The Best Movies of 2014

33.

Just when you're ready to pop bottles over 2014's movie output, along comes an exceptional and alarming essay by esteemed film journalist Mark Harris. On Grantland yesterday, Harris, the site’s go-to awards season critic, wrote a lengthy, superb piece about how Hollywood’s overdosing on franchises, sequels, and reboots over the next few years could signal the end.

The end of what, exactly? Originality, it seems. Harris writes:

32.

In 2014, franchises are not a big part of the movie business. They are not the biggest part of the movie business. They are the movie business. Period. Twelve of the year’s 14 highest grossers are, or will spawn, sequels. (The sole exceptions—assuming they remain exceptions, which is iffy—are Big Hero 6 and Maleficent.) Almost everything else that comes out of Hollywood is either an accident, a penance (people who run the studios do like to have a reason to go to the Oscars), a modestly budgeted bone thrown to an audience perceived as niche (black people, women, adults), an appeasement (movie stars are still important and they must occasionally be placated with something interesting to do so they’ll be cooperative about doing the big stuff), or a necessity (sometimes, unfortunately, it is required that a studio take a chance on something new in order to initiate a franchise).

31.

In that same piece, Harris includes two infographics that list every single sequel, franchise picture, Marvel Studios release, and DC-produced superhero flick audiences will see from 2015 through 2020—the grand total is, *zoinks*, 99. That’s an average of just under 17 per year. As much as we all love a good comic book page-to-screen adaptation, oversaturation looms. By the time there’s a standalone Cyborg movie in 2020, will you even care anymore?

As for Harris’ comments, they’re spot-on. But, if anything, they’re also indirectly reassuring. As you’ll see on our list of The 30 Best Movies of 2014, the films we’ve honored are, for the most part, exceptions to Harris’ understandable disappointment. Granted, a few mega-budget blockbusters made the cut, but they’re the undeniably excellent ones, the ones that turned Chris Pratt into an A-list actor and made talking performance-capture apes emotionally poignant. The rest of the countdown, though, is dedicated to smaller character-driven films that only made the festival circuit and modestly budgeted popcorn entertainment with more brains than bucks.

The future may look like a barrage of Struggle Imagination™, but as long as filmmakers like the ones responsible for the following movies keep working, cinema lovers should breathe easy. Creativity isn't dead.

30.Obvious Child

Director: Gillian Robespierre

Stars: Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffman, Richard Kind, David Cross, Polly Draper, Paul Briganti

Obvious Child is small and enormous at the same time. Gillian Robespierre’s debut has a modest cast of characters, led by Jenny Slate’s Donna Stern, a stand-up comic. She meets a guy. They have sex. She becomes pregnant. She terminates the pregnancy. End movie.

Small story, right? But arriving in a year defined by feminism and listening to women, Obvious Child accomplishes something enormous by telling a story that doesn’t get told. I can’t put it better than the Hairpin’s Haley Mlotek did:

“The author Chris Kraus wrote that ‘what happens between women now is the most interesting thing in the world because it’s the least described,’ a sentence that kept vibrating in my head as I watched Obvious Child, a film that seems to be directly conversing with the audience. There are so few films and television shows that talk to women, where women reach out and start conversations about their lives, instead of about or at women. Obvious Child is taking an experience so rarely accurately described and creating a space to talk, connect, and feel something that’s either very new or very familiar.” —Ross Scarano

29.The Guest

Director: Adam Wingard

Stars: Dan Stevens, Maika Monroe, Brendan Meyer, Leland Orser, Sheila Kelley, Lance Reddick, Chase Williamson, Ethan Embry, Joel David Moore

In a perfect world, Adam Wingard's The Guest would've opened in over 2,000 theaters nationwide. It demanded to be seen by mass audiences in big theaters, not constricted to indie art-house venues and VOD platforms. But, alas, it was limited to a few screens and, sadly, disappeared into the ether.

A shame, though, since The Guest is about as much fun as you would've had watching a movie all year. Made by the writer/director team responsible for last year's similarly awesome horror-comedy You're Next (director Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett), it's about a handsome, polite Army soldier named David, (Downton Abbey alum Dan Stevens) who, having been discharged, immediately visits the family of a fallen comrade. He starts off beneficial to them, helping the young son overcome bullies and the father deal with workplace neglect. Gradually, David starts revealing that he's not quite the wonderful houseguest everyone thinks he is, and that's when the bullets spray, bodies drop, and The Guest turns into something that resembles The Terminator without the science fiction trappings.

Like Drive, The Guest pumps on glossy, bouncy '80s-esque synth music, juxtaposing its moments of heightened carnage with a shrewd bubblegum soundtrack. In the middle of that contrast is Dan Stevens, exuding ample movie star presence and commanding every single frame he's in. In an even more perfect world, The Guest would elevate Stevens into being the new Ryan Gosling. —Matt Barone

28.Snowpiercer

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Stars: Chris Evans, Kang-ho Song, Go Ah-sung, Jamie Bell, Alison Pill, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer, Ed Harris

Based on Jacques Lob’s comic book, which ran from 1984 through 2000, Joon-Ho’s film is a 125-minute excursion into madcap dystopia, equal parts supercharged sci-fi/action movie, visually insane director’s showcase, and star-studded oddity. And it’s seriously badass.

