Best Movies of 2014
2014 stands as a remarkable year in cinema history, delivering an exceptional collection of films that pushed creative boundaries and left lasting impressions on audiences worldwide. Whether you're searching for the best movies of 2014 or looking to revisit the year's most powerful cinematic achievements, this carefully curated selection of 21 films showcases the extraordinary range and depth that defined the era. From pulse-pounding psychological dramas that explored the price of perfection to visually stunning period pieces that transported viewers to meticulously crafted worlds, the year offered something for every type of film enthusiast. Award-winning performances elevated intimate character studies, while ambitious science fiction epics expanded the possibilities of storytelling on the biggest scales. The lineup also highlights compelling documentaries that shed light on crucial social and environmental issues, alongside contemplative foreign language films that earned international acclaim. These movies of 2014 represent the pinnacle of filmmaking craft, featuring visionary directors, breakthrough performances, and narratives that continue to resonate years later. Prepare to discover—or rediscover—the films that critics celebrated, audiences cherished, and that collectively made 2014 an unforgettable year for cinema.
Intense doesn't begin to describe Whiplash, a psychological thriller disguised as a music school drama that will leave you physically exhausted. Miles Teller stars as Andrew Neiman, an ambitious young jazz drummer at a prestigious conservatory who attracts the attention of Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), an abusive conductor whose teaching methods cross every ethical line imaginable. Director Damien Chazelle crafts the practice room scenes with the tension of a horror film, using sharp editing and dynamic camera work to make drumming feel visceral and urgent. Simmons delivers an absolutely volcanic performance that somehow makes Fletcher both monstrous and occasionally, disturbingly compelling in his arguments about greatness and mediocrity. The film raises provocative questions about artistic excellence and the costs we're willing to pay for it, building to a finale that's as thrilling as any action sequence. Justin Hurwitz's jazz score propels the whole experience.
Joshua Oppenheimer returns to Indonesia's 1965-66 mass killings, but this time shifts perspective from perpetrators to survivors, specifically an optometrist whose brother was murdered during the anti-communist purges. Where Oppenheimer's previous film "The Act of Killing" gave voice to unrepentant executioners, this companion piece focuses on Adi Rukun's quiet quest for acknowledgment and reconciliation from the men who killed his brother decades earlier. The contrast between Adi's gentle dignity and the aggressors' continued denials creates almost unbearable tension. Oppenheimer's camera captures these confrontations with sensitivity and rigor, allowing silence to speak as loudly as words. The optometrist's profession becomes metaphor—helping people see clearly—as he attempts to restore moral vision to a society still refusing to examine its past. This represents documentary filmmaking at its most essential and courageous, illuminating not just historical atrocity but how nations avoid reckoning with their crimes. The result is quietly devastating, a powerful argument for truth and the ongoing human cost of collective amnesia.
In the fictional Eastern European nation of Zubrowka during the 1930s, a legendary concierge and his lobby boy protégé become entangled in a theft, a murder, and the gathering clouds of war. Wes Anderson's meticulously crafted comedy is a visual confection, with every frame composed like a painting and every color carefully chosen to evoke nostalgia for a vanished world. Ralph Fiennes gives a delightful performance as Monsieur Gustave H., the impeccably mannered concierge whose refinement masks a resourceful survivor, while Tony Revolori holds his own as Zero, the immigrant lobby boy who becomes his trusted friend. The supporting cast reads like a who's who of Anderson regulars—Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum—each contributing memorable turns in brief appearances. Anderson's signature style is fully realized here, the ornate hotel setting allowing his dollhouse aesthetic to flourish while the darker historical undertones give the whimsy unexpected weight. Beneath the pastries and pastel colors lies a bittersweet meditation on friendship, loss, and the civilizations we build and watch crumble. This is Anderson's finest achievement, marrying his technical precision with genuine emotional resonance.
Filmed over twelve years with the same cast, this groundbreaking coming-of-age drama follows Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from age six to eighteen, capturing the ordinary moments that define growing up in contemporary America. Director Richard Linklater's ambitious experiment transcends gimmickry to create something genuinely moving—watching the actors age naturally before our eyes adds emotional weight that makeup and casting tricks could never achieve. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke shine as Mason's divorced parents, both flawed and trying their best, with Arquette delivering particularly heartbreaking work. Linklater resists the temptation to manufacture drama, instead trusting that life's accumulation of small moments—haircuts, breakups, family dinners, moving houses—contains its own profound narrative power. The result is a remarkable achievement that feels like watching life itself unfold, capturing childhood and adolescence with uncommon authenticity and tenderness.
