Year end top 10 lists are, for some reason, an inflammatory exercise. There are those who balk at the notion of reducing 365-ish days of output to tiers, others who seem to pride themselves on plucking unreleased titles from obscurity, along with the underlying question of authority — as though a given arrangement must be the chosen one. In any event, I just think they’re fun, and few, year after year, are as pithy as John Waters’ list for Artforum.  Unsurprisingly, Maps to the Stars and Nymphomaniac make the cut, but he also gives a shout-out to the more middle of the road charmer Gloria, the very dry Kidnaping of Michel Houllebecq, the transmedia outing Charlie Victor Romeo and the “modest” trifecta of Joanna Hogg. Along with Cahiers du Cinéma, he cites Bruno Dumont’s L’il Quinquin, which screened at Cannes in Director’s Fortnight, even if it — technically speaking — is a television series. A bit of a catchall, in large part due to its expansive voting body, the Sight and Sound top 20 has almost as many ties as spots. Two of the best titles among the group, The Duke of Burgundy and The Look of Silence won’t receive a stateside release until 2015.

John Waters

1. Maps to the Stars
2. Charlie Victor Romeo
3. The Kidnapping of Michel Houllebecq
4. The Smell of Us
5. Gloria
6. Who Took Johnny
7. Li’l Quinquin
8. Nymphomaniac
9. Violette
10. Unrelated, Archipelago, Exhibition

Cahiers du Cinéma

1. L’il Quinquin
2. Goodbye To Language 3D
3. Under the Skin
4. Maps to the Stars
5. The Wind Rises
6. Nymphomaniac
7. Mommy
8. Love is Strange
9. Le Paradis
10. Our Sunhi

Sight & Sound

1. Boyhood
2. Goodbye To Language 3D
3. Leviathan, Horse Money (tie)
4. Under The Skin
5. The Grand Budapest Hotel
6. Winter Sleep
7. The Tribe
8. Ida, Jauja (tie)
9. Mr. Turner, National Gallery, The Wolf Of Wall Street, Whiplash (tie)
10. The Duke of Burgundy
11. Birdman, Two Days, One Night (tie)
12. Citizenfour, The Look Of Silence, The Wind Rises (tie)