By Dan Skip Allen

This is Part 5 of my Special Series Celebrating my life in film. In this article I will be running down my Favorite Films from 2014 to present day. This decade isn’t as good as some of the other decades I’ve lived in and celebrated my favorite films, but there are still a lot of films I love. There are always a few or ten good films every year.

2014: Boyhood/Nightcrawler

The joys and pitfalls of growing up are seen through the eyes of a child named Mason (Ellar Coltrane), his parents (Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke) and his sister (Lorelei Linklater). Vignettes, filmed with the same cast over the course of 12 years, capture family meals, road trips, birthday parties, graduations and other important milestones. Songs from Coldplay, Arcade Fire and other artists capture the time period. Directed by Richard Linklater.

Boyhood was a film I had heard about until I read an article a year before it had come out about this weird way Richard Linklater had made it — shooting for two weeks at a time and watching his two stars, Ellar Coltrane as Mason and his very own daughter Lorelei Linklater as Samantha, grow up on camera. They literally shot for twelve years. This was an amazing feat as far as I was concerned back then. The film exceeded my expectations. The performances by Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette were also very good and garnered Arquette a most deserved Academy Award win for Supporting Actress as the mother of these two children. Linklater blew me away with the story of this struggling mother and her kids. I loved this movie back then and still love this film today. It’s Linklater’s masterpiece. I know some would argue a couple of his Before Trilogy are owed this, but I stand by my statement. Boyhood is the best film of his career as of then and still is now.

Release Date: July 11, 2014 (USA)

Director: Richard Linklater

Screenplay: Richard Linklater

7.9/10 IMDB 97% Rotten Tomatoes 3.8/5 Letterboxd

Los Angeles denizen Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) survives by scavenging and petty theft. He stumbles into a new career as a cameraman and — armed with a camcorder and police scanner — begins nocturnal forays across the city in search of shocking and grisly crimes. When he catches the eye of a shopworn news director (Rene Russo) who welcomes the chance to raise her station’s ratings, Louis goes to increasingly greater lengths to catch the “money shot.”

Nightcrawler is a film that surprised me when I watched it for the first time. It was like nothing I had seen before in my lifetime. Jake Gyllenhaal gave a performance I hadn’t seen until this point in his career. He played this character like a rat in an alley. He was very skinny, and his eyes were recessed in his head. He became this slimy character. It’s just what he had to do to become what the director, Dan Gilroy, needed from this character. This world he created was a sleazy one where the latest news cycle was all that mattered. This day and age of cell phone videos and dashcam videos provide the perfect scenarios for a fledgling cameraman trying to make a name for himself. Rene Ruso and Riz Ahmed were also very good in the film. I loved how it looked as well. Shot mostly at night is what gave it the vibe the filmmakers and writer were going for. This movie was like a gritty, dirty ‘70s film in many ways. I love me some ‘70s films. 

Release Date: October 31, 2014 (USA)

Director: Dan Gilroy

Screenplay: Dan Gilroy

7.8/10 IMDB 95% Letterboxd

2015: Spotlight

In 2001, editor Marty Baron of The Boston Globe assigns a team of journalists to investigate allegations against John Geoghan, an unfrocked priest accused of molesting more than 80 boys. Led by editor Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), reporters Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Matt Carroll and Sacha Pfeiffer interview victims and try to unseal sensitive documents. The reporters make it their mission to provide proof of a cover-up of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church.

Spotlight was a film that hit home for me more than most have ever done. It takes place in and around Boston, Massachusetts, where I grew up nearby in Lowell. As a kid, I went to church on Sundays and took communion like any good Catholic kid in my neighborhood. I wasn’t an altar boy, though, because we moved around so much. So, when I saw this movie, it blew me away. This story could have been about my brothers or me, but we got out of the Massachusetts diocese just in time. This story was overshadowed by 9/11, so most people outside of Boston didn’t know about it. The entire cast — Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, and everyone else in this film were all incredible — and the fact that this story was brought to the big screen by director Tom McCarthy was an absolute blessing. The world needed to know what was going on. This film deserved every award, including Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and I am so glad these men were held accountable and real news and reporting still had a place in our society. This film proved that with flying colors.

