The summer box office saw science fiction, fantasy and superhero movies completely dominate proceedings. One has to go to 13 (Rio 2) before one can find a film outside one of these three genres. Also, although not all the films in the Top Ten were sequels, films like Guardians of the Galaxy and Maleficent (2 and 3 respectively) definitely benefitted from the Marvel and Disney brand recognition. This will continue to be the case, with only a handful of directors (Nolan, Jackson, Scott, del Toro, Cameron) able to get blockbuster levels of funding for original projects. Finally, 3D is dead, or at least paying extra for it is. IMAX is the future now. Expect to hear little about whether a film is 3D or not over the next few years.

Finally, the year ended with one of the oddest diplomatic incidents of recent years, after a Seth Rogen film caused the type of tension normally associated with cuban missiles or the shooting down of passenger jets. The truth of the matter seems somewhat muddied, although what seems to have emerged is Sony relying on alternate streams of revenue to big theatres to ensure a profit. Perhaps The Interview will mark a watershed moment where the simultaneous release of “Video on Demand” for non-blockbuster films is the rule rather than the exception.

Anyway onto the main event, my Top Five Films of 2014:

5. Frank

I’m a big fan of Jon Ronson’s writing (The Men Who Stare at Goats, Them, and Psychopath Test among his best known). If you’re unfamiliar with him, he has a similar style to Louis Theroux in that he gets to know people on the outskirts of society in a non-judgemental way. Before he was a well-known writer, Ronson was part of Frank Sidebottom’s band. Frank is a fictional retelling of that time told from the point of view of Jon (Domhnall Gleeson).

The film is an exploration of the thin line between being true creativity and madness. Frank (Michael Fassbender) refuses to take off his paper maché head through out the film for reasons that are never completely clear. Jon is determined to make his band a success, despite the protests of the other odd ball members of the band for whom the art is all that matters.

Like its protagonist, Frank is both eccentrically funny yet undeniably tragic. It gets to the heart of the fact that often we want to change the most idiosyncratic of our acquaintances to be ‘normal’ like the rest of us, and yet there is something beautiful and appealing about someone who chooses to live outside those norms.

4. Interstellar

Christopher Nolan currently stands alone as a director able to command big budgets and do something spectacular and original with it. Standing on the shoulders of Kubrick and Spielberg, he does this with Interstellar which not only looks beautiful but which inspires us to see beauty in the universe we live in.

It’s not a perfect film, and undoubtedly owes a lot to 2001: A Space Odyssey, yet it forces us to look up and out at our place in the universe, a rarity in film and also in sharp contrast to the other big sci-fi success of this year, Guardians of the Galaxy.

3. Lego Movie

There’s just something joyful and hopeful about this movie that meant it would have been a crime to leave it out. The Lego Movie, like The Muppets or Wallace and Gromit seems to inhabit such a positive, funny, imaginative space that it’s impossible not to want to be a part of its world.

Its rare a franchise film manages to capture what’s so *ahem* awesome about its product, but The Lego Movie managed to perfectly capture what makes the toy such a hit with generation after generation of children since its inception.

2. Her

On paper, the concept of Her seems like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch: a man falling in love with the “Siri”-like personality of his computer. However, there is a depth and subtlety to the execution of the concept that sends it well beyond its initial idea.

Her explores notions of regret, intimacy, AI, and romance in a profound, funny and endearing way. Like Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, it allows us to think about technological advancement by focussing on the unchanging aspects of human nature. No matter how much the world changes around us, we still need companionship, acceptance and love. However, can we ever experience such things from an articificial being?

1. Boyhood

There’s nothing original about my choice for Best Film of 2014, however, perhaps that is testament to the quality of the film. Boyhood is a film that transcends the medium and shows us the power cinema can truly have. Filmed over 12 years, Boyhood shows us the growth of a young boy, Mason, into adulthood.

There are so many wonderful moments in the film it’s hard to pick out just one or two. What it manages to capture beautifully though is the changing problems you deal with as you get older. Whether that be an annoying sister who tries to get you in trouble, changing schools, a new haircut, or a new step-father, there’s something simply amazing about the way such an individual story will evoke so many different memories in the mind of each individual viewer. A masterpiece that will be studied and adored for many years to come.

