The Awards season is over, which means it’s about time to wrap last year up and begin embracing what 2015 has in store. Judging by such great early releases as ‘The Duke Of Burgundy’; ‘It Follows’ and ‘White Dog’, all premiered during last year’s LFF, as well as the overall reactions to the competition in Sundance and the Berlinale, it looks like we may be up for another excellent harvest.
The way we traditionally put an end to the season is with our annual recap, looking at the year’s biggest disappointments, then the biggest surprises and finally our Top 50 best films.
We begin talking a walk on the dark side by counting down the films we had high expectations for but didn’t live up to them, which doesn’t necesarily mean the worst movies we saw last year -that dubious honor would be shared by Seth McFarlane’s profoundly unfunny ‘ A Million ways to die in the west’ and perhaps the greatest waste of talent of 2014 ‘Horrible Bosses 2’, achieving the almost impossible goal of making even a worse movie than its predecessor.
Among those less fortunate works we find many a failed, over-hyped awards contender; a few legendary auteurs going through a creative bump and some screen couples seriously lacking of chemistry… And the Disappointments of the year are:
 | 1- MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN / LABOR DAY (Jason Reitman) Not that long ago quickly adopted by the mainstream for celebrated breakthrough indie hits such as Juno and Up In The Air, a few years down the line director Jason Reitman seems to be going through creative difficulties. If 2013’s dull romance ‘Labor Day’ was quietly side kicked during the Awards season, its follow-up ‘Men Women & Children’ fared even worse, universally panned for its sanctimonious cautionary tale about the damage online dependency causes to relationships. |
 | 2- JERSEY BOYS / AMERICAN SNIPER (Clint Eastwood) Getting out of his comfort zone, Eastwood's musical venture with ‘Jersey Boys’ was one of the year’s most resounding misfires, showing more interest for Frankie Valli’s mafia connection than for anything related to his stellar career. The legendary director didn’t take long to return to more familiar ground and ended up the year on a high with ‘American Sniper’ being a monumental box office hit and his best work for a decade, only dampened by the controversy surrounding its ambiguous politics. |
 | 3- THE MONUMENTS MEN (George Clooney) Another misfire, one of the few ever made by George Clooney in his nearly exemplary directorial career to date. Top cast and crew and the interesting history of a special army force dedicated to retrieve the art masterpieces stolen by the Nazis during WWII that unfortunately didn’t find its tone, shifting between war strategies and light comedy without being able to decide what it wanted to be. |
 | 4- BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP (Rowan Joffé) And the clumsiest thriller of the year goes to this adaptation of S.J. Watson bestseller by Roland Joffés son, executive produced by Ridley Scott (who doesn’t seem to get any project right these days). Not even Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth, whose former partnership in another flop ‘The Railway Man’ could have been an indication of their lack of onscreen chemistry, salvaged the implausible plot of woman suffering from a type of amnesia that erased her memories while sleeping, shaping up a sort of impossible Groundhog day with shabby mystery behind. |
 | 5- UNBROKEN (Angelina Jolie) Perhaps due to her status as Hollywood Royalty, Angelina Jolie’s big profile second effort as a director was hailed as an Oscar frontrunner from the beginning of the year. A human interest story of superation against adversities, rising star Jack O’Connell in passport to Hollywood role; Roger Deakins’ cinematography and a Coen Brothers screenplay were some of its main attractives. However promising, the film rhythm and narrative failed to engage and turned out to be one of the season’s more lacklustre biopics. |
 | 6- TRANSCENDENCE (Wally Pfister) Another star sorely needing to put better quality control filters to his project selection is Johnny Depp, of whom we cannot recall the last time we watched a good film. Transcendence looked like high concept sci-fi about the perils of artificial intelligence taking over our world, and Christopher Nolan’s collaborator Wally Pfister at the helm gave all the right signs for us to get excited, but the subject’s exploration lacked of depth and substance diverting soon into unbelievable cliche. |
 | 7- THE GIVER (Phillip Noyce) The boom of young adult literature in Hollywood is second only to superhero reboots as the main source for mainstream movies. Unfortunately The Hunger Games seems to be a one-off in terms of quality and interest. The Giver, apparently a favourite best seller, with its warning message about a perfectly functional future society at risk to kill the essence of our being human, was tempting enough for Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges to join in, but not even them could help improving the bargain basement philosophy of its subject, nor its boring execution. |
 | 8- ST. VINCENT (Theodore Melfi) From the moment it was launched at TIFF, it was hailed as the role that would finally give Bill Murray his long deserved moment of Oscar glory, St. Vincent looked like quirky comedy but turned out to be a sentimental fest at his core, like a poor man’s Gran Torino, with a grumpy retired man reluctantly befriending his newly arrived single mum neighbour’s kid. Another example of a Good cast (Naomi Watts, Melissa McCarthy) not taken fully advantage of. |
 | 9- FADING GIGOLO (John Turturro) The mere idea of Woody Allen, in a rare appearances as an actor outside his own films, trying to become John Turturro's pimp to help him boost his income by cashing up on his "sex appeal" with a clientele that includes Sharon Stone and Sofia Vergara sounds so preposterous that it could have even been funny. But they took themselves so seriously that any sense of irony and self-mockery got virtually killed. What’s left felt more like a failed vanity project than anything resembling a proper comedy. |
 | 10- MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT (Woody Allen) Woody Allen, again, hasn’t enjoyed the best of years. Magic in The Moonlight, the romantic story of a young medium making a living among the naive wealthy residents of the French Riviera and the circus artist sent to unmask her tricks was Allen by numbers and didn’t even work as a showcase for his as usual remarkable cast. The pairing of Colin Firth and Emma Stone wasn't exactly made in heaven and the shortcomings of a rather average screenplay didn't make things better. |