Top five international movies
1) Nightcrawler: If there's one movie during whose complete duration my jaw was constantly touching the floor, it's this Dan Gilroy debut vehicle about a stringer (Jake Gyllenhaal) who makes it big in network television in Los Angeles (LA). Gyllenhaal's hypnotic performance of a cold-blooded reporter willing to go to any length to sensationalise his story was aptly complemented by the grimy LA locations. My best cinematic experience of the year.
2) Ida: This 80-minute Polish movie of a nun in the 1960s trying, with the help of her bohemian aunt, to discover the graves of her parents, who died in the Second World War, left me in raptures at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa. Pawel Pawlikowski's stripped-down, shot-in-black-and-white drama has been shortlisted for the best foreign film at the Oscars.
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3) Edge of Tomorrow: This was the "capital-R" riveting Hollywood movie of the year for me. This playfully frantic science-fiction twister liberally borrows tropes from Alien, The Matrix, Groundhog Day - and has Tom Cruise at his best. Plots this hilariously deranged rarely pass muster with the big studios, but I wasn't complaining - and, what's more, Cruise looked like a fresh breath of air after god knows how many years.
4) Gett-The Trial of Viviane Amsalem: As I settled down in my seat during the Mumbai Film Festival to watch this Israeli court drama, I wasn't expecting something this amazing. The plot revolves around the antiquated divorce law of Israel, owing to which the titular character has to fight tooth and nail to get legal separation from her husband, who is unwilling to part with her. Deadpan humour shines through the unremitting bleakness of the proceedings. Also, brownie points for being entirely shot in a single room, like 12 Angry Men.
5) Winter Sleep: Turkish film maker Nuri Bilge Ceylan's near-200-minute-long meditation on life, as seen through three intense characters, won the coveted Palme d'Or at Cannes. I saw it at the IFFI Goa, and took a couple of hours to recover afterwards.
Top five Indian movies
1) Jigarthanda: Think Bullets over Broadway, but in the temple town of Madurai. This sepia-tinted comedy is from Karthik Subbaraj, who announced his arrival with Pizza, a ridiculously inventive horror movie. A struggling film maker (Siddharth) is trying to make a movie about a local hoodlum, played by Bobby Simha; and Santhosh Narayanan's characteristically up-tempo music, the arresting presence of Simha, and cracking writing make Jigarthanda absolutely unmissable.
2) Drishyam: The biggest commercial success in Malayalam cinema not just in 2014 but ever. The story of how even someone relatively unprivileged - in this case a cable operator played by Mohanlal - can take on the world if necessary clearly struck a chord. With skills borrowed from the movies that he loves and keeps watching, the main character battles against the circumstances that threaten to swallow his family.
3) Cuckoo: The schmaltziest of plots (two lovers, both blind, get separated and finally meet at a crowded railway station) is somehow turned into an effective film by Raju Murugan. Amply aided by his lead actors, music from Santhosh Narayanan (that man again!) and P K Varma's cinema-verite-style camerawork, Murugan ensured the movie never became cloying, which is what caused viewers to root for the characters.
4) Chotushkone: A really tight thriller with a stunning ensemble cast. Four directors narrate their ideas for short films en route to a writers' retreat - except there's a twist in the final tale. An outrageously unconventional plot and the savagely wicked turn that one character takes in the end deserves every acting award.
5) Bangalore Days: Far from perfect - with uneven tonal shifts and a maudlin flashback - but worth a watch, thanks to winsome performances of the three friends who emigrate to Bengaluru from Kerala to reinvent their lives. Nivin Pauly deserves special mention for his goofy portrayal of an innocent young man grappling with the vicissitudes of a big city life.
Honourable mention
Sulemani Keeda deserves a shout-out despite its preposterous inconsistencies, because it might just be our first "slacker" movie - and in another year or two, we might just have our own Kevin Smith with his/her own Clerks, and that's a future worth waiting for.