The end of the year is upon us and with that movies of the year lists will come.

It was a weird year for cinema. If a film was not unanimously praised, it got mixed reviews and seemed to fall of the face of the earth.

While there were not many brilliant films, there are some that made waves and will be remembered for some time.

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“Birdman: Or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance” (Rated R; 119 min) is the best and most unique motion picture of the year.

“Birdman” is a comedy drama directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and stars Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis and Edward Norton.

Riggan Thomson, played by Keaton, is an actor on the last leg of his career. It has been 20 years since the original Birdman movie came out and made him a star. He has searched for relevance within his art ever since.

His last chance at being remembered as anything other than Birdman comes in a theater adaptation of Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” which he wrote, and is directing and staring in.

The play starts to fall apart and Thomson’s psyche goes with it. He starts to imagine the character of Birdman as an alternate personality of his and the lines between reality and fantasy become more blurred.

Michael Keaton is a man mostly known for one role. While many cinephiles will tell you the man has had a plethora of amazing characters to his name, there is one that still haunts him to this day, Batman (1989).

Since then, he has become an actor fighting under the shadow of success, which makes him perfect for the role of Riggan Thomson.

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Keaton is beyond excellent in this film. It will be a crime if he does not win an Oscar for Best Actor this year. He brings sadness to his character and plight. The fight for relevance is something every creative person can relate to and he makes it even more heartbreaking.

It is never truly stated whether Thomson sees truth or illusion. The character is constantly on the edge of a breakdown, he adds realism and believability to the fantasies around him.

The acting in general is to be commended. Stone and Norton both give award-worthy performances as well. Stone plays Thomson’s drug addicted daughter and Norton plays a fictional version of himself. Both play characters who, in the wrong hands would be deplorable, but they make them charming.

There are many interesting and engaging aspects of this film. The continuous shots, the mixture between meta-realism and off-the-wall visuals and random moments of black comedy make it compelling.

The meta-realism of this movie is present and sound. Many pieces of fiction fail at building a convincing world, but this movie never struggles with it. The superhero craze, the nature of critics and the personality of an actor are just some of the aspects of this movie which make it successful.

This movie is not going to win the Best Picture award this year and that is disappointing. It is of no fault of this film, but in fault of the Oscar committee. It is by far the best movie of the year and is groundbreaking work for everyone involved.