2013 was the 7th year now that I’ve kept extensive track of what movies (and sometimes television series) I’ve watched for ultra-fun stat tracking purposes. It’s become a time-honored tradition (some say going back as far as the advent of celebrating the new year itself) to post the highlights of these findings on whatever blog I’m using at the time.
I do this for a couple reasons.
One, it makes it seem like all my meticulous and diligent work has paid off, and everyone can bask in the intrigue and sheer wonder of my lists.
And two, it–more than any singular review of a movie I can write–gives an honest look into what I actually think about what I watch. A lot of folks, from a glance, can get the impression I don’t like much, or am ultra-critical. This list serves as some hard proof that lo, I do like things, and it turns out (as it always has) that I like quite a bit more than I don’t.
So, what’s up 2013? You can check out my full list by clicking here to access the public file.
Top 10 First-Watch Movies of 2013
- The Long Goodbye (1973, Altman): A
- The Passion of Anna (1969, Bergman): A
- Django Unchained (2012, Tarantino): A
- Election (1999, Payne): A
- Midnight Cowboy (1969, Schlesinger): A-
- The Master (2012, Anderson): A-
- Wings of Desire (1987, Wenders): A-
- The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1980, Bennett): A-
- Frances Ha (2012, Baumbach): A-
- Blue Valentine (2012, Cianfrance): B+
Wow. Lots of good stuff there. It’s really hard to order those when 9 of those are so damn good. Brief liner note, is that Hamlet there was indeed a stage production, but it was shot as a movie, and it had its own director and everything, so I’m counting it as a movie. What’s even more interesting, is that beyond the top 9 A/A-, there were 12 movies this year I gave a B+. Was Blue Valentine the “best B+”? I dunno, I guess. But other notables here include: Amour, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Roman Holiday, Life of Pi, Burma VJ, Enemies of the People, The Imposter, Ponyo, Upstream Color, and My Left Foot. A large portion of these, too, are ripped directly from the movie club I was in all year. So, if there’s one takeaway, being in that club really forced me to watch some great things (and some really, really terrible things).
Top 10 Worst First-Watch Movies of 2013
- Paranormal Activity 4 (2012, Joost): D-
- C.H.U.D. (1984, Cheek): D-
- Silent Hill Revelation 3D (2012, Bassett): D
- V/H/S (2012, Miska): D
- Bellflower (2011, Glodell): D+
- The Experiment (2010, Scheuring): C-
- Brother Bear (2003, Blaise): C-
- Mama (2012, Muschietti): C-
- Hara-Kiri Death of a Samurai (2011, Miike): C
- Hamlet (1996, Branagh): C
As always, there’s not a lot to say here. These movies sucked hard, and none of it was all that surprising. I feel like I’m being a little generous for some of these, too. Is Paranormal probably an F? Probably.
2013 Films Themselves
- Evil Dead: B
- Man of Steel: C+
- Pacific Rim: B
- Star Trek Into Darkness: B
- Upstream Color: B+
Yeah, I only watched 5 movies released in 2013, and their average was a B. As is pretty apparent, I’m usually about a year behind in terms of theatrical releases, so my post next year should better illustrate what actually happened this year.
Hard Data
All in all, I watched 119 separate titles this year. As always, I include an entire television series watched either on video or streaming as 1 entry in the list (this has been my rule for better or worse for many, many years). Believe it or not, this is somehow actually down from last year’s 126. I really thought I watched more this year, honest! As is also a fun tradition, I kept track of the episode totals and run-times of the television series I watched, and all in all I watched 7295min of television series, which breaks down to 121.58hrs. If you consider the average movie length is 2hrs, then this works out to the equivalent of about 61 movies. And, now graphs!
Worth noting is that I stopped categorizing things as either “Foreign” or “Classic”, as I felt this lessened their importance by attaching those labels specifically. So, I instead categorized them by what they actually were, like Drama or Comedy etc. Obviously I watched a lot of “Family” movies this year, and I think this is really the heart of the problem: I only watched movies Juliet wanted to watch. So, instead of seeing a bunch of new movies, I watched Hercules 350 times. I really should’ve kept track of how many times I had to watch through her favorite family films, I bet my actual total would be closer to 55,000.
Good luck, 2014.
The Glass City 