One Night.

Movies I’m proud to say I didn’t see: Transformers 4, Dumb and Dumber To, Into the Woods, all of the freaking Bible movies.

Overrated: The Grand Budapest Hotel, Interstellar, Chef, Dear White People, Godzilla, Gone Girl, Pride, Birdman (not bad, just overrated), Under the Skin (the same).

Underrated: Fading Gigolo, If I Stay, Life of Crime, The Unknown Known.  Truthfully, not a lot of underrated movies in 2014.  Can I include Boyhood with only “99% Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes?

Best Actor: Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler

Best Actress: Agata Trzebuchowska, Ida

Best Supporting Actor: Ethan Hawke, Boyhood

Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood

Worst Movies of the Year: This is Where I Leave You, Godzilla, The Giver.

Honorable mention: Nymphomaniac Volumes 1 and 2 (Lars von Trier); The Skeleton Twins (Craig Johnson); Belle (Amma Asante); Love is Strange (Ida Sachs); Ida (Paweł Pawlikowski).

10. Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)

This was Full Metal Jacket meets a masochistic version of Mr. Holland’s Opus (with a tiny bit of Black Swan thrown in), and although hopefully few of us have ever encountered a teacher or boss as genuinely sadistic as J.K. Simmons’ Mr. Fletcher, director Chazelle does an incredible job of invoking the fear of public shaming that everyone feels on a daily basis.  Andrew, the talented young drummer played by Miles Teller, feels that fear in the first parts of the film when he’s lambasted by Mr. Fletcher, but soon that fear transitions into the same anger, aggression, and brutality that Fletcher displays in front of his music students.  In a roundabout way, Whiplash is an oddly moral film that asks serious questions about what degrees of sacrifice and personal harm are necessary in order to shape a prodigy.  These aren’t just questions of whether the end justifies the means, but to what degrees professional society permits abhorrent behavior at the expense of collectively turning the other cheek. I especially admired the last scene of the film, which depicts a climatic showdown between the forces of good or evil that isn’t resolved through words or fists, but through music.  Because in the end, that’s all Whiplash is really about, right?

9. A Most Wanted Man (Anton Corbijn)

Like The Lives of Others, this is a film that ostensibly dealt with espionage and police surveillance, but was really about how bureaucracies are not only barriers to human compassion, but forge alienation within even its own top members.  This was also a haunting and brilliant final performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman, playing a German intelligence agent tracking a potentially dangerous terrorist suspect who has recently emigrated from Russia.  Hoffman’s foil is not the terrorist, but two women – one an immigration lawyer (Rachel McAdams) who has come to the aid of the suspect, and the other an American diplomatic attache (Robin Wright) skeptical of Hoffman’s rogue and detached demeanor.  Based on a John le Carré novel, the film deals with one of le Carré’s favorite themes, which is how politics get in the way of good old fashioned spy games.  Unfortunately, this fact is truly detrimental for a character like Hoffman’s – a (perhaps ironically) gruff, chain-smoking, heavy-drinking man whose job demands that he remain deliberately aloof from others, himself, and most tragically, even us viewers. RIP PSH.

8. Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund)

2014’s award for “most divisive film between men and women” shouldn’t go to David Fincher’s overrated Gone Girl (“hysterical” and “outrageous” are adjectives that men and women can agree on), but to this Swedish gem.  It’s the type of film Hollywood studios are probably too afraid to make because there’s not a lot of sex or violence – just dialogue that poses uncomfortably provocative questions about the lengths to which we will go (or not go) to protect those that we love.  It’s also a film about the funny ways that life makes us incapable of forgetting seemingly insignificant things, and as a result, brandishing them to an unforeseen level of importance in our every waking moment.  Is it our job to rehabilitate someone whose gut instinct is to do the wrong thing in a moment of desperation?  Or is the wrong thing to aggrandize that person to the point of extreme guilt and loss of self-worth?  I’ve been intentionally vague about the major plot points of Force Majeure because frankly the plot isn’t the thing that has stuck with me – it’s the questions raised by the plot, and the inevitable personal questioning (“What would I do?”) that make this film unforgettable.