Science and fiction are two words that shouldn’t really belong together within a genre. Science, to give it its precise definition is “study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.” That is, it deals with facts and that which is observable in some way. Fiction on the other hand deals with the imagination, things which are unknown and unobservable. What is it about the theories and practice of science that so provokes the imaginations of creators and audience members alike when it comes to science-fiction as a genre?

Interstellar is a film Spielbergian in its set-up (he was originally set to direct the film). There is a father, Cooper, (McConnaghey) doing his best to provide for his two children in the aftermath of a worldwide famine which has wiped out most of the world’s crops. With the earth becoming unsustainable for human life, Cooper, a former NASA pilot gets recruited to go on a mission to find other planets the people of earth could move to.

While the first half of the film owes a lot to Close Encounters of the Third Time, the second half is more 2001: A Space Odyssey; the opening line from the ship robot, TARS, for example, making more than a wink and a nod towards 2001‘s HAL. Where it differs to these two films thematically, is that the protagonist is less interested in discovery for discovery’s sake, but rather because the future of his children is on the line. This motivation is what allows the film stay afloat when it’s dealing with complex scientific concepts like relativity and multi-dimensional space.

Since making Close Encounters in 1977, Spielberg has confessed that after becoming a father, he would have changed the ending to the film. Specifically when (SPOILER ALERT) the protagonist doesn’t hesitate in leaving behind his wife and three kids to go on an interstellar space trip with aliens. In many ways Interstellar‘s story feels like an antidote to Close Encounter‘s ending. We have a father who does leave behind his kids, but he does it in order to save them, and his decision to do hurts both his children in a major way. (END OF SPOILERS)

The film itself feels like a love letter to space exploration, and the human need for discovery. While the plot requires the characters to go and explore other solar systems and the planets they contain, there is the sense of real excitement when as viewers we get to see these uninhabited planets for the first time. So far no human has ever set foot on another planet, but it’s cool to consider the possibility that this is a film that could inspire the next generation of astronauts to do precisely that.

Interstellar then is a film of possibilities. And perhaps that is the reason why science and fiction are familiar bedfellows. As we delve deeper into the world of relativity and multi-dimensional space; and as we imagine the possibilities these concepts allow for, we are inspired to think big, imagine big, and ultimately perhaps discover big as well. It is for this reason it’s probably my favourite of his films to date.

I feel like I’ve written extensively on the subject of adaptations, covering it in my reviews of Life of Pi and The Great Gatsby for example. Adaptations are a strange and contradictory beast. All adaptations must balance being true to the spirit of the original work with the desire to bring creativity and imagination to their version of the story.

David Fincher is a director well suited to one of these two things. Whether with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo or Fight Club he knows how to successfully bring well-loved books to the big screen. However, I would argue the creativity and vision of a true auteur when doing so. He is the director a writer wants to work with since it will primarily be the writer’s version of events which ends up on the big screen (cf. Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network).

In the case of Gone Girl, it is difficult to see any changes Fincher requested from Gillian Flynn’s book, since the two are virtually indistinguishable. The film relies entirely on the strength of the plotting, story and characters of the source material. This is by no means a bad thing, since the book is one of the most exhilarating and clever novels I have read in recent years. However, for me the experience does not differ much from merely re-reading the book.

Gone Girl sees Nick Dunne’s (Ben Affleck) wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) going missing. Suspicions grow that Nick might somehow be involved as we realise their marriage was in trouble. The present day narrative is interspersed with extracts from Amy’s diary as we see how Nick and Amy’s relationship started off so brightly before family circumstances moved them from New York to Nick’s hometown in Missouri.

Thematically, the film deals with the ups and downs of marriage, and the evolving relationship between a husband and wife. Is getting to know one another more and more necessarily a good thing as the years go by? What if the person you are deep down isn’t a person you want your other half to see?

