Taking stock in the year’s offerings in December while happily gorging on prestige flicks that have graced Cannes and Toronto seems habitual even if you don’t partake in the Wide World of Film Criticism. But undertaking the same kind of survey in June while suffering through summer bonanzas like Transformers or Godzilla and enjoying the pleasures, as major or minor as they may be, of movies like 22 Jump Street and Edge of Tomorrow feels a little more counterintuitive. Have we really seen anything good so far in 2014? Most definitely. Although our choices might differ, I think we can all agree that there were many gems in the first half of 2014 hiding under the buzz or right in plain sight.

Making our survey specific to films screened in the Twin Cities between January 1 and June 30 encompassed a number of anomalies, including late releases to our no-coast market from 2013 (Her, which opened January 10, locally scored big) as well as a large slate of early looks and undistributed films in April’s Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival (Boyhood earning standout marks). Other top tier movies in our accumulated votes--The Grand Budapest Hotel, Stranger by the Lake, Under the Skin, and Ida—will no doubt resurface in six months with our year end assessment.

Without further ado, our collective list scored via ranking and our individual ballots. Eight ballots resulted in 51 movies.