7. Fury (David Ayer)

The previews made it look like another dumb war film not too distant from the likes of Monuments Men, but the truth is David Ayer (whose End of Watch appeared on my 2012 list) has become an intriguing filmmaker who deals with groups of men facing dangerous situations.  This time, it’s the 2^nd Armored Division of an Army squadron stationed in western Germany during the final months of World War II, where Staff Sargent Don “Wardaddy” Collier (Brad Pitt) commands a five-man unit aboard a M4 Sherman tank.  No, the movie isn’t too radically different from the 1940s war pictures of John Wayne, but some of those films like Sands of Iwo Jima actually hold up pretty well today, and Fury executes the formula of the classical war picture to perfection.  In the post-modern world of the 21^st century, it’s become increasingly difficult to make a movie like this – one that isn’t overwhelmed by nostalgia or simplistic and conservative interpretations of American military interventionism, or where the uncouth demeanor of army units is conveniently pushed under the rug.  Fury is successful because like End of Watch, Ayer is most concerned with complex characters and relationships, and the reasons behind why these men are drawn to the heat of battle.  The standout sequence of the film isn’t the climatic shootout, but an extended scene in the middle of the film when Pitt and Logan Lerman find an abandoned apartment and share a rare moment of peace and relaxation.  Fury is a “war film” inasmuch as that it is set during a war, but it’s much more accurate to bestow it with the more revered title of “character study.”

6. Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy)

Like Fury, this was a film I didn’t have a lot of high hopes for going into it, but in the end was rather shocked by how good it really was.  There may not have been a better performance in a 2014 film than Jake Gyllenhaal as Norman Bates Lou Bloom, a loser who starts the movie unemployed but finds a passion for shooting videos at crime scenes and selling the footage to local news.  The movie is an entertaining mix of Taxi Driver and Breaking Bad, showing the ways that an anti-social sociopath is able to find a profitable niche, and quickly move up the ranks through coercion, deception, and extremely questionable professional ethics.  It wouldn’t be inaccurate to call Nightcrawler a portrait of modern America where television audiences are addicted to sensationalistic crime from the vantage point of their living rooms (as a TV personality says in the film, “think of our news cast as screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut.”)  But that message alone would make the film passe; Gilroy seems to be more interested in how getting ahead in America has less to do with genuine hard work than with the ability to manipulate on individual and mass levels.  Nightcrawler may bite off more than it can chew, but with a film this enjoyable and unpredictable, who cares?

5. Life Itself (Steve James)

Ever since his death in April 2013, I’ve asked myself the question, “What would Roger Ebert have thought of this film?” (Hold that thought for a second).  So what would Roger have thought about the documentary made about his own life and influence?  OK, OK, I’m sure he’d recuse himself from officially reviewing it, but not without first admiring James’ skill for balancing Ebert’s passion toward film with his complex relationships with friends, family, and certain professional TV colleagues.  There was no way I wasn’t going to love this film, but I was surprised at how little of Life Itself actually dealt with movies (this is also true of Ebert’s autobiography from which much of this film is drawn).  Who cares whether Roger really liked Robert Altman and Mike Leigh but didn’t like David Lynch and Adam Sandler?  Those who are interested can read his archived reviews.  What doesn’t show up in those reviews is a man whose alcoholism nearly led him to a personal and professional collapse; whose personality led to unhealthy competitiveness; and most importantly, how his marriage and his battle with cancer at the end of the life transformed him into a better man.  Sure, he was giving out a ridiculous amount of four star movies toward the end, but that’s because Roger Ebert loved movies and loved life.  If the movies really are a machine that generates empathy, as he beautifully states in the film, there could be no greater empathetic portrait of Roger than this exceptional documentary.

4. The One I Love (Charlie McDowell)

So remember that question I alluded to above, about which 2014 movies Roger Ebert would have liked?  I would make the argument that he would have named The One I Love his #1 film of 2014.  Roger loved movies like this, and it’s easy to see why: Movies that challenge conventional definitions of story and character, and movies that aren’t afraid to be completely daring and experimental even if the result might appear gimmicky at first (let’s remember that Roger’s #1 film of the last decade was Synecdoche, New York).  Earlier on this list, Force Majeure was a film I didn’t want to spoil too much of, and it is the same thing here; all I can say is that The One I Love stars Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss as a couple experiencing great difficulties in their marriage, and are recommended by their counselor (Ted Danson) to take a mini-vacation for a weekend to a remote cabin in the country.  That’s all folks, I’m sorry.  Once you see this film, you’ll understand why going into this movie with any partial notion of its story thwarts the total experience that it gives its viewers.  It is funny, sad, unpredictable, moving, frightening, and above all else, completely and utterly original.  I’ll also say that it’s a lot like Force Majeure in the way that it causes you to rethink meaningful personal relationships, and whether putting up with someone’s flaws and blemishes is ever really worth it in the end.  This is also the kind of movie that most American audiences probably won’t like (P.S. That’s probably a good thing). And you probably won't stop thinking about it.

