Josh Kupecki's Top 10 List

1)

Force Majeure With exacting precision, this film turns a fight-or-flight moment into a wicked treatise on trust, identity, and the tenuous bonds of, well, everybody.

2)

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) Iñárritu finally pulls the stick out of his butt, and the results are fireworks. Imagine that! Dude from Beetlejuice is pretty good, too.

3)

The Grand Budapest Hotel Anderson's most mature and entertaining contraption to date; as elegantly artful and satisfying as a pastry from Mendl's.

4)

Only Lovers Left Alive Ripping out a page from Anne Rice (and a few from Neil Gaiman), Jarmusch infuses his own urbane aesthetic into this mesmerizing tale of vampire ennui.

5)

Borgman I'm pretty sure I had goose bumps for the entire running time. An unflinching decimation of the bourgeoisie by insidiously controlled chaos.

6)

Under the Skin A deft deconstruction of the "predatory alien" genre, Glazer's film strips alienation to its core. A haunting, indelible film.

7)

Locke Yeah, it's that movie about a guy driving and talking on the phone for 90 minutes. But that guy is Tom Hardy, and this film is on fire.

8)

We Are the Best! Eschewing pretension and nostalgia, this glimpse of life in Eighties Stockholm for a trio of punk rockers is a vibrant "fuck you" to conformity.

9)

Nightcrawler It might not be the movie we want about the current state of news media, but it is definitely the one we deserve.

10)

Maps to the Stars Late-era Cronenberg can be hit-or-miss, but he nails it with this evisceration and subsequent autopsy of Hollywood players and losers.

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Near Misses

Calvary, Finding Vivian Maier, Inherent Vice, Obvious Child, The One I Love

Most Overrated

Boyhood, Gone Girl, Whiplash

Most Underrated

God Help the Girl, Enemy, A Field in England

Wild Card

The car chase from The Raid 2: Sure, there's that amazing kitchen fight, but this is presently the ne plus ultra of kinetic action filmmaking.

Acting Kudos (Male)

Brendan Gleeson (Calvary), Tom Hardy (Locke), John Hawkes (Low Down), Macon Blair (Blue Ruin), Ralph Fiennes (The Grand Budapest Hotel)

Acting Kudos (Female)

Julianne Moore (Still Alice, Maps to the Stars), Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything), Marion Cotillard (Two Days, One Night), Essie Davis (The Babadook), Laura Dern (Wild)

Best Director

Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin), Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Ruben Östlund (Force Majeure)

Best Original Screenplay

Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund), Maps to the Stars (Bruce Wagner), Locke (Steven Knight)

Best Adapted Screenplay

Enemy (Javier Gullón), Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson), Wild (Nick Hornby)

Worst Film

Third Person: Paul Haggis continues to cement his reputation as the most plodding and obvious filmmaker currently beguiling A-list actors to be in his horribly overdetermined movies.