There’s also a critique of the media and their obsession with innocent blonde women, the ease with which they throw around accusations of guilt and their attraction the the narrative that is the most appealing, rather than the most true.

Finally, while Fincher’s greatest talent is simply his ability to stand out of the way and let his source material take the weight, Affleck and Pike and well chosen as the leads of this film. Affleck’s always had this sense of trying too hard to be charming which suits the character of Nick perfectly. Amy Dunne will also be remembered as one of the great movie characters of this decade, and Pike manages to play all the sides of her character beautifully.

Gone Girl then is a film which manages to largely match but never surpass the greatness of its source material. Like the book, it’s a dangerous, dark and depraved story that demands your attention.

Some ideas for films are so simple and wonderful one wonders why they haven’t been done before. Boyhood is the fictional account of a boy, Mason (Ellar Coltrane), as he grows from boy of six to a man of eighteen. Filmed over a twelve-year period we see how him and his sister, Samantha (Lorelei Linklater, the director’s real-life daughter) change both in the sense of their personalities and physical forms. We also see how their concerns change from moving home and haircuts to romance and recreational drugs.

The story’s scope is not limited to Mason and his sister, however, we also see how his mother (Patricia Arquette) and father (Ethan Hawke) change and do their best to support their children in spite of the difficult circumstances that often arise.

A third tier of the story also concerns the passing of the time, the film opens with Coldplay’s “Yellow” (remember when their were this small up-and-coming indie band?), reminds us of the excitement of Obama’s election campaign, and Lady Gaga’s video for “Telephone”. Viewers will of course remind themselves of where they were and what they were doing at these times, alongside identifying with the issues of childhood and adolescence Mason encounters.

The genius of the film is the way in which in captures Mason’s concerns that are unique to his age. Early scenes include his sister doing his best to wind him up by singing Britney Spear’s, which results in him predictably getting the blame when they start hitting each other. Later on as teenagers Mason, Samantha and Mason’s father must suffer through the mutual awkwardness of having a talk about the importance contraception and consent.

The film also benefits from choosing not to have a main story that the characters follow, despite having many moments of growth and achievement for all the main characters. There is the sense that the events that do happen are merely the result of growing older, rather than the characters following some set script or meticulous plotting. This makes the characters feel a lot more real and relatable, and it’s sad to bid them all adieu at the end of the film’s almost 3-hour runtime.

Boyhood is one of those rare films that makes movie-making seem so easy yet so creative. In capturing the passing of time it becomes a film you somehow take ownership over as you remember similar situations and problems you had to encounter as you grew older; like watching old home videos of yourself as they suddenly jump between successive Christmases or summer holidays. The passing of time is a strange, terrifying and wonderful thing, it’s difficult to think of another film that captures it so well.

Guardians of the Galaxy could come across as kind of an oddity in terms of Marvel’s films. It doesn’t open with a superhero coming to terms with their new abilities, neither is it based on earth, or is even concerned with earth (constantly referred to as “Terra” in the film). However, like other Marvel films it is an origin story, it’s just it’s concerned with the origin of a team, rather than the origin of a character’s abilities.

The film opens with Peter Quill aka Starlord (Chris Pratt) stealing an orb which everyone in the film wants their hands on. This includes Gamorrah (Zoe Saldana), Rocket the Racoon (Bradley Cooper), and Groot (Vin Diesel). However, their attempts to get if off Starlord land the four of them in jail. They attempt to escape and are helped by Drax (Dave Batista) who joins their newly formed merry crew.

In terms of tone, the film has a similarity to Joss Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity as a group of misfits go on adventures through space. There are also similarities with Star Wars as they have to fight off evil and prevent a planet from being annihilated.

The problem with these comparisons, is where as Firefly and Star Wars actually caused us to care about the characters, and allowed us to get behind what they were doing, Guardians of the Galaxy gives us little reason to do so beyond the fact they have the occasional one-liner.

To put it another way the first half of the film sees a bunch of criminals put into jail for stealing an orb, and causing lots of damage to civilian property. They then decide to escape. Why? Because they realise the orb could be dangerous if it gets into the wrong hands? Because they have heard about an evil plot that could cause the end of the universe? Nope, none of these things, just so they can make a huge amount of money from the sale of said orb.

