Best Movies of 2014
Ranked by our critic's grades, best first.
InterstellarThe rare blockbuster that stakes everything on sincerity and wins.Read the review
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)The unbroken take is a stunt, and Keaton and Lubezki turn it into a nervous system.
WhiplashA two-hander about ambition cut like a thriller, and Simmons is a weapon inside it.
Wild TalesSix stories of ordinary people snapping, told with a gag writer's timing and a moralist's fury at how money, class and red tape grind people down.
Captain America: The Winter SoldierA paranoid seventies conspiracy thriller wearing a shield, and still the best film this studio has made.
X-Men: Days of Future PastThe busiest X-Men film is also the most coherent, because Singer anchors the spectacle to two actors doing real work.
The Grand Budapest HotelAnderson's most beautiful film and his saddest, hidden inside a nesting doll of frames.
SelmaA campaign procedural about a movement, with Oyelowo finding the tired tactician inside the icon.
BoyhoodTwelve years of shooting, and the miracle is how little of it plays as a stunt.
Gone GirlA marriage thriller with a mid-film detonation that reorganizes everything before it.