This gripping documentary plunges viewers into the daily battle to protect Congo's mountain gorillas from poachers, militias, and the oil industry's encroachment. Director Orlando von Einsiedel follows park rangers at Virunga National Park who risk their lives to defend one of Africa's most precious ecosystems while caught in the middle of armed conflict and corporate corruption. The access von Einsiedel achieves is extraordinary—we witness tense confrontations, tender moments with orphaned gorillas, and the rangers' incredible dedication despite impossible circumstances. The film builds genuine thriller tension as it documents a British oil company's schemes and the park director's efforts to gather evidence against them. Cinematography captures both the breathtaking beauty of the park and the very real dangers facing those who protect it. This isn't just nature documentary but vital investigative journalism that exposes how conservation, corruption, and conflict intersect. It's urgent, infuriating, and ultimately inspiring filmmaking that demands attention.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan crafts an extraordinary chamber piece that unfolds across three-plus hours in Turkey's Anatolia region, where a former actor turned hotel owner, Aydin, spends the brutal winter months engaged in increasingly bitter philosophical debates with his much-younger wife and his recently divorced sister. What could have been simply talky becomes utterly mesmerizing through Ceylan's patient direction and the phenomenal performances led by Haluk Bilginer as the self-satisfied Aydin, whose intellectual pretensions mask his moral failings as a landlord and husband. The film fearlessly explores class dynamics, religious hypocrisy, and the human capacity for self-deception through extended conversation scenes that crackle with tension and uncomfortable truths. Gökhan Tiryaki's cinematography transforms the snowy landscape into both prison and refuge, while Ceylan's Chekhovian approach allows scenes to breathe and develop organically. This is cinema for patient viewers willing to sit with complexity and ambiguity, rewarding that patience with profound insights into how we justify ourselves while failing those around us.
Wim Wenders co-directs this stunning portrait of photographer Sebastião Salgado, whose black-and-white images have documented humanity's struggles and triumphs across decades and continents. The film gains intimate access through Salgado's son Juliano, who co-directs and provides a personal perspective on his father's obsessive dedication to capturing workers, refugees, and endangered landscapes. Wenders' inspired decision to animate Salgado's photographs creates a mesmerizing effect, allowing viewers to enter these frozen moments and understand their emotional power. The documentary traces Salgado's evolution from economist to photographer, through his devastating documentation of Rwanda's genocide to his redemptive environmental project reforesting his family's Brazilian land. What emerges is not just a biography but a meditation on witnessing, activism through art, and the possibility of hope after confronting humanity's darkest chapters—a truly transporting cinematic experience.
Emotionally profound and visually breathtaking, Christopher Nolan's space epic reaches for the stars while keeping its heart firmly grounded in human connection. Matthew McConaughey leads as Cooper, a former pilot turned farmer who must leave his children behind to join a desperate mission through a wormhole in search of humanity's new home. What distinguishes this ambitious science fiction film is its commitment to both scientific accuracy and raw emotion—the space exploration feels plausible while the father-daughter relationship provides devastating emotional weight. Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine deliver strong supporting performances, while Hans Zimmer's powerful score heightens every moment. Nolan tackles complex concepts involving relativity and time dilation, making them accessible without dumbing them down. The stunning visuals, particularly the black hole sequence, showcase practical effects combined with cutting-edge CGI. This is thoughtful, adult science fiction that trusts its audience's intelligence while delivering genuine spectacle and heartfelt performances.
David Rawle voices Ben, a young Irish boy whose sister Saoirse may be the last of the selkies—mythical creatures who transform from seals to humans. Tomm Moore's breathtaking animated masterpiece weaves Celtic mythology into a deeply moving family story about grief, love, and letting go. The hand-drawn animation is simply stunning, with every frame resembling a living watercolor painting that pulses with life and magic. Moore and his team at Cartoon Saloon have created something truly special here, a film that works on multiple levels for both children and adults. The voice work is heartfelt, the score by Bruno Coulais and Kíla is enchanting, and the emotional journey is profound without ever feeling manipulative. This is animation as art, storytelling at its finest, and a film that deserves to be mentioned alongside the very best of Studio Ghibli.
Aleksey Serebryakov delivers a powerhouse performance as Kolya, a stubborn mechanic fighting to keep his ancestral home from being seized by a corrupt mayor in a small Russian coastal town. Andrey Zvyagintsev's searing drama unfolds like a modern Job story, examining how ordinary people are crushed beneath the machinery of institutional power and moral decay. The film's breathtaking cinematography captures the stark beauty of the northern landscape—skeletal fishing boats against grey skies, the Barents Sea churning beneath ancient cliffs—creating a visual metaphor for Kolya's increasingly desperate situation. What makes this such a gripping watch is how Zvyagintsev layers personal tragedy with scathing social commentary, exploring themes of faith, justice, and resilience without ever becoming preachy. Elena Lyadova is equally magnificent as Kolya's wife, caught between loyalty and survival, while the supporting cast brings authenticity to every frame of this unflinching masterpiece.
