Golden Stans 2014

70 films seen, of which 59 can compete for the Golden Stans (three repeat screenings, five as part of the BFI’s Sci-fi season, and three classics).

Keen followers of the Golden Stans will be expecting me to kick off with the Cone of Shame, but I managed to avoid stinkers in 2014. Yes, I am declaring that even the likes of 300 2 and Sin City 2 had some saving graces (most of the graces courtesy of the unhinged, committed and mostly naked performances from Eva Green, star of both); even both volumes of Nymphomaniac had some interest, while the pornography of Wolf of Wall Street did not entirely detract from an otherwise enjoyable satire; and I can’t hand the award to The White-haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom, as the embarrassment felt while watching it was simply induced by cultural misunderstanding.

Thus, I move on to the first award: Best Score. Some films had excellent scores in 2014, but in only one film did the score become as active a participant as the protagonists: and that film was Interstellar, and that score was of course Hans Zimmer. That’s Zimmer’s second Golden Stan (having won before for The Dark Knight).

Next, it’s Best Cinematography. Here’s the shortlist:

• Matt Flannery & Dimas Imam Subhono for The Raid 2
• Hoyte van Hoytema for Her, and Interstellar
• Sharone Meir for Whiplash
• Martin Ruhe for The Keeping Room
• Jeremy Saulnier for Blue Ruin
• Jens Schlosser for The Salvation

There’s the full breadth of cinema here: from the outrageous action and fight sequences in The Raid 2, to the sombre realism of Blue Ruin, and from the perfect, shiny future of Her, to the autumnal hews and solemnity of the American Civil War in The Salvation and The Keeping Room.

Hoytema is at the height of his game, following Let The Right One In, The Fighter, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with both Her and Interstellar (the opposite of Her’s future). Next for him is Bond with Sam Mendes.

But Hoytema is unlucky that this formidable double whammy came in the same year that Sharone Meir significantly contributed to the astonishing end result of Whiplash. Quite how Meir got his camera that close to the action without getting in the actors’ way I just can’t say. The astonishing vigour of the film is in part due to his camerawork, and thus he wins.

Meir’s cinematography could have been wasted without spot-on, time-perfect editing to maintain and reinforce that vigour, but thankfully Tom Cross produces a tour de force, jumping energetically but never randomly between angles. And for that, Cross wins the Best Editing award.

In a year awash with adaptations and sequels, several stood out and they make the shortlist for Best Adapted Screenplay:

• James Gunn for Guardians of the Galaxy
• Graham Moore for The Imitation Game
• Paul Viragh for The Face Of An Angel

It is hard to overstate Gunn’s success with Guardians: he turned a little-known comic that’s never been hip or regularly well-reviewed into a monster hit. Such is his thorough re-working of the existing Marvel ingredients that I was tempted to put him in the Original Screenplay category!

Moore’s ‘blacklisted’ story of the life and times of Alan Turing was turned into a popular and critical hit, despite the hokey, Hollywood line (“the people that nobody imagines anything of often do the unimaginable” or whatever!).

Viragh (probably, I should note, with some input from Michael Winterbottom) turned in a deeply layered script based on the Meredith Kercher murder case. Given that this demands to be seen again to fully comprehend all that’s going on, Viragh takes the gong.

Now, it’s the Golden Stan for Original Screenplay. The shortlist is:

• Ritesh Batra for The Lunchbox
• Spike Jonze for Her
• Jonathan & Christopher Nolan for Interstellar
• Francois Ozon for The New Girlfriend
• Angus Sampson and Leigh Whannell for The Mule
• Jeremy Saulnier for Blue Ruin

There’s great scope on this shortlist. With The Lunchbox, Batra infused romantic drama with sympathetic, yet realistic spicey twists and turns, but always with a keen eye on developing her two main characters.

