2014 Critic Top 10s – FILM (Updating)

It’s that time of year, when not gifts but top lists are stuffed into Oscar blogger stockings to enjoy. This will be a constantly updating post and we start off with two big groups offering their top films of 2014; Sight & Sound (with a top 20) and Cahiers du Cinema (a top 10). This will also be a place for individual top 10 (or whatever) critic lists.

The Sight & Sound list, comprised of top 5 lists from 50 or so members, includes the 2013 US release The Wolf of Wall Street, which was internationally available in 2014. Already, Boyhood and Under the Skin are pulling ahead of the pack with the latter appearing on all three of the first lists.

Sight & Sound Top 20 Films Of 2014
01. Boyhood
02. Goodbye To Language 3D
03. Leviathan (tie)
03. Horse Money (tie)
05. Under The Skin
06. The Grand Budapest Hotel
07. Winter Sleep
08. The Tribe
09. Ida (tie)
09. Jauja (tie)
11. Mr. Turner (tie)
11. National Gallery (tie)
11. The Wolf Of Wall Street (tie)
11. Whiplash (tie)
15. The Duke Of Burgundy
16. Birdman (tie)
16. Two Days, One Night (tie)
18. Citizenfour (tie)
18. The Look Of Silence (tie)
18. The Wind Rises (tie)

[divider]

Cahiers Du Cinema Top 10 Films Of 2014
01. Li’l Quinquin
02. Goodbye to Language
03. Under the Skin
04. Maps to the Stars
05. The Wind Rises
06. Nymphomaniac
07. Mommy
08. Love Is Strange
09. Le Paradis
10. Our Sunhi

[divider]

Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

01. Boyhood
02. Birdman
03. CITIZENFOUR
04. Force Majeure
05. Foxcatcher
06. Under the Skin
07. Selma
08. Edge of Tomorrow
09. Beyond the Lights
10. Locke

[divider]

John Waters

1 MAPS TO THE STARS (David Cronenberg) Hilariously funny and, dare I say it, yes, pernicious. I love this film more than I love my own mustache.

2 CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO (Robert Berger, Patrick Daniels, and Karlyn Michelson) A nail-biting, fear-of-flying 3-D experimental movie where you are locked in six separate cockpits with the flight crew as they reenact black-box dialogue from actual aviation mishaps and crashes. The scariest airplane movie ever.

3 THE KIDNAPPING OF MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ (Guillaume Nicloux) My favorite writer is now a movie star, and he’s great playing himself in a literary whodunit that revisits his supposedly factual but still vague and unexplained book-tour kidnapping. Did it really happen, or was Houellebecq just drunk? Who knows? Who cares? I do, a lot.

4 THE SMELL OF US (Larry Clark) When the director, playing a wino savant named Rockstar, actually sucks the toes of his French teen male star on-screen (with subtitles yet!), you’ll know you’re beyond Odorama. The smell here may be ripe, but Larry Clark is back in top form. Oh, yeah . . . it’s a great musical.

5 GLORIA (Sebastián Lelio) A feel-bad date movie for old people who love their lives but hate romantic comedies.

6 WHO TOOK JOHNNY (David Beilinson, Michael Galinsky, and Suki Hawley) An amazing, lunatic head-scratcher of a documentary about missing children with plot twists that will leave you creeped out, surprised, and excited. As good as Capturing the Friedmans.

7 LI’L QUINQUIN (Bruno Dumont) Yes, there is such a thing as hillbillies in France. A comic barnyard mystery that asks the nagging question: Who is killing people in the countryside, cutting up their bodies, and stuffing the pieces up cows’ asses?

8 NYMPHOMANIAC: VOLUME I and VOLUME II (Lars von Trier) I, a Woman meets Salò. I thank the director for every hideous second of this comic masterpiece.

9 VIOLETTE (Martin Provost) An upbeat biopic about one of my longtime literary idols, Violette Leduc (aka the “female Genet”), a doubly miserable bisexual who only fell in love with gay men or heterosexual women yet found salvation through writing. The fact that she doesn’t commit suicide seems like a happy ending.

10 THE FILMS OF JOANNA HOGG (Unrelated [2007]; Archipelago [2010]; and Exhibition [2013]) As the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s mini-retrospective last summer made clear, this British director’s perfectly framed scenes of simmering family resentments and embarrassed silences will thrill you in a severely modest way, and that should be enough. More than enough.

