Okay, so 2014 was a fantastic year for film, and I wanted to throw together a personal Top 10 list  for the first time in a few years. That said, there are a lot of critically well received films of 2014 that I still have yet to see, so go easy on me, I guess. However, that said, my top 5 films are seriously incredible, and were my motivation to put this list together. They are pretty much locks on this list, but the back half might have been different if I had seen everything. Okay, okay, stupid disclaimer out of the way, here’s my list, starting with one Honorable Mention:

Honorable Mention: Enemy – Denis Villeneuve

A seriously enigmatic film that you won’t understand on your first viewing, guaranteed. It’s obtuse nature can be frustrating and certainly unsatisfying, but upon careful inspection, Enemy is a fascinating film that plays with the boundaries of storytelling, audience expectations, and even cinematic structure. Is it a good film? I’m still trying to figure that out. Is it worth seeing? Most definitely.

10. Interstellar – Christopher Nolan

First things first: I didn’t walk out of Interstellar liking it all that much. Hell, the final 10 minutes had me rolling my eyes and ready for the film to be over with. It contains some of the most awkward lines of dialog in any film I saw in 2014, and it’s plot doesn’t hold together cinematically nearly as well as it may scientifically (thanks, Neil Degrass Tyson). But, and this is a huge BUT, Interstellar has some of the most powerful images and thrilling sequences of any film I saw in 2014. The Black Hole alone could win an award, and I wouldn’t disagree. Granted, films are more than the sum of their parts, and as a whole, Interstellar is quite flawed, but between Hans Zimmer’s POWERFUL score (all caps for volume), McConaughey’s performance, and sequences like those on that shallow water planet, it was one of the best theater experiences of the year.

9. The Lego Movie – Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

The Lego Movie wins the award for the most sheer joyous energy of a film in 2014. If there was any doubt before, The Lego Movie now cements Phil Lord and Christopher Miller as my favorite comedy writer/directors working today. Not only does their sense of humor really click for me, they have an impeccable knack for taking on projects that should be disastrous wastes of screen time and transforming them into whip-smart and subversive comedies while still being crowd pleasing and, above all, hilarious.

The Lego Movie is far better than it had any right to be. Not only is the art style absolutely gorgeous and the animation fascinating to watch, the story features a strong thematic message that really worked for me. I loved the idea of critiquing the Lego property for what it has become – a series of kits with exact instructions on how to build cool, albeit unoriginal designs – and promoting what Lego originally represented for a generation of children. Extrapolating that out to a larger scale, the film is about the dangers of conformity and how breaking the rules creatively should be encouraged. To me, that’s an excellent message for kids, and just people in general.

I am, of course, aware of the irony of the film’s suggestion that individuality can and should be expressed through a licensed corporate toy property, but at the end of the day, it is a commercial cash-in film. The fact that it comes as close as it does to knocking the current state of Legos was enough for me to forgive the slight thematic hypocrisy. And besides, The Lego Movie is fucking hilarious. And, at the end of the day, I can’t fault it for that.

8. How to Train Your Dragon 2 – Dean DeBlois

The sequel to How to Train Your Dragon doesn’t outshine the gorgeous embodiment of boyhood wonder and human fascination with flight that was the first film, but it still brought a tear to my eye more times than I care to admit. How to Train Your Dragon 2 is bigger and bolder than the first film, serving as the dark second chapter of its own Star Wars-esque trilogy-to-be. It expands its family dynamic further, and pits them all against the series first big bad. It takes risks that many animated films wouldn’t dare, and is all the more powerful for those intimate moments of beauty and heartbreak. It’s ending was a bit of a letdown after everything that came before, and the comic relief side characters are still mostly obnoxious, but the rest of the experience more than makes up for all of that. I am eagerly anticipating the third film.

7. Guardians of the Galaxy – James Gunn

In some ways, I adore Guardians of the Galaxy precisely because it was the highest grossing film of 2014. Well, domestically anyway (go fuck yourself, Transformers). In an era where big budget studio films rule Hollywood, I love that at least big, badass Marvel Studios has the guts to take a seemingly anti-commercial, weird-as-hell property from its back-catalog, bring on a unique director like James Gunn to let him put his stamp on it, and throw a budget of $170 million behind it. I love that it begins with a tear jerking sequence that grounds the film in humanity before taking us on a crazy tour of its batshit universe. I love that its late title card is laid over an impromptu dance sequence set to Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love”. I love Bradley Cooper’s performance as Rocket. I love that a character like Groot, who only utters 4 different words the entire film, is given a character arc that actually made me tear up.

With as much comic book bullshit as Guardians of the Galaxy contained, I should’ve hated it. And yet, I think it is the best film from Marvel Studios, and the first which was able to make me care about every single one of its characters. If Guardians of the Galaxy manages to affect some kind of change in Hollywood’s ultra risk-averse, overly self-serious, and homogenous films-as-products-first culture, that would make me love it all the more. I’m not holding out much hope on that front, but the fact that Guardians got made is enough for now.

6. The Raid 2 – Gareth Evans

The unequivocal, nagging question I had when sitting down to watch The Raid 2 was: “How could you possibly top the fight sequences in The Raid?” Watching The Raid 2, I felt like the director had sat me down and proceeded to laugh at the very nature of that question. The Raid 2 is confident filmmaking embodied. Every fight ups the ante over the previous one, and just as it feels like its reaching its breaking point, something even crazier happens. The plot may be crap and the characters overly cartoonish, but none of that matters all that much here. The Raid 2 is an action film masterclass. No film of the year left me with my jaw on the floor more regularly. The question I kept asking while watching the film was “How? How are they doing this?” From crazy camera work to absolutely bonkers fight choreography, The Raid 2 is a cinematic thing to behold.

