Movies I saw in 2013. Which you care about... why, exactly?

List of all the movies I saw for the first time this year:

Abby, Aeon Flux, After Earth, American Hustle, Amour, Anchorman, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Ben Hur, Blackenstein, Blackmail (silent version), Blue Jasmine, the Cameraman, Captain Phillips, Chanel Solitaire, City Girl, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Fanny (1932), Flight, Frozen, Gravity, Griboche, the Half Breed, Hansel & Gretel Witch Hunters, the Heat, Hitchcock, The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug, the House on Trebnaya Square, the Hunger Games, the Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the Impossible, the Incredible Burt Wonderstone, Invasion of the Star Creatures, It Started with Eve, King Kong Lives, Knives of the Avenger, Langang: Dance of the Virgins, the Last Edition, Lee Daniels' the Butler, Les Miserables, Let the Bullets Fly, Life of Pi, Ludwig II, Magdalena Possessed by the Devil, the Magic Serpent, Marius (1931), the Master, Mirror Mirror, Moneyball, Museum Hours, My Week with Marilyn, the Narrow Trail, Now You See Me, Oblivion, the Oogieloves in the Great Balloon Adventure, the Outlaw and his Wife, Oz the Great and Powerful, Pacific Rim, Philomena, Power, Prix de Beaute, Saving Mr. Banks, the Sessions, Silver Linings Playbook, Sisterakas, Something in the Wind, Star Trek Into Darkness, the Three Stooges (2012), Toomorrow, the Trespasser, the Turin Horse, 12 Years a Slave, Waltzes from Vienna, Weary River, the Wolf of Wall Street, the Wolverine, the Woman in Black, World War Z, Zero Dark Thirty.

Lots of silent movies on this list, thanks to the SF Silent Film Festival and the Niles Silent Film Theater, both highly recommended. I made some more headway on my OCD project of seeing every movie that ever got an Oscar nomination for Picture, Director or any acting performance (see below), finally sat down & watched the last Hitchcock film that I had never seen, and found the proper environment in which to watch a postapocalyptic Will Smith vanity project.

Bulk of the list is old stuff, but Favorite Movie of 2013 that I managed to see would be Gravity. Exercize in pure style, sure, but what style. Also liked 12 Years a Slave and American Hustle, both high-level OscarBait, and the Heat, which in a better world would be OscarBait. "Worst" is harder; even the officially bad movies like After Earth and Pacific Rim aren't hateful or mean, they're just stupid; fine time-wasters on a cross-country airplane trip. Wolf of Wall Street I am of two minds on; it's brilliant and funny, but it's also self-indulgent, overlong, and pornographic (which I usually mean as a compliment but not this time). I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Of the less current films, I loved my discovery of the Niles theater more than any individual movie I saw -- I've thought about going there since they opened but didn't until just last year (thanks, scottasf!) Worst older movie -- again, the traditional "bad movies" like Invasion of the Star Creatures and the Oogieloves are just stupid time-wasters, perfect for Netflix streaming, and I can't hate on them... the way I can hate on Zero Dark Thirty, a poorly-paced, badly-acted full-of-itself prestige turd (granted, the last 20 minutes rocked. Thanks, Joel Edgerton!) Or Weary River, which got an Oscar nomination for Directing in 1929, apparently for the number of victims who stabbed themselves in the eardrums rather than hear the title song for the 37th time.

Or the way I really, really hate on the Turin Horse, the most agonizing 15 hours I've ever spent watching a movie. And the critics praised it to the skies. Well, not all. Just some. And now I'm listening to Nightvale instead of movie reviewer podcasts because of this one movie.

Next up, my riveting tale of live performances attended in 2013. Click the button below for further updates! Wait, what happened to the button?