Set in 2031, after chemical warfare has left the planet frozen and the amount of living humans desperately minimal, Snowpiercer unfolds like one giant set-piece. The apocalypse’s survivors are stuffed into the eponymous train, a massive locomotive that zooms around the icy landscape on a path to nowhere. In its front section, the rich and privileged live luxuriously, eating high-end sushi, partying like drunken Manhattanites on New Year’s Eve, and constantly under the protection of armed guards and soldiers. Why the security? Because the train’s other three sections house its prisoners, its sick inhabitants, and tail’s dirty, mistreated have-nots.

Once Evans and his crew engage in brutal combat, Snowpiercer’s lunacy kicks into full gear, and the ensuing film is less about cohesion and more for those who enjoy loudly saying “Damn!” while watching a movie. The film’s tone dizzyingly shifts to the point of bewilderment, volleying back and forth from gritty realism to hyper-stylized violence and vibrantly staged yet dark comedy, sometimes the latter two happening at the same time.

Tilda Swinton has some of the film’s best lines: “My friend, you suffer from the misplaced optimism of the doomed,” she says in one scene, relishing the wild material she’s been given. Elsewhere, Chris Evans keeps a straight face and his maintains his character’s steeliness as he delivers three sentences you’ll never hear in a Marvel movie: “You know what I hate about myself? I know what people taste like. I know that babies taste best.” That, keep in mind, coming in the same movie where he’s lodging an ax into dudes’ skulls. Chris Evans, much like Tilda Swinton and Bong Joon-Ho, understands that not all movies need to be tidy. In Snowpiercer’s case, the filmmakers’ sense of messy ambition is a badge of honor. —Matt Barone

27.Wild

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée

Stars: Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, W. Earl Brown, Gaby Hoffman, Kevin Rankin, Michiel Huisman, Charles Baker

Reminder: Reese Witherspoon can be a great actress. She just needs material that isn’t rom-com drivel (This Means War) or vanity projects for lesser and more desperate talents (Four Christmases, with Vince “King of the Fall-Off” Vaughn).

In Wild, Witherspoon found the perfect role to reclaim her position among Hollywood’s elite. Essentially a one-woman showcase, it’s the real-life story of Cheryl Strayed, a self-destructive woman who curbed her drug/alcohol vices, sexual philandering, and grief over her mother’s death by walking more than a thousand miles across the Pacific Crest Trail. Fortunately, director Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club) doesn’t take an extended smoke break and let the camera follow Witherspoon around on foot; seamlessly mixing in dreamlike flashbacks, he presents the emotional and quietly hard-hitting Wild as a cathartic cleansing.

Whether the Wild team realized it or not, the catharsis is as much for Witherspoon—2014’s answer to last year’s McConaissance comeback—as it is for the big-screen Strayed. —Matt Barone

26.The Raid 2

Director: Gareth Huw Evans

Stars: Iko Uwais, Arifin Putra, Oka Antara, Tio Pakusadewo, Alex Abbad, Julie Estelle, Ryuhei Matsuda, Kenichi Endo, Kazuki Kitamura

Nearly two-and-a-half-hours' worth of adrenaline, dizzyingly choreographed fights, and more brutal nihilism than Rust Cohle with two six-packs in him, The Raid 2 pushes the action genre to levels other filmmakers never attempt, and with a smaller budget.

Like its predecessor, The Raid: Redemption (2012), Gareth Huw Evans’ follow-up is an aesthetics first, narrative second attraction, but the filmmaker is definitely maturing as a storyteller. Picking up immediately after Redemption, The Raid 2 sends rookie cop Rama (Iko Uwais, who deserves to be a worldwide, A-list action star by now) undercover in prison to infiltrate a powerful, ruthless crime ring, and, further echoing its Internal Affairs/The Departed influences, he gets in way too deep.

A sprawling crime saga with numerous key characters, twists, and complicated relationships, The Raid 2 shows that Evans has the desire to be seen as more than a grandmaster of eye-bashing action. —Matt Barone

25.The Double

Director: Richard Ayoade

Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn, Noah Taylor, Yasmin Paige, James Fox

A loose adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1846 novella, Richard Ayoade’s sophomore feature—the follow-up to his 2010 debut Submarine—is the best Terry Gilliam movie (i.e., Brazil, 12 Monkeys) the former Monty Python member never made. Funny, surreal, and impressively otherworldly without any sci-fi visual trickery, The Double places viewers into a heightened reality that can be described as an urbanized remodeling of the industrial setting seen in David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977), right down to the constant horns that blare from off-camera, as if Ayoade’s film takes place in the town neighboring Eraserhead’s location.

The script, co-written by Ayoade and Avi Korine, is a shrewd comedy of epic fails experienced by Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg, his neurotic drollness utilized perfectly here). He’s a cubicle dweller who wouldn’t be out of place in Office Space; his co-workers rarely acknowledge his existence, beginning with the security guard who makes him sign in everyday and acts like he’s never seen Simon before, even though Simon’s worked there for five years. Par for the course, there’s a pretty girl in his office (played by Mia Wasikowska) whom Simon adores but can’t be bothered by his awkward attempts at conversation. His lack of identity takes a wild turn when new employee James Simon (also Eisenberg) shows up one day looking like Simon's clone, because, well, in a way, he is.

