As a precursor to my Favorite Films of 2014 List that I am preparing I wanted to put out the list of all the eligible candidates. 2014 was just an epic year for movies for me. How I broke things down was by using Box Office Mojo. Lots of films get releases at film festivals or overseas sometimes before coming here. So how I organized what films categorized as ‘2014 releases’ was by using the Yearly tab on Box Office Mojo. If that site thought a film was a 2014 release for the USA then I did too. So some of these if you look at IMDB or Wikipedia will say they are 2013 movies, however they were not widely available or available at all in America in that year, but only starting in 2014. Other of these films you might think were released early this year, but were available enough to have made limited theater runs or qualifying Academy Awards runs to be considered 2014 releases. I have seen 106 total films released in 2014. Looking over the past few years I have only seen as many as 70, so this was a very good year. I owe this a lot to alternative release methods where a lot of smaller films were put on iTunes or OnDemand along with limited theater runs that never made it to the midwest. I also live close to two amazing theaters that show smaller films, Oriental and Downer. Of the 106 films I saw 44 of them in theaters. So here is the list. I hope you got to see a lot of these films too, lots of them are very, very good. And I’ll get back to contemplating my favorite movies from 2014.
| 20,000 Days on Earth | Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard | UK |
| A Field in England | Ben Wheatley | UK |
| A Most Violent Year | J.C. Chandor | USA |
| A Most Wanted Man | Anton Corbijn | UK |
| Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas | Arnaud des Pallieres | France |
| Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa | Declan Lowney | UK |
| American Sniper | Clint Eastwood | USA |
| Big Hero 6 | Don Hall & Chris Williams | USA |
| Birdman | Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu | USA |
| Blue Ruin | Jeremy Saulnier | USA |
| Borgman | Alex van Warmerdam | Netherlands |
| Boyhood | Richard Linklater | USA |
| Calvary | John Michael McDonagh | Ireland |
| Captain America: The Winter Soldier | Anthony & Joe Russo | USA |
| Chef | Jon Favreau | USA |
| Citizenfour | Laura Poitras | USA |
| Coherence | James Ward Byrkit | USA |
| Dawn of the Planet of the Apes | Matt Reeves | USA |
| Dinosaur 13 | Todd Douglas Miller | USA |
| Dom Hemingway | Richard Shepard | UK |
| Edge of Tomorrow | Doug Liman | USA |
| Enemy | Denis Villeneuve | Canada |
| Expedition to the End of the World | Daniel Dencik | Denmark |
| Fading Gigolo | John Tuturro | USA |
| Filth | Jon S. Baird | UK |
| Finding Vivian Maier | John Maloof & Charlie Siskel | USA |
| Force Majeure | Ruben Ostlund | Sweden |
| Foxcatcher | Bennett Miller | USA |
| Frank | Lenny Abrahamson | Ireland |
| Fury | David Ayer | USA |
| Godzilla | Gareth Edwards | USA |
| Gone Girl | David Fincher | USA |
| Grand Piano | Eugenio Mira | Spain |
| Guardians of the Galaxy | James Gunn | USA |
| Hide Your Smiling Faces | Daniel Patrick Carbone | USA |
| Ida | Pawel Pawlikowski | Poland |
| Inherent Vice | P.T. Anderson | USA |
| Interstellar | Christopher Nolan | USA |
| Jodorowsky’s Dune | Frank Pavich | USA |
| Joe | David Gordon Green | USA |
| John Wick | Chad Stahelski & David Leitch | USA |
| Kill the Messenger | Michael Cuesta | USA |
| Korengal | Sebastian Junger | USA |
| Land Ho! | Martha Stephens & Aaron Katz | Iceland |
| Le Week-End | Roger Michell | UK |
| Leviathan | Andrey Zvyagintsev | Russia |
| Life Itself | Steve James | USA |
| Locke | Steven Knight | UK |
| Love is Strange | Ira Sachs | USA |
| Magic in the Moonlight | Woody Allen | USA |
| Manakamana | Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez | Nepal |
| Mood Indigo | Michel Gondry | France |
| Mr. Turner | Mike Leigh | UK |
| Night Moves | Kelly Reichardt | USA |
| Nightcrawler | Dan Gilroy | USA |
| Noah | Darren Aronofsky | USA |
| Nymphomaniac: Vol. 1 | Lars von Trier | Denmark |
| Oculus | Mike Flannagan | USA |
| Only Lovers Left Alive | Jim Jarmusch | UK |
| Palo Alto | Gia Coppola | USA |
| Particle Fever | Mark Levinson | USA |
| Pride | Matthew Warchus | UK |
| Rosewater | Jon Stewart | USA |
| Run & Jump | Steph Green | Ireland |
| Selma | Ava DuVernay | USA |
| Sin City: A Dame to Kill For | Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller | USA |
| Snowpiercer | Bong Jonn-ho | South Korea |
| St. Vincent | Theodore Melfi | USA |
| Starred Up | David Mackenzie | UK |
| Still Alice | Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland | USA |
| Stretch | Joe Carnahan | USA |
| The Babadook | Jennifer Kent | Australia |
| The Double | Richard Ayoade | UK |
| The Drop | Michael R. Roskam | USA |
| The Grand Budapest Hotel | Wes Anderson | USA |
| The Guest | Adam Wingard | USA |
| The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies | Peter Jackson | New Zealand |
| The Imitation Game | Morten Tyldum | UK |
| The Immigrant | James Gray | USA |
| The Internet’s Own Boy | Brian Knappenberger | USA |
| The Interview | Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg | USA |
| The Lego Movie | Phil Lord & Christopher Miller | USA |
| The Liberator | Alberto Arvelo | Venezuela |
| The Lunchbox | Ritesh Batra | India |
| The One I Love | Charlie McDowell | USA |
| The Raid 2: Berandal | Gareth Evans | Indonesia |
| The Retrieval | Chris Eska | USA |
| The Rover | David Michod | Australia |
| The Skeleton Twins | Craig Johnson | USA |
| The Tale of Princess Kaguya | Isao Takahata | Japan |
| The Theory of Everything | James Marsh | UK |
| The Trip to Italy | Michael Winterbottom | UK |
| The Wind Rises | Hayao Miyazaki | Japan |
| The Zero Theorem | Terry Gilliam | UK |
| Transcendence | Wally Pfister | USA |
| Two Days, One Night | Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne | Belgium |
| Unbroken | Angelina Jolie | USA |
| Under the Skin | Jonathan Glazer | UK |
| Venus in Fur | Roman Polanski | France |
| Visitors | Godfrey Reggio | USA |
| Watermark | Edward Burtynsky & Jennifer Baichwal | Canada |
| We Are the Best! | Lukas Moodysson | Sweden |
| Whiplash | Damien Chazelle | USA |
| Wild | Jean-Marc Vallee | USA |
| X-Men: Days of Future Past | Bryan Singer | USA |
| Young & Beautiful | Francois Ozon | France |
| Young Ones | Jake Paltrow | USA |
midwestmovieman 