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My recent DVD viewing provided a late entry for my favorite performance of 2012: Tom Courtenay in Quartet is excellent. I was wary about this movie, thinking it was going to be pandering fluff like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I was pleasantly surprised that it takes itself more seriously than that, but still has a sense of humor about aging. Quartet is the perfect antidote to the glum view of aging in Amour. Warm Bodies also put itself at the top of my 2013 favorites, even above Iron Man 3. It's a brilliant touch to make the undead not actually dead, and turn a taboo into a love story. I don't expect it to be my favorite movie by the end of the year, but I liked it a lot.

On the contrary, Beautiful Creatures started with a similar voice over setup and I immediately identified it as a chore. The romance is boring, and the attempted accents and Southern attitude are just about unbearable. Mama and Dark Skies were both effectively scary, providing enough startling moments to keep me interested. Escape from Planet Earth was just okay; for dueling animated brothers, I'd suggest Arthur Christmas instead. Promised Land was also just okay, since it beat you over the head with the preachy story, even if I agreed with it. Stand Up Guys was fun. Alan Arkin steals the show as someone who just kicks ass by his nature, regardless of his age. Gangster Squad was also entertaining enough for what it was - slightly better than Christian Slater's mobsters and less ponderous than The Untouchables. Emma Stone looked great but was mostly useless, and Gosling had a weird high pitch to his voice.

The Last Stand is also okay for just tune out viewing. One that I would recommend against despite some curiosity is Revenge for Jolly! I picked it up because I noticed Kristen Wiig's in the cast. It's about a guy avenging his dead dog, but what should be a comedy is just overly violent and strange. Seven Psycopaths is much more fun for a similar story. Lastly, if you want to get weird, I recommend John Dies at the End. It's surreal, but not hard to follow, and that's what makes it funny. Also, The Details starts off weird, starring Tobey Maguire as a guy who accidentally kills his neighbor's cat, and to get past it he keeps making things worse for himself. What hooked me on the movie is that they go further than you'd expect even for a dark comedy, and the brutal honesty about his situation is rare, particularly among married couples.

Kim Hollis: I've mostly enjoyed almost every 2013 movie I've seen with one glaring exception. That exception is Beautiful Creatures, a movie I wanted to see because the trailer looked so bad I figured it would be a fun but terrible film to watch. Instead, it was just terrible, with horrible accents and a perception of the deep South that is deeply offensive.

Warm Bodies, on the other hand, is a blast of a movie, subverting the zombie genre in a way that I really enjoyed. It will be one of those movies that I re-watch whenever it's on. It's nothing like World War Z, which similarly deals with zombies but in a completely different way. What I like about World War Z is that it's a combination thriller, horror movie and medical mystery. I also really like that both of these films succeed without gore. Warm Bodies isn't really meant to be super scary, but I was on edge throughout World War Z and I'd much rather watch something like that than any of the recent, all-too-realistic horror flicks.

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