The British accents of Simon’s colleagues imply that The Double takes place somewhere in England, but, really, who cares? Though it resembles our reality, the world in which Simon aimlessly drifts around feels not of this universe, in the best ways. The streets are fog-cloaked and eerily vacant at all times. The commercials and shows Simon watches on his rinky-dink television have the aesthetics of brainwash propaganda made in the 1980s. The office building where he works is part factory and part prison-like nest of long-running bars and corridors. If not for the sharp, purposely mean-spirited comedy, The Double would qualify as an existentialist horror flick. —Matt Barone

24.Big Hero 6

Directors: Don Hall, Chris Williams

Stars: Ryan Potter, Scott Adsit, T.J. Miller, Jamie Chung, Damon Wayans, Jr., Genesis Rodriguez, James Cromwell, Daniel Henney, Maya Rudolph, Alan Tudyk

Sure, Big Hero 6 is about a group of kids who rally around an oversized balloon figure to avenge the death of the main character's brother, but it's really about family. And if Boyhood didn't exist, it might be 2014's best movie on the subject.

The relationship that develops between Hiro and the aforementioned latex balloon, Baymax (Top Five Movie Character of 2014), is remarkably touching and deep. Hiro runs through the gamut of emotions—true despair, anger, vengeance, and acceptance—after losing his older brother and mentor in a fire while Baymax, technically an inflatable health care robot, helps him process it all. That adorable ball of air is both there as a shoulder for Hiro to cry on and as a weapon of mass destruction. And he's somehow the perfect guidance counselor for teaching kids (and adults) how to deal with grief.

But Big Hero 6 is also a superhero origin story (seriously, Big Hero 6 are another version of the Guardians of the Galaxy), and in that capacity, it does an impressive job of establishing its own world with fleshed out villains and settings—the city of San Fransokyo, where the movie takes place, is a clever, whimsical hybrid of two vivid metropolises, a perfect representation of the movie as a whole. The first-stab successes of Big Hero 6 suggest a franchise ripe for sequels, and that's a great thing. I can't see Baymax's fist-bump enough. —Andrew Gruttadaro

23.John Wick

Director: Chad Stahelski

Stars: Keanu Reeves, Adrianne Palicki, Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Bridget Moynahan, Dean Winters

Balletic. That's the only way to describe the simply gorgeous action choreography on display in this overall gorgeous film, easily the best action flick of the year (in the U.S. anyway—what up, The Raid 2?). John Wick knows exactly what it is and what it's going for—it might be the most fun, self-assured B-movie crime thriller since Running Scared. (RIP to Paul Walker.)

Keanu Reeves, like the eponymous un-retired hitter he portrays here, is a man with a very specific set of skills. When those chops are used right, and amidst a world of colorful rogues gallery antagonists, you've got a straightforward winner more entertaining than any Liam Neeson vehicle. —Frazier Tharpe

22.Whiplash

Director: Damien Chazelle

Stars: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Meliss Benoist, Austin Stowell, Paul Reiser, Jayson Blair

Forget about Fury, Unbroken, and American Sniper. The year’s best war movie has nothing to do with battlefields, automatic weapons, or tanks—it’s about a jazz drummer battling against a militant conservatory conductor, and it’s the peak of intensity.

A showcase for two remarkable performances, Whiplash is no-frills indie filmmaking at its best. Miles Teller, one of the best actors of his twenty-something generation, plays the Private Pyle to J.K. Simmons’ Sgt. Hartman. Whiplash, in other words, is the Full Metal Jacket of music-based dramas, a blistering and taut look at how far ambition will take you, even as you head straight into the clutches of a borderline sociopathic mentor. A scene in which Teller drums endlessly and ferociously as Simmons angrily berates him is a frontline assault on your nerves.

The most impressive thing about Whiplash, its stellar acting aside, is the fact that it’s directed by a relative behind-the-camera newcomer. A former high school jazz drummer, the 29-year-old Damien Chazelle knows Teller’s character’s internal landscape in and out, and it shows. Whiplash is a minefield of raw emotion and dangerous aspirations. —Matt Barone

21.Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Director: Matt Reeves

Stars: Jason Clarke, Andy Serkis, Keri Russell, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Kirk Acevedo, Toby Kebbell, Judy Greer, Nick Thurston

This is what all summer movies should be like.

Matt Reeves, who previously directed Cloverfield and the excellent horror remake Let Me In, is at the helm of a long-intelligent franchise, a Planet of the Apes brand that, after having been tarnished by Tim Burton and his embarrassingly idiotic 2001 reboot, was given new life with 2011’s unexpectedly stellar summer hit Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Sans James Franco, Reeves had a strong foundation to work with for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, bringing back performance-capture king Andy Serkis’ evolved ape Caesar 10 years after Simian flu wiped out all humans except the few with natural-born immunity. But Reeves and co. exceeded all expectations

Largely set within the Caesar-led ape community, Dawn is an emotionally charged character piece in which the characters also happen to be motion-captured, computer-rendered animals. The beauty of the Apes franchise, though, is that the animals are no different from the humans, and vice versa; now that he has a family, including a teenage son named Blue Eyes, Caesar’s no longer an ape grappling with humanity—he’s a father and a protector, and Reeves devotes plenty of time to establishing Caesar’s human-like troubles. Reeves pays similar attention to Caesar’s rebellious righthand man, Koba (played brilliantly by Toby Kebbell), an ape whose seething dislike for humans comes from a life spent being tortured and tested upon by them before the collapse.

A complex character with justifiable motivations and shades of empathy, Koba isn’t exactly a villain, nor are any of the film’s flesh-and-blood survivors, who inadvertently disrupt the apes’ woodland existence and trigger a "Can these two communities love together peacefully?" conflict.

