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.

Dallas Buyers Club
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Writers: Craig Borten, Melisa Wallack
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto, Steve Zahn
Focus Features
Rated R | 117 Minutes
Release Date: November 22, 2013

Based on a true story, Dallas Buyers Club is directed by Jean-Marc Vallée (The Young Victoria) and stars Matthew McConaughey (Mud) as Ron Woodroof, a homophobic Texan roughneck with an insatiable appetite for prostitutes and hardcore drugs.

Dallas, 1986. Ron Woodroof is diagnosed with HIV and is given 30 days to live. He begins taking AZT, the only AIDs drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S.

The experimental drug does more harm than good, nearly killing Woodroof before he gives up on it altogether. After doing some research on other AIDS medications available outside the U.S., Woodroof travels across the world and smuggles the unapproved anti-viral medications into Texas.