5. Birdman: The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance – Alejandro Iñárritu

Birdman is an exhilarating film to behold. Not only is it technically incredible – the entire film is stitched together such that it seems done in one long, continuous take – its mesmerizing craftsmanship transcends being a gimmick and instead gives the film a weight and tone like nothing else you’ve ever seen on film. Birdman is about Michael Keaton’s character attempting to find fulfillment in his life after having once been famous for playing the titular superhero. He decides to direct and star in a Broadway play, and the film centers around the lead up to opening night.

The film’s lack of cutting gives the entire experience the feel of being a Broadway production, with larger-than-life performances and a continual sense that anything could go wrong at any time and you won’t be able to look away. It’s a cinematic achievement that ponders the meaning of art, life, fulfillment, and other equally large questions. Though its ending is a bit perplexing (and not really the good kind), the experience of watching this film and the questions it posits are things I won’t soon forget. A must-see for anyone for anyone who loves film. Or theater. Or drama. Or anyone. Yeah. It’s just a must-see. Period.

4. The Babadook – Jennifer Kent

The Babadook is my perfect horror film. It gathers up the tropes of the genre and infuses them with profound meaning, letting the ugly emotional truths of human experience physically manifest themselves into the awful things we all have nightmares about. There are a multitude of ways you can read the story of The Babadook, but it primarily serves as an allegory for grief, and all the negative, sometimes unspeakable emotions that accompany that sense of loss.

Not only that, but The Babadook plays with the horror genre tropes in a way that I sincerely appreciated. Sure, it starts out with the creepy kid – a fear that has been done to death in film – but it flips those expectations on their head midway through the film, making the kid into the hero and forcing the audience to reevaluate everything that came before.

I don’t think it is as ultra-scary as the titans of the genre, but the performance from Essie Davis is absolutely chilling and its story merits discussion and analysis in a way that I sincerely wish more horror films did. When it’s done right, horror is my favorite genre of film, and The Babadook absolutely does horror right. It was Australian filmmaker Jennifer Kent’s first film, and whether her next film remains in the horror genre or not, she is certainly a name to watch.

3. Gone Girl – David Fincher

Without a doubt my most anticipated film of 2014, Gone Girl delivered as great a novel adaptation as I expected of a David Fincher film. The strength of its screenplay – which was written solely by Gillian Flynn herself – was the biggest surprise of the film, followed closely by the portrayal of Amy Elliott by Rosamund Pike (which I believe deserves an Oscar nomination). It was wonderful to see Fincher get back to his roots, so to speak, with a film that didn’t have the vaguely hollow feeling that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo did. Some of the most haunting images he’s ever put to screen are in Gone Girl. It is absolutely gorgeous (or hideous, depending), and Fincher’s obsession with detail made him the absolute perfect director to make this film. It’s also one of the most thought-provoking films of the year, asking difficult and often ugly questions about marriage, gender, societal pressure, the media, and how we present ourselves outwardly to the world. Plus, you know…dat music.

2. Under the Skin – Jonathan Glazer

My favorite “art film” of the year. Under the Skin is a superb slow burn, one which feels less like a film and more like an experience. That may sound a bit ridiculous, but everything about this film, from Scarlet Johansen’s chilling and Oscar-worthy performance to the skin-crawlingly atmospheric score come together to form a film that I still get chills thinking about. It’s my kind of social commentary film, one which doesn’t get in your face with its message, but it roils and seethes with it throughout, just under its surface. The final scene of Under the Skin says more with its visuals alone than most films do in their entire runtime. It is brilliant, eerie, disturbing, and like most great films, I can’t get it out of my head, even now.

1. Nightcrawler – Dan Gilroy

Nightcrawler made the top spot on my list primarily for this reason: its message stayed with me longer and troubled me more than any other film this year (though Under the Skin and Gone Girl came very close).  It presents a lot of upsetting aspects of our society, such as a dispassionate media obsession with the gory and macabre (something that should hit home for heavy users of the internet), as well as how our capitalistic society is set up to reward sociopathic behavior rather than punish it. Of course, many elements of the film are exaggerated for dramatic effect, but the fact that it contains such a kernel of truth even in those moments makes it a powerful viewing experience.

And none of this is to mention Jake Gyllenhaal, who gives the best performance of his life here as empathy-devoid, blink-less media entrepreneur Lou Bloom. He lends to the character a chilling, almost insect-like observance of the world, as well as some deeply grotesque manipulative actions. While he is a character to be reviled, we see in him a startling familiarity with the world of corporate America and startup culture. Lou Bloom is a walking business seminar, taken to its logical conclusion as an entire world view.

For me personally, as someone currently attempting to adapt to corporate America culture and taking on adult life for the first time, what Nightcrawler has to say only makes this prospect all the more terrifying. Not to get too jaded, obnoxious “this country is going to hell” old man here, but Nightcrawler really made me upset about the society I live in, and it did it in a way I couldn’t have possibly expected. It’s a film I almost don’t want to revisit, but I know I will. It’s an absolutely brilliant directorial debut from Dan Gilroy (this is the guy credited with “Story” for Real Steel, for fuck’s sake), and my overall favorite film of 2014.