As 2014 crawls to an end and the Christmas season is upon us it's time to take a look back and see what emerged as the best movies of the year. Hollywood delivered the predictable mixed bag of goodies, from some surprisingly good blockbusters that came out of nowhere such as The Lego Movie and Guardians Of The Galaxy, to new franchise installments which suggested that they were upping their game (both Captain America: The Winter Soldier and X-Men: Days Of Future Past surpassed expectations for many audiences). Independent cinema proved itself capable of delivering lower budget thrills, too, with Cold In July, Cheap Thrills and Blue Ruin representing the darker side of cinema. On the international scene the variety of great movies was certainly notable - from the strange and surreal through to beautifully animated movies more suitable for children, world cinema served up a veritable genre-hopping smorgasbord of cinematic delights. Having sifted out the lesser foreign language movies of the year, let's take a look at ten essential international movies released in 2014. It should be noted that some of these movies were either released in their home country or screened at international film festivals in 2013 - their inclusion on this list is assessed by their general release dates in the US and UK.
