Each year, Film Comment surveys 120 different film critics and journalists to determine that year's critical favorite. For 2013, the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis topped the list, followed by Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave.

The Coen Brothers are well known for their quirky, artful, and consistently excellent movies. Their hits include Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Are Thou?, and No Country For Old Men, and critics are already numbering this latest effort as among their best. Film Comment's Johnathan Romney went so far as to say that Inside Llewyn Davis "proves to be the most moving film the Coens have ever made."

Inside Llewyn Davis was also chosen as the top film of the year by the Toronto Film Critics Association, though 12 Years a Slave was the favorite of the Boston Society of Film Critics and the San Francisco Film Critics Circle. New York's tastemakers went with David O. Russel's American Hustle and those in Los Angeles seemed to be on a sci-fi kick, naming Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity and Spike Jonze's Her as their co-favorites.

The Film Comment list also gave high marks to a number of smaller and lesser-known films. Joshua Oppenheimer's incredible documentary The Act of Killing was fourth in the survey. In the film, former leaders of Indonesian death squads reenact their past crimes and current nightmares on screen. Also making the top ten were Shane Carruth's science fiction mind-bender Upstream Color and Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha.

But it was clearly Inside Llewyn Davis and 12 Years a Slave that dominated most critics' lists. The former is a movie about a singer in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1960s. It stars Oscar Isaac, Carrey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garret Hedlund, and Justin Timberlake. The latter is a film adaptation of Solomon Northup's brutal true account of being kidnapped into slavery. Chiwetel Ejiofor carried the movie with a univerally lauded performance. Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch and newcomer Lupita Nyong'o all shone as members of the film's large supporting cast.

Looking at the list of favorites, some trends seem to emerge. This year critics showed the most appreciation for true stories (or adaptations thereof), period pieces, and cerebral near-future science fiction.