The Grand Budapest Hotel
On Sunday, this website started a countdown of the top 85 most acclaimed films of 2014, according to the vast number of critics' year-end top-ten lists that were published in the past month, by revealing the films that placed at numbers 31 through 85. Today, the countdown comes to a close, with the reveal of the top 30.
30. WILD (dir: Jean-Marc Vallee)
140.5 points
Based on Cheryl Strayed's 2012 biographical novel, the movie stars Reese Witherspoon (in her most celebrated performance since Walk the Line) as a woman who decides she want to stop her self-destructive attitudes following the death of her mother and starts getting her life back together by setting out alone to hike the Pacific Crest Trail.
29. CALVARY (dir: John Michael McDonagh)
141 points
A film centering on the week in the life of an Irish priest (played by Brendon Gleeson in a career performance) living in a deeply cynical small town as he deals with a death threat from one of his parishioners. Besides Gleeson, this film features an array of terrific Irish actors, from Aidan Gillen and Domhnall Gleeson (who also appeared in this year's #53 film Frank) to Chris O'Dowd and Dylan Moran.
28. LEVIATHAN (dir: Andrey Zvyagintsev)
145 points
For the second straight year, a film titled Leviathan makes it onto the top 30 of the aggregate list. Last year, it was the experimental documentary from the duo of Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel. This year, it's the Russian black comedy from The Return director Andrey Zvyagintsev, which premiered back in Cannes and received the festival's award for Best Screenplay. A modern re-telling of the Book of Job, the story focuses on a family who fights with the local politicians over possession of an ocean-front property near the Bering Sea. The film was submitted as Russia's official entry in the Best Foreign Language category at the Oscars (which surprised many who saw it as a condemnation of the nation's current political regimes) and is considered one of the favorites to win.
27. THE IMITATION GAME (dir: Morten Tyldum)
149.5 points
Benedict Cumberbatch portrays Alan Turing, the famous British mathematician and computer scientist pioneer, as he works on a top-secret mission to help break the Nazi regime's famous enigma code during World War II. Keira Knightley also stars as one of Turing's chief co-workers in the mission, along with an ensemble that includes Matthew Goode, Mark Strong and Charles Dance.
26. WE ARE THE BEST! (dir: Lukas Moodysson)
161 points
A coming-of-age story centering on three young Swedish teenagers who decide to start a punk rock band in the early 1980s.
25. WINTER SLEEP (dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
162.5 points
With the running time of a whopping 196 minutes, Nuri Bilge Ceylan (director of Climates and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) presents what many consider to be his magnum opus, a beautifully shot Turkish film that takes precious time telling its story of class conflict, strained family relationships and power. Along with the aforementioned Leviathan, this film also premiered at Cannes 2014, where Ceylan went home with the festival's top prize: the Palme D'Or.
24. LOCKE (dir: Steven Knight)
174 points
Shot in only one setting (the inside of an automobile) and featuring only one actor on screen (Tom Hardy, with the other actors appearing only via telephone calls), the film focuses on one fateful night in the life of constructionist Ivan Locke as he attempts to drive to the birth of his illegitimate child while also breaking the birth news to his wife and instructing the preparations for an important concrete pour.
23. INTERSTELLAR (dir: Christopher Nolan)
180 points
Yet another ambitious sci-fi story from the mind behind Inception, this time starring Oscar winners Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway as NASA astronauts in the future who space travel across multiple universes and dimensions in an effort to save the human race from extinction. Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck and Nolan-favorite Michael Caine also star.
22. THE BABADOOK (dir: Jennifer Kent)
238 points
As the year's highest-rated horror film, The Babadook is about a single mother (Essie Davis) who must protect her son from evil forces that she believes came from a character in a book she found on her doorstep.
21. THE IMMIGRANT (dir: James Gray)
247.5 points
A newly arrived Polish immigrant named Ewa (played by Marion Cotillard) goes into prostitution for a pimp named Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix) in order to get her sick sister Magda (Angela Sarafyan) released from Ellis Island. The film also stars Jeremy Renner as the magician Emil, Bruno's cousin, who get entangled in a love triangle with Bruno and Ewa. Heading into the year, there were many people who worried that The Immigrant may not be released in theaters at all, as there were creative differences between director James Gray and producer Harvey Weinstein, who seemed to want to disown the movie altogether (rumors even swirled over the film possibly being available on VOD only). However, cooler heads prevailed, and the movie was eventually released to the delight of many critics (as seen by its high placement on the countdown).
20. FOXCATCHER (dir: Bennett Miller)
257.5 points
In one of the most feel-bad sports movies of all time, Capote and Moneyball director Bennett Miller tells the true story of the U.S. wrestling team Foxcatcher in the late 1980s, which centered around billionaire-with-mommy-issues John E. DuPont (played by Steve Carell) and Olympic gold medalist brothers Mark and Dave Schultz (played by Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo, respectively). The film has earned much acclaim for Carell, and for Miller the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival.