All of this talk about emotions and characters isn’t what you’d expect from a big summer movie, is it? An art-house drama disguised as FX-heavy escapism, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is as visually remarkable as it is narratively sound. Serkis and his fellow Ape actors are at peak authenticity, while WETA Digital—Peter Jackson’s effects company responsible for bringing Apesto life—raise the bar for big-screen pageantry. —Matt Barone

20.Ida

Director: Pawel Pawlikoski

Stars: Agata Trzebuchowska, Agata Kulesza, Joanna Kulig, Dawid Ogrodnik, Adam Szyskowski, Jerzy Trela

Most movies purposefully make you ignore the formal decisions. The effects of editing, sound mixing, cinematography should be near subliminal. Your pulse may race, or you might cry, but you don’t think about the technical mechanics that helped earn that response.

Ida doesn’t do that. Pawel Pawlikoski's film is as much about composition as it is about a young woman who finds out that she’s Jewish during a road trip with her aunt, a Holocaust survivor (which is technically what the story is). You will think about camera placement the entire time the story unfolds, and that’s good and right. Because camera placement contains meaning, and the images in Ida are some of the most beautiful of the year. —Ross Scarano

19.Dear White People

Director: Justin Simien

Stars: Tessa Thompson, Tyler James Williams, Marque Richardson, Teyonah Parris, Dennis Haysbert, Kyle Gallner, Brittany Curran, Malcolm Barrett, Brandon P. Bell, Justin Dobies

Hollywood is pretty whitewashed. We all know this. Films that are centered on the lives of African Americans don't come around very often, and when they do they tend to look the same. That's why Justin Simien's Dear White People is so refreshing. It not only skillfully addresses issues of race in 2014, but manages to do so without being heavy-handed or trite. The world that Simien creates on the well-manicured lawns of Winchester University may be fictional, but it perfectly encapsulates how low-key racism has become the American standard.

Simien uses satire to get his point across; make no mistake about it, though—this isn't a comedy. It's a serious film worthy of its $4 million in domestic ticket sales and then some. The key to its success is the fact that this isn't a black movie about black students written for a black audience. Dear White People is a film about how we deal with cultural difference in the age of the Internet. No other film this year was so daring in its attempt to address race relations and how difficult it can be to navigate those waters today. —Lauretta Charlton

18.Nightcrawler

Director: Dan Gilroy

Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, Bill Paxton, Kevin Rahm

Blood might be an acquired taste, but Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler is building an empire on his lust for it.

Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a scavenger who makes a living from stealing and selling scraps. That is, until he finds his true calling off of a dark Los Angeles road where a car has been in an accident. Bloom watches a freelance film crew record the scene as responders rescue the victims, so they can sell the footage to whichever news station is willing to pay the most for it. He sets out to start his own run-and-gun camera service and hires money-starved Rick (Riz Ahmed) to be his partner. Bloom quickly discovers that the more horrific the video, the more news stations are willing to pay. He forms a relationship with local TV news director, Nina (Rene Russo), who is in need of content to quell her audience's thirst for grisly video, and, in turn, earn ratings. It's a tag-team formed out of desperation.

Nightcrawler follows Bloom's transition from vulture to nocturnal predator. Gyllanhaal is dark, eerie, and thrilling. He goes to extreme lengths portraying Bloom: He injured himself while breaking a mirror on set, and lost nearly 30 pounds to give Bloom sunken-in cheeks and eyes. This gives him a bat-like appearance. Director Dan Gilroy​ has beautifully shot the streets of Los Angeles that Bloom lurks. The glistening night scenes and the roar of muscle cars are reminiscent to Nicolas Winding Refn​'s 2011 film Drive.​

Gyllanhaal and Gilroy take us on a chilling ride that not only lets us into the world of a sinister character, but into the world that allows for this character to become successful, even celebrated. That world—one that yearns for footage of shocking events and filled with people ready to supply it—is not unlike our own. —Jason Duaine Hahn

17.Neighbors

Director: Nicholas Stoller

Stars: Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron, Dave Franco, Ike Barinholtz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jerrod Carmichael, Lisa Kudrow, Carla Gallo

First, the bad news: Despite all of the Sony hack news breaks and North Korea’s ire, The Interview—Seth Rogen’s second co-directing effort with buddy Evan Goldberg—is a disappointing dud. It’s a misfire populated by stale cameos, flat jokes, and an overall sense of unevenness. Thus, 2014 would’ve have been a rough year for Rogen, if not for the hilarious, live-wire comedy Neighbors.

Though Knocked Up gives it some healthy competition, Neighbors is the funniest Seth-Rogen-as-lead movie yet. Its raucousness, though, comes largely from everyone who’s around him. Rogen is, more or less, the film’s Jason Bateman-like straight man, letting cast-against-type co-stars Zac Efron (as a dim-witted frat bro) and Rose Byrne (Neighbors’ M.V.P., playing Rogen’s smart, assertive wife) anchor its raunchy and kinetic energy.

Byrne’s co-M.V.P. is director Nicholas Stoller, whose bold decision to infuse Enter the Void visual influences into a broad studio comedy give Neighbors a slick, sneaky artistic edge. In other words, exactly what The Interview lacks. —Matt Barone

16.Enemy

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Sarah Gadon, Melanie Laurent, Isabella Rossellini

The first time you watch Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy, you’re left bewildered. A puzzle piece not unlike David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, it’s oblique, creepy, and punctuated by abnormally large spiders that show up randomly and crawl into your nightmares. That first viewing is a sensory experience, in which the overpowering mood Villeneuve sets gives star Jake Gyllenhaal free reign to give his best, most complicated performance yet. Gyllenhaal plays two characters: an introverted and unhappy college professor and his suave doppelgänger, a struggling thespian who spends more time womanizing than he does acting.

