2014's Best Movies: 10 Years Later

In keeping with previous polls, I've gone with the contenders in the top 2,000 films, but they now offer the entire starting spreadsheet. Here are the titles that carry through through the top 5,000 films ever.

2015	1779	Force Majeure	Östlund, Ruben	2014	Sweden	120
2020	1815	Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, A	Andersson, Roy	2014	Sweden	101
2023	2019	Winter Sleep	Ceylan, Nuri Bilge	2014	Turkey	196
2054	2031	Clouds of Sils Maria	Assayas, Olivier	2014	France	124
2193	2054	Birdman	González Iñárritu, Alejandro	2014	USA	119
2235	2441	Phoenix	Petzold, Christian	2014	Germany	98
2366	2618	It Follows	Mitchell, David Robert	2014	USA	100
2440	2366	Li'l Quinquin [TV]	Dumont, Bruno	2014	France	206
2464	2403	Look of Silence, The	Oppenheimer, Joshua	2014	Denmark	103
2472	2393	Eden	Hansen-Løve, Mia	2014	France	131
2483	2436	Duke of Burgundy, The	Strickland, Peter	2014	UK	104
2676	2604	Paddington	King, Paul	2014	UK	95
3088	3246	Ex Machina	Garland, Alex	2014	UK	108
3096	4308	Edge of Tomorrow	Liman, Doug	2014	USA	113
3110	2979	Appropriate Behavior	Akhavan, Desiree	2014	UK	86
3136	2970	Mommy	Dolan, Xavier	2014	Canada	139
3236	3534	Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, A	Amirpour, Ana Lily	2014	USA	101
3372	3433	John Wick	Stahelski, Chad	2014	USA	101
3446	4078	Selma	DuVernay, Ava	2014	UK	128
3605	3806	Raid 2, The	Evans, Gareth	2014	Indonesia	150
3675	3548	Tribe, The	Slaboshpytskyi, Myroslav	2014	Ukraine	126
3775	3775	Jersey Boys	Eastwood, Clint	2014	USA	134
3810	3773	Girl at My Door, A	Jung, July	2014	South Korea	119
3815	4177	Maps to the Stars	Cronenberg, David	2014	Canada	111
3907	3854	Salt of the Earth, The	Salgado, Juliano Ribeiro & Wim Wenders	2014	France	110
3919	3804	Two Days, One Night	Dardenne, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne	2014	Belgium	95
3934	3821	Citizenfour	Poitras, Laura	2014	USA	114
4095	4221	Heaven Knows What	Safdie, Benny & Josh Safdie	2014	USA	94
4156	4347	What We Do in the Shadows	Clement, Jemaine & Taika Waititi	2014	New Zealand	86
4465	4627	Journey to the West	Tsai Ming-liang	2014	France	56
4474	4335	Foxcatcher	Miller, Bennett	2014	USA	134
4533	5420	Jauja	Alonso, Lisandro	2014	Argentina	109
4557	4420	Lego Movie, The	Lord, Phil & Christopher Miller	2014	USA	100
4684	4646	Song of the Sea	Moore, Tomm	2014	Ireland	93
4773	4623	Still the Water	Kawase, Naomi	2014	France	121
4844	4713	Frank	Abrahamson, Lenny	2014	UK	95

BABADOOK

inherent vice... easily? ofc i haven't seen goodbye to language or leviathan

Probably the worst year overall from the last 15 or so. Goodbye to Language over Inherent Vice.

Girlhood > Boyhood, of course

Girlhood was my favorite film of 2015. Our beloved, often addled Morbs thought it advocated shoplifting and hooliganism.

Both can be true

Grand Budapest Hotel

Definitely would have voted for Winter Sleep if it were an option. Horse Money was sub-standard for Costa, Leviathan was powerful but emotionally monotonous. Respect to anyone voting for Godard but I feel he was starting to thin out by then.

Voting Timbuktu, even though I can't recall any more vivid impressions than "liking it" at the time.