Release Date: February 23, 2016 (USA)

Director: Tom McCarthy

8.1/10 IMDB 97% Rotten Tomatoes

2016: Manchester by the Sea

A depressed uncle is asked to take care of his teenage nephew after the boy’s father dies.

The first thing I have to say about this film is about the performance by Casey Affleck as this man named Lee, who is trying to move on from a tragedy in his past. When he is told he has to take care of his nephew, he returns home to Manchester by the Sea, a quaint fishing village. Once there, he has to deal with a community that still resents him for the death of his brother Joe. Add in the fact that his ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams, who is also very good in the film) comes back into his life as well. This movie hit home for me due to the tragedy at the center of it and the fact that it takes place in and around the Boston area. Kenneth Lonergan, the writer/director, grounded this film in a realistic world with characters that are very authentic. The two leads brought a level of acting that blew me away. Rarely do you see a movie with such depth of characters, story, and location

Release Date: November 18, 2016 (USA)

Director: Kenneth Lonergan

Screenplay: Kenneth Lonergan

7.8/10 IMDB 96% Letterboxd

2017: Baby Driver/Blade Runner 2049

Baby, a music-loving orphan also happens to be the prodigiously talented go-to getaway driver for heist mastermind Doc. With the perfect soundtrack picked out for each and every job, Baby ensures Doc’s violent, bank-robbing cronies – including Buddy, Bats and Darling – get in and out of Dodge before it’s too late. He’s not in it for the long haul though, hoping to nail one last job before riding off into the sunset with beautiful diner waitress Debora. Easier said than done.

Edgar Wright is a very good director, but it wasn’t until he directed Baby Driver that I was invested in his style of filmmaking. This story of a young man named Baby (Ansel Elgort), a driver, was very exciting. He infused an incredible soundtrack with amazing car chases and fight scenes. Plus, he threw in a great romantic love story for good measure. The cast in this film, starting with Elgort, Lily James, Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, and Kevin Spacey, were all at the top of their game in this movie. Wright jammed so many great genres to make a film I couldn’t imagine could be this good. It’s a change of direction for him from his slapstick buddy comedies he’s done in the past with Nick Frost and Simon Pegg. He showed me he could go in a different direction and still make a great film. 

Release Date: March 11, 2017 (USA)

Director: Edgar Wright

7.7/10 IMDB 92% Rotten Tomatoes 3.7/5 Letterboxd

Officer K (Ryan Gosling), a new blade runner for the Los Angeles Police Department, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. His discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former blade runner who’s been missing for 30 years.

It was 35 years before the sequel of Blade Runner, the sci-fi thriller from Ridley Scott, came out. Blade Runner 2049 is a vastly better film than the original in so many ways, though. The first thing that is beyond belief is the cinematography by Roger Deakins. This is one of the most gorgeous films I’ve ever seen, mainly because of Deakins’s camera work. Each location was shot differently and looked entirely different from the others. The acting by the entire cast is out of this world as well. Ryan Gosling as Gent K brings his A Game, alongside Dave Bautista, Jared Leto, and Harrison Ford, returning to play the character he made famous from the previous film, Rick Deckard. This sequel by Denis Villeneuve blows the first film away. It won a total of six Academy Awards in many of the below-the-line categories. Blade Runner 2049 is on par with the greatest sci-fi movies of all time for me. It’s just that good of a film. Villeneuve was starting to hit his stride as a director, and Dune proved that as well because they were both masterpieces in their own right. 

Release Date: October 6, 2017 (USA)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cinematography: Roger Deakins

8/10 IMDB 88% Rotten Tomatoes

2018: Greenbook/Avengers: Infinity War

Dr Don Shirley is a world-class African-American pianist, who is about to embark on a concert tour in the Deep South in 1962. In need of a driver and protection, Shirley recruits Tony Lip, a tough-talking bouncer from an Italian-American neighbourhood in the Bronx. Despite their differences, the two men soon develop an unexpected bond while confronting racism and danger in an era of segregation.