The second time through Enemy, though, is the revelatory one, and the film’s mystifying nature clarifies itself with each viewing after that. The more you sit with Gyllenhaal’s weirdest movie since Donnie Darko, the clearer its themes become. Through visual disorientation, a fractured reality, and that creepy-crawly imagery, Enemy provides a dark and fascinating look at man’s fear of commitment and domestication. —Matt Barone

15.Gone Girl

Director: David Fincher

Stars: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon, Neil Patrick Harris, Patrick Fugit, Kim Dickens, Casey Wilson, Missi Pyle, Emily Ratajkowski, Sela Ward, Scoot McNairy, Boyd Holbrook, Lola Kirke

Your feelings towards author Gillian Flynn's book are irrelevant. In lesser hands, Flynn's tightly-wound thriller/dissertation on the mechanics of the modern-day couple could've played as a Lifetime-lite movie on the silver screen. Instead, it's the pop drama of the year, the flick that's good for both awards groups and the Friday night moviegoers who call the Oscars overrated.

Reports of the resurgent Ben Affleck are old news at this point—a handsome douchebag who gets less sympathetic as the search for his wife wears on? Of course he aces it. The real revelation is Rosamund Pike, who puts a deliciously batshit twist on her shoulders and carries the movie's back half into the all-time pantheon. (To say nothing of Tyler Perry's surprisingly fun and essential defense attorney.) There were better movies this year, sure, but I can't remember the last time I instantly knew a scene would endure as classic while I was watching it. Such a scene happens in Gone Girl. You'll know when you see it (if you haven't already).

This is the sleek, sexy, proudly R-rated movie this generation needed. And, to a lesser extent, that director David Fincher—in the wake of the just okay The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo—needed, too. One time for the Cool Girl™. —Frazier Tharpe

14.A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Director: Ana Lily Amirpour

Stars: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Manesh, Mozhan Marno, Dominic Rains, Rome Shadanloo

Light on dialogue and heavy on atmosphere, first-time writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is the most exciting new bloodsucker movie since Jim Mickle’s Stake Land (2011). The Farsi-language film hinges on an enigmatic but quietly emotive character named The Girl (Sheila Vand), a silent film transplant marauding around the fictional "Bad City" and drinking the blood of bad people, operating with a quasi-Dexter agenda. The Girl’s tough-chick posturing softens when she meets the kind-hearted Arash (Arash Marandi), a James Dean look-alike who’s dressed in a Dracula costume when they first cross paths. He’s a good dude mixed up with a drug dealer in an effort to help his junkie father, and through The Girl he finds an unlikely salvation.

Amirpour tells a familiar love story in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, but the film never feels ordinary. With its stark, gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, it’s the best Jim Jarmusch vampire movie ever made, feeling like something from his Stranger Than Paradise period, if Jarmusch hadn’t just made the equally sublime Only Lovers Left Alive. The mood here, though, oozes cool. Amirpour accentuates A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night’s alt-hip vibe by off-setting various tracks from Iranian rock bands with White Lies’ “Death,” placing her film’s tone somewhere in between a darker Rock ’n’ Roll High School and the retro sonic appeal of Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night couldn’t have been made by anyone other than Amirpour. Recent, inferior vamp properties like Twilight and NBC’s Dracula were soullessly manufactured and disposable, overseen by corporations to satiate audiences who couldn’t care less about ingenuity. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night has none of that interference—it’s exactly the film Amirpour wanted to make. Your enjoyment of it will depend on whether or not you’re able to get on her antithetical wavelength. Open minds are required. —Matt Barone

13.Edge of Tomorrow

Director: Doug Liman

Stars: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson

You'd think Tom Cruise's marketing people could get their shit together enough to promote one of the year's best action movies, but at three titles—All You Need is Kill, Edge of Tomorrow, Live Die Repeat—and counting, they missed the boat. Luckily, word of mouth has been great, and people have finally come around to this excellently executed sci-fi smash in time for its home video release. But while the branding may have been contentious and confusing, everyone involved seems to know exactly what an audience wants to see: Tom Cruise getting shot, blown-up, smashed, squashed, stabbed, and otherwise eviscerated in every way imaginable.

The plot is video-game simple. Aliens have invaded earth and things aren't going well. Just when it looks like humans are going to be wiped out once and for all, Tom Cruise's character Major Cage discovers the ability to "reset" when he dies. In so doing he can relive the same battle (and same day) over and over again until he wins. It's like Groundhog Day with tentacled alien invaders and state-of-the-art special effects. The fact that Cruise also plays a total jerk just makes it better to watch him get whacked ad nauseum—it's a genius PR stunt that totally pays off. Also great is Emily Blunt playing a Sergeant fighting alongside Cruise. Blunt plays Rita Vrataski with such intensity it's no trouble buying that she's a battle-hardened badass (that fact that she's inhumanly ripped just adds to the believability).

See Edge of Tomorrow. Then see it again. —Nathan Reese

12.The LEGO Movie

Directors: Phil Lord, Chris Miller

Stars: Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Nick Offerman, Charlie Day, Alison Brie, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Cobie Smulders, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson

When the idea of a “LEGO Movie” first hit the internet, most people were confused. Would it be a tutorial? Would it be poorly animated LEGO people just living the life? No. Instead, the film was this: a seriously deep lesson on how you can be awesome if you';re yourself, and you try your hardest. And it wasn't poorly animated.