Godard I think

The wrong Leviathan made the list

THE BABADOOK - mostly very good, but was sleepy when watched and haven't finished ending.
BOYHOOD - loved it, clown away if you want. i realize it was a gimmick. eat me.
GONE GIRL - "that's marriage!" is cringe, but pretty effective boilerplate crime drama
THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL - not a big Wes fan, but this one was heartwarming and funny and Fiennes is hilarious
INHERENT VICE - maybe my favorite on the list? needed even more Martin Short cameo
INTERSTELLAR - 30 good minutes, then a complete pile of shit
WHIPLASH - enjoyed it as long as I didn't take it as an endorsement of Simmons' character (regardless of whether Chazelle did or not)

Interstellar is maybe the one Nolan film (outside of Dunkirk, which barely feels like his) that I kinda have any fondness for? Helps that it's so incredibly dumb that it can't even pretend to posture that it's anything but

inherent vice... easily?

― ivy., Friday, 8 March 2024 14:28 (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

interstellar is great. the only nolan i wholly support (haven’t seen dunkirk)

Boyhood first, Girlhood second, Andersons nowhere; Eden from runners-up.

Probably my ten favorites from that year:

1. Boyhood
2. Goodbye to Language
3. Horse Money
4. Timbuktu
5. Citizenfour
6. The Grand Budapest Hotel
7. Journey To The West
8. Phoenix
9. Two Days, One Night
10. Mr. Turner

Lot of my favorites on the undercard here.

1. Goodbye to Language
2. Horse Money
Timbuktu

whoops, accidentally posted early

1. Goodbye to Language
2. Horse Money
3. Heaven Knows What
4. The Look of Silence
5. Phoenix
6. Two Days, One Night
7. Timbuktu
8. Clouds of Sils Maria
9. Jauja
10. Citizenfour

I absolutely love some of Linklater's work, but a decade later, I'm still a little baffled by acclaim that Boyhood received, there must be something I'm missing with that one.

1. Boyhood
2. Inherent Vice
3. Guardians of the galaxy
4. Calvary
5. Leviathan
6. Gueros
7. Timbuktu
8. Wild Tales
9. Citizenfour
10.Mr Turner

Inherent Vice is the one fir me

Goodbye to Language still has the best, most inventive use of 3D I've seen in the modern era.

The part in Boyhood that struck me most was that kid had de facto siblings for a while and then suddenly, for reasons entirely outside his control, he didn't. Really highlights how much childhood is about things happening to you, with no agency or even the means to properly process any of it.

Another for Goodbye to Language. The only good thing to come out of the 3D craze

Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams was another, if you can see it in 3D on the big screen.

Recapping our winners, who will join this crew?

1944: A CANTERBURY TALE
1954: REAR WINDOW
1964: DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB
1974: CÉLINE AND JULIE GO BOATING
1984: THIS IS SPINAL TAP
1994: SÁTÁNTANGÓ + CHUNGKING EXPRESS
2004: TROPICAL MALADY

lol that Birdman missed the top 2000. I haven't seen more than a handful of these, but I'll throw a vote to Paddington, because it is a very fine movie in all respects that won't rate at all with the ilx film snobs

Shame that Pigeon... and Winter Sleep just missed the cut-off (and though Journey to the West isn't my favourite Tsai Ming-liang, was an absorbing experience at a Guangzhou installation back in the day)

surprised by how few of these I’ve seen. write in for HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT

what a bunch of dreck lmao

didnt click that birdman didnt make the list

would have been very close to picking that over inherent vice

i reread the thread for it only a few weeks ago and was struck by the absolute dullard level of analysis tbh

also, ILE rates paddington but its a 7/10 with nice quality touches.

paddington 2 is the masterpiece

Girlhood, one of the decade's best.

I like Grand Budapest Hotel, which was kind of a Return To Form for ol’ Wes. Second choice would be Force Majeure. Nothing else jumps out at me.

The wrong Leviathan made the list

― Morris O’Shea Salazar (Noodle Vague), Friday, March 8, 2024 4:31 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

was about to vehemently agree, but apparently it came out the previous year.

can't really get too worked up about any of the actual choices here, i still haven't seen girlhood though

I wonder how many of the people at the time who were crying "Why is it 'BOYHOOD?' Why not a movie called 'GIRLHOOD,' huh!?" ended up seeing Girlhood.

especially since in the States Girlhood got a spring '15 release.