[divider]

French Première Magazine 
http://www.premiere.fr/Cinema/Photos…e-2014-4091608

1. THE WIND RISES (Hayao Miyazaki)
2. SAINT LAURENT (Bertrand Bonello)
3. GONE GIRL (David Fincher)
4. MOMMY (Xavier Dolan)
5. NOAH (Darren Aronofsky)
6. SAMBA (Eric Toledano & Olivier Nakache)
7. HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 (De DeBlois)
8. 12 YEARS A SLAVE (Steve McQueen)
9. AMERICAN HUSTLE (David O. Russell)
10. HER (Spike Jonze)

[divider]

EMPIRE Magazine TOP 10

1. BOYHOOD (Richard Linklater)
2. NIGHTCRAWLER (Dan Gilroy)
3. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (Martin Scorsese)
4. INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (Joel & Ethan Coen)
5. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (James Gunn)
6. EDGE OF TOMORROW (Doug Liman)
7. THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (Wes Anderson)
8. WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (Taika Waititi & Jamaine Clement)
9. DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (Matt Reeves)
10. HER (Spike Jonze)

See the TOP 50 here:
http://www.empireonline.com/features…st-films-2014/

[divider]

David Ehrlich’s Video Top 25

[divider]

Edgar Wright’s Top 10 Films of 2014

Boyhood 
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Birdman 
Snowpiercer
Iinterstellar
Nightcrawler 
Under the Skin
The LEGO Movie
Whiplash
Edge of Tomorrow

[divider]

J. HOBERMAN
1. Goodbye to Language
2. Inherent Vice
3. Ida
4. The Americans (FX)
5. Under the Skin
6. The Marx Bros. Collection
7. Farbe (Polke)
8. Snowpiercer
9/10. Maps to the Stars & The Congress

[divider]

JAMES QUANDT
1. Goodbye to Language
2. Amour Fou
3. Horse Money
4. Das Spektrum Europas (Puiu)
5. Hill of Freedom
6. Jauja
7. The Tribe
8. Timbuktu
9. Above and Below the Minhacao
10. August Winds

[divider]

AMY TAUBIN
1. Goodbye to Language
2. Boyhood
3. Whiplash
4. Dreams are Colder Than Death
5. Tales of the Grim Sleeper
6. Timbuktu
7. Level Five (Marker)
8. White God
9. Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
10. ???

[divider]

Time Magazine (Richard Corliss)

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel
2. Boyhood
3. The Lego Movie
4. Lucy
5. Goodbye to Language
6. Jodorowsky’s Dune
7. Nightcrawler
8. Citzenfour
9. Wild Tales
10. Birdman

http://time.com/3616154/top-10-best-movies-2014/

[divider]

Entertainment Weekly (Chris Nashawaty)

01. Whiplash
02. Boyhood
03. The Grand Budapest Hotel
04. Life Itself
05. Selma
06. Guardians of the Galaxy
07. Gone Girl
08. Snowpiercer
09. Birdman
10. Jodorowsky’s Dune

[divider]

Vanity Fair Top 10

1. Love Is Strange
2. Mommy
3. Force Majeure
4. CitizenFour
5. Boyhood
6. Selma
7. Snowpiercer
8. Mr. Turner
9. Pride
10. X-Men: Days of Future Past

http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywo…movies-of-2014

[divider]

Eric Kohn’s top 10

1. Boyhood
2. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
3. Manakamana
4. The Grand Budapest Hotel
5. Leviathan
6. Ida
7. Starred Up
8. Only Lovers Left Alive
9. The Double
10. Inherent Vice

[divider]

Donald Clarke – The Irish Times

1. Ida
2. Pride
3. Under The Skin
4. Her
5. 12 Years A Slave
6. We Are The Best
7. Mr. Turner
8. Boyhood
9. The Grand Budapest Hotel
10. Norte, The End Of History

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/ti…year-1.2025841

[divider]

Lou Lumenick, New York Post

1. The Theory of Everything
2. Interstellar
3. Selma
4. We are the Best
5. The Imitation Game
6. Birdman
7. American Sniper
8. Nightcrawler
9. Boyhood
10.Into the Woods

Kyle Smith, New York Post

1. American Sniper
2. Calvary
3. Boyhood
4. Whiplash
5. The Theory of Everything
6. Edge of Tomorrow
7. Last Days in Vietnam
8. Interstellar
9. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
10.Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Link: http://nypost.com/2014/12/06/the-pos…ovies-of-2014/

[divider]

Ed Gonzalez (Slant Magazine) 

1. Under the Skin
2. Stranger by the Lake
3. The Immigrant
4. Mr. Turner
5. The Naked Room
6. Only Lovers Left Alive
7. We Are the Best!
8. A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness
9. Land Ho!
10. Lucy

[divider]

TIME Magazine’s Top 10 Performances

Top 10 Performances:
1. Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game
2. Julianne Moore, Still Alice
3. Chadwick Boseman, Get On Up
4. Marion Cotillard, The Immigrant & Two Days, One Night
5. Eva Green, 300: Rise of an Empire & Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
6. Jack O’Connell, Unbroken
7. David Oyelowo, Selma
8. Essie Davis, The Babadook
9. Jenny Slate, Obvious Child
10. Tilda Swinton, Only Lovers Left Alive

Time Magazine (Richard Corliss)

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel
2. Boyhood
3. The Lego Movie
4. Lucy
5. Goodbye to Language
6. Jodorowsky’s Dune
7. Nightcrawler
8. Citzenfour
9. Wild Tales
10. Birdman

http://time.com/3616154/top-10-best-movies-2014/

[divider]

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly

01. Whiplash
02. Boyhood
03. The Grand Budapest Hotel
04. Life Itself
05. Selma
06. Guardians of the Galaxy
07. Gone Girl
08. Snowpiercer
09. Birdman
10. Jodorowsky’s Dune