In alphabetical order. 2013 was when I picked up Criterions of Videodrome, Blow Out and Walkabout which would be what I cherished the most from that year, but I remember getting excited about a lot of movies coming out at that time.
BTW, I’m starting to wonder if 2013 can be crowed the year DVDs “officially” fell, sort of how someone here (Matt I think) said that no one under 21 purchased a CD with their own money from 2007 onward. It probably isn’t but after this seemed to be when it was all Blu Ray or streaming. SEEMED. I know for sure it would only be one or two more years before my local DVD rental place ate it for good.

Oh, and I did not rewatch Star Trek Into Darkness, one of the highlights that year. Or at least to me. I’ve rewatched it since, and I’ve also watched Wrath Of Khan, which is, well, y’know, better. (I kind of don’t want to rewatch STID, one of the biggest examples ever of the bloom falling off the rose in the public’s favor.)

12 Years A Slave: Good enough for a total beatdown of a movie, I guess. Three scenes in the movie blow it, though. First is the unintentionally hilarious scene where Paul Dano gets his ass whooped, but that one’s a given. Second is where everyone is dancing around in a circle and Sarah Paulson, who’d I forgot was in this, hurls a coffee cop at a slave’s face and bloodies her; it’s so awful and sudden and uncalled for that one almost laughs that they may not cry. Third is the dumb scene where Brad Pitt appears on Behalf Of All Good Guilty White People Everywhere; it sticks out like a sore thumb. As with a lot of Best Picture winners (let alone nominees) in recent years, I have no idea how much this movie is still being watched or discussed; it’s also disconcerting that it’s probably the one since 2010 that I’d be most interested in rewatching, even though I’m slightly above lukewarm about it.

American Hustle: I remembered enjoying this in theaters a decade ago, but rewatching it on a small screen did it no favors; now, it just seems like two hours of a bunch of meaninglessly scheming characters in ostentatious 70s costumes talking smartassedly to each other. I’d forgotten what the scheme-plot was even about, and now that I’ve seen the film again, I’ve forgotten it twice. Oh, and Jennifer Lawrence’s two big scenes in the film are embarrassing camp.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: I remembered this as a disappointment–I’ll go to my grave loving the first Anchorman, regardless of how much shit you guys gave me for it over the years–but it’s actually just annoyingly inconsistent. A hilarious bit will be followed up with a stupid joke where the guys crash their van and all go flying through the air in slow-mo with dumb looks on their faces, or the bad pun name “Jack lame.” The two worst bits are at the end with the dumb celebrity-cameo-laden battle royale and Will Ferrell chasing a shark into the ocean to hug it. Bad as that sounds, there’s some good stuff in the film too, but I guess the public didn’t remember it.

Blue Jasmine: It’s a tribute to how great an actress Cate Blanchett is that one would feel anything for her character at all after 100 minutes of some of Woody Allen’s most neurotic, most easily-open-to-accusations-that-he’s-out-of-touch material; one inch to the left, and you’d have Annette Bening in American Beauty. But it isn’t the out-of-touchness that weakens this movie, it’s having to sit through Woody’s usual romantic-travails crap, scenes of characters blowing up at each other over accusations of infidelity and dumb scenes with Peter Sarsgaard and (especially) Michael Stuhlbarg as Blanchett’s paramours. I sort of liked Andrew Dice Clay’s scenes though.

Blue Ruin: Almost “ruined” indeed, by its ending, which is easily the weakest part–it’s just a dumb shootout and by the time you arrive at it, it doesn’t seem to matter much what the main character was trying to avenge, or whether he lives or dies, and I hadn’t even remember what really became of him. As played by Macon Blair, who looks like Paul Giamatti’s scrawnier, slightly-autistic kid brother, he’s actually a pretty good character, a pathetic wretch who doesn’t really know what he’s doing. Count this as half a good film, though I haven’t kept up with Jeremy Saulnier in recent years.

Carrie: The only good things in this remake are a bit during the prom blowout when Carrie smashes a kid with a video camera between some bleachers and he spits up blood, and an amusingly obnoxious girl-punk song called “I Can Hardly Make You Mine,” by some band called Churches, which blares over the end credits. Everything aside from that is perfunctory, retreaded from Brian De Palma’s original, or Julianne Moore overacting. This wasn’t the first time the 1976 film was remade and probably won’t be the last.