When I first saw Green Book, I knew it would win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It has a story that I felt a lot of people at the time could get behind. The country was having a time of strife between the white and Black races. We needed a film like this to show we could get along with each other despite the past between these two races. Mahersha Ali had recently won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor a couple of years before for Moonlight, and now he gives another amazing performance as this musician from up north who experiences true hatred when he and his chauffeur, played by Viggo Mortensen, go down South. He isn’t allowed to stay in certain hotels or eat in certain restaurants even though he’s playing shows in these establishments for predominantly white audiences. This shows truly what racism was like in this country at the time. They end up becoming friends, breaking barriers between white and Black relations during this era. I was emotionally moved by this film the first time I saw it, and I’ve felt strongly about it ever since.

Initial Release Date: September 11, 2018

Director: Peter Farrelly

Screenplay: Nick Vallelonga, Peter Farrelly, Brian Hayes Currie

8.2/10 IMDB 77% Rotten Tomatoes

Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk and the rest of the Avengers unite to battle their most powerful enemy yet — the evil Thanos. On a mission to collect all six Infinity Stones, Thanos plans to use the artifacts to inflict his twisted will on reality. The fate of the planet and existence itself has never been more uncertain as everything the Avengers have fought for has led up to this moment.

Avengers: Infinity War was part one of two of a ten-year plan by executive producer Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios, which was bought by Disney, called the Infinity Saga. This film mainly featured Thanos (Josh Brolin) going through the galaxy, including Earth, collecting the Infinity Stones, five gems that will help him eliminate half the galaxy’s population. Brolin was perfectly cast as this mad demigod. He brought everything he had to this role and knocked it out of the park. This was one of my favorite comic book stories when I read comics as a younger man. Keige and company the cast, Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlet Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Hiddleston, Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, and Benedict Cumberbatch were all stellar in their portrayals of these various characters. This story was brought to life phenomenally by the Russo Brothers, Joe and Anthony. Like the comics, this film showed the cost of life and how many people fought valiantly for it but fell short. There had to be consequences for Thanos’s plans. The villain won, which never happens in the movies, but this set up Avengers: Endgame perfectly in my mind.

Release Date: April 27, 2018 (USA)

Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

8.4/IMDB 85% Rotten Tomatoes

2019: 1917/ Avengers: Endgame

During World War I, two British soldiers — Lance Cpl. Schofield and Lance Cpl. Blake — receive seemingly impossible orders. In a race against time, they must cross over into enemy territory to deliver a message that could potentially save 1,600 of their fellow comrades — including Blake’s own brother.

1917 is a film about World War I, but it’s done in a way that war movies haven’t been done before. Sam Mendes, the director of American Beauty, and two of the recent James Bond films, Skyfall and Spectre, brought this war to a new height in filmgoers’ minds. He chose to team with one of the best cinematographers of all time in Roger Deakins, who had recently won his first Academy Award for cinematography for Blade Runner 2049 two years prior. They chose to do a continuous take from the beginning of the film until its conclusion. With this, there was not much editing. The main characters — two British soldiers, played by George Mackay and Dean Charles Chapman — went on a mission, and the full brunt of the war was shown in vivid color.  Many greens and browns and a couple of night scenes were brilliantly shown on screen. Deakins did it again regarding this film. He is an absolute master with a camera. Throw in a bunch of big-name cameos like Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, and Richard Madden, and this was my favorite film of 2019. 

Release Date: December 25, 2019 (USA)

Director: Sam Mendes

Cinematography: Roger Deakins

8.2/10 IMDB 88% Rotten Tomatoes

Adrift in space with no food or water, Tony Stark sends a message to Pepper Potts as his oxygen supply starts to dwindle. Meanwhile, the remaining Avengers — Thor, Black Widow, Captain America and Bruce Banner — must figure out a way to bring back their vanquished allies for an epic showdown with Thanos — the evil demigod who decimated the planet and the universe.

