Comic-book heroes tops with film fans

By now, it's no surprise to report that the 2014 box office is, yet again, dominated by toys and comics. Looking at the four top earners in the foreign blockbuster list, film fans can at least comfort themselves with the knowledge that Captain America: The Winter Soldier and X-Men: Days of Future Past are excellent efforts. It also says something about local cinema-going trends that the top five is rounded out by Christopher Nolan ( Interstellar), the genius geek who's still riding on his Dark Knight trilogy fame.

To illustrate the depth of quality in the field, even the conservative film viewer in me has to acknowledge the Guardians of the Galaxy team has come up with the year's most shamelessly entertaining romp - super-powered or otherwise. An escapist fantasy through and through, this irreverent origin story of the little-known ensemble of Marvel Comics characters rides on its zaniness and a truly killer soundtrack to go to the exhilarating extremes that a more-storied superhero franchise would probably avoid.

The gulf between the realms of superhero adventures and high-minded experimental films has been surprisingly bridged by one prominent Hollywood actress this year. Apart from appearing in the Captain America sequel and the pseudo-philosophical action flick Lucy, Scarlett Johansson has charmed the socks off art-house movie buffs as a seductive alien on the road in the sensual Under the Skin, and as the voice of artificial intelligence in Spike Jonze's Her, a poignant meditation on human relationships. And Jonze is not the only auteur who has justified his signature style with quality substance.

While Wes Anderson has made one of his best films to date with the period tragicomedy The Grand Budapest Hotel, Jim Jarmusch has channelled his deadpan cool to great effect in the vampire romance Only Lovers Left Alive, with Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston playing a hipster couple for the ages. Even Nuri Bilge Ceylan, that champion of inexpressive characters among Turkey's vast landscapes, has turned in the incredibly talky Winter Sleep, a 196-minute-long Palme d'Or winner that charts the complex human psyches in the most meticulous manner possible.

Finally, a few words on Hong Kong cinema, whose underwhelming output would see only two titles ( Rise of the Legend and The Golden Era) coming close to my year-end top 10 film list. While the bleak social atmosphere in Hong Kong has been evoked in at least a couple of films released in late 2013 ( Doomsday Party and As the Light Goes Out), controversial subject matters - the chaos in Central in Firestorm, the very bad cops in That Demon Within, the umbrellas in Rise of the Legend - have also been singled out by critics looking to put the Occupy movement in context.