Jonze’s Her featured a beautifully realised vision of a near-future and somehow made it believable (at least to me!) that a man can fall for an operating system, its dissection of human relationships deliberately at odds with its setting and central conceit.

The Nolan brothers took hard science and created the humane version of 2001 with the ambitious Interstellar.

Ozon rose to new heights, combining his usual wit and analysis of petit bourgeois attitudes with a new-found belief in and sympathy for his own characters.

Sampson and Whannell’s Mule takes a slightly familiar story, adds local flavour and cultural references, and intelligently delivers both drama and gut-wrenching lavatorial humour.

Saulnier, already nominated for his cinematography on Blue Ruin, is up again, his pared down script never less than realistic and objective.

The winner? It’s a pitched battle between the Nolans and Jonze. I deeply love both films… In so much that Jonze is not deliberately referencing anything else (as the Nolans do with Interstellar – clearly 2001 is a huge influence upon not only the story, but also the story structure), because he has created something truly original, he gets the award.

Now for an occasional award Golden Stan, that of Best Cameo. This actor not only stole the trailer, but also stole the film: was it monstrous mugging or a genuinely unhinged performance? I’m opting for the latter, so the award goes to, of course, Matthew McConaughey in The Wolf of Wall Street.

2014 wasn’t a great year for supporting roles for actresses, and my shortlist below features three performers from one film:

• Jacqueline Bisset for Welcome To New York
• Rosemarie DeWitt for Men, Women & Children
• Jennifer Garner for Dallas Buyers’ Club, and Men, Women & Children
• Judy Greer for Men, Women & Children
• Anne Hathaway for Interstellar
• Kelly Reilly for Calvary

Bisset acted as a counterpoint to Depardieu and had no issue going up against his balls out performance.

DeWitt, Garner and Greer are the reason to see Men, Women & Children: DeWitt has the more sympathetic role as the loveless wife, while Greer and especially Garner are almost cast against type and take deeply unsympathetic roles and make them believable.

Garner was equally cast as type in Dallas Buyers’ Club.

Hathaway helped ground the emotional core of Interstellar, performing in the opposite fashion to her Oscar winner in Les Mis.

Reilly managed to keep her clothes on for once and brought a realistic emotional focus to Calvary.

And the Best Supporting Actress award goes to Garner for her two different takes on how best to care for someone.

Next it’s Best Supporting Actor. Here’s the shortlist:

• Kim Bodnia for Rosewater
• Don Johnson for Cold In July
• Ewen Leslie for The Mule
• Jared Leto for Dallas Buyers’ Club
• Dean Norris for Men, Women & Children
• Hugo Weaving for The Mule

There’s almost a unifying theme here: extrovert characters. Don Johnson steals Cold In July with a role surely written for him, while Leslie and Weaving make the most of their bent, thoroughly old school cops (one more bent than the other; not so much good cop, bad cop as bad cop, badder cop) in The Mule (their performances are worth the price of admission alone). Jared Leto, perhaps more than Garner and McConaughey, is the soul of Dallas Buyers’ Club.

And Kim Bodnia (known for The Bridge TV series) is a surprisingly sympathetic as the interrogator of Gael Garcia Bernal’s journalist in Rosewater.

The only exception to the extroverts is Dean Norris’s confused and well-meaning dad: a down-played, sympathetic portrayal of modern single fatherhood.

Leto snatches the award thanks to more than matching his co-stars.

Next up is Best Actress. The shortlist features some first-time Golden Stan nominees:

• Anais Demoustier for The New Girlfriend
• Adele Haenel for French Riviera
• Scarlett Johansson for Her, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Lucy
• Nimrat Kaur for The Lunchbox
• Brit Marling for The Keeping Room
• Andrea Riseborough for The Silent Storm
• Kristen Wiig for The Skeleton Twins
• Kate Winslet for A Little Chaos

Let’s get the controversial nominee out of the way: Scarlett. She makes an operating system into a realistic female character in Her, and, via the Black Widow in Cap 2 and Lucy, now owns the kick-ass action woman roles that used to be Angelina Jolie’s bread and butter.

