Boyhood Lands Atop Sight & Sound’s 20 Best Films Of 2014

As we head into December, year-end articles are already starting to appear around the web, and while you’ll have to wait a little longer to check out We Got This Covered’s own coverage, the revered Sight & Sound is getting a head-start, having just unveiled its top 20 films of the year.

112 Sight & Sound contributors and colleagues collaborated to put together the list, which includes a mix of familiar titles, like Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman and Richard Linklater’s list-topping Boyhood, and unfamiliar ones, like Portugese director Pedro Costa’s Horse Money and Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso’s Jaujau. Some of you may raise your eyebrows at the inclusion of Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, which arrived stateside last year, but Sight & Sound is a U.K. publication and the film was released earlier this year across the pond.

Sight & Sound ended up with multiple ties in its list, though Boyhood was unmatched in the number one spot. Also notable: Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, an early spring title that seems to be losing Oscar steam with every passing day, cracked the top ten, as did Jonathan Glazer’s beautiful, baffling sci-fi tale Under the Skin.

Check out the full list below, and let us know whether any of these titles would have made your personal top ten!

18. The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki) (TIE)
18. The Look of Silence (Joshua Oppenheimer) (TIE)
18. Citizenfour (Laura Poitras) (TIE)
16. Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne) (TIE)
16. Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu) (TIE)
15. The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland)
11. Whiplash (Damien Chazelle) (TIE)
11. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese) (TIE)
11. National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman) (TIE)
11. Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh) (TIE)
9. Jauja (Lisandro Alonso) (TIE)
9. Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski) (TIE)
8. The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy)
7. Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
6. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)
5. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
3. Horse Money (Pedro Costa) (TIE)
3. Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev) (TIE)
2. Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard)
1. Boyhood (Richard Linklater)