Top Ten: 2014 Movie Characters For Halloween Costumes

Halloween hits on Friday. Are you prepared to see Elsa & Annas & Olafs everywhere you look for our first post-Frozen dress-up holiday? That billion dollar 2013 smash will surely dominate. As for 2014 movies it goes without saying that you'll see a lot of Guardians of the Galaxy  and sometimes full teams. Team costumes on Halloween are the best but the key to their worth will be in how they handle adorable memorable Groot. Groot costumes will range everywhere from the godawful to the 'how'd they do it' spectacular, depending on creativity and budget.

Here are the characters / movies that would be the neatest tricks to pull off that would make the biggest treats for The Film Experience if fully sewn or creatively cobbled together by overachievers.

(Say no to store bought costumes!)

TEN 2014 COSTUMES WE HOPE TO SEE ON HALLOWEEN

10 "Full Metal Bitch" 
The great takeaway of Edge of Tomorrow or Live. Die. Repeat. or All You Need is Kill or whatever they're calling it today is that Emily Blunt is a badass. Rita, the feared warrior within, practically begs for a life outside of that movie since she is so iconized within it. Good luck pulling off all the metal armor and weaponized accessorizies. And how to look exactly like Emily Blunt while doing it and not "Random Robot Girl"... that's your challenge.
How to win Halloween in this costume: Get a male sidekick in a similar outfit who is shorter than you. Or drag along weird alien carcasses behind you.

"The Shailene Woodley and eight more costumed curveballs after the jump

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Halfway Pt. 4: Top Ten Movies of 2014 (Thus Far)

For today's Tuesday Top Ten it's your last peek at Nathaniel's top ten list for 2014 until the official one at year's end. Only films that have already played theaters in regular release are eligible hence endearing indies like Happy Christmas (currently On Demand) or instant classics like Love is Strange or next weekend's highly raved openers (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Boyhood) cannot yet apply. Herewith my ten favorite pictures of 2014 thus far since we've already looked at favorite sights and favorite sounds. 

You should see all of these movies. How many will stick around for the official top ten of 2014? I haven't a clue. That's half the excitement of drawing these invisible lines in the sand and waiting with hot anticipation for the rest of the year's wonders

TOP TEN FILMS OF 2014'S FIRST HALF
(ALPHA ORDER)

BEGIN AGAIN (John Carney) 104 minutes
Weinstein Co | June 27th| Box Office Rank of 2014 (At This Moment) #85 with $1.7 million

Like a new favorite song you can't stop playing, it's hard to even suss out why it's so damn loveable. My hunch is that its ephemeral endearments are powered by the combo of writer/director John Carney's sincere musicality (he captured lightning in a bottle with Once) and Keira Knightley's wonderfully relaxed but emotionally astute work as an abandoned musician who genuinely doesn't care about fame and fortune but has lots of love for music and people... whether or not they deserve it.

CAPTAIN AMERICA 2 (Anthony & Joe Russo) 136 minutes
Marvel/Disney | April 4th | Box Office Rank of 2014 (At This Moment) #1 $257 million

The best superhero film since the genre's peak in 2004 with that Spider-Man 2 and The Incredibles double-whammy and the best yet from Marvel Studios. I've probably raved enough this year but practically everything works from performance to action to theme and especially the firm sense of identity and character work at its core (here's a fine piece on that). That sense of self saves this superhero film from the generic problems that plague its genre. [Review]

CHILD'S POSE (Calin Peter Netzer) 112 minutes 
Zeitgeist | February 19th |  Box Office Rank of 2014 (At This Moment) #170 with $97 thousand 

Romania's 2013 Oscar submission continues the super annoying but enormously familiar trend of gambling its entire US release strategy around an Oscar nomination that doesn't materialize. Which is a pity since gold statues aren't everything (Ida proves that memorable foreign films don't need any awards buzz at all to find their natural fanbases but more on that in a minute) and this arguably overripe melodrama about a rich bitch trying to cover-up her son's crime is gripping. [Review]

alien invasions, travelling nuns, and mouthy toys after the jump...

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Two Quickies: "Test" and "Edge of Tomorrow"

Two movies you should see: a buzzy queer indie and a struggling would be blockbuster...