Does it matter if they injure, maim or kill loads of prison guards along the way? Probably not, because it’s a talking racoon with a cool gun! Who cares about these boring guys in uniforms?!

As such, Guardians of the Galaxy is a bit like Star Wars with Han Solo is the main role instead of Luke. This sounds great in theory until you realise that all the stuff that actually matters in the story comes through Luke and his view on the world. Han Solo is one of the all-time great science fiction characters, but he is only allowed to be so because he inhabits the same world as Luke does.

Guardians of the Galaxy then is Star Wars without Luke. It has a similarly well-drawn, deep universe; similar menacing villains; and a similarly varied crew. However, for too much of the film it has no reason for being, it struggles to find something to fight for.

The point of Guardians of the Galaxy is supposed to be that anyone can become superheroes, anyone can change and decide to do the right thing. The problem is it seems to have no consideration that sometimes doing the right thing involves doing boring stuff like taking responsibility for the havoc you caused to the innocent people you hurt along the way. Why bother when you can just listen to 70s pop tunes and listen to a wise-cracking racoon some more?

Three of these films are X-Men: Days of Future Past, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and How to Train Your Dragon 2. All are big budget, high quality films, but more importantly thematically they actually have a surprising amount in common.

More so than most other big budget franchises, X-Men, Planet of the Apes, and How to Train Your Dragon are all about two rival groups and the struggle to find peace between them.

For this reason, all three films appealed to me as someone who grew up in Northern Ireland in the midst of such a struggle. Whether the ‘other’ are mutants, apes, or dragons there is a sense in these films that peace is a possible, if difficult, outcome, and the protagonists in all these films are all doing their hardest to bring reconciliation to their worlds.

It is of course merely coincidence that this summer we are also seeing the horrific consequences of real-life conflict between two sides in Gaza. It would be much easier to view the conflict in the light of films like Transformers where the evil Decepticons are clearly thus and must be destroyed. However, real-life is rarely so simple, and evil never so easy to identify.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past we see Wolverine travelling back in time to try and prevent the assassination of Trask, a scientist determined to wipe out the mutants with his robotic sentinels. The message of the film seems to be that while violence can appear to do good in the short-term, its long-term impact is often messy and lead to consequences much worse than the alternative.

In Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, a war between what remains of the humans and a newly formed ape community is almost inevitable. However, fear, distrust and the reality that war is often a popular option with community’s citizens, lead to conflict in the final act.

Finally, How to Train Your Dragon 2 sees Hiccup continue to try and create a world where dragons and humans work together. Unfortunately, in his way is Drago, someone who sees dragons as a means to his end. Unlike his father, Stoic, Hiccup believes there is a peaceful solution to the conflict with Drago and is prepared to put himself in great danger for the sake of reconciliation.

If there is a problem with these three films it’s that despite all revolving around plots and protagonists who want to avoid war all three films (MINOR SPOILER ALERT) end with big budget, dazzling, impressive fight sequences. It’s as though these films are saying: “we’ve paid enough lip service to peace, it’s time to give the audience what they paid for.” This is problematic, since it requires all the main characters to be strong in battles, and they all use violence to prove their worth.

In the real world of course peacemakers are not known for their mad fighting skills, rather they are known for going through immense personal sacrifice to achieve their aims. Where as in these three films, respect is gained through the protagonists’ use of violence.

Perhaps I am expecting too much of films to deal with their stories in a more consistent ethical manner. Films after all are attempting to entertain, challenge, and inspire us – and these three films broadly succeed on these fronts. However, the ethics they choose to portray are, more often than not, those they consider palatable to the audience. These films’ characters use violence because, for whatever reason, we allow them to do so – it makes sense to us. Perhaps the only way they will change is if our attitude changes first?

In 2010, Gareth Edwards released Monsters, an indie film shot with a tiny cast and crew that was a great example of the kind of ambitious sci-fi film one could make for next-to no money. Now with a bigger budget, bigger crew, more famous cast, and possibly the biggest of big monsters comes Godzilla.

