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The 10 best movies of 2014

To celebrate all that was wonderful in 2014, the staff of For The Win is counting down our favorite moments in sports, TV, movies and music. We’ve already counted down our 10 favorite albums and 10 favorite songs. While this list isn’t comprehensive (no one on staff has seen Selma yet, for example) here are our favorite movies of the year.

10. Gone Girl

Merrick Morton, 20th Century Fox

Merrick Morton, 20th Century Fox

David Fincher is a director who long ago mastered the art of adapting complex stories into incredible movies, and his adaption of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is up there with his best. Gone Girl is a story that on surface is about an unhappy wife, a woman who’s been a muse for her mother and the perfect partner for her husband. She’s never created her own narrative, though, until she creates her own murder mystery. But what Fincher manages to do best in Gone Girl is leave the viewer not only breathless during the movie but also with a sense of wariness about their own reality. – Nina Mandell

9. Fury

Giles Keyte, Sony Pictures

Giles Keyte, Sony Pictures

David Ayers’ Fury is a gruff, gravelly movie exposing the horrors of warfare; particularly the horrors that occurred after World War II was “officially” over. It stars a hardened Brad Pitt, a positively green Logan Lerman, and Shia LaBoeuf, who plays an unforgettable Bible-thumping southerner. The responsible thing to do here is to begin by letting everyone know that there’s absolutely nothing uplifting about it. Characters come and go, allowing just enough time for you to grow attached to them before they’re snatched away from you.

From the very beginning when Lerman’s character is thrust into Pitt’s company for the worst two days of his life on up to the bitter end, Fury is undeniably dark, heavy, and unrelenting. There’s not even a sense of relief by the time the credits roll. Why see it? While making the media rounds to promote the movie, LaBoeuf intimated that Ayers had the actors have fist fights with each other as a team bonding exercise. That probably explains why in its two hours, Fury never once dips in quality and is sturdily acted throughout. – Micah Peters

8. X-Men: Days of Future’s Past

Alan Markfield, 20th Century Fox

Alan Markfield, 20th Century Fox

There are so many ways this movie could have been a disaster and Matthew Vaughn deserves credit for simply penning a coherent script. Instead of big budget debacle, this is the most dynamic X-Men film to date and is responsible for one of the greatest set pieces of comic book film history. -Mike Foss

7. The Lego Movie

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

The Lego Movie is a carefree, slaphappy animated adventure film that follows Emmett, voiced by Chris Pratt, an everyman who stumbles upon greatness. Apart from being shamelessly fun and refusing to take itself seriously, the film’s underlying message is truly important: anything is possible and, no matter your station, your dreams are very much valid.

Emmett is, on paper, truly unremarkable in every way. Co-writers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller cannot stress that enough. But despite having no discernible talents and a mind that Vitruvius, a wizard and the leader of the master builders voiced by Morgan Freeman, describes as “prodigiously empty,” it turns out Emmett is the savior the world needs.– Micah Peters

6. Live Die Repeat (Edge of Tomorrow)

David James, Warner Bros. Pictures

David James, Warner Bros. Pictures

Tom Cruise shouldn’t be an action movie star. He barely cracks five feet, has the gait of a panicked chicken, and made Cocktail. Yet, his most enjoyable movies of recent years have all been action flicks. Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow is the prototype for what a summer Hollywood blockbuster should be. Thrilling, clever, and well-acted, Cruise, Emily Blunt, and a wildly underrated Bill Paxton make Edge of Tomorrow a fantastic ride. – Mike Foss

5. Birdman

Fox Searchlight Pictures

Fox Searchlight Pictures

I love Michael Keaton with a fervor that’s usually reserved for family members, significant others and Bucks guard Giannis Antetokounmpo, and seeing him at the peak of his powers in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman brought me happiness I find difficult to describe.

Keaton is brilliant as an aging actor, made famous by playing a superhero two decades earlier, who takes one last stab at greatness by putting himself in a play of his creation on Broadway. What at first seems like a satire of Hollywood’s obsession with superheroes transforms into a deeply specific and fantastical look at a broken man.  – Nate Scott

4. Guardians of the Galaxy

Jay Maidment, Marvel

Jay Maidment, Marvel

There have been several defining moments in comic book movie history. Films like X-MenSpider-Man 2 (2004 not 2014), Iron Man, and The Dark Knight have influenced everything that has followed on screen. In 2014, there was a potential for comic book movie glut. Instead, we were given a film that has effectively rejuvenated the genre and will undoubtedly shape the next decade of films in both the Marvel and D.C. universes. – Mike Foss

3. Snowpiercer

Radius-TWC

Radius-TWC

Like so many other great films, Snowpiercer takes place on a train. Directed by Bong Joon-ho and starring a grizzled Chris Evans and a dementedly wonderful Tilda Swindon, Snowpiercer imagines a dead world where the only life exists on a speeding locomotive. The poor are at the back of the train, the rich and powerful at the front of the train. At once a simple parable and a sphincter-tightening action flick, Snowpiercer was the movie that most made me sit up and pay attention this year. – Nate Scott

2. Blue Ruin

Radius-TWC

Radius-TWC

What a year for the indie thriller. Several came out in 2014, including the excellent Bad Turn Worsebut the best of the bunch was Jeremy Saulnier’s stunning, spare Blue Ruin. A more-or-less straightforward revenge tale is made relevant and haunting both in the cinematography and the performance of Macon Blair, who I’d never heard of before but can’t wait to hear from again. Blair starts the film as a washed-out drifter, transitions to a clean-cut preppy and ends the film soaked in blood. Go find it. – Nate Scott

1. Boyhood

Matt Lankes, IFC Films

Matt Lankes, IFC Films

On the most basic level, Boyhood is a coming-of-age tale centered around young Mason (Ellar Coltrane) and his family. Director Richard Linklater’s decision to film the same cast over 12 consecutive years, though, transforms this from a simple bildungsroman into a masterpiece.

Shot and acted with patience and poise, the film is the best of the year because it does something many others are afraid to do: slow down and explore the small moments that constitute a human life. Plus, the dialogue avoids cliché. Don’t balk at the three-hour run-time — it’d be a mistake to miss this one.– Avery Stone

Honorable mentions:

Nightcrawler, Bad Turn Worse, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Whiplash, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Frank, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, A Most Wanted Man

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