Top 20 movies of 2013

1. Gravity

Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Starring: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

If you're feeling brave, steel yourself for a moment and catalogue everything that terrifies you about existence. Loneliness. Hopelessness. Darkness. Death. Don't forget about that dream where you're falling into nothingness and/or grasping uselessly at something that's always just out of reach. Gravity taps into each and every primal fear that's ever shivered down your spine and makes them appear more real than you could have imagined in your worst nightmares. In Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón hasn't directed a sci-fi at all; it's nothing less than the most technically astounding horror movie ever made.

I put off writing my review of Gravity for the longest time. When viewed in mindblowing 3D at the IMAX, it is so thrillingly visceral it leaves you spinning, gasping for superlatives, choking on your own inability to adequately describe it. It's extremely rare that a film leaves one lost for words, but Gravity is that film. For once, marketing speak seems to be the most accurate way of conveying Gravity's appeal: it's not just a movie... it's an experience. Given breathing room - and you will be grateful for the lungfuls of oxygen you'll gulp upon exiting - Gravity proves itself to be the best cinematic experience of the year by a lunar mile.

There's a school of thought that says Gravity would have been equally effective if it was filmed with mannequins in spacesuits replacing Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, and it's hard to argue that the performances don't come second to the effects, particularly once you learn that post-production on the entire movie was finished before either actor uttered a single word on set. But that would be to ignore the fine work put in by both stars, relatable leads who anchor Gravity with weighty performances - Bullock in particular is literally and figuratively out of this world.

What Cuarón has achieved with Gravity cannot be overstated: it feels like the first words uttered in an entirely new language of filmmaking. It is a movie that feels that it truly exists in 360 degrees and three dimensions. Here, the director's camera has no dolly, no shakycam, no agenda - it floats as if untethered to the narrative. There is no camera, no filmmaker, no set, no star. The artifice of film itself - the safety net between screen and audience - is all but disappeared. As Bullock spins into the abyss and the entire universe is reflected in her visor as she tumbles towards the void, Hollywood and all its bullshit seems an awfully long way away.

Gravity will undoubtedly be remembered as a peerless technical achievement, and it deserves to be, but it has countless merits that can't be measured in mere pixels. Cuarón's pacing is exhausting right from that audacious unbroken 15-minute opening shot, holding its terrifying pace throughout. There are emotional moments that stick in your throat like tumours (Bullock's fragile desperation in her last broadcast: "I know we're all gonna die, but I'm going to die today") and scenes of such unbearable tension, the term 'white knuckle' seems woefully inadequate.

Consider also the masterful score - and, indeed, the vacuum of sound it fills. Steven Price's soundtrack rattles the ribcage; as time runs out for survival, the music serves to underscore Gravity's harsh reality without ever feeling intrusive or alien. The absence of sound in space means the stunning debris shit-storm that descends on Gravity's protagonists plays out in eerie silence, yet another crutch kicked out from under the audience.

Cuaron's willingness to put us - and his cast - through the wringer is the reason Gravity has taken the top spot this year. Emotionally draining, visually devastating and genuinely unpredictable, it asks more of you than any other blockbuster in recent memory: Gravity is a movie that's universal in its themes but is capable of making you feel like you're in an audience of one. Films like this come along once in a lifetime. Thankfully, like your worst fears, it'll stay with you forever. Ali

Defining moment: Tapping into an unknown frequency aboard her rapidly deteriorating spacecraft, Bullock howls with an Inuit's dogs in her last ever contact with another lifeform. Somehow the animals always know.

That was the year that was, and it was very much 2013. Sorry I didn't see many films. I promise I'll try harder next year and put at least two documentaries on the list. Really depressing, upsetting ones. Here's to a healthy, herpes-free 2014 to everyone and those you love.

PS. Remember when Die Hard 5 came out? Crazy shit.