It’s a film that starts off promisingly. The action starts in Japan (as every good Godzilla movie should) where we see Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) lose his wife in an accident in the nuclear power station he’s working in. Cranston is told the accident was caused by an earthquake, but he begins to suspect a cover-up and starts to investigate.

Cut to 15 years later, Joe’s son, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is now grown up and has a family of his own. He has just got back from a stint as a bomb disposal expert (this will definitely NOT be significant later) when he gets a phone call that his Dad has been arrested. His Dad convinces him to investigate the site of the explosion and they soon discover something sure to send tremors around the world….

So yeah, that’s the good bit of the film described. The rest of the film sees monsters taking centre stage at the expense of literally anything interesting happening to the human characters.

Don’t get me wrong, Godzilla looks amazing and acts in exactly the way we want Godzilla to act. Characters aren’t quite sure whether he is a god, something to be worshipped, or a monster, something to be feared, and the film does a good job of seeing him in those terms. There are also parallels with nuclear energy the film does a good job of drawing.

The problem is that I can describe to you what happens in the second and third act of the movie in just a couple of sentences. All the interesting character development that the film does a reasonable job of establishing early on goes to complete waste because they are given little to do beyond either run or fight.

This left the paradoxical situation where we have huge beasts fighting, massive explosions, and buildings being knocked to the ground but it was all incredibly dull.

Godzilla, for me has to go down as a massive disappointment. Or to put it another way: “The bigger they are, the harder they fall”

Bad Neighbours (or simply Neighbors if you’re of an American persuasion) is the latest Seth Rogen vehicle that in some ways is a spiritual sequel to Knocked Up in the sense that it sees his character coming to terms with the reality he is no longer young enough or irresponsible enough to be invited to the wildest parties.

In the film his character, Mac has a wife, Kelly (Rose Byrne), and a baby daughter Stella. The start of the film sees them having to cope with the realities of being young parents, such as not being able to drop everything to go out with their friends. However, these issues are brought all the more to the fore when a fraternity house moves in next door. Led by Teddy (Zac Effron) and Pete (Dave Franco), things quickly turn sour between the two households as the students want to party, and the family want a decent night’s sleep.

In comedy terms I felt the paths tread by Bad Neighbors have already been well worn by Rogen’s previous films. For example, I had a little bet with myself as to how long it would be before Rogen smoked pot and then did something funny (it’s about three minutes if you’re interested), and as is to be expected there’s lots of jokes centred on stupid things people do while high, drunk, or tripping.

Where the film attempts to break new ground is in its portrayal of a young couple coming to terms with the stage they’ve reached in life. As with all of Rogen’s films there’s a soft centre hiding beneath the raucous outer shell. Therefore most of the film’s best moments centre on the joys Mac and Kelly get from Game of Thrones or having pizza in bed.

The characters in the film also manage to avoid the stereotypes they seem to be fitting into when we meet them. So, unlike in most of these comedies, Kelly is every bit as up for mischievous revenge as Mac. Likewise, frat boys Teddy and Pete are given depth as they come to terms with the reality of graduating university and having to think about what they actually want to do with their lives.

Bad Neighbours then is not a terrible film, but it isn’t a classic either. There are funnier, more original films, and although the characters do have depth, it’s the minimum I’d expect for a more serious film dealing with similar themes. A film that meets your expectations without surpassing them.

The Amazing Spider-Man came out two years ago and I for one was unimpressed with its failure to tell a new, exciting story with its take on the superhero.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 then seemed like a fresh opportunity to really take the rebooted series in a fresh direction now they’d got the backstory out of the way in the previous film. Unfortunately for director Marc Webb and everyone else involved in the film it’s like they’re completely uninterested in the fact they’re retelling the same stories as Raimi’s original trilogy.

So this time we get to meet Harry Osbourne (Dane DeHaan) who like James Franco’s take on the character starts out as friends with Peter Parker, but by the end of the film the two soon fall out for one reason or another and become mortal enemies.

