{"id":4453,"date":"2014-12-31T13:28:42","date_gmt":"2014-12-31T19:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4453"},"modified":"2014-12-31T13:28:42","modified_gmt":"2014-12-31T19:28:42","slug":"the-year-in-awesome-movies-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4453","title":{"rendered":"The Year In Awesome: Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few brief thoughts on my year at the cinema:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt2015381\/?ref_=nv_sr_1\"><em>Guardians of the Galaxy<\/em><\/a> was the best popcorn movie of 2014. Like a lot of people, I had my doubts about whether Marvel could make a decent movie based on a third-tier comic book title, but they demonstrated that a strong script, stunning visuals, and charismatic actors can elevate the most obscure source material into a blockbuster. It still seems odd to me that we now live in a world where Chris Pratt is an action hero, but odd in a good way.<\/li>\n<li>I liked <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt2562232\/?ref_=nv_sr_1\"><em>Birdman<\/em><\/a>, but it didn&#8217;t leave me enthralled. I could appreciate its technical prowess and it has some genuinely funny moments, mostly thanks to Michael Keaton and Edward Norton. I&#8217;m just not sure that&#8217;s enough to justify the raves it has received.<\/li>\n<li>I still need to see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1065073\/?ref_=nv_sr_1\"><em>Boyhood<\/em><\/a>. Don&#8217;t tell anyone.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I could have liked <a href=\"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4427\"><em>Interstellar<\/em><\/a> more than I did.<\/li>\n<li>Best movie that came out of nowhere: <a href=\"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4441\"><em>The Babadook<\/em><\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>My favorite time at the movies this year was seeing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt2278388\/?ref_=nv_sr_2\"><em>The Grand Budapest Hotel<\/em><\/a>. Wes Anderson&#8217;s fussy movies usually leave me cold, but this story within a story about the final glory days of an Eastern European hotel is probably his best work. Ralph Fiennes is perfectly cast as the hotel&#8217;s solicitous manager and the plot concerning a stolen painting is zany while maintaining a dark and melancholy undertone. It&#8217;s a movie that rewards repeated viewings because of Anderson&#8217;s careful attention to detail and because of the many hilarious moments delivered by the cast. It makes me want to spray myself liberally with some <a href=\"http:\/\/nose.fr\/en\/brands\/the-grand-budapest-hotel\/l-air-de-panache\">L&#8217;air de Panache<\/a> and take a holiday.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few brief thoughts on my year at the cinema: Guardians of the Galaxy was the best popcorn movie of 2014. Like a lot of people, I had my doubts about whether Marvel could make a decent movie based on a third-tier comic book title, but they demonstrated that a strong script, stunning visuals, and <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4453' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-pop-culture","category-23-id","category-11-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-19P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4454,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4453\/revisions\/4454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}