Films of the year: Our critics pick the best movies of 2014

With choice quotes from City A.M.’s film critics

 

 

 

Anderson’s world is so lovingly crafted that checking into the Grand Budapest hotel is nothing short of a joy.

 

 

 

Scarlett Johansson has few lines, and barely wavers from a vacant stare into nothing, but it is a transfixing, landmark performance.

 

 

 

It’s a slick, impeccably paced, brilliantly acted drama, and Scorsese’s best work in years.

 

 

 

Boyhood is a domestic epic that’s about nothing more or less than life itself and the moments that make us.

 

 

 

Chef is a molten chocolate lava cake of a movie: soft centred, comforting and entirely satisfying.

 

 

 

It’s a film that’s more thriller than horror, but disturbs us nonetheless by holding a mirror to our own salacious appetites

 

 

 

It embraces the man in all his strange ambiguity, and therein lies its richness.