Avengers: Endgame picks up five years after the tragic events of Avengers: Infinity War.Nee characters like Captain Marvel make their first appearance, and old characters return from retirement or the quantum zone, like Hawkeye and Ant-Man. These two and some of the previous Avengers who didn’t die team together to figure out how to change the events from Avengers: Infinity War. Once again, the writers and the Russo brothers, Joe and Anthony, come up with a perfect story with incredible visual effects to accentuate that story. The technical aspects are again amazing in this movie, as in the previous one. Like in comic books, the writers create a get-out-of-jail-free card so the good guys can win in the end, but there is still collateral damage at the end of this film. This movie was the perfect conclusion to the Infinity Saga. It was always going to be hard to top this decade-plus plan. And they haven’t yet. There is never going to be a 23-film series like this ever again. Endgame became the most profitable  film ever made, and it deserves that accolade. It’s my favorite film of the Infinity Saga and Marvel Cinematic Universe because it stuck the landing. It’s a perfect film and the perfect conclusion to this journey for me as a movie and comic book lover.

Release Date: April 26, 2019 (USA)

Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

8.4/10 IMDB 94% Rotten Tomatoes

2020: Nomadland

woman in her sixties who, after losing everything in the Great Recession, embarks on a journey through the American West, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.

I’ve said this before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again. When it comes to Academy Award Best Picture winners, more often than not, they win in the year they’re supposed to win. That’s the case with Nomadland. This country was going through a difficult time with the COVID-19 virus and subsequent epidemic. This film, directed by Chloe Zhao, in particular, was very reminiscent of what the country was going through. A woman in her later years lost everything she had and had to move around from place to place in a van as a Nomad. Fern (Frances McDormand) looks for work wherever she can, including seasonal work at an Amazon Distribution Factory. She meets new people wherever she goes and finds friends. This is the epitome of what her life and so many others were like during this time. Zhao used her distinct style of filmmaking, which is like a documentary style, to make this movie very real and effective in telling the story of this struggling woman. Many Americans could relate to this story, and I definitely could during this time. That’s why this film is so near and dear to my heart.

Release Date: February 19, 2021 (USA)

Director: Chloé Zhao

Cinematography: Joshua James Richards

7.3/10 IMDB 93% Rotten Tomatoes

2021: Dune

Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence, only those who can conquer their own fear will survive.

Dune is based on the famous novel by Frank Herbert. Denis Villeneuve has split this famous novel into two parts, but it didn’t mean that the first of these two parts wasn’t good. In fact, it was great. It won six Academy Awards for its technical prowess, most notably in the cinematography category for Greg Frasier.  He brought the Tunisian desert as a stand-in for Arrakis vividly to life, as well as other planets focused on this world created by Herbert. The cast that Villeneuve assembled was a first-rate one. He brought together so many great actors to portray these iconic literary characters. This story was brought to life in this film, and the events truly meant what they were perceived on screen. The dichotomy of the two main races is the crux of what this story is about. One wants what the other has, and we can relate to that. Spice is the thing in this film the evil Harkonnens want and the Atreidies have. We can relate to this as our country seeks oil, located mainly in a desert similar to the one in this story. The political machinations are in full force in this film, which reminds me of what the country is going through quite often. Dune truly reminds me of what we’re constantly going through as a people. Throw in giant sandworms and the indigenous Fremen, and you have a great film by anybody’s standards — especially mine. It was my favorite movie of 2021 for a good reason.

Release Date: October 22, 2021 (USA)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

8/10 IMDB 83% Rotten Tomatoes

2022: The Banshees of Inisherin/ Everything Everywhere All At Once

On a remote island off the coast of Ireland, Pádraic is devastated when his buddy Colm suddenly puts an end to their lifelong friendship. With help from his sister and a troubled young islander, Pádraic sets out to repair the damaged relationship by any means necessary. However, as Colm’s resolve only strengthens, he soon delivers an ultimatum that leads to shocking consequences.

The Banshees of Inisherin is a film that hit me hard the first time I saw it. It’s about a friendship that degrades from one man who gets bored of being around the other man. They had been friends for 14 years before this one man, Colin Doherty (Brendan Gleeson), decided to end the friendship with Padraic (Colin Farrell). He was a musician and wanted to concentrate on that instead of the friendship he had for so long. There are a lot of dramatic scenes in the film, but it’s the comedic moments that bring this movie home, like the relationship with Farrell’s character’s sister and the island idiot Dominic, played by Barry Keoghan. At the heart of this film is how people who’ve known each other for many years had a falling out. I had a similar situation in my life where I didn’t talk to a good friend of mine for six months. It wasn’t easy, but it was over being stubborn and acting inappropriately. You eventually come to your senses, though, and realize the error of your ways. In this film, that doesn’t happen before some pretty drastic steps are taken by both men. I felt bad for these guys on both sides of this. The script was written by the director Martin McDonagh. This is the second time he has worked with the pairing of Ferrell and Gleeson. The first time was in In Bruges. That film was a bit funnier than this one, but McDonagh has a way with dark comedy. I loved the cinematography and the music as well. This movie struck the right chord with me from the first moment I saw it. The ties to Ireland didn’t hurt it either.

Release Date: October 21, 2022 (USA)

Director: Martin McDonagh

7.7/10 IMDB 97% Rotten Tomatoes

A middle-aged Chinese immigrant is swept up into an insane adventure in which she alone can save existence by exploring other universes and connecting with the lives she could have led.

I’ve watched a lot of films about the family dynamic. Whether they be comedies or dramas, Black families, white families, or, in this case, an Asian family, none of them have been quite like Everything Everywhere All at Once. At its core, it’s a film about husbands and wives and mothers and daughters, but it’s a whole lot more than that. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s vision is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. That’s what makes it so great! They infuse their wacky sense of humor with their crazy style. It’s unbelievable how the crazy multiverse stuff works in the context of the story, but it does perfectly — from talking rocks to Racoocoonie, a raccoon that controls a person, similar to Ratatouille, the Pixar film. Everything in this wild and wacky movie serves a purpose and made me laugh at multiple scenes. There is a lot of raunchy humor similar to Daniels’ other crazy film, Swiss Army Man. This is probably the weirdest Best Picture winner in Academy Awards history, and I loved every minute of it.

Release Date: March 25th 2022 (USA)

Written & Directed by Daniel Kwan Daniel Scheinert

7.8/10 IMDB 94% Rotten Tomatoes

2023: Oppenheimer

During World War II, Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. appoints physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to work on the top-secret Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer and a team of scientists spend years developing and designing the atomic bomb. Their work comes to fruition on July 16, 1945, as they witness the world’s first nuclear explosion, forever changing the course of history.

 saw Oppenheimer in July, and plenty of other films came out after it. It stood up to all those films, including my most anticipated film of the year, Killers of the Flower Moon. None of the other films, including that one, had the dramatic heft that Oppenheimer had. It’s divided into two segments with the titles Fission and Fusion. Fission was entirely in black and white, while Fusion was in color. One dealt with the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and his rise from a brilliant college student to the man who spearheaded the creation of the atomic bomb. The other dealt with a courtroom affirmation hearing with Senator Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.). The dichotomy of these two stories was quite fascinating. Nolan used various camera tricks and IMAX cameras to bring this story vividly to life. The cinematography by Hoyt Van Hoytema is absolutely amazing. The script depicting these two intersecting plot threads is equally as incredible. Based on the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer by Cal Bird, the story is absolutely unbelievable. What this man accomplished and how he was treated afterward was terrible. Both sides were told throughout the film, making for a more powerful film in the end. The cast, including Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Alden Ehrenreich, and many others, were stellar in big and minor roles. The score by Ludwig Göransson was big and loud and filled the theater. This movie is a biopic of one of the most influential men of the 20th century, but it was about a whole lot more than that. It was about a man’s soul and reputation. Nolan has finally made his magnum opus and will be rewarded handsomely for his achievements by winning multiple Academy Awards.

Release Date: July 21st 2023 (USA)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cinematography: Hoyt Van Hoytema

Music composed by: Ludwig Göransson

8.5/10 IMDB 93% Rotten Tomatoes