2013. 365 days. 163 films. 326 hours. That’s 13.58 days I’ve dedicated this year to watching new releases. 2013 was a great year for film – and I’m pretty comfortable with this list I’ve put together, even if I have missed a few releases here and there. The art of list-making is fluid – you can never cover as much ground as you would like, and it’s possible I’ll continue discovering this year’s great films well into 2014.

The annual ritual of narrowing down hundreds of titles to just 25 is a cruel but necessary discipline as a film critic. There are a lot of movies I wanted to include here, but couldn’t find room for – films like Prisoners, Maniac, Spring Breakers, The Bling Ring, About Time, and Before Midnight all appeared on this list at one point or another.

Anyway, let’s get down to the business of celebrating the cinema of 2013. Here are 25 moving pictures that moved me this year.

Pop Quiz, Hotshot: There’s a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?!

Whoa. Wait. Sorry, that isn’t the question I want to ask – I just got carried away thinking about Dennis Hopper in Speed. What I really want to know is: how many movies have you seen this year?

Me? I’ve seen 89. That’s 89 movies in a little over six-and-a-half months, which means out of the 210 days of the year so far – I’ve spent 7.4 days devouring new movies. With less than six months left in 2013, I decided to do a top ten list of my favorite films of the year so far.

There are still tons of highly-anticipated films on the way – Elysium, Gravity, Ender’s Game, Anchorman: The Legend Continues, The Wolf of Wall Street – but, until then, consider checking out the films below. OK, enough talking, let’s get on with the show. Without further ado, here’s my list of the 10 best films of 2013 so far”¦