TEST
Chris Mason Johnson, a former dancer turned writer/director, really comes into his voice with his second feature. (He previously directed The New Twenty). Test is about a young dancer named Frankie (Scott Marlowe) in San Francisco in 1985 who, like most gay men at the time, fears he might have AIDS. He learns of a new test he could take to find out. The surprise of Test is that it's not really about AIDS despite the setting and time period so much as a slice of life drama about a young man struggling to face his fears and live his dream. Frankie is an understudy learning a dance he might never get to perform. And a young gay man beginning a life he might never get to live. Test is beautifully lensed for a micro-budgeted indie (I was shocked to hear that the cinematographer is a first timer) and though the pacing and subplots are hit and miss the dancer/actors are endearing and the centerpiece performance is just completely electric stuff. B+

P.S. Here's my interview with the director at Towleroad
I'll share excerpts that I didn't use for that piece soon that I think you cinephiles/musical addicts will enjoy. Test is playing in New York and available OnDemand and at iTunes.

EDGE OF TOMORROW
I had planned on avoiding this but the reviews, which I didn't read but gleaned were raves, caught me off guard. If you've also planned to skip, reconsider. I thought a movie that absorbed the very soul and structure of a video game (repeat until your kinetic memory gets every move right) would be highly annoying but I was wrong. It's sharply written, well acted and often exciting even if some of its moves are familiar (Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day meets Aliens?). Tom Cruise is extremely well cast as a smarmy coward who is all surface and has to actually work his way towards heroics and soul. And Emily Blunt, memorably dubbed "Full Metal Bitch" is approximately 1000% believable as an action heroine, proving yet again that she should be a much bigger star. 

I can't say that I necessarily believe this would hold up to repeat viewings and, like every current action movie, there's too much CGI, too much generic dystopian destruction, typical color palette, but it was so entertaining and cleverly structured that I feel too generous towards it to quibble. But... I am not a fan of the ending which makes no damn sense whatsoever, even given the elaborate suspension-of-disbelief conceit. B+

A Great Big Weekend in Movie Theaters

What a delicious crop of movies to take us through the weekend! I'm tempted to just sit in the theater and play hooky from the blog till Monday. Two highly anticipated sequels in 22 Jump Street and How To Train Your Dragon 2 (the latter of which I've seen and loved) will surely crush the box office but there's a whole mess of movies worth seeing in arthouses right now, many of which we've already written up from festivals. If you're in the big cities here are just a handful of many choices.

I like this poster• Hellion (Sundance review) starring Aaron Paul as a grieving widower who's losing control of his sons. Juliette Lewis plays his sister-in-law
• Borgman The Netherland's Oscar submission last year
• Obvious Child (Sundance review) a romantic comedy that's getting a lot of attention due to its filthy mouth and abortion plotline
• The Rover (Cannes review) David Michôd's follow up to his outstanding debut Animal Kingdom is another crime drama. This one stars Guy Pearce again and Robert Pattinson.
• A Coffee in Berlin - this comedy was a huge hit in Germany. It used to be called Oh Boy! 
• We Are the Best - a girl band 80s-set movie from the great Swedish director Lukas Moodyson (Together, Lilja 4ever). I've only heard wonderful things and I have to stop putting it off.

Are you going to the movies this weekend? I'm off to see Edge of Tomorrow right at this moment (I'm late I know) due solely to the surprise of those extremely positive reviews. The premise, at least as delivered in the trailer, held zero interest so if I hate it I'll have to seek vengeance on the nation's film critics somehow. 

Box Office Haiku: The Fault in Cruise's Budget

Cancer romance tops
Critics loved expensive "Edge"
Maleficent's legs!

Mutants or Monsters - 
What did you see this weekend?
Time for Tonys. Bye!  

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE
01 THE FAULT IN OUR STARS $48.2 NEW Review
02 MALEFICENT $33.5 (cum. $127.3) Podcast
03 EDGE OF TOMORROW $29.1 NEW
04 X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST $14.7 (cum. $189.1) Review
05 A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST $7.1 (cum. $30) Guest Review
06 GODZILLA $5.9 (cum. $185) Review & Podcast
07 NEIGHBORS $5.2 (cum. $137.8)  Review & Podcast
08 BLENDED $4 (cum. $36.5)
09 CHEF $2.6 (cum. $10.3)
10 MILLION DOLLAR ARM $1.8 (cum. $31.3)

P.S. Good Captain
Finally lapped those Legos
Champion of the year