Ah December. Everywhere you look, Christmas trees are going up, people are kissing under the mistletoe, and film nerds are racing to see every movie they possibly can so they can finalize their year-end top ten lists. We here at ScreenCrush are still deep in catch-up mode, so we’ll have our picks to you in the very near future. In the meantime, as a sort of cinematic appetizer, you should definitely check out director Edgar Wright’s best films of the year list over at Esquire. Wright’s not only a great filmmaker, but a cinephile of impeccable taste, and his top ten is really great.

Wright prefaces his favorites by praising 2014 as “a great year for independent movies” and saying that we (i.e. you) “need to... support original movies, for the future of the medium.” To that end, his list contains no sequels, remakes, prequels, reboots, or sidequels. They’re all standalone works (at least until Tom Cruise decides to make ‘Edge of 2morrow’). And his choices (in no particular order) are:

Edgar Wright’s Top 10 Movies of 2014
Boyhood
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Birdman
Snowpiercer
Interstellar
Nightcrawler
Under the Skin
The LEGO Movie
Whiplash
Edge of Tomorrow

To see Wright’s honorable mentions and to read his thoughts on each of his ten films, be sure to read the full list at Esquire. And if you’ve missed any of these movies, you better cracking: the clock is ticking on those 2014 best-of lists.

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