Not every movie year is going to sparkle — this we must accept. But unlike recent times, in which prestige pictures vying for Oscar consideration have proved a consolation in lackluster years, 2002 provided no respite. The garbage coming out of Hollywood was more pungent than ever, while the independents came up lame. There was a dearth of quality all around.

For a very short time, my hopes were high. Summer brought not one, but three films — “Changing Lanes,” “Lovely and Amazing” and “The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys” — good enough to warrant consideration for a Ten Best List. Still, I assumed when the anticipated glut of high-quality films arrived at year’s end, at least one or two would be bumped.

Alas, it wasn’t to be. As Oscar season revved into high gear, one much-hyped movie after another left me underwhelmed. Films by once-great directors — Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York,” for instance — were rightly panned, while upstarts like Todd Haynes’ “Far From Heaven” were wildly overrated. Even relatively good movies such as Alexander Payne’s “About Schmidt” and Steven Daldry’s “The Hours” have been praised out of proportion, winning kudos by default.

So here they are: the films, which, if not brilliant, were exceptionally good in a year when being “exceptional” really meant something. The few, the proud, the tolerable:

1. “25th Hour”

Time can be unkind to “cutting edge” stories, which is why the greatest storytellers, from Shakespeare to Fellini, for the most part choose human emotions over hot-button issues. Director Spike Lee has made himself an exception to this rule, crafting films that seem somehow more urgent — more about the way Americans live right now — than those of any other filmmaker. “25th Hour,” his best picture since “Do the Right Thing,” follows a convicted drug dealer’s last day of freedom play out against a New York backdrop still scarred by terrorism. Cutting between the main character (Edward Norton), haunted by his own sins, and the ongoing moral transgressions of those gathered to wish him farewell, the film plays like an elegy for American exceptionalism — the only film to come to terms with our national unease since Sept. 11.

2. “Lovely & Amazing”

Nicole Holofcener’s breakthrough movie is a powerful call to arms — a would-be tearjerker about a family of dysfunctional women that casts aside the banalities of its genre to emerge as the best feminist movie of our time. As a self-obsessed mother undergoing liposuction, Brenda Blethyn occupies the center of the movie’s neurotic storm, one in which her three daughters, played by Catherine Keener, Emily Mortimer and Raven Goodwin, are also swept up. All four women have become incapable of separating physical attractiveness from self-worth, and the ways in which we see patterns of self-destruction linking one generation to the next is tremendously poignant.

3. “Changing Lanes”

Here is a movie with a slick Hollywood premise that proves more resonant than you’d expect. Two men, a yuppie lawyer and a desperate father on hard times, get into a fender-bender. An important legal document switches hands, a custody hearing is missed and, basically, the lives of both men start on a downward spiral. Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson give career performances, but the lion’s share of credit belongs to screenwriters Chap Taylor and Michael Tolkin, who have crafted “Changing Lanes” into a meditation on fate, class conflict and the perils of modern life.

4. “Solaris”

Steven Soderbergh’s “Solaris,” filmed once before by Andrei Tarkovsky, is the type of movie you watch, ponder, than watch again — to revisit the visuals, but also to unravel the depth of meaning buried within the story. Set in the distant future, the film stars George Clooney as a psychiatrist sent to investigate some strange developments aboard a cast-off space station. When a vision of his dead wife (Natashe McElhone) suddenly materializes, old feelings of love and guilt are rekindled and the film attains a necrophilic emotional pitch — all while posing some interesting questions about memory, reality and the elusive nature of the truth.

5. “The Man From Elysian Fields”

George Hickenlooper’s film winds and meanders like a great short story by Carver or Updike, in which fate intercedes at certain moments in life to produce meaningful, if unexpected, lessons. Andy Garcia plays a struggling writer who, in order support his wife (Juliana Marguiles) and baby, secretly takes up work as a male escort. His first client happens to be the exquisite young wife (Olivia Williams) of a legendary older writer (the late James Coburn) who hasn’t published a novel in many years. “The Man From Elysian Fields” is such an original, wholly unpredictable film that it would be a crime to reveal any more about the story. Seek it out, wherever it’s playing, and savor it.

6. “Spirited Away”

Here’s one that nearly everyone has on his or her year-end list, and for good reason. Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away,” an animated film that quickly became the all-time highest grossing movie in its native Japan, is like “E.T.” and “The Wizard of Oz,” weaving a magical story about being lost in a strange world, hoping to find your way home. The assortment of strange places and bizarre spirits the film’s hero, a little girl named Chihiro, runs into after dropping into an alternate universe makes Alice’s adventures in Wonderland look tame. The movie’s greatest triumph, however, is it’s refusal to patronize it’s young target audience; like the early Disney pictures, “Spirited Away” isn’t afraid to confront the hard facts of life, taking on an assortment of themes, from the fragility of nature to the meaning of identity.

7. “Adaptation”

Try to follow this: Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, author of “Being John Malkovich,” was hired to write a movie adaptation of “The Orchid Thief,” a book about a backwater orchid poacher laying low in the Florida Everglades. The film he actually wrote, “Adaptation,” is about a screenwriter assigned to adapt a book called “The Orchid Thief,” who, in a fit of creative constipation, ends up writing himself into the movie. Got all that? It doesn’t matter. “Adaptation” may be difficult to explain, but in the sheer fun it has toying with our idea of reality, the picture is a thing of genius all the same. With wonderful comic performances by Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper.

8. “The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys”

No, it’s not about that. “The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys” tells the story of a tight-knit group of Irish-Catholic school boys who’ve submerged themselves in comic-book fantasies for so long that the onset of adolescent emotions creates a rift in their universe. With brilliant animated segments and uniformly great performances from Emile Hirsch, Kieran Culkin, Jena Malone and Jodie Foster as their dour headmistress, Peter Care’s film tells a story so deceptively powerful, it stands alongside the greatest coming of age movies ever made.

9. “8 Women”

It seems like ages since a good (non-animated) musical arrived in theaters, yet 2002 saw the release of not one, but two. With eight Golden Globe Nominations to its credit, “Chicago” has hoarded most of the buzz, but even better is Francis Ozon’s “8 Women,” which manages to wrangle eight of France’s most celebrated screen actresses — Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert and Emmanualle Beart among them — into a murder-mystery sing-along that positively crackles with bitchy wit. With its beautiful costumes and candied sets, “8 Women” vies with “Solaris” for the title of Best Looking Film of the Year.

10. “Insomnia”

For all it’s hype, Christopher Nolan’s “Momento” (2001) was really more trick than treat, which makes “Insomnia” — a cat-and-mouse Alaskan thriller with as much soul as style — such a welcome follow-up for the director. As a child killer who takes sadistic delight in his crimes, Robin Williams does the nerviest work of his career. But the movie really belongs to Al Pacino, who’s brooding turn as a cop tormented by the magnitude of his own crimes serves to remind us of the brilliant actor whose smart, subtle performances once riveted us to our seat.