Anyone who's ever played a LEGO video game can attest to the weirdly enjoyable experience. It should be bad. It should just be a pretty easy buck to earn from children of the middle class, who's parents have a little extra cash and little less love to throw around. “Oh, LEGO Harry Potter? That's good, safe, clean fun where we don't have to watch you and mommy can drink until you finish the game!”

But The LEGO Movie is actually fantastic. It has all your favorite characters, because LEGO has the rights to them (Batman, Wonder Woman, the Lord of the Rings wizard, Shaq) and even features the classic LEGO pieces you grew up playing with. That is to say, it proves to be a nostalgic adventure for the older crowd forced to take their children and the adult-kids who never really grew up.

The LEGO Movie is hilarious in an entirely earnest way that's hard to explain. Considering it's led by Chris Pratt of Parks and Recreation fame, allow us to explain it this way: it's the Andy Dwyer of movies. It has jokes for the adults in the audience, but never jokes that would make kids feel bad about not being able to catch on, and it provides an inspirational message at the end. Be who you are, and people will love you. —Hope Schreiber

11.Nymphomaniac

Director: Lars von Trier

Stars: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell, Uma Thurman, Willem Dafoe, Mia Goth, Sophie, Kennedy Clark, Connie Nielsen, Michaël Pas, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier

"I trusted Lars implicitly because his worst shit is better than dreams of my best shit," said Shia LaBeouf in an interview about working on Nymphomaniac. "He's our Tarkovsky." Both statements are very true, but this comparison is particularly accurate when it comes to Nymphomaniac. The mood of this film is quiet and contemplative, masking the chaos that hides just underneath the surface. Think Solaris, or Nostalghia. These are films that take their precious time, and they are better off because of it.

In the same interview, LaBeouf also points out that landing the role of Jerôme was not easy. In von Trier's world, the center of the universe is always a woman, men are afterthoughts, and his preoccupation with the machinations​ of the female mind is well known. But in this film, von Trier outdoes himself. He examines Joe's (Charlotte Gainsbourg​) life with such precision that it's sometimes too painful to watch. And unlike his two previous films—Melancholia and Antichrist—Nymphomaniac feels like less of a fantastical exaggeration of the darkness that sometimes inspires the female mind and more of a case study of what happens when a woman allows lust and jealousy to reach their full potential. It's empowering to succumb to carnal desires, but nature, a recurring theme in all of von Trier's movies, has a way of bringing us to our knees. Whether or not Joe is a modern day Whore of Babylon or a saint, her story resonates more powerfully than any female character in film introduced to audiences this year.

​Not many directors have spent so much time dissecting the female psyche like a surgeon, but one could argue that von Trier has devoted his entire oeuvre​ to just that. If that is true, then Nymphomaniac is his crowning achievement​, his Andrei Rublev.​ —​Lauretta Charlton

10.Guardians of the Galaxy

Director: James Gunn

Stars: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Lee Pace, Karen Gillan, Michael Rooker, Djimon Hounsou, John C. Reilly, Glenn Close, Benicio del Toro

Guardians of the Galaxy was the most fun I had in a movie theater this year. It's not the best movie of the year, nor is it the best Marvel movie (that's still probably Spider-Man 2). It's just a film that's nearly impossible not to love.

Chris Pratt's move from Parks and Rec's schlubby goofball to the inhumanly buff Star Lord was the most seamless transition we never saw coming. The guy absolutely kills it, playing the character with a combination of goofball charm and Harrison Ford-esque swagger that's both campy, cocky, and cool all at once. (Imagine a combination of Harrison Ford and Seth Rogen that doesn't suck.) But it's not just Pratt that makes the movie kick so damn hard. From the '70s cassette jams to the amazing physical effects and the supporting cast, including Glenn Close and Michael Rooker (you know, Daryl Dixon's brother), it's all pitch-perfect.

I have a friend who disliked the scene where Star Lord and Gamora (Zoe Saldana) float around in space until I showed him Jack Kirby's Cosmic Comics; then, he said, "Oh, so that's what they're doing!" James Gunn knows what the fuck is up. Movies are here to entertain us and, pound for pound, minute for minute, nothing was more entertaining that Guardians this year. —Nathan Reese

9.Only Lovers Left Alive

Director: Jim Jarmusch

Stars: Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Anton Yelchin, Mia Wasikowska, Jeffrey Wright

Is it enough for a movie to get by on "cool" alone? Yes. Definitely. Jim Jarmusch’s hipster vampire mood board is powered by cool in the form of: Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Jeffrey Wright, Detroit, drone metal, old soul records, literature, rare guitars, sadness, travel, blood. The experience is akin to a long soak in a warm bath—you don’t want to leave the very specific, hermetically sealed environment that Jarmusch creates for his stars to lounge in.

Swinton and Hiddleston, both looking like milk, are hip and weary, well-read and fond of crackling vinyl. They’ve been in love for ages, have liked everything you like for ages, and it’s alternatively awe-inspiring and chuckle worthy. Vampires—the original hipsters. Somehow, Twilight glossed over this. Lame. —Ross Scarano

8.Starred Up

Director: David Mackenzie

Stars: Jack O'Connell, Ben Mendelsohn, Rupert Friend, Sam Spruell, Anthony Welsh, David Ajala

Sometimes greatness is just the ability to perform something complicated in as few moves as possible. On screen, at the movies, this can take many forms: It can be a particular gesture deployed by an actor, a tight line of dialogue, a clarifying edit, a sudden camera movement.

