There were some painful inevitabilities in 2014: Michael Bay's films made a bucket-load of money despite being mostly terrible, South Korean (ALLEGEDLY) didn't take too kindly to Sony's The Interview and the last Hobbit movie proved that Peter Jackson unnecessarily over-reached. In terms of the front-runners of the year, it was no surprise that comic book movies basically ruled the box office, or that Benedict Cumberbatch's Imitation Game was little more than Oscar bait, but amongst the clanging inevitabilities and the lack of surprises there were some revelations. Despite the high frequency of comic book movies, sequels and franchise starters, the filmic landscape of the last twelve years packed a variety of surprises: some meant that films were over-rated, some under-rated, and some were so atypical that they utterly defied most expectations that came with them pre-release. This was the year of a talking tree, a talking bear and Ben Affleck's gigantic penis, and in all cases, the films that framed them were all disarmingly brilliant. Who would have thought that Chris Pratt would pretty much nail the entire year? Or that a film about a concrete supervisor would pick up Oscar buzz? Or that Steve Carrell would, come to that? And they weren't the half of the biggest surprises of the year...