This is fundamentally about courage, surveillance, and the price of exposing uncomfortable truths in the digital age. Director Laura Poitras was granted extraordinary access to Edward Snowden during the explosive weeks when he leaked classified NSA documents revealing massive government surveillance programs. The documentary unfolds with the tension of a thriller as Snowden, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and Guardian intelligence reporter Ewen MacAskill meet in a Hong Kong hotel room to verify information and strategize releases. Poitras captures the paranoia, ethical complexity, and genuine danger surrounding these revelations with remarkable immediacy. You're watching history unfold in real-time, witnessing a young man making a decision that will exile him forever while changing the global conversation about privacy and security. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and deserves every accolade—it's gripping, important cinema that documents a pivotal moment in modern history.
Devastating in its cumulative power, this Israeli masterwork from directors Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz examines one woman's five-year battle to obtain a divorce through the country's religious court system with unflinching precision and mounting fury. Ronit Elkabetz stars as Viviane Amsalem, who must convince an all-male rabbinical court to grant her freedom from a marriage she can no longer endure, despite facing a legal system that offers her no clear path to autonomy. The film unfolds almost entirely within the courthouse, yet the constrained setting generates tremendous dramatic intensity as months and years pass through a series of hearings. Elkabetz's performance is nothing short of extraordinary—her face becomes a map of exhaustion, frustration, and steely determination as the absurdity and cruelty of her situation compounds. The directors structure the film like a pressure cooker, allowing each procedural obstacle and patriarchal dismissal to accumulate until the emotional weight becomes almost unbearable. It's a searing indictment of religious law that subordinates women's lives to institutional power, and one of the most powerful films about systemic injustice ever made.
Darkly comedic yet deeply melancholic, this audacious examination of ego and irrelevance unfolds almost entirely in what appears to be a single continuous shot. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu follows Riggan Thomson, played brilliantly by Michael Keaton in a role that mirrors his own career, as a washed-up movie star attempting a comeback through a Broadway play. The technical wizardry of Emmanuel Lubezki's camerawork creates an immersive, almost claustrophobic experience as we navigate the backstage chaos alongside Riggan and his dysfunctional company, including a scene-stealing Edward Norton and Emma Stone. The film operates as both a biting satire of celebrity culture and a poignant character study of artistic desperation. Antonio Sánchez's percussion-heavy score pulses throughout, heightening the fever-dream atmosphere. This is bold, ambitious filmmaking that takes risks and delivers something truly original—a film about theater that could only work in cinema.
A family drama that explodes with raw intensity, Xavier Dolan's film follows a widowed single mother struggling to raise her volatile, ADHD-affected teenage son in a near-future Quebec. Dolan's bold visual choices—including a variable aspect ratio that literally expands during moments of emotional freedom—match the fearless performances from Anne Dorval and Antoine Olivier Pilon as the embattled mother-son duo. Suzanne Clément completes the central trio as a stammering neighbor who becomes an unlikely lifeline for this fractured family. The film pulses with kinetic energy, soundtracked by pop music that amplifies rather than undermines the emotional stakes. Dolan, directing at just 25, demonstrates a maturity and visual confidence that belies his age, crafting scenes of breathtaking beauty and heartbreaking honesty. This is emotionally exhausting cinema in the best possible way—devastating, life-affirming, and utterly unforgettable.
This psychological thriller operates like a perfectly constructed puzzle box that keeps reshaping itself just when you think you've figured it out. Director David Fincher adapts Gillian Flynn's bestseller about Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike), who disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary, casting suspicion on her husband Nick (Ben Affleck). What begins as a straightforward mystery evolves into something far more complex and disturbing, examining marriage, media manipulation, and the personas we construct for the world. Pike delivers a tour-de-force performance that anchors the film's audacious tonal shifts, while Fincher's meticulous visual style and Trent Reznor's unsettling score maintain an atmosphere of creeping dread. The screenplay smartly preserves the novel's structure and acerbic wit, creating a thriller that's as darkly funny as it is genuinely shocking—a rare adaptation that stands alongside its source material.