There are so many moments of greatness in the incarcerated-father-meets-incarcerated-son prison drama Starred Up, it doesn’t make sense to catalog them here. But here's a single moment: In a matter of seconds, and via only meaningful glances and the placement of one man’s hand, Eric Love (Jack O’Connell—amazing) realizes that his father, Neville Love (Ben Mendelsohn—also amazing), is romantically involved with a man. There’s one line of dialogue from Neville that’s too perfect to repeat here, and that’s it.

This is what brilliant filmmaking looks like. —Ross Scarano

7.The Grand Budapest Hotel

Director: Wes Anderson

Stars: Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Edward Norton, Mathieu Amalric, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Léa Seydoux, Jeff Goldblum, Jason Schwartzman, Jude Law, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Tony Revolori

It's always seemed like there were two versions of Wes Anderson vying for supremacy. The first was interested in people—he's the guy who wrote Rushmore and the scenes between Margot and Richie in The Royal Tenenbaums. This Wes Anderson probably peaked with Natalie Portman's "If we fuck I'm gonna feel like shit tomorrow" line in Hotel Chevalier or, possibly, the beach camping sequence in Moonrise Kingdom.

The other Wes Anderson is interested in things. This is the Wes Anderson who directed The Life Aquatic and most of The Darjeeling Limited (minus the bathroom sex scene with Jason Schwartzman and Amara Karan). This second Anderson is more interested in building models, perfecting camera angles, and partnering with designer luggage brands.

I like both Wes Andersons, but I prefer the former. Luckily, it seems we may no longer have to choose.

The Grand Budapest Hotel displays both sides working together in a way we've never quite seen. He's gone all in with his dollhouse instincts, creating a hotel with the same intricacy he applied to The Life Aquatic's submarine. But though the film may not show the Anderson at his most raw, the characters are still easy to dig into. In particular the relationship between Monsieur Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes) and Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori) is wonderfully heartfelt and brightly drawn.

There's also a newfound energy to the film that points to a third Anderson that we haven't quite seen. Running with the madcap comedy of The Fantastic Mr. Fox and the mayhem of Aquatic's pirate rescues and pushing them to eleven, the movie's second half is go-for-broke insanity in the best way possible. The resulting set pieces are often jaw dropping, with the ski sequence and prison escape marvels to behold. Rather than be hemmed in by this tidier impulses or weighed down by ennui, he opts for upping the intensity all around. It's a style that fits Anderson better than any designer suit fits a hotelier. —Nathan Reese

6.Selma

Director: Ava DuVernay

Stars: David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, Tim Roth, Colman Domingo, Wendell Pierce, Common, Stephan James, Tessa Thompson, Keith Stanfield, Oprah Winfrey, Andre Holland, Lorraine Toussaint, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Dylan Baker, Stephen Root, Giovanni Ribisi, Martin Sheen

The synergy between Selma and current national news headlines is unbelievably perfect. A rousing and sensitive look at the Civil Rights Movement and how it gave voices to segregated minorities, it’s a film that should be required viewing for every protestor who’s seething about the deaths—and subsequent lack of grand jury involvement—of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Beyond that, though, Selma is just a remarkable piece of filmmaking. Its timeliness is simply a bonus, albeit a profound and necessary one.

Ostensibly a Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic (fueled by British actor’s David Oyelowo’s tremendous performance as King), Selma uses MLK’s efforts to get the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed as a lynchpin to explore a variety of themes and issues. It’s a frank look at who Martin Luther King was, the normal, everyday husband and father who harbored powerful insecurities and didn’t completely do right by his wife, Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejogo); a visceral examination of the intense levels of police brutality and intolerance that hindered southern blacks’ hopes of achieving equality; and bold, tender evidence that the #EricGarner protests of today aren’t much different than what happened in Selma, Ala., back in the ‘60s.

The driving force behind Selma is director Ava DuVernay, an indie darling turned awards season contender. She’s the first black woman to ever receive a Golden Globe nomination for directing, and, if justice is served, she’ll be the first to get an Oscar nod, too. DuVernay’s previous films, I Will Follow (2010) and Middle of Nowhere (2012), were stripped-down character studies that packed emotional uppercuts—with the magnificent Selma, she’s applied that same small-scale intimacy to what could’ve been a sprawling and stodgy biopic. It’s one of 2014’s greatest accomplishments in any medium. —Matt Barone

5.The Babadook

Director: Jennifer Kent

Stars: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall, Hayley McElhinney, Barbara West

Everything that Haley Mlotek wrote about Obvious Child that I quoted in that film’s blurb, the stuff about how “what happens between women now is the most interesting thing in the world because it’s the least described”? That’s also true of The Babadook, a movie that uses horror to explore one mother’s grief and frustration with her difficult child.

It makes sense that a genre movie would pose questions that are so troubling: What happens when you want to harm your child? When your child does something that is so impossible to love, what if you want to do something terrible? This territory is so scary, it would have to be relegated to the margins of genre. It’s also, you know, a really scary movie for other reasons. Like the monster. —Ross Scarano

4.Citizenfour

Director: Laura Poitras

​Stars: Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras

Director Laura Poitras' documentary about the early stages of ex-NSA contractor and whistleblower​ Edward Snowden's crusade to leak classified government documents is one of the most significant films of 2014—not only because it builds tension like any thriller of the past year, but because of its historical weight.

The film follows Poitras and then-Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald on their journey to meet Snowden, a man they only knew by the code name "Citizenfour,​" in an inconspicuous hotel in Hong Kong. Once there, Snowden shows the two journalists files that detailed the wide-range of secret systems the government uses to spy on citizens and foreigners since the Bush administration.