Captain Phillips: This is still pretty good as a straight up hostage thriller, and Barkhad Abdi gave a pretty good performance for a guy who wasn’t really an actor, but Tom Hanks bawling and howling “oh God what waas thaaatt!” when the Somalis get killed at the end and he gets splattered with blood is the only moment in the entire flick where the “political subtext” really seems to be enforced with anything real.

Computer Chess: Rewatched TWICE, but it’s only available to me on Youtube. A fake documentary set at a hotel/computer chess convention around 1980 or so, this minor little mumble of a film only musters a couple of mildly entertaining scenes and a couple of interesting sociological bits at best. A scene where Wiley Wiggins from Dazed And Confused chats with a computer about where technology is leading is probably the highlight (and had to be angrily explained to me by Norville ten years ago.) There’s a funny bit reflecting on 1970s cult therapy stuff where people just yell a guy’s name at him, but the scene where a computer nerd almost gets snared by aging hippie swingers is one of the most painful cringe scenes I’ve ever sat through. The rest of it will fade from my mind just like it did the first time.

Dallas Buyers Club: The peak of the “McConnaissance,” which gave McConaughey an excuse to play his usual Texas shit-talker, but with added gravitas due to the fact that his character is only marginally less of an “asshole” by the time it (and he) is over. Which I guess is…realistic? He sure does seem to wise up from being a dumbass cowboy pretty damn fast in this movie, disgusing himself as a priest and going all over the world to get those drugs he ins’t supposed to be distributing–and frankly, this movie has sort of a Nurse Ratched problem where I couldn’t really blame the authorities for being mad at his character like I’m apparently supposed to. Or maybe I’m misreading that a bit, but it sure feels like it.

Gravity: I remember two big things about this movie, which are: 1)This is, sadly, the last time I remember the public being genuinely wide-eyed enthused–“how’d they DO that?”–over a movie’s special effects, which had been a mainstay of the progress of movies ever since I was a little kid, but which seems to be gone now–am I right? Is there a movie since that has blown people away effects-wise? Oh, and 2)TonyV remarked that he couldn’t see people coming back to the film much, and I think he’s probably right–this really doesn’t seem to have had that much of a shelf life. I still think it’s pretty good, both in terms of special effects and in terms of making you feel for Sandra Bullock’s character–I know Cuaron wrote the script himself, or at least cowrote it, and I’m genuinely surprised he was able to come through on this front. That being said, it dissipates badly in the last half hour and the suspension of belief is gone by the time Bullock survives re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. Which brings me to my third memory of this film, which is my mother calling it “stupid.”

Inside Llewyn Davis: I used to think of this as maybe the fifth or sixth best Coen Brothers film, but rewatching it has made my opinion of it cool a bit. It’s still got a strong Oscar Isaac performance (in spite of his annoying Adam Sandler-ish way of talking), a great production design and interesting setting that really seems to put you in Greenwich Village in 1961, a couple good songs and a few good gags…but by the end, I wasn’t convinced it had any real point other than taking its ne’er-do-well of a main character and booting him in the butt for two hours. It was nice to hear “Please Mr. Kennedy” again, though.

Lone Survivor: Well, I wouldn’t say it didn’t give me anything to think about, but this film’s main achievement seems to be being possibly the most awkward war/combat film there is. First, the situation where Wahlberg and company have to make the decision not to shoot a bunch of farmers ends up backfiring on them, then there’s a bunch of unbelievably brutal combat scenes where God only knows where any of them were in relation to their enemies, bordering on Black Hawk Down levels of intensity, then there’s Wahlberg getting captured and having to awkwardly deal with the Afghanis. Since it all actually happened, you just sort of walk out of it with a hole in your gut, and that’s that. I guess I’d still count it as a good film, though.

Nebraska: The most improved film on this list, because the small details AND the big picture of the movie got to me more than before; if I had to pick one film to perfectly illustrate the sadness, quietness, loneliness, desperation and emptiness of go-nowhere rural Midwestern lives, both young and old, I’d easily pick this one, hands down, though I’m not sure if that makes me want to go buy a copy or not. Certainly I’ve felt such themes myself more as I get older. Between the small towns, bleak black-and-white cinematography and plight of its characters, one not only walks out feeling a sense of the agony of life, but bewilderment that such a thing even approaches having a happy ending. Alexander Payne certainly couldn’t be accused of getting it wrong (one would hope not, since he’s from here, anyway.) I’d still say I like Election more as far as his films go, but this one certainly hits the hardest.

