As a cinephile, few things are more sublime than finding back-to-back features that hit some specific thematic sweet spot. Drive-in theaters may not be the popular viewing spot they once were, but with the overwhelming accessibility we now have, one can program their own personal double bill. Today we’ve run through the gamut of 2014 films to select the twenty best pairings. Check out list the below, and we’d love to hear your own picks, which can be left in the comments.
Enemy and The Double
This pairing might seem too easy at first. Yes, both of these movies feature a man coming face-to-face with his doppelgänger in a world that is at once fantastical and only a few steps removed from our own. Yes, in each case the relationship is antagonistic. However, these movies are a case study in how different artists can take the same idea — with similar story beats — and tell it in vastly different ways. The Double, for instance, builds its story in a world that is retro industrial and carries the trappings of science fiction, while Enemy takes place amidst a world that is alien and dreamlike but still obeys the rules and logic of our own. Each protagonist has their own journey based on the discovery of their double. Each film examines the relationship between the two lookalikes in different ways and uses those observations to explain very different worldviews. It may be true that every story that can be told has been told, but these films prove that the same music played to a different tune can produce strikingly different experiences. – Brian R.
Citizenfour and The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
Information is a powerful and dangerous commodity in today’s world. This validity of this notion is at the forefront of two of the year’s best documentaries: the Edward Snowden exposé Citizenfour and the tragic story of a technological hero, The Internet’s Own Boy. Showcasing the struggle one must endure to bring political overreach to light, each film acts as a part-thrilling, part-chilling portrait of our civil liberties (or lack thereof). While one can’t quite make this a double feature just yet, Citizenfour is currently in theaters and The Internet’s Own Boy can be streamed for free. – Jordan R.
Gone Girl and Force Majeure
If one is planning to tie the knot shortly, they can skip right over this entry and onto more marriage-affirming features. However, those craving an intimate and sensationalized exploration of matrimony should look no further than Force Majeure and Gone Girl. The former, Sweden’s Oscar contender, acutely looks at the ways a single action can create a cascading rift in a relationship, while David Fincher‘s delightfully pulpy tale takes a troubled romance to its most extreme ends. After viewing this double feature with a significant other, you’ll certainly be asking a few questions, a set that may or may not include, “What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other?” – Jordan R.
Land Ho! and The Trip to Italy
Both premiering at Sundance earlier this year — where I saw them mere days apart — Land Ho! and The Trip to Italy form a genial double bill containing reflections on life amongst a great deal of comedy and, yes, culinary delights. As I said in my review of the former, “As one of the best road trip comedies I’ve ever had the pleasure of taking part in, Land Ho!’s success is found in its small observations and flawless, off-beat leads. Think of it as The Trip to Iceland: The Elder Years; with that notion, I’d welcome many more adventures with our duo.” – Jordan R.
Only Lovers Left Alive and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
There are times as a critic where you feel like you’re seeing lots of a certain kind of movie without encountering a good one. After a recent glut of half-hearted vampire films, it’s nice that, in 2014, two dared to cut directly through genre tropes and touch the face of the subject itself. Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive latched onto that modern affinity for seeing vampires as goth chic libertines, and then gently explored notions of humanity, connectivity and what it might mean to have to live with yourself for an eternity. Playing with dramatic convention, Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston gave us vexing and vulnerable vampires that are never one thing entirely; they are shorn of the malevolence of Dracula, unburdened by the great Catholic guilt of Anne Rice, and, thanks specifically to Jarmusch, given a sense of humor that’s been honed by ages of watching society circle back and eat its own tail. Ana Lily Amirpour‘s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is the vampire movie we didn’t even know we were waiting for; an evocation of graphic novel grittiness, art-house hypnoticism, and a masterful celebration of the genre’s gothic roots. It gives us this year’s most delightful incongruity: the protagonist, Vand, cruising down the empty nighttime streets of Bad City on a skateboard, her hijab flowing behind her like the traditional cape. – Nathan B.
The LEGO Movie and 22 Jump Street
It’s difficult to imagine what sounds worse from the outset: a film about a long-running brand of children’s toys or a sequel to a remake of a short-lived TV series. Each may contain some of Hollywood’s worst impulses, but somehow writers-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller managed to pull off both concepts without a hitch in The LEGO Movie and 22 Jump Street, two of this year’s funniest films. By being brave enough to go for irreverence and absurdity, they still found a key throughline of emotional and narrative action. By letting things build and paying them off brilliantly and for all the laughs that Lord and Miller are credited with, I think the heart of their films are usually overlooked. The LEGO Movie might seem like a kids’ film, but adults still in-touch with their younger side should be able to make this an absurdly entertaining double feature. – Bill G.
Mr. Turner and Tim’s Vermeer
Mike Leigh does incredible justice to J. M. W. Turner in his recently released biopic, beautifully displaying a life well lived and the inspiration and the experiences that led to the artist’s stunning creations. On the other side of the coin, however, Teller‘s documentary Tim’s Vermeer follows a quest to uncover Dutch master Johannes Vermeer’s ability to create picture-perfect paintings. Tim Jenison, through a camera obscura, posits that the influential artist might have had more help than imagined. Both are engaging pieces of work that will make one think twice about each master’s art, albeit in very different ways. – Jordan R.
Non-Stop and A Walk Among the Tombstones
When Taken hit, Liam Neeson announced a new phase in his career. The days of portraying heroic historical figures seemed to be gone. Instead, he would become a new kind of hero, a modern response to the popularity of Arnold Schwarzenegger a generation prior. Here we had an average man — and one with a non-American accent that’s never explained — who rises to the occasion and performs superhuman acts of heroism. This year saw Neeson working in that same vein once more with Non-Stop, in which he plays an air marshal who must overcome impossible odds and a drinking problem in order to save a plan from terrorists. Similarly, in A Walk Among the Tombstones, Neeson plays a private detective / ex-cop who must overcome advanced depression and a drinking problem in order to find out who has been kidnapping the family members of various drug traffickers. These movies give us the two sides of Neeson, one a bombastic action hero who will shout his way to the truth, and the other a weary man who may be past his prime but can still get the job done. It’s an interesting dichotomy to dissect, and it makes for compelling back-to-back viewing. – Brian R.
We are the Best! and God Help the Girl
While Boyhood seems to be taking the critical crown when it pertains to this year’s coming-of-age films, two other features used the power of music to show how this sort of story can be effectively delivered. Both showcasing the camaraderie and attitude it takes to create art — no matter how small an audience it may be for — Lukas Moodysson‘s We Are the Best! and Stuart Murdoch‘s debut God Help the Girl follow the formation of punk and indie trios, respectively. With unbridled energy and inventiveness, these two overlooked dramas make for the perfect double feature. – Jordan R.
Under the Skin and Lucy
Over the past twelve months, few leading ladies proved their talents more significantly than Scarlett Johansson. If last year’s Her served as something of a sci-fi warm-up, Under the Skin and Lucy provided the main courses on two wildly different ends of the stylistic spectrum. The former feature provided what’s easily her best performance (outside of the Coppola realm) as an alien who descends to Earth and begins understanding humanity, while the other gleefully throws logic aside to deliver the year’s best superhero film. Making for the ultimate sci-fi double feature of 2014, here are two films that also display a daring actress in her prime. – Jordan R.
What double feature would you recommend this year?