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Written by Pete Timmermann Sunday, 04 January 2015 18:29

Foreign-language films and/or avant garde films make up most of my list of the best of 2014’s releases that didn’t find their way to St. Louis’s theaters.

Why is it that we don’t seem to get much in the way of foreign films theatrically here anymore? Apart from Bollywood films the AMC Chesterfield runs, we only seem to get them sporadically: Force Majeure for a week, Gloria earlier in the year, Ida for a while over the summer. These are all good films, but there were plenty better. Numbers 1-3 and 6 are all foreign language. More documentaries on this list, in #7 and #10 (the former an HBO production that got a brief theatrical release that preceded its debut on said channel, the latter being a concert documentary about the band Of Montreal). Coming in at #11 on the list would have been the new Godfrey Reggio/Philip Glass collaboration Visitors; the last time they worked together, on 2002’s Naqoyqatsi, they managed to get a local theatrical release, despite the film’s experimental, non-narrative nature. So what’s changed in the interim?

1. The Dance of Reality (Le Soleil Films)
2. Goodbye to Language (Wild Bunch)
3. We Are the Best! (Svensk Filmindustri)
4. Return to Nuke ‘Em High, Vol. 1 (Troma/Starz)
5. Listen Up Philip (Sailor Bear Productions)
6. Why Don’t You Play in Hell? (Drafthouse Films)
7. Private Violence (HBO Documentary Films)
8. Night Moves (Cinedigm)
9. White Bird in a Blizzard (Magnolia Pictures)
10. The Past Is a Grotesque Animal (Oscilloscope Pictures)