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On the whole, I found 2013 to be a solid year in movies. The prior year had included a high volume of solid to great movies, only a few of which truly dazzled me. I feel that my 2013 top 20 list was as strong as any movie group in recent years. Alas, the Academy still somehow managed to get a lot wrong. Only four of the movies I selected as among the true greats of the year earned Best Picture nominees. Another three selections finished in the top third of my movie rankings for the year. The other two titles fell somewhere in the range of wildly disappointing to utterly deplorable. Suffice to say that anything I rank lower than four skews toward the overrated range. The movies ranked eighth and ninth have no business being critically praised, much less Best Picture nominees.

1) Gravity
Our site’s passion for Gravity was stated in plain terms when we selected it Best Picture at The Calvins. In the process, its margin of victory absolutely shattered the previous record in the category. All of our voters but two listed Gravity as one of the ten best movies of the year. More than half determined that it was the seminal movie achievement of 2013. Count me among those voters. Simply stated, Gravity leaves me breathless every time I watch it. The movie has been on permanent repeat on my Roku for over two weeks now. I am not saying that I have watched all of it that often but I would estimate I have already seen Gravity 15 times. Part of that is because it is a short movie (barely 80 minutes). The larger reason is that when certain moments of Gravity occur, I simply cannot take my eyes away.

I have made peace with the fact that Gravity has less than a coin flip of a chance of winning Best Picture. My hope is that the sheer volume of voters who admire it will be enough to carry the day over a lesser competitor. When people remember 2013 in cinema, Gravity and a film that did not receive a Best Picture nomination, Frozen, will be the first two conversation topics. Nothing else on this list is even close to them in terms of movie-going experience.

2) Nebraska
I am stubbornly indifferent to Alexander Payne movies as a rule. Sideways, while fun, in no way lives up to the hype it received from critics. About Schmidt is a pleasant surprise but a slight film. And Election will be the movie that plays eternally for me if I wind up in Hell. With The Descendants, Payne took a strong step in the right direction by letting the actors rather than the dialogue become the focal point. Nebraska is an extension of that as living legend Bruce Dern and virtual unknown June Squibb portray the type of parents few people want yet most people have. They are innately decent and a bit boring yet they are revealed to be the anchor members of the family.

Will Forte, whom I finally forgive for MacGruber, plays the son who experiences this revelation as he indulges his father on a cross-state quest for riches. Along the way, he feels outcast from most of the people involved with the lives of his parents. . Particularly memorable are the scenes with his bumbling cousins, men who share no commonality with him save for DNA. Many of us will find that relatable. Payne has always revealed a complicated relationship with his parents throughout his filmography. Nebraska is the culmination of this career trajectory. I accept that Nebraska is too slight to win Best Picture. It is, however, one of the best 10 best movies of 2013. I warmly recommend it to everyone.

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