The Screen Life

What better way to begin this new blog on New Year’s Day than with a rundown of all the new films I watched over the past year! These are all the movies released in 2013 that I had a chance to see.*

I’ll announce my Top 10 in a separate post tomorrow. For now, I present #11-20. I divided the rest into 3 categories and listed them alphabetically.

This was an incredibly strong year for great movies. Even some of those I listed under “Very Good” could have made it into the Top 10 of another year with less competition. On top of that, this list leaves out several films I’ve heard great things about and still look forward to seeing, such as Her, Frances Ha, Stories We Tell, Blue is the Warmest Color, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and a bunch of others.

One final note: Every year someone will ask me why my list skews so far toward the positive. Surely there must be far more bad movies out there than good; everybody knows the average quality of Hollywood’s output has been on a steady decline for decades, right? Every year my answer is the same: Research. Read reviews. Read this blog. Read ANYTHING, but read a lot. Save yourself from having to sit through dreck like Oz the Great and Powerful. Sure a few stinkers still slip through, but as expensive as movie tickets are, you owe it to yourself to do everything you can to spend your money wisely. That’s what I do.

Enjoy my list! It’s by no means definitive. If you disagree with any of my rankings, let me know in the comments!

TOP 11-20
11. This Is the End
12. Blackfish
13. Out of the Furnace
14. Much Ado About Nothing
15. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
16. Inside Llewyn Davis
17. Ernest & Celestine
18. Frozen
19. The Conjuring
20. Blue Jasmine

VERY GOOD
All Is Lost
American Hustle
Elysium
The Fifth Estate
Fruitvale Station
Kon-Tiki
Monsters University
Pacific Rim
Side Effects
Star Trek Into Darkness
Warm Bodies
The Way Way Back
White House Down
World War Z
The World’s End

OK
42
The Butler
The Croods
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Iron Man 3
John Dies at the End
Mama
Saving Mr. Banks
Spring Breakers
Thor: The Dark World
The Wolverine

BAD
Carrie
G.I. Joe: Retaliation
The Great Gatsby
The Lone Ranger
Man of Steel
Now You See Me
Oblivion
Oz the Great and Powerful

*Kon-Tiki made last years Oscars for Best Foreign Film, but didn’t open here in St Louis until this past spring.

More and more our lives are a revolving series of screens. From multiplexes to the phones in our pockets, screens are increasingly important to the way we interact with the world. This isn’t news to anyone, of course. There are countless studies and discussions and half-assed internet memes deconstructing the pros and cons (ok, mostly cons) of our screen life. But like it or not, it’s a fact that this is the direction our culture is evolving right now.

This blog is a celebration of that fact. No, not celebration. I’m not here to defend our screens from the nay-sayers bemoaning the loss of face-to-face interaction. Hell, you’ll find that, often as not, I’m right there with you. But rather than drag myself kicking and screaming into the 21st 20th 17th century (the first magic lanterns were developed sometime around the 1650’s), I choose to embrace the richness that screens bring to my life.

I’ll be the first to admit I can easily go overboard in my screen addiction. I love getting the chance to go theater hopping, seeing sometimes 3 or 4 movies in one day. I can browse the internet for hours on end and never get to a stopping point. I will work my way through an entire season of Star Trek: Voyager in one sitting, dissecting all the reasons it’s a horrible show, and then go back for more. And heaven help you if you talk during the Oscars.

But just as often, screens are a source of enlightenment. I watch movies and TV shows by masterful artists whose unique visions broaden my horizons. Facebook and Twitter and this very blog are vital outlets for self-expression. The news and opinions I read online everyday help to give me a more complete picture of the world around me. Even the bad art and bigoted commentators serve the crucial role of helping me to recognize and reaffirm the good.

This blog is an exploration of all of the above. In it you will find:

• Film and TV reviews – As an amateur critic, this will be my primary outlet.
• Awards season news – The Oscars, and by extension the rest of the film awards season, are my biggest guilty pleasure.
• Links to all kinds of stuff – From silly memes and cat videos (aww!) to articles about politics (gasp!) and religion (no!), if I found it online, nothing is out of bounds.
• Video Games – I often regret not being more of a gamer, but obviously no examination of screens in our lives could be complete without gaming. I often find amusing tidbits, vintage game references, and fun free online games that are worth sharing.
• Commentary – If I’ve got something else on my mind, I’ll say it. I try to keep it at least tangentially related to the subject of screens, but I make no promises. If this blog ever reaches readers beyond those of you I know personally, I hope to present myself as a complete person with all my views, opinions, faults and flaws intact.

In a sense this is a bit of an aggregator for a lot of the stuff I once posted on Facebook, but with a more defined sense of purpose. I expect my presence on that social network to decline a bit as I move in over here. This will be an ever growing and evolving project. Expect changes. Change is good.

Thanks for reading and adding one more blog to your screen life!

– Aaron L. Fram