This was pretty easily Boyhood for me.

(I’ve only seen three of the choices.)

I’ve seen all of them (not usually the case for me with these retrospective polls). My five favorites are

The Wonders =
Leviathan

The Grand Budapest Hotel
Inherent Vice
Goodbye to Language

The Wonders by Alice Rohrwacher is a beautiful pastoral film about teenage yearning. It features a girl, Gelsomina, who is starting to assume responsibility for her family and their apiary in the dusty Tuscan countryside, but who becomes distracted. IMDB describes the family as “a household disrupted by the simultaneous arrival of a silently troubled teenage boy and a reality TV show intent on showcasing the family “, which is as good a description as any.

Her new film opens here next week

Leviathan for me, I love PTA but IV was a shaggy dog. Dunno what the previous posters were referring to with "the wrong Leviathan" - a fishing documentary? Anyway the Zvyagintsev film has stayed with me and I've watched it several times. I love the major scene toward the end (no spoilers for a decade old movie).

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Andrey Zyagintsev’s Leviathan is a story about a fisherman who fights back when a corrupt mayor tries to seize his ancestral home, which brings even more misfortune to him. It’s funny and tragic, and has amazing images

The Return (2003) is shockingly good as a first feature film about a dangerous father who resurfaces in the lives of his two sons. It takes place in a remote area of Ladoga Lake near St. Petersburg.

His film Loveless (2017) is about a child who goes missing in the middle of a bitter divorce, and is also amazing

Yeah I know Z's films and agree with much of your assessment (altho disliked Loveless) - I just wondered what NV's comment upthread about "the wrong Leviathan made the list" meant.

Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel made a fishing documentary in 2012 through the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard called Leviathan. It was a very avant-garde film that experimented with waterproof cameras aboard a fishing ship to capture raw, wordless, hallucinatory images and occasional fragments of dialog.

It is a beautiful film as far as it goes, but there is no story

you say that like its a flaw

It's not a flaw as such, just that ultimately the film doesn't have a greater meaning for me.

I know there are other films I have loved where the images matter more than the story,Satyricon may be one

Sounds interesting nonetheless!

The fishing documentary is called Leviathan (which may confuse some people given the excellent Russian film by that name which was released a couple of years later). I caught the premiere at Alice Tully Hall for the NYFF and thought it was great, but it's not a film that'll appeal to everyone - there were famously some walkouts during its initial theatrical run as some people claimed it was actually physically hard to watch, inducing something like real sea sickness.

Here's Jim Hoberman's rave.

It's been too long for me to recall where exactly I saw those reports of sickness, but FWIW, here's a recent report published last fall:

The film uses an experimental filmography style, including the use of multiple GoPro cameras. This technique offers a unique perspective, ranging from the depths of the ocean to breathtaking bird’s-eye views. To some, this technique was disorienting. Several attendees of the screening even reported feeling sea sick.

Senior Emily McAllister, a film and media studies major with concentrations in sociology and philosophy, was among the audience members who left feeling dizzy.

“I felt the absence of a narrative or plot dissolved any possibility of the romanticization or glorification of this line of work, leaving viewers with the bare authentic reality of deep sea trawling. If the filmmaker had used any other mode of communication to describe life on the trawler, it would not have been as impactful or immersive. The camera work represents a wet, disorienting and dizzying existence, successfully inducing these sensations upon the viewers. When I stood up to leave the theater, I felt myself wobble a little,” McCalister said.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I'm happy that Boyhood is the winner. I can see that it is a film people really connect to, and I think it is one of the great films ever. It definitely deserved to win the Oscar for Best Film over Birdman in 2014

I also like seeing that every film got a vote

I demand a Boyhood-Girlhood double feature.

Triple feature with Boyz N The Hood

Either they don't know, don't show, or don't care about what's going on in Boyhood

voted godard, though hill of freedom is the actual best film of 2014

And the last two pieces of the puzzle:

1924's Best Movies: 100 Years Later
1934's Best Movies: 90 Years Later