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"   Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures  There is nothing better than sitting back and having a marathon in your own living room over the holidays. As the year winds down, the list of must-sees piles up. We selected the best of the year&amp;#039;s releases to appease every taste whether you prefer sci-fi thrillers, nostalgic comedies, or romance sagas, as reviewed by ELLE&amp;#039;s very own inimitable film critic Karen Durbin. See what she had to say about the 2013&amp;#039;s best flicks. Your binge watching spree starts now. Gravity &amp;quot;In Gravity, Bullock&amp;#039;s newbie astronaut Dr. Ryan Stone is stunned to find herself the lone survivor of a massive bombardment of space debris while in orbit...the camera stays close to the protagonists, giving us as well as them the intimate, personal experience of looking mortality squarely in the face.&amp;quot; Stories We Tell &amp;quot;Polley doesn&amp;#039;t hide behind her cameras; we see the way she works, at once gently and relentlessly, with her cast, and when the very big family secret is finally disclosed, she doesn&amp;#039;t hide from that, either. She&amp;#039;s dauntless, and we reap the rewards.&amp;quot; Kings of Summer &amp;quot;The Kings of Summer is a youthful comedy, but what gives it universal appeal isn&amp;#039;t only its treatment of the parents the boys are fleeing, but the deft way Vogt-Roberts takes you back to your own adolescence, nicking your heart more than once along the way.&amp;quot; Fruitvale Station &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s where the action really is in Fruitvale Station Not the street but the hearth, not focused on a drug dealer&amp;#039;s fast money but on a manhood worth aspiring to.&amp;quot;   Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures  Before Midnight &amp;quot;Like Hawke and Delpy, who wrote much of their own dialogue, their characters are intellectuals who fall for each other as much with their minds as with their bodies. The blaring brashness of today&amp;#039;s romantic comedies pays off handsomely at the box office, but the art-house audience for this trilogy has been strong too: The arc of our lives is being etched in theirs, roughly a decade at a time.&amp;quot; Blue Jasmine &amp;quot;Blue Jasmine is an audacious, sure-footed leap for Allen, who, at 77, makes it look easy. He gives us the absurdist human comedy we expect from him\u2014but at the same time something weird and scary is going on underneath.&amp;quot; The Reluctant Fudamentalist The Reluctant Fundamentalist has the pulse of a thriller, although it isn&amp;#039;t about terrorism or religion run amok but rather a deadly and recurrent clash of cultures with no end in sight.&amp;quot;  Photo: Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures How I Live Now Some of the best scenes in How I Live Now are also the most beautiful: cows in pastures, sprightly goats hanging around the house, and an inviting swimming hole, complete with waterfall, where Daisy begins to shed both her clothes and her armor and hesitantly considers love. But horror awaits, and wars aren&amp;#039;t easily stopped.&amp;quot; The Book Thief &amp;quot;Death does the voice-overs in The Book Thief, which works surprisingly well: This device doesn&amp;#039;t take us out of the movie\u2014it actually pulls us more deeply into it.&amp;quot; The Heat &amp;quot;Sisters under the skin, they make such a great pair that a sequel is said to be in the works already. We can only hope that&amp;#039;s true, because for all the raucous goofing, The Heat&amp;#039;s fearless female sense of humor makes it a great women&amp;#039;s movie.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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