This isn’t just the year’s best animated film, it’s one of 2013’s finest motion pictures period, and as someone who has already seen, and loved, it twice I cannot wait to head out to the theatre and see it again before happily adding it to my personal library when it comes out on DVD and Blu-ray a few months hence.

Even at nearly three hours, Blue is the Warmest Color is never out of sorts or unfocused, and while certain tangents have the initial aura of being inconsequential, the filmmaker continually connects all the dots, giving things a ruthless eloquence difficult to describe and even harder to dismiss.

This is one of those rare instances where I feel like [Dallas Buyers Club] is one of those movies that, do not just live up to the hype, but also exceed it, making Vallée’s based-on-fact stunner one of the best films I’ll watch this, or in any other, year.

It’s hard to imagine a movie will look into this heart of American darkness with more meticulous an eye anytime soon, McQueen latching onto Northup’s story refusing to allow it to lapse into melodrama or treacle. His filmmaking acumen is beyond reproach, the technical aspects never overshadowing the human story every piece augmenting the next allowing the story to bloom and blossom as it likely wouldn’t have otherwise.

All is Lost is a triumph, no more, and certainly no less, and my gut feeling is that viewers who take up the challenge to see it in a theatre will likely feel the same.

Captain Phillips doesn’t present new ideas so much as it puts a mirror to the best and the worst of human nature, allowing the viewer to make of that glimpse what they will, the resultant life lessons striking in their universality.

Cretton understands his story and his characters in ways that are inspiring, never once belittling them or taking them for granted. The final moments of Short Term 12 are as refreshingly invigorating as any I could have dreamt of, and as such the filmmaker’s latest effort is cause for complete and total celebration.

Before Midnight, like its predecessors, is a masterpiece, and I have a feeling I’ll be holding it near and dear to my heart for the rest of my life.

It’s ebullient and joyous but still laced without the proper amount of pain and pathos, everything working in incandescent tandem with its various pieces in order to make the movie come alive to its own free-flowing beat. Make no mistake, Frances Ha is a stunning achievement, an exercise in pure cinema that’s as rare as it is spectacular.