Butler's Cinema Scene

2014 wasn’t a year of great movies.

Great performances, yes, but often in movies that were only good.

Which poses a problem for the critic assembling a 10 Best List.  Is a spectacular piece of acting enough?  Just how far can it lift a movie that in other regards  fails to reach the stratospheric atmosphere of cinema art?

Examples: Eddie Redmayne’s astounding work as cosmologist Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything.”  Robin Wright in “The Congress.”  Ralph Fiennes in “Grand Budapest Hotel.”  Or Jake Gyllenhaal in “Nightcrawler.”

Ultimately you have to fall back on the basics, looking not at a film’s parts but at its totality, at the personality it presents to the world. Does the experience stick with you, burrowing into your consciousness so effectively that months or even years later you can recall the thrill of viewing?

These are the films that did it for me this year. There are several documentaries (the genre least insulting to the intelligence of audiences), one foreign title, and several independents (a couple of which came and went in the blink of an eye).

There’s only one mainstream release because…well, because Hollywood is less into discovery than into recycling the tried and true. I find it too late in the day to be treading water.

So here they are no particular order:

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