3. Blue Ruin (Jeremy Saulnier)

Inviting comparisons to the Coen Brothers, Brian De Palma, and Abel Ferrara, Blue Ruin began as a Kickstarter campaign, was shot for under $500,000, and grossed under $1 million theatrically.  And as anyone who has seen the movie can attest to, the visuals are on par with any multi-million dollar behemoth manufactured from the Hollywood studio factory output.  Of course, Blue Ruin is more than simply impressive visuals and special effects; the film tells the harrowing story of a vagrant named Dwight (Macon Blair) who is forced to carry out an act of vengeance upon hearing that a murderer has been released from prison.  For much of Blue Ruin, we remain in the dark about Dwight’s real motives, but the movie is so suspenseful, taut, and engaging that the backstory almost takes on secondary importance.  When light is finally shed upon the facts leading up to the film’s startling climax, Blue Ruin reveals itself to be a story that deeply questions the motives behind vigilante justice, and the ripple effects it causes.  There are also moments of very dark humor too, and the movie’s beguiling final line is the dialogue equivalent to the spinning top at the end of Inception.  Jeremy Saulnier and Macon Blair are serious talents on the rise, and movies like Blue Ruin serve as reminders that American independent cinema is not totally dead yet.

2. Citizenfour (Laura Poitras)

The most important movie of 2014, if for no other reason than that it captures history in the making, as it profiles the week leading up to Edward Snowden’s infamous interview and outing as the NSA whistleblower in June 2013.  If Islamic terrorism was the defining issue of the 2000s, than cyber-security and cyber-terrorism are making a strong case as the defining issue of the 2010s, and Poitras’s documentary explores the ways in which it is misunderstood and misrepresented by both governments and mass media.  Although Poitras believes that Snowden’s actions were justified, she is not an apologist and Citizenfour does not necessarily absolve Snowden but rather points to the problematic circumstances that led to Snowden’s release of classified NSA documents.  Like Michael Moore and Barbara Kopple, Poitras is successful at making audiences rethink their unquestioned loyalty to a country that is so hypocritical and corrupt in its policies at the highest levels of governance.  It may go down as “the Edward Snowden documentary,” but the truth is, in wake of The Interview fiasco and looming threats of compromising online security by rogue hackers, Citizenfour is the most unexpectedly relevant and important film of 2014.  It captures not only history in the making, but suggests what kind of future we will see if transparency and public access are discarded for the sake of upholding “national security.”  Snowden and others rightly suggest that what we need security from most is our own government.  Quick, someone call Seth Rogan and James Franco!

1. Boyhood (Richard Linklater)

I don’t want to say what everyone else has already said, so let’s look at what has been overlooked.  First of all, this is an incredibly well-written motion picture, which gets forgotten because much of the dialogue was written on nights prior to shooting, which for some unknown reason makes it less admirable from a critical perspective.  It’s not the type of movie that readily contains inspirational speeches, but Ethan Hawke explaining the Beatles Black Album, Brad Hawkins’ description of his military service in Afghanistan, and Patricia Arquette’s speech at the very end of the movie are three examples of extraordinary dialogue – dialogue unmatched by any other 2014 film. Then there’s Ellar Coltrane, whose performance may be less flashy than Hawke’s and Arquette’s, but is no less astonishing.  Watching this movie, especially in the second half, I couldn’t help but thinking: “There is no way this is acting.  This is the way this kid actually is.”  I love how Coltrane’s character, Mason, is unconventional and doesn’t conform to our normal expectations of what a 21^st Century American teenager “should” be.  He has piercings, likes photography, and doesn’t play for the football team.  He drinks and smokes, but is in no way a bad kid.  Boyhood doesn’t show him going to prom or getting his first kiss or getting expelled.  It also doesn’t show weddings or funerals or those other rudimentary markers of significant events in our life.  It shows a father taking his kids to a baseball game, and a mother attending a college class to prepare for a new career.  It shows a son riding a bike and a daughter singing Britney Spears.  It shows a high school graduation party.  The events are of such little significance, and yet we glean so much from observing them. 