Three actresses well known for being excellent were predictably just that: la Winslet in A Little Chaos (which, were the film to be released at the right time, would be perfect Bafta and Oscar fodder); Marling in The Keeping Room; and Andrea Riseborough, who breathed life into the oppressive Silent Storm.

Kristen Wiig was nothing short of a revelation to me in The Skeleton Twins: once again a performer known for comedy proves they can handle drama.

Nimrat Kaur made the most of her Indian mousewife who learns to roar in The Lunchbox.

Adele Haenal marked herself out as another French actress worth watching in French Riviera, as did Anais Demoustier in The New Girlfriend.

And it is Demoustier who snatches the trophy for her star-making turn. She helps to ground and make believable a somewhat improbable tale. At the time, I said of her performance: “The range of emotions that Demoustier’s Claire goes through are written on her face and pour out of her eyes – it’s one of the performances of 2014.”

Upon reflection, it’s the performance of 2014.

Best Actor is next. Some notable performances from big names don’t make the list because I don’t think the actors in question stretched themselves enough: Brendan Gleeson in Calvary (hugely charismatic of course, but was he just playing the role he’s played so many times before?; ditto for Guillaume Canet in French Riviera, Gael Garcia Bernal in Rosewater, and, brace yourselves, Timothy Spall in Mr Turner).

I’d love to nominate Chris Evans for Captain America: The Winter Soldier (just as Robert Downey Jnr is Tony Stark and Hugh Jackman is Wolverine, the onscreen portrayals informed from and now informing their comic origins, so Evans is Cap – and Cap is one of my all-time heroes), but there’s some serious competition here.

Similarly, as good as he was, Daniel Bruhl in The Face Of An Angel just misses the cut.

Here then is the shortlist:

• Macon Blair for Blue Ruin
• Nikolaj Coster-Waldau for A Second Chance
• Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game
• Gerard Depardieu for Welcome To New York
• Romain Duris for The New Girlfriend
• Irrfan Khan for The Lunchbox
• Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers’ Club, and Interstellar
• Joaquin Phoenix for Her
• JK Simmons for Whiplash
• Miles Teller for Whiplash

Where to start with this lot? With the in-your-face performances: Depardieu went balls out (metaphorically and figuratively); JK Simmons and Miles Teller gave their all in Whiplash; and Duris once again proved his near demi-god status.

Macon Blair in Blue Ruin bridged the path between full-blooded and under-played, transforming from downbeat deadbeat to reluctant but clever action hero, while Benedict Cumberbatch displayed many shades and commanded the screen.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau walked an emotional tightrope for Susanne Bier in A Second Chance, while Irrfan Khan provided an almost awful focus for The Lunchbox, hinting at depths of loneliness and resignation but nevertheless allowing a chink of light to escape and give his character a ray of hope.

Joaquin Phoenix displayed a previously unseen light touch to craft his most sympathetic role ever and, as with Scarlett Johansson, he certainly made me believe that a man could fall in love with his OS.

And then there’s McConaughey: that Oscar-winning performance in Dallas Buyers’ Club and then that lynchpin role in Interstellar.

The winner, having been shortlisted for Golden Stans in 2011, 2012 and 2013, is McConaughey, just snatching the award from Simmons.

But what about Alfred Molina and John Lithgow in Love Is Strange? Their performances are so understated, their chemistry so natural, it’s hard to believe that they’re acting. But because of that chemistry, they get a new Golden Stan: Best Onscreen Couple.

