Back in 2015, I wrote a piece called “Of movies and music: My top ten favorite movie scores of all time”. As the title promised, I listed my favorite movie scores, but more than that I tried to share why I like movie scores so much. For me it started way back in 2002. I was watching the special features on one of the Back to the Future DVDs. Back to the Future was one of the movies my sister Katie and I could agree on to watch, so by that time I had seen the movie more than twenty times.

I didn’t see a ton of movies in theaters this year. At the beginning of 2016 it seemed like there was at least one new release every weekend that I was interested in seeing. But as the reviews rolled out in the week leading up to most releases, my enthusiasm waned and I ended up choosing to do something else that weekend. I was surprised to find that the box office has actually fared a little better in 2016 than 2015, so maybe my apathy wasn’t shared by everyone.

Inside Out, Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios. 2015 was a year of widely anticipated movies and sequels. But whether it was the Hunger Games saga wrapping up, Mad Max getting a long-awaited sequel, or even Avengers: Age of Ultron, nothing could match the excitement and the hype for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And while some of the sequels were good (and some were even great), most of my favorite movies this year were originals.

Interstellar, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures Happy New Year! It’s now 2015, but before we get too far into the new year it’s worth looking back at 2014, which was another great year for movies. It was another year of sequels and sequels to the sequels (Expendables 3, The Hobbit Part 3, Transformers 4, Captain America: The Winter Soldier), but it was also a year showcasing directors at the top of their craft (Gone Girl’s David Fincher and Interstellar’s Christopher Nolan).

2013 was another great year for movies. We had the long-awaited sequel to the 2009 reboot of Star Trek, the beginning of Phase 2 of the Marvel universe, two movies featuring a terrorist attack on the White House, and seemingly at least 30 movies featuring a futuristic dystopian US government in which nothing is what it seems. I didn’t get to the theater to see every movie I wanted to see, but nevertheless, here are the best five movies I saw this year.