6) Listen Up Philip (Oct. 17)
Alongside Boyhood, Whiplash and Love is Strange – three titles that should appear on various year-end lists of the best films of 2014 – Listen Up Philip was one of the most acclaimed movies to debut at Sundance earlier in the year. However, do not expect it to catch on with audiences who are not up to spend two hours with a smug narcissist, the title character played by Jason Schwartzman. With his tale of an unrepentant intellectual filled with acerbic wit and a glorified ego, writer/director Alex Ross Perry is outdoing Noah Baumbach at his own game.
Schwartzman stars as Philip Lewis Friedman, an author with a major attitude and sense of entitlement about to go on a book tour for his critically-beloved new novel. However, he is going through relationship woes with his girlfriend, Ashley (played by Elisabeth Moss), and a tough friendship with his literary mentor, a Philip Roth-like master novelist and miscreant played by character actor Jonathan Pryce, who does some of the finest work of his career here.
Listen Up Philip should be the breakthrough for director-in-waiting Alex Ross Perry. This toxic, dark comedy may not be for everyone, but fans of the scathing early films of David O. Russell and Noah Baumbach should find themselves in good company here.