Boyhood reminded me of two lines of beautiful dialogue from other movies.  The first is spoken by Wallace Shawn at the end of My Dinner With Andre: “I treated myself to a taxi.  I rode hom through the city streets.  There wasn’t a street, there wasn’t a building, that wasn’t connected to some memory in my mind.  There, I was buying a suit with my father.  There, I was having an ice cream soda after school.”  Boyhood reminds you that it’s the little things we remember so much more than the Important Life Events.  Is it weird that riding my bike to the local lake when I was 10 years old remains a much more vivid memory than my grandfather dying?  Boyhood doesn’t think so.  The second line comes from a much more unlikely source – You’ve Got Mail: "The odd thing about this form of communication is that you're more likely to talk about nothing than something, but I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings."  That is the way I feel about Boyhood.  The movie is so profound precisely because it is so mundane.  It does not deviate from that strategy for a moment because it has tremendous self-assurance in its story and characters.  When the movie is over, the cumulative effect is overwhelming.

If movies are indeed machines that generate empathy, like Ebert said, then Boyhood is perhaps the closest experience I have ever had into being transported into the life of another person.  It is almost insulting to think the breadth of that experience can be reduced to a handful of words of a film review, or for that matter a handful of minutes captured by a camera.  All I can really describe is the way I felt watching it, which was profoundly and deeply moved. Not moved to the point of tears, because that is not the intention of Boyhood.  It restrains from manipulating viewer emotions too dramatically.  We feel for Mason, Samantha, and their parents because we feel for the important people in our own lives.  And by the end of this film, they have become precisely those people.  Linklater has said that Boyhood is about the ambiguous time when "growing up" turns into "growing older."  Although you may not see it, every scene in Boyhood is a small component of that larger paradigm shift -- that shift which is so notoriously difficult to pin down in real life, but so much more translatable in great literature and art.  Why is that?  Charles Bukowski said the difference between art and real life is that art is more bearable.  Boyhood blurs those lines with extreme precision and uncanny nuance.

Thoughts?  Disagreements?  Omissions?  Why are you still reading this if you haven't seen Boyhood yet?  Let me know below.

Boyhood (2014) Review

Directed by

Richard Linklater

Life has not allowed me many opportunities to hit the theatres this year to see the latest and greatest the film industry has to offer.  When I do make it to the theatre, it has been a special occasion.  When I heard the concept and idea behind Richard Linklater's latest endeavor, I knew this had to be one of those special occasions.  Richard Linklater has had a pretty remarkable career that has, for the most part, gone unnoticed by the general public.  The average moviegoer would know him for films like School of Rock and Dazed and Confused.  However, it is films like the Before series and character studies like Tape that has made him one of the most intriguing directors working.  He is never afraid to do something different, like the animation in A Scanner Darkly or the character studies snapshots every nine years that has become the Before series.  However, this groundbreaking film is truly an innovation in filmaking and has resulted in what may be Linklater's masterpiece.

The film centers around a broken family.  Mason (Ellar Coltrane) and Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) live with their struggling mom (Patricia Arquette) and see their dad (Ethan Hawke) occasionally.  The plot of the film is really watching these two grow up, especially Mason, who starts the film as a 5 year old and ends with him going off to college.  What makes this film different than any other coming of age story is it was shot piece by piece over the last 13 years.  The cast would get together with Linklater for a few weeks every year to film the next piece.  This allows for this not only to be a film about growing up, but we get to see the actors grow up at the same time.

This premise could have just been a gimmick that became the only thing this film had going for it.  This is not the case as Linklater also was able to produce a script that told a beautifully subtle story.  At one point in the film, a character states that we don't seize the moment, but the moment seizes us.  This is truly the theme Linklater was going for with his script as the film truly is a series of moments in the lives of these characters.  Some moments are life-altering events.  Some moments are simply everyday normal events.  Much like he has done with the Before series, Linklater is able to fully capture a character's essence in these short moments each year along the way and truly show them grow up year by year.