19. MR. TURNER (dir: Mike Leigh)
260 points
Timothy Spall (who received Best Actor for this role at Cannes) portrays the famous English painter J.M.W. Turner in the final years of his life, a time in his life which saw a decline in critical acclaim, the death of his father and a secret relationship with a seaside landlady named Sophia Booth (among other things). Marion Bailey also stars as Ms. Booth, with Dorothy Atkinson playing Hannah Darby, Turner's housekeeper. The film marks yet another lauded work in the filmography of British director Mike Leigh, who worked with cinematographer Dick Pope to make perhaps the most beautiful-looking film of the year.
18. FORCE MAJEURE (dir: Ruben Ostlund)
263 points
At a ski resort in the French alps, a well-off family staying at a ski resort gets in the middle of a controlled avalanche. The husband (Johannes Kuhnke) flees the scene alone, leaving his wife (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and two children in the middle of the avalanche. No one ends up getting hurt, but the impact on the family dynamic dramatically shifts for the rest of the trip.Considered by many to be like a Michael Haneke film but with a sense of humor, critics have praised Force Majeure for its examinations of topics like survival and the male ego.
17. THE LEGO MOVIE (dir: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller)
268 points
The year's highest-rated animated film, centered on a world created entirely out of Legos in which an average-looking man named Emmett (voiced by Chris Pratt) joins a team led by the wizard Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) that aim to stop the evil Lord Business (Will Ferrel) from taking over the entire world. Other voice actors in this films include Elizabeth Banks, Liam Neeson, Will Arnett, Charlie Day and Alison Brie.
16. CITIZEN FOUR (dir: Laura Poitras)
286.5 points
The year's highest-rated documentary, centering on the days leading up to and following the famous 2013 news leaks regarding the NSA and their legal wiretapping programs from whistleblower employee Edward Snowden.
15. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (dir: James Gunn)
288.5 points
It's a superhero film that not only won over the general moviegoing public (finishing 2014 as the year's highest-grossing flick at the box office), but critics as well. Chris Pratt continued his breakout year in movies that began with The LEGO Movie as Peter Quill, who joins a group of aliens (starring Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista and the voices of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel as the duo of Rocket Raccoon and Groot) to take an orb away from the villain Thanos in yet another adaptation from the Marvel comic books.
14. SNOWPIERCER (dir: Bong Joon-ho)
289 points
While the Guardians were able to win a battle against Thanos, it seems that they could not win the battle against this action flick set entirely in a train station (starring a cast that includes Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton), which narrowly edged Guardians of the Galaxy out in the countdown by only half-a-point.
13. TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT (dir: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne)
291 points
So, yeah, count Marion Cotillard among the list of actors who had a great 2014. Besides her performance in The Immigrant, which finally became available for the general public to see, the former Oscar winner also played the lead role for this drama from the respected Dardenne brothers (in a rare moment of star casting by the two) about a recently unemployed solar-panel factory worker who must convince her former co-workers to forego their €1,000 bonus in order to allow her to be brought back to the job.
12. GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE 3D (dir: Jean-Luc Godard)
320 points
Despite it being part of his sixth decade of filmmaking, the living cinematic legend that is Jean-Luc Godard continued to amaze critics in 2014 by finding a new way to make them awe, this time with a 70 minute feature about the relationship between a couple who find themselves further and further apart, a feature that was also the director's first film shot in three-dimensions. It is arguably the man's most acclaimed work in thirty years (earning such top honors as the National Society of Film Critics' award for Best Picture), with those who loved it praising its avant-garde story structure and calling its use of 3D revolutionary.
11. ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (dir: Jim Jarmusch)
322 points
Speaking of films starring Tilda Swinton, here is another film of hers on the 2014 poll, in which she stars alongside Tom Hiddleston as centuries-old vampires who decided to spend some time apart from one another. Mia Wasilowska, John Hurt and Jeffrey Wright also make up the film's cast.
10. INHERENT VICE (dir: Paul Thomas Anderson)
407.5 points
There aren't too many directors out there who you would consider to have had a down year by only placing tenth on an aggregate film poll. However, for a director like Paul Thomas Anderson, whose last two movies (There Will Be Blood and The Master) would've probably placed at the top three in such a list, you can argue that this is the case. Still, a tenth place spot for Anderson's adaptation of the 2009 Thomas Pynchon novel (an ensemble film led by Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin and Katherine Waterston) is not something worth feeling bad about, especially when considering the movie's mixed response as it came out (most liked it, although some criticized it for having a complicated storyline and languish pacing).
9. GONE GIRL (dir: David Fincher)
451.5 points
A good book adaptation + good acting + David Fincher proved to equal a recipe for success once again in 2014. Based on the novel by Gillian Flynn (who also wrote the script), Gone Girl tells the investigation into the disappearance of a woman named Amy Dunne, starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in one of this decade's best femme fatale performances.