Meanwhile Electro (Jamie Foxx) takes on the pointless extra villain role that Thomas Haden Church’s Sandman performed so admirably in Spiderman 3. All this means many of the characters lack space to develop decants arcs leaving a finale that feels rushed and clichéd.

Like The Amazing Spider-man where the film succeeds is when Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone) and Peter Parker(Andrew Garfield) are on screen together. Like in (500) Days of Summer Webb is an expert in scenes between couples, and in many ways it’s a shame this film didn’t focus even more heavily on their relationship.

In many ways the film is best summed up in thinking about it as a carefully prepared meal which has lots of brilliant individual elements but lacks thought about how best to make these ingredients work together.

All the actors perform their parts admirably, but I left the cinema confused about what I’d just seen. What exactly is The Amazing Spider-Man 2 bringing to the table? What are the themes of the film? What is it that separates Peter Parker as a hero, from the villains he is up against?

I came back without any answers to that question. Undoubtedly there is something to be taken from the relationship that develops between Peter and Gwen, but it’s hard to get away from the fact that these films have lacked the clarity and simplicity of the original’s “With great power comes great responsibility.”

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 then comes down to a superhero film by numbers. Love Interest? Check. Deranged Villains? Double Check. Spectacular Fight Scenes? Triple Check. Strong Theme? That one doesn’t matter that much, right?

In my opinion, Captain America has had the most difficult task in making the transition to the big screen. Primarily because both his character and his name comes from the American Armed Forces, not exactly the most popular of organisations across the world.

The first film wisely took Steve Rogers , aka Captain America back to his Second World War roots. After all few can argue with a man fighting the Nazis. That film ended with Steve Rogers being frozen in the Arctic Sea only to be awoken seventy years later in the present age.

Captain America: The Winter Solider is set after the events of Avengers Assemble and sees Rogers (Chris Evans) having to cope both with life in the present day as a civilian. The film sees Rogers working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and being confronted with the reality that things aren’t just as black and white today as they were during the Second World War. Who are the good guys and the bad guys? Who can he really trust?

In many ways Captain America: The Winter Solider is the film Man of Steel should have been. Obviously their mythologies are very different, but essentially the characters of Superman and Captain America are cut from the same cloth. Both are known for their patriotic red and blue costumes, and in some ways represent America as it likes to view itself: moral, righteous and the saviour to the rest of the world. Both, at their best, are outsiders conflicted about the right way to make a difference to the murky world they find themselves in.

Where the latest Captain America film succeeds where Man of Steel fails is that it knows that its protagonist’s strict moral code is what is most interesting about the character, not something that should be discarded to somehow ‘modernise’ the character.

The other way it gets things right is to surround Captain America with characters who have differing views of morality to Rogers. Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson) will do whatever it takes to stay alive, keeping her true self as hidden as possible from those around her. Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) is a man for whom the ends always justify the means. Meanwhile the good Cap lives by phrases such as “The price of freedom is high, and it’s a price I’m willing to pay.” This seems clichéd and nauseating out of context, yet within the many shades of grey he finds himself in, lines like that somehow work.

Captain America: The Winter Solider is far from a perfect film. It relies on us believing in a complete lack of competence from most of the main characters for the film’s plot to make sense. There’s also a great irony in the final ‘moral’ choice our heroes make, which essentially boils down to “The bad guys are going to kill some people so that there is order in the world. Killing people is bad, so we must kill all of them.” Although if one wanted to read too far into such things, one might argue it was through similar justification many of America’s recent wars have been fought (and to be fair most wars are fought).

Despite these shortcomings and the predictable nature of the third act (will there ever be a superhero movie that DOESN’T end with a big set-piece battle between the heroes and villains?) there is a lot to be liked in Captain America: The Winter Solider. The key to a good superhero movie is how they handle their main character, and in Captain America they’ve managed to take what could have been someone drab and boring and made him into something refreshing and original. In this world of conflicted Dark Knights and Iron Mans, it’s could to have a superhero who is simply trying to be a hero.