An exploration of revenge, injustice, and the thin veneer of civilization, this Argentine anthology film presents six standalone stories about ordinary people pushed to extraordinary breaking points. Director Damián Szifron crafts a darkly comic masterpiece that examines how quickly social norms collapse when individuals feel wronged. Each vignette escalates from mundane situations—a road rage incident, a restaurant encounter, a wedding reception—into jaw-dropping explosions of violence and retribution. The ensemble cast is uniformly excellent, committing fully to characters whose reactions range from understandable to absolutely insane. Szifron maintains perfect tonal control, finding genuine humor in human darkness without trivializing the underlying anger and pain. The cinematography is gorgeous, the pacing relentless, and the final explosive sequence is worth the admission price alone. This is savage, brilliant filmmaking that captures something profound about human nature and our capacity for both restraint and spectacular self-destruction.
André Singer crafts an extraordinarily powerful documentary about the suppressed 1945 documentary evidence of Nazi concentration camps, revealing why the original film—shot by Allied forces including director Sidney Bernstein and overseen by Alfred Hitchcock—remained unfinished and unseen for decades. The documentary interweaves this devastating archival footage with contemporary testimony from survivors and liberators, creating a profoundly moving examination of both the Holocaust itself and our complicated relationship with documenting atrocity. Singer handles the horrific imagery with appropriate gravity, never exploiting the suffering on screen while ensuring viewers understand the full scope of the camps' evil. The film also serves as a meditation on the responsibility of witnessing, asking difficult questions about why these images were deemed too disturbing for post-war audiences and what we owe to historical truth. Helena Bonham Carter's narration provides necessary context without overwhelming the testimony. This is essential viewing that honors the victims while exploring the ethical dimensions of preserving their suffering on film—challenging, unforgettable, and vitally important.
In this searing Russian drama, a plumber discovers that the decrepit apartment building where his neighbors live is on the verge of catastrophic collapse, triggering a desperate race against bureaucratic indifference and systemic corruption. Director Yury Bykov crafts an absolutely gripping morality tale that plays like a thriller while serving as a furious indictment of institutional rot. Artyom Bystrov stars as Dima, the ordinary man who becomes an accidental hero when he tries to evacuate the building, only to encounter officials more concerned with protecting their positions than saving lives. The film's confined timeframe and escalating tension create an almost unbearable sense of urgency. Bykov never lets you forget that real people—families, children, the elderly—are at stake while administrators deliberate and deflect. The cinematography emphasizes the brutalist architecture and crumbling infrastructure as both literal danger and metaphor for societal decay. It's enraging, heartbreaking, and absolutely vital cinema that transforms a specific Russian story into a universal examination of how systems fail the vulnerable.
From Chicago's movie palaces to the pages of the Chicago Sun-Times and beyond, this documentary traces the remarkable life and career of film critic Roger Ebert with warmth and intelligence. Director Steve James crafts an intimate portrait that goes beyond Ebert's fame to explore his working-class roots, his partnership with Gene Siskel, and his courageous final years after losing his ability to speak. The film features candid interviews with Ebert and his wife Chaz, along with insights from filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Werner Herzog. What emerges is not just a tribute to a critic but a meditation on cinema's power to connect us. James balances celebration with unflinching honesty, particularly in depicting Ebert's physical decline, resulting in a deeply moving testament to a life fully lived.
Identity, memory, and the possibility of reinvention form the haunting core of this post-World War II psychological drama that unfolds like a slow-burning mystery. Christian Petzold directs with remarkable restraint as Nina Hoss plays Nelly, a concentration camp survivor who returns to Berlin with her face reconstructed by surgery, seeking the husband who may have betrayed her. Ronald Zehrfeld is chilling as Johnny, who fails to recognize his own wife and recruits her to impersonate herself for an inheritance scheme. The film's power lies in Hoss's extraordinary performance and Petzold's refusal to explain everything—we watch Nelly navigate an impossible situation, her motivations complex and deeply human. The cinematography captures a bombed-out Berlin in muted tones that reflect the moral ambiguity of the postwar period. The final scene is absolutely devastating, a moment of revelation that brings everything into sharp, heartbreaking focus. This is sophisticated, intelligent cinema that trusts its audience and rewards close attention with profound emotional impact.
In 1984 Britain, during the miners' strike that defined Thatcher's government, a group of LGBT activists in London decide to raise money to support a Welsh mining community. Director Stephen Beere crafts an uplifting true story about unlikely solidarity and the power of finding common cause across social divides. The ensemble cast—including Ben Schnetzer, George MacKay, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, and Dominic West—brings warmth and authenticity to characters who could easily have become caricatures in less thoughtful hands. The film balances humor and heartbreak, never shying away from the prejudice faced by both groups while celebrating the genuine friendships that form. The Welsh mining village's initial suspicion giving way to acceptance provides the emotional arc, handled with sensitivity and earned sentiment. This is crowd-pleasing filmmaking in the best sense—entertaining and accessible while honoring real struggles and the people who fought them. It's a vital reminder that solidarity isn't abstract but built through individual acts of courage and compassion.