8. SELMA (dir: Ava DuVernay)
454 points
A biopic that takes the Lincoln route, portraying a famous person (the reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) not over the course of an entire life but through a specific moment in time, specifically the time in which King led the famous Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches in 1965. David Oyelowo stars as King in a strong ensemble that also includes Tom Wilkinson, Tim Roth, Oprah Winfrey, Loraraine Toussaint, Carmen Ejogo and many more.
7. IDA (dir: Pawel Pawlikowski)
473.5 points
Shot in black-and-white, this solemn film set in 1960's Communist Poland focuses on a young nun (Agata Trzebuchowska) who visits her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a former prosecutor for the Stalinist regime, and finds out that her parents were actually Jewish and died in World War II. Ida took home the top prize at the year's European Film Awards back in December, and (like the list's #28 film, Leviathan) is considered one of the favorites to take home the Best Foreign Language Film award at the Oscars.
6. NIGHTCRAWLER (dir: Dan Gilroy)
482.5 points
Part neo-noir, part suspense thriller and part satire on the news media and coroprate-humanoid speak, Nightcrawler finds Jake Gyllenhaal playing an amoral man named Lou Bloom who decides to start a freelancer cameraman operation and have his company's videos played for cash by a low-rated Los Angeles news station, headed by a news director played by Rene Russo. This is the first feature film from Dan Gilroy, making it critics' highest-rated debut directing work from the past year.
5. WHIPLASH (dir: Damien Chazelle)
666.5 points
J.K. Simmons has received about 20,000 different awards (with 20,000 more awards to go, I assume) playing the role of a Shaffer Conservatory band conductor named Terence Fletcher from this film, whose infamous tactics take a toll on newcomer drummer Andrew Nelman (Miles Teller). The film received top honors for a dramatic film at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, and has since been praised for its acting, directing and psychological intensity.
4. UNDER THE SKIN (dir: Jonathan Glazer)
692 points
Joining 12 Years a Slave as the only movies to make a top 50 appearance on the aggregate list for the second year in a row (albeit for slightly different reasons) is this mindfuck sci-fi film from Birth director Jonathan Glazer. Here, Scarlett Johansson (in the third film of hers to make an appearance on the top 85) plays an alien who woos male victims into her van to do who-gives-a-crap-it's-just-cool-to-watch. After premiering in several festivals in 2013, the movie was finally released this past spring, which explains its significant increase in points from a year ago.
3. BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) (dir: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
783 points
Michael Keaton goes meta playing Riggan Thomson, a washed-up actor famous for playing the lead in a superhero franchise who sets out to redeem himself by directing a Broadway play, even if he loses his mind in the process. Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Emma Stone and Zach Galifanikis also star. Grammy winner Antonio Sanchez provided the score, while recent Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki shot the film in a way that made it look like one continuous take.
2. THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (dir: Wes Anderson)
999.5 points
In what was arguably Wes Anderson's most intricate and stylish film yet (shot in four different aspect ratios), Ralph Fiennes stars as Gustave H, head of the prestigious Grand Budapest Hotel in the early 20th Century, who gets falsely accused for the murder of a regular female visitor (played by Tilda Swinton, in her third film to make it onto the 2014 poll's top 15) while battling the woman's son for the rights to a prestigious painting of hers. The cast also includes Harvey Keitel, F. Murray Abraham, Jude Law, Tony Revolori and several of Anderson's regulars including Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe and Bill Murray. Since premiering in February, The Grand Budapest Hotel has been a smash hit, earning over $150 million in the box office (the most ever for an Anderson film) as well as several awards and nominations, including the Berlin Film Festival's Jury Grand Prix and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture-Comedy or Musical.
1717 points
Was this #1 reveal surprising in any way? Since debuting at the Sundance Film Festival, this coming-of-age tale of a boy named Mason Jr. (played by Ellar Coltrane), shot over the course of twelve years from the time Ellar was six to the time he turned eighteen, has been an ambitious gamble from director Richard Linklater heavily rewarded by critics. It currently stands as only the second 21st Century film ever with a perfect 100 Metacritic score, and, as its points total compared to the rest of the list demonstrates, it dominated the list of 2014's year-end top-ten lists. Besides the fact that it has over 700 points more than runner-up The Grand Budapest Hotel, consider the following additional stats:
- Among the 300 lists I used, Boyhood placed #1 in 91 of them. That is nearly five times more #1 spots than the next two film (Birdman and Under the Skin, which both had 19).
- Boyhood placed in 69% of the 300 lists I used. To put that in perspective, only one other film appeared in more than 50% of the 300 lists (The Grand Budapest Hotel) while only three others appeared in more than 30% of the 300 lists (Birdman, Whiplash and Under the Skin, in that order).
Wednesday: A list of the other films that received placements in the various year-end top-ten lists, and a list of the critics whose lists I used.
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