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It’s never been easier for a great film to fall through the cracks. In fact, between an unsure VOD model and a theatrical landscape that focuses all of its attention on a small handful of movies, the cracks are starting to feel a lot bigger than the sidewalk that splits around them. While this is terrible news for directors working outside of the studio system, audiences have yet to pay a particularly grievous price. The tent may be on the verge of caving in, but the truth of the matter is that, at least for now, excellent micro- and mid-budget films are still being churned out at a blistering rate. A quick look at some of the extraordinary work that flew under the radar this year is enough to confirm that the movie business might be in trouble, but the movies themselves are doing just fine. Here are 5 of the most unjustifiably overlooked films of 2014, along with information about how you can see them.
God Help the Girl
A semi-autobiographical musical directed by Belle and Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch, God Help the Girl is a buoyant and bittersweet tear through the twee streets of Glasgow. Years in the making (Murdoch released the soundtrack in 2009, and then built the film backward from there), God Help the Girl might be a bit rough around the edges, but that only contributes to the ramshackle charm of this story about three young musicians enjoying the last summer of their lives in which everything seemed possible. Emily Browning is absolutely sensational as the young lass in need of divine intervention, her performance so special that even people who are deathly allergic to hipster fetishism will fall in love at least a little bit.
God Help the Girl is available to buy or rent on iTunes.
Bird People
To accurately describe Pascale Ferran’s first film in eight years is to ruin it. Ostensibly a light drama about an American businessman (Josh Charles) who suddenly decides to reboot his life one dreary afternoon at an airport hotel in Paris, Bird People becomes a very different movie with very little warning. While the story can certainly still be enjoyed if you know what’s coming, the film is nevertheless explicitly about the exhilaration of discovery and the euphoria of the unknown. You have to work for the payoff, but you’ll be glad you did.
Bird People arrives on DVD and iTunes on January 13, 2015.
Stranger by the Lake
Alain Guiraudie’s entrancing psychosexual thriller feels like what might happen if Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Alfred Hitchcock met at an all-male orgy and somehow produced a child. Entirely set at a lakeside cruising spot in the woods of rural France, Stranger by the Lake is just another day at the beach for Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) until he begins crushing on a mysterious man named Michel (Christophe Paou). When Franck sees Michel unambiguously drown another man, he finds himself seduced by the dark desires at play. From there, this story about men who let it all hang out begins to spiral inward, becoming a breathless portrait of predatory eroticism. If nothing else, it promises a higher flaccid penis per minute ratio than any other new film you can watch on Netflix with your family on Christmas Day.
Stranger by the Lake is available on Netflix Instant.
Actress
A shatteringly good movie about a woman who “tends to break things,” Robert Greene’s latest documentary is an unclassifiable portrait of a woman caught at the crossroads between herself and her self-image. The eponymous thespian is Brandy Burre, Greene’s neighbor in upstate New York, and a woman who was on the brink of breakthrough success in her professional life before she recast herself as a mother (Burre had a recurring role on The Wire, and Greene’s film shows her desperately hiding her baby bump during the last episodes she shot). Blurring the line between fact and fiction until the divide is as arbitrary in the film as it is in Burre’s life, Actress prompts and observes its heroine as she weighs her expectations for herself against those the world has for a woman in her late 30s. Part slice-of-life domesticity, part Sirkian melodrama, Actress is the best and most beguiling film yet from one of America’s most lucid directors, documentary or otherwise.
Actress is still in theaters. More information can be found here.
They Came Together
A loving but merciless parody of romantic comedies, this gloriously silly movie from the mind of Wet Hot American Summer director David Wain is right on schedule to develop a cult following in 2015. Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd are great as the leads, but my favorite thing about the movie is that New York City is really its own character in the story.
The Came Together is available to rent or buy on iTunes.
Other hidden gems:
The Rover, The Missing Picture, Stray Dogs, Coherence, What Now Remind Me?, Honeymoon, Locke.