The process Linklater uses to make this film really becomes its own character as you watch.  Not only is each piece showing young Mason grow from a boy to a man, but it is also acting as a tiny time capsule for that year.  At the start of the film, the big bubble imacs are used.  By the end, characters are talking to each other over Skype on their phones.  We hear a 7 year-old Samantha singing "Oops, I Did It Again," another character sing High School Musical, the kids wait in line for the latest Harry Potter book, and Roger Clemens pitching for the Houston Astros.  My favorite is a conversation in 2008 about whether they will ever make another Star Wars movie and how there is no way they could ever come up with a good story that comes after Return of the Jedi.  (For those that don't catch the irony in that, that's actually happening now.)

All these aspects make this film quite an achievement, however the performances that bring the characters to life are truly what makes this film a special experience.  Patricia Arquette gives what will probably go down as her best performance to date, and Ethan Hawke is solid as usual as he seems to play Before's Jesse in an alternate universe.  The star of this film, though, is Ellar Coltrane.  Linklater lucked out when he cast him as a young boy, not knowing he would turn into the strong actor with the Hollywood features he has become.  Watching Mason grow up throughout the movie is also watching Coltrane grow up, not only physically but also in his craft.  So many child actors simply can't cut it as adults.  I think we will be hearing from Ellar Coltrane for a long time.

My only critique of this film would be the ending.  It seemed to drag on a little at the end, as it felt like it was ending about three or four different times before the film ended on an odd note.  Also, Mason seemed at the end to have grown into some modern version of Jesse from the Before series.  It isn't a bad character to have the essence of, but it was slightly distracting.  However, when picturing the film as a whole, these issues are minor at best and more personal preference than anything.

This film is truly a movie-going experience that allows you to relive parts of your childhood as you watch these young people live theirs out on screen.  It is a realistic, grounded film that would be a remarkable film on its own merits.  However, you add in the way it was made, and it truly becomes something special.  Watching the same actors get to grow and mature with their characters throughout the years makes this one of the shortest 3 hour movies I have ever seen.  If you see a movie in the coming weeks, go find Boyhood and enjoy.

Rating:

Richard Linklater’s ‘Before’ series

There are very few times that I have felt this connected to film characters. Richard Linklater’s beautiful, heartfelt, two-decades and counting romantic saga has taken a generation of filmgoers and swept them off their feet. At no point do Jesse and Celine overstay their welcome with the audience. At no point do they fall out of reality. They are absolutely relatable and true at all times. I could watch these characters forever.

Before Sunrise (1995)

I was too young to watch this movie at any time close to its release, but it still was able to place its hooks on my heart and not let go. We first meet Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) on a train bound for Vienna. They meet, talk briefly, and somehow develop an attraction to each other that neither one can really explain. They spend the entire night in deep conversation, learning the most intimate details about one another and their thoughts on the world, all leading up an early morning checkpoint when they must part ways. Every moment of the film is authentic and somehow exhilarating. Maybe that is just my obsession with dialogue-heavy scripts, but these characters are just so real. Jesse is sort of an asshole. Celine is extremely bitchy. Together, they are perfect and they would not take it any other way. Neither would we.

What is most interesting about this film is how the film was able to speak to a generation. The back of the DVD says that it is “a valentine to young love forever”, which is something that has always stuck with me. It is messy, frustrating, naïve, and yet incredibly beautiful. There is a time when they are in the play room at a record store listening to a Nina Simone song and there are no words spoken. The camera just shows their faces, their expressions, and their reactions. If you watch this scene alone, you will know what these characters are all about. The performances are so indelible and genuine. If I didn’t know better, I would think that they are playing themselves and they were in love. They become these characters, and they never let me completely stop thinking about them.

The film ends in a way where their fate is somewhat unknown. We ache for a film to check in with them six months later. We need to know whether they continue the romance, whether they did the deed, whether they truly were as inseparable as they were for those fleeting hours in Vienna. Luckily enough, Linklater felt the same way.

Before Sunset (2004)

 

Now, it was after this film came out that I caught up on the series. I watched them back-to-back, which some will think may have ruined or skewed the experience, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. Sunrise can stand alone as its own film, and if I did not know that there was going to be a look-in on Jesse and Celine every nine years, then I could have stood the pain of the uncertainty. I could not have done that for almost a decade knowing that there was more to the story. 