We’re on to the penultimate award, that of Best Director, and the shortlist is:

• Damien Chazelle for Whiplash
• Spike Jonze for Her
• Gareth Huw Evans for The Raid 2
• Phil Lord and Chris Miller for The LEGO Movie
• Christopher Nolan for Interstellar
• Francois Ozon for The New Girlfriend
• Ira Sachs for Love Is Strange
• Jeremy Saulnier for Blue Ruin
• Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game
• Michael Winterbottom for The Face Of An Angel

Winterbottom wove yet more layers into Viragh’s script; Tyldum pitched the Turing drama perfectly; and an eye needs to be kept on what Saulnier does next.

Ira Sachs' meditation on mature love went down like a fine dessert wine, while Ozon maintained his analytical and critical eye even as he invested in his characters.

Nolan very nearly pulled off the most ambitious film of his career without a scratch, while Lord and Miller took what could have been a shameless 90-minute ad for building blocks and instead crafted genuine entertainment.

Evans performed a miracle with The Raid 2: each scene is better than the last (it almost makes you wonder if it was shot in sequence).

Jonze delivered his best work since Being John Malkovich.

And Damian Chazelle made jazz the most exciting thing on screen in 2014. And for that achievement alone, Chazelle grabs the gong.

And finally we reach Best Film. In the order in which I saw, here are the films that really got to me in 2014:

• The LEGO Movie: perhaps the maddest film of 2014. A huge hit and rightly so. Inventive and very funny.
• Dallas Buyers’ Club: so many great performances.
• The Lunchbox: yes, this will be the first film I’ll watch if they ever invent smell-o-vision – the curry recipes look great and one can only imagine how they might taste. I can easily see George Clooney doing a remake of this in a few years’ time. A beautiful film about realising you’ve wasted your life, but that it’s never too late to get on living.
• Her: to my mind, this is a companion piece to Eternal Sunshine. And that’s a hell of a compliment!
• The Raid 2: dear god, did action cinema get anymore immersive than this in 2014? The outrageous fight scenes escalate in their ferocity and visceral impact upon the viewer: you feel every punch and every cut. Jonathan and I were breathless at the end.
• Blue Ruin: writer, director and cinematographer Jeremy Saulnier delivered an absolute humdinger here. There’s a touch of Lynch and Winding Refn, especially in the precision of the compositions, editing and score. Watch whatever he does next.
• The Imitation Game: a huge crowd pleaser not without intelligence and certainly with heart. A very British film about a very British hero.
• The New Girlfriend: Francois Ozon at his finest? Combining not only his usual wit and interrogation of the bourgeois, but also belief in his own characters for the first time. The characters drive the plot rather than being puppets simply there to illustrate Ozon’s point. One of my absolute faves of the year, and one I’m looking forward to seeing again when it (hopefully) gets released in the UK later in 2015.
• Whiplash: very rarely have I given a film a standing ovation, and Whiplash absolutely deserved it.
• Love Is Strange: an understated, heart-braking joy. A film to fall in love with.
• The Face Of An Angel: intelligent and compelling meditation on movie-making, and the media’s responsibility to and failure to report the truth.
• Interstellar: possibly the most-talked about movie of 2014. Almost blindly ambitious. A hard science movie about the nature and power of love. Great performances, stunning visuals and Zimmer’s score: this is mainstream cinema that asks the audience to take a bold leap, and is not embarrassed to do so. A leftover from the late 60s/early 70s when studios could afford to make challenging films.

And which of these is my best of 2014?

It’s a pitched battle between Whiplash and Interstellar. I found both to be intense, gripping me from the start.

I didn’t have any issues with Interstellar (and I have rationalised some of the character motivations and reactions that others have questioned). I rejoiced in its look and feel, its ambition, and its messages (the call to return to space, the power of love) and was prepared to make the leap when the film asked. And then there’s Zimmer’s stunning score.

But Whiplash had me nailed to my seat, white-knuckled. Simple, lean, brilliantly acted, shot and edited, it really is a shot in the arm. I was completely immersed in the finale, as if I was Miles Teller. How right that a film that is about how to be brilliant should dare itself to be brilliant. Whiplash takes the Golden Stan for Best Film of 2014.