The 10 Most Overrated and Underrated Films of 2014

OVERRATED

LISTEN UP PHILIP

DIR. ALEX ROSS PERRY

Listen Up Philip is sometimes a really beautiful film, namely when Elisabeth Moss takes center stage, as she offers the audience a graceful and very human performance as a woman plagued by her ex-lover’s acidic remarks and his general displeasure with life. Unfortunately, the titular character Philip, played by Jason Schwartzman, is anything but human; he is a robot who spouts cutting insults, failing to realize it is actually him and not those around him who suck. As I wrote in my review for the film, Philip “is the exact same person in the middle of the film as in the beginning, and he doesn’t change one bit by the time it concludes … he remains the same smug, pretentious asshole throughout the movie, from start to finish.” Schwartzman plays the role well, but there is absolutely no empathy generated by his character, which makes me wonder how exactly anybody truly connected to this movie aside from the minor relief we get when the focus turns to Moss’s character for a portion of the film. – Jordan Benesh

UNDERRATED

THEY CAME TOGETHER

DIR. DAVID WAIN

When it comes to David Wain films, the only one I had ever actually seen prior to watching They Came Together is Role Models, which is a comedy I love so much I’ve seen it probably 20 times now. I stumbled across They Came Together through Twitter and decided to rent it from iTunes to watch as fluff entertainment during a prolonged study break, but I found myself almost strangely taken by this whip-smart, hilarious takedown of the romantic comedy genre. There are jokes abound, and I had a smile on my face the whole time. It’s a bit of a mess, but They Came Together is one of the rare spoof movies to come out in quite some time that aims higher than the lowest common denominator, and I don’t think it has necessarily been given its due for that. – Jordan Benesh

OVERRATED

BLUE RUIN

DIR. JEREMY SAULNIER

Much as The Babadook is labeled a horror film but isn’t one I consider scary, Blue Ruin is labeled a revenge thriller but isn’t one I consider thrilling. At just 90 minutes long, Blue Ruin still ambles along at an almost dreadful pace, and with a main character as bumbling as Dwight (Macon Blair), those 90 minutes pass by even slower. Watching this film, I sat wondering how exactly Dwight made it past the first 20 minutes of the movie without getting his head blown off; given his actions from the outset, such an abrupt ending wouldn’t have surprised me. For goodness sakes, he tells a man he’ll open the trunk of his car once he has a gun, all the while failing to realize he actually had one right up until he stuffed the man in his trunk. Blue Ruin is a thriller that embraces stupidity, and while perhaps that was meant to lend it a sense of realism, it just didn’t feel very believable. – Jordan Benesh

UNDERRATED

FURY

DIR. DAVID AYER

I struggled quite a bit with rounding out my “most underrated” list to five. I don’t get a chance to see quite as many movies as a lot of people who write about film, so when I go to the theater I try to actively avoid those titles I’m pretty sure I won’t like, which means my pool of films to choose from at year-end isn’t quite as vast as others’. But at any rate, I chose to go with Fury as my fifth choice, a film I found really good but that seemed to be judged more for the film it wasn’t instead of for the film it was. David Ayer‘s World War II tank drama drew me deep into its world and made me feel as though I were a character along for the gritty, gruesome ride. Fury feels honest and intentional, and while its ending doesn’t quite land as well as it could have, the sheer adrenaline of the movie grabbed me from the start and took until long after its stunning end credits rolled to finally wear off. – Jordan Benesh

As a recap, Mike’s list is…

Overrated: