Counting Down The Fourteen Best Films Of 2014
In this totally subjective game of lists, there can only be one winner.
#8: Under The Skin, dir. Jonathan Glazer
Scarlett Johansson is still Hollywood’s avatar of sexiness, and her films this year mined it: throaty vocal textures in Her; a kinetic, deadly body in Captain America: The Winter Soldier; uncanny cognition in Lucy. Here, director Jonathan Glazer metatextually likens ‘Scarlett Johansson’ to a ‘skin’ used to lure men, conveying the uncanny, alienating aspects of embodiment, gender relations and sexuality in an abstract, hypnotic way that’s both beautiful and grotesque.
Johansson deftly manages her character’s transition from emotionless predator – the scene with the baby at the beach is truly distressing – to a more vulnerable, affecting explorer of empathy and intimacy. Mica Levi’s terrifying minimalist soundtrack is easily the year’s best. And the film’s ending is poignant yet satisfying: a romantic resolution of a troubled character’s impossible predicament.