Sunset takes place in Paris nine years after the original encounter. Jesse is on a book tour promoting the story of his chance encounter with a French girl and how they fell in love under the stars in Vienna. Celine hears about it and shows up at the bookstore just an hour or so before Jesse has to catch a flight back to New York. They use that brief time to talk, explain, commiserate, and again engage in deep conversation. The two characters are made for each other, and the actors (both co-writers on the film with Linklater) have lived with the characters for almost a decade and perfected their back stories and made this film, shot in real-time, an absolutely beautiful blur. The dialogue is just as poignant and insightful. The story is even more believable and sound. This movie is some kind of miracle.

What makes this film so interesting is that it would not exist without the first film. It seems almost impossible for this film to make any sense without viewing Sunrise first. Yet somehow, this may be the best of the trilogy. Maybe it is the real time. Maybe it is the fact that this movie is both heartbreaking and hopeful. Maybe it is because the actors finally show some real emotion. Maybe it is the romantic backdrop of Paris. Maybe it is the current situations of the Jesse and Celine that cause the conflict. Maybe it is just admiration and fulfillment of our thirst for wanting to know what happened to them. No, it is every one of these things and more.

The film ends in a way that is impossible to describe without ruining it. It is the ends of the films that really make the series so astounding and hard to let go. This film in particular has one of the best endings in film history. It fades out right before something is about to happen, leaving the audience to create their own ideas. Is Jesse a romantic? Are we romantics? This film will make you decide.

Before Midnight (2013)

Finally, we get to the third chapter (and I pray that it is not the last). We drop in on Celine and Jesse in Greece. By drop in, I mean just that. It is not some artificial meeting or any event that we have been looking forward to seeing. It is dropping us into a day in the life of the most irresistible couple in modern movie history. To avoid spoilers and maybe ruining the experience of Sunset for you, I will stay away from details.

The movie has a slightly different format than the previous two. In those, Jesse and Celine were essentially the only characters with more than a line or two in the film. This one starts out differently, and one of those deep conversations they typically engage in actually takes place at a dinner table with six other people. This is the crucial scene in the movie. We see how they interact with other people. We see their past experiences have shaped them and how they have grown since. We see in their performances everything we need to know to catch up with their story. It is a remarkable scene that I can only describe as being Sideways-esque, which if you don’t know, is about the best compliment I can give a film.

The format eventually focuses in on the characters and we get those details we wanted. We also see these characters really open up for maybe the first time. They are so self-deprecating and personal when they fight. We see how unhappy with life Celine is and how sarcastic Jesse is. We see glimpses of the couple that met 18 years prior in Vienna, but that spark and the ambition of the characters has almost completely faded out. The fights are excruciating to watch and easy to relate to. It is like watching The Puffy Chair or Your Sister's Sister. We feel the pain that they do, and so many harbored feelings are revealed that have been haunting them for years. The audience is frustrated, the characters are furious.  The final half hour or so of this film, taking place almost solely in a hotel room, is drama at its finest. Sorry if this is corny, but Judd Apatow…THIS is 40.

The performances in this film are even better than the previous two. In those, Delpy basically stole the show. In this film, though, the emotional ante is upped in a major way. Delpy breaks our hearts as the seemingly coldhearted and paranoid Celine. Hawke continues use his passive aggressive comments to come off like the good guy but making it clear that he is has ulterior motives in his statements. Hawke should do more movies like this. He is the absolute best with dialogue-based movies (see Linklater’s Tape if you aren’t simply convinced by these three films).

I have never really been haunted by a movie quite like I was after watching this movie. I was thinking about it the rest of the day. It probably ruined the next movie I watched because it was still in my head. It takes so much more out of the audience to watch this. The true feelings are shown. The first two films were romantic and brief. This film is gut-wrenching and frustrating. Somehow, Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy are able to make another near-flawless ending. Again, it happens right before something is about to happen, but if you know as much about these characters as I do, you can almost figure what their fate is. All three films have an ending that could stand as the end of the series, but I cannot help but selfishly hope for more. They have done a remarkable job at not making any of these films seem forced or overly cinematic. They are almost like documentaries, dropping in on their lives and revealing details in ways that are not obvious or trite. Looking at the trilogy, for me it stands as the second best ever. I do not think it is over, though. Come 2022, I am sure that we will be seeing the quick development of another flawless masterpiece checking in on Jesse and Celine at age 50. I know I say things like this a lot, but I honestly cannot wait to see where it goes from here. I will be first in line.

Rating: 4 stars