Best of 2014

Awards, awards, and more awards! And then, for dessert, additional awards! Yep, it’s December all right, and that means every group of movie lovers under the sun is giving out their prizes for the best films of the year. The National Board of Review, the country’s leading body dedicated to reviewing boards from our nation, just announced their favorites, including their pick for the top movie of 2014: J.C. Chandor’s ‘A Most Violent Year,’ starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain.

Every year, Little White Lies Editor-at-Large David Ehrlich celebrates the best movies with a video countdown supercut. The newly released 2014 edition is typically excellent, and covers Ehrlich’s picks for the top 25 films of the calendar year (even if I might quibble with some of his individual choices coughsomethinginmythroatnotreallyIjustdon’tlike‘Godzilla’cough).

At a meeting in New York City earlier today, the members of the New York Film Critics Circle announced the winners of their annual awards, which will be handed out at a special ceremony early next year. The biggest prizes, Best Picture and Best Director, went to Richard Linklater and his epic ‘Boyhood,’ which took 12 years to make. The other big winner of the day, in a bit of a surprise, was James Gray’s ‘The Immigrant,’ which hasn’t gotten a ton of attention during awards season so far but picked up two trophies from the NYFCC, for star Marion Cotillard and cinematographer Darius Khondji.

The director of ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and ‘The World’s End’ picks the best films of the year.

Here are the best movies of 2014 so far! (Note: These movies have all been released in theaters and I am not including movies that I saw at film festivals that have not been yet released to the public.)