It's the end of the year and, on top of having yet another return to Middle-Earth and a barrage of Christmas movies trying to be hip, it's the time when everyone gets a little recollective. Best, worst and most-disappointing lists are rife, but there's more to reviewing the year than just ranking its standout entries. Looking back over the movies of 2014 there's a lot of oddly specific traits that more than a few share. You'd naturally expect there to be some vague similarities between movies produced around the same time, although maybe not to this extent. Part of this is to do with the fact that movies aren't made in isolation - unless a director goes full-Mike Leigh and locks away his actors for months, real world events are going to have an impact on the film-making process, while knowledge of what other studios are up to can greatly influence a production - but some of these ten shared themes have strangely come about by simple coincidence. There's obviously a lot of trends that permeate modern cinema in general, but this list will look at those specific to the past twelve months; overarching themes that have either sprung up, or gained a whole new level of prominence, this year. Prepare to see originality busted open.
Honourable Mention - Scientific Accuracy
The Movies: Interstellar, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Jurassic World Trailer Are you making a sci-fi movie that's in some way related to the real world? Then you better make sure your science is 100% accurate, otherwise Neil deGrasse Tyson and anyone who f**cking loves science on Facebook are going to come down on you hard in the vague belief that it matters. This doesn't make the list proper because it's a stupid current trend of nit-picking that has no bearing on a movie's quality. People may harp on and on about the science of black holes, but whether Interstellar was accurate to reality or not had no real bearing on an individual's enjoyment of the film. The whole hoo-ha about Jurassic World's dinosaurs not having feathers may indeed be scientifically accurate, but it misses one big steaming pile of fact - they knew that back with the first one. The first thing Dr. Grant says in Jurassic Park is that dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds, but Spielberg chose the traditional reptile look because it's cooler on screen. God forbid a director do something in a film because it looks good.
