Diandra’s Late Farewell to 2014 Viewing

2014 was a very busy year for me. My summer was occupied with moving to a new city, while the rest of the year was mostly spent at my new day job. Still, I managed to watch two hundred-thirty movies and two hundred ninety-one full episodes of television).

UTOPIA II

Movies

Thanks to a two-week free trial of Fandor and a McDonald’s Monopoly prize of one month of free Hulu Plus, I was able to stream many movies I hadn’t been able to access before through legal channels. This year I also finished watching the feature filmography of actor and promising director/writer Sergei Bodrov, Jr., as well as the fiction features and shorts of Djibril Diop Mambéty (it was only when writing this that I found out about his behind-the-scenes documentary Parlons Grand-mère).

Actor I watched the most:
Joe Shishido (宍戸錠), six films

Runners-up: Zbigniew Cybulski and Tatsuya Nakadai, five films each.

Newest addition to my favorite films:
Wanderers of the Desert (El-haimoune).

I couldn’t quite get into Nacer Khemir’s other films in the Desert Trilogy, though.

The only movie I gave a perfect rating
La Vie de Bohème, Aki Kaurismäki’s droll but ultimately devastating adaptation of La Bohème.

Feline performance of the year
Masuka the cat, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Most stirring moments from 2014’s releases:

  • Maleficent – true love’s first kiss
  • Indonesian-international tie: the hotel fight and chase from the Mo Brothers’ Killers, and the prison mud fight from The Raid 2: Berandal
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier — “I’m with you till the end of the line.”
  • Haider — The Jhelum [clip] search montage and Haider performing for audiences
  • Godzilla – The HALO jump upon San Francisco.

Can there be a monsters and atmosphere-only edit of this movie ?

Diandra Rodriguez

Proudly Latinasian NorCal American.

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