The film does a great job of describing the details of the surveillance systems, and what they mean for the everyday citizen. Instead of relying on cutaway infographics to explain technological jargon, Poitras lets the articulate​ Snowden do the talking. This is a film you can sit down and show your parents, and they'll understand it as long as they're familiar with smartphones or the Internet.​ Poitras, though she's very much a part of the event, doesn't ever place herself in front of the camera. Instead, she focuses on Greenwald and Snowden's many conversations, and on the intimate moments Snowden has while couped up in his hotel room where he is for most of the film. Gone are the Russian propaganda videos and thinkpieces. This is Snowden at his most vulnerable—cautious about every key typed and every word spoken, changing the course of history while in his pajamas.

And if you think you know everything about the leaks, there's a twist at the end of the film that shocks even Snowden himself. —Jason Duaine Hahn

3.Under the Skin

Director: Jonathan Glazer

Stars: Scarlett Johansson

It would be kind of accurate, if uncharitable, to describe Under the Skin as two hours of Scarlett Johansson driving around in a van. Then again, Scarlett Johansson doing just about anything is all you need to get me interested in a movie. The fact that she also plays an alien seducing (and consuming?) unsuspecting men is also a great hook, but neither description captures the uncanny wonder that is Under the Skin.

More Solaris than Species, Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Birth) has created a masterpiece of raw atmosphere and stunning cinematography. The dialogue may be as spare as the Scottish countryside where it's set, but the long silences and surreal set pieces are stitched together like an eerie dream. While Glazer's done visually arresting work for years (just look at his video for Radiohead's "Street Spirit (Fade Out)"), the effects he employs in Under the Skin aren't like anything we've ever seen before.

As gorgeously frightening as film's oily effects are, though, it's Johansson's magnetic performance that anchors the film. Both human and alien, terrifying and sad, she grabs us with the same gaze with which she entrances her unwitting victims. Once she makes eye contact, it's impossible to look away. —Nathan Reese

2.Boyhood

Director: Richard Linklater

Stars: Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Lorelei Linklater

Think about your childhood. Think about the way all those years just kind of floated by—one day you were riding your Huffy (with shocks and pegs, obviously), the next you were putting a down payment on your first house. Time is a blur that way. It's something that's constantly exacting its power on us, only we don't realize it until after the fact. All we're left with are reminders—tiny moments from the past that stand out, initially unremarkable moments that end up taking on inexplicable meaning.

I've never seen a movie lay out this encompassing sense of life better than Boyhood.

Director Richard Linklater's 11-year filmmaking excursion has been lauded for its ingenuity almost to the point of hyperbole by now, which kind of sucks, because what's so great about the movie is how it doesn't focus on highlights or spectacles. It's more concerned with the regularness of life, or, rather, the feeling of regularness in life. Things obviously happen to the main character, Mason (Ellar Coltrane), in between ages 6 and 18, but they don't resonate as Important Moments, perhaps the way they would in a lesser movie. That's what makes Boyhood so relatable, and in turn, so emotional. As Patricia Arquette's character says towards the end of the movie, "My life is just gonna go, like that! This series of milestones ... You know what's next? It's my fucking funeral!"

Boyhood, like life, just goes. —Andrew Gruttadaro

1.Inherent Vice

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Katherine Waterston, Benicio del Toro, Owen Wilson, Martin Short, Jena Malone, Maya Rudolph, Joanna Newsom, Eric Roberts, Sasha Pieterse, Elaine Tan, Michael K. Williams, Serena Scott Thomas, Timothy Simons

If detective Philip Marlowe were a loveable, recovering crack addict, he still wouldn’t be as entertaining and insane as Larry “Doc” Sportello, the private eye in Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 novel Inherent Vice, now brought to you in a glorious new adaptation directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. This is the first time any Pynchon novel has been turned into a film, and Anderson does not disappoint, faithfully capturing the schizophrenia, the mayhem, the drugs, the sex, the politics, the crime, and the violence of Los Angeles in the 1970s.

But this isn’t an adaptation in the same way that the Coen Brothers adapt, say, a Cormac McCarthy book, or even in the way that Howard Hawks treated Raymond Chandler. You can’t just recreate the kind of world that Pynchon, one of the most notoriously reclusive American writers in history​, spins out in his post-modern novels. “I approached it in the most straightforward but laborious way I could come up with,” Anderson told NPR Fresh Air this month. “I transcribed the dialogue.”

That’s right. Anderson literally had to retype the book in order to get to know it well enough to turn this far-out stoner-noir into a movie. It also helped to enlist an all-star cast to act out the gags and spoofs that characterize the zany and hilarious universe in which Doc (Joaquin Phoenix​) operates. In other words, even if you’re too stoned to really follow the plot, there are plenty of laughs to be had while watching.

When you look at Anderson’s work—​notably, There Will Be Blood, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, and The Master—​it’s hard determine which is his best film. Whether or not Inherent Vice deserves that title is up for debate, but there’s no question that it's one of his most ambitious projects. It’s circuitous, chaotic, and often times it feels like you’re watching complete nonsense, albeit in picturesque 35 millimeter.

The takeaway is this: Inherent Vice turns what was once considered to be impossible into something that's uniquely alive. “I remember thinking, I don’t know how to do this," said Anderson. "But really thinking, I’ve got to figure out how to do this.” It’s a very good thing that he did. —​Lauretta Charlton