Pacific Rim: Not a film to be seen on a small screen by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s what I had to do. There was probably no chance I would have ever adored this, and it’s holding on to a thumbs-up by a thread, but I suppose Guillermo Del Toro manages enough skillful action direction and visual chaos to make it have a slight impact on 41 year old me. That said, the very first scene in the film (a monster destroying the Golden Gate bridge) is probably the last time I was ever truly awed by a mass-destruction scene in a summer blockbuster (and the whole movie the last time I was ever entertained by a dumb summer action movie), but it’s all downhill from there–few films have ever been the recipient of a bigger backhand compliment than the best this film received, which was “the best dumb movie ever made.”

Passion: As lonely and embarrassing as it feels to be even watching a post-1996 Brian De Palma film in 2024, there’s a slight respite in knowing at least I got to rewatch the closest he has to a “good one” in all that time. It has a better setup than conclusion. The setup is that mean girl Rachel McAdams lures in underling Noomi Rapace for a corporate scheme, then backstabs her and publicly embarrasses her, so murder murder. De Palma actually pulls of the big silly split-screen set piece, where a ballet plays in one screen and a murder plays in the other, but after that he starts ripping off Hitchcock and his usual bag of tricks and shots for the cheesy conclusion. The only thing I remember from any of the reviews is that this was like watching a recovering alcoholic fail to avoid grabbing the nearest bottle.

The Counselor: Well, opinions were probably never going to change here. Faceless cartel villains (except for, y’know, Cameron Diaz, miscast as ever), a dull “moral” mixed with duller bits of philosophical dialogue, dumb “sexy” scenes like Diaz humping the car, characters that barely count as existing (Penelope Cruz, Brad Pitt), dumb death warnings, cheap Ridley Scott gore, and a main character who the movie seems to be deliberately positing as the dumbest upper class fool who ever lived. One of Ridley’s low points and CERTAINLY Cormac McCarthy’s low point. Didn’t someone here try to defend this failure? On what grounds?

This Is The End: Not bad, but it certainly shoots its load too early–the Michael Cera cocaine bit is the funniest for sure, and the Milky Way bit lands about halfway through. The ending–a giant CGI monster ravaging Hollywood, and everyone going to Heaven–is very unfunny and lame in an Anger Management sort of fashion, though not bad enough to completely derail the film. It’s sort of a miracle that this movie is good at all–it gives an impression that Rogen and company somehow got away with throwing it all together in like three weeks, but also somehow not failing miserably like Zombieland. I remarked at the time that this probably would be a good note for the Apatow crowd to part ways on, but it wasn’t…and I’m not sure what they’re even doing now, what with James Franco not doing half-assed arty stunts anymore.

The Wolf Of Wall Street: A watchable three hour nonstop orgy, and that’s all it was ever trying to be. This movie cares even less than its viewers about what a fuckhead Jordan Belfort was and probably still is, which would still be more than Belfort himself cared or probably still cares. Maybe two minutes or less are spent on Belfort’s prison days. I’ve always gone back to the Quaalude yacht-rescue bit, with Belfort jokingly talking about how people died trying to save him. Good film, but certainly not in Scorsese’s top tier, and don’t wake me up the day Belfort dies.

World War Z: In contention with the 2006 Poseidon and maybe that Green Lantern disaster to be the Least Cared-About, Shortest Shelf-Life Failed Big-Budget Blockbuster Released After 2000. I remember that the big build-up before this film’s release was that it was going to be a flop of truly epic proportions, but then it wasn’t, and it even managed more than a 60 on Metacritic. It’s such a high-speed mess of plot and action that I don’t know how it ISN’T one of the worst films I’ve ever seen, but it isn’t, not quite; nor do I know who in God’s name would be emotionally impacted by its dreary zombie scenario (let alone its ending), nor who would even be watching it (let alone finding it anything other than a total artistic failure) in the year 2024. Maybe the Israel part sort of works, a bit? Just a bit?