This week we can either go back in time and discover the legend of Hercules, or we can go forward in time to when our Operating Systems will be, apparenty, sentient. Of, you can do what I’m doing and catch up on films you may not have gotten to see in December. I’m going to be catching Saving Mr. Banks because a). I want to see it a lot and am dissapointed I didn’t get to see it before year’s end, and b). I think it will be better than either of the two new options I’m listing here. But I do plan to at least see Her I just don’t know when.

New This Weekend

Her — R

So this film looks…

The complicated Star Wars canon can be separated into two groups. The official, main Star Wars canon is composed of the (currently) six feature films and the animated Clone Wars series, while the expanded universe is composed of everything else — every weird book you see in the sci-fi section of Amazon, every video game, and every comic.

The canonical Star Wars universe is a mess, and now that Disney owns the franchise, the House that Mouse built has appointed a committee to sifting through that mess, and determining what the official Star Wars canon will be.

Disney, Lucasfilm, Star Wars,…

2013 was a pretty great year for me. I saw more films than ever before, largely due to my involvement in The MovieByte Podcast with my friend TJ. If I totaled everything correctly, I saw 40 new films this year in theaters, so this list is drawing from a pretty wide selection.

An important note: this is a list of favorite films, which may conflict with my ratings. My ratings are usually based on a combination of both quality and enjoyment, whereas this list will mostly be based on enjoyment with quality mixed in just a bit.

Chad and I talked about my top twenty, and his top ten on the

Rebel Wilson has been set to join Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan and Ricky Gervais in Night At The Museum 3, which Shawn Levy is directing from the script written by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant and David Guion and Michael Handelman for Fox. Wilson will play the night guard at the British museum where the action takes place this time around.

Remember how I put this movie on my list of movies to look forward to this year and everything? Well, YIKES! I take it all back. Ugh.

With the crowd funded Veronica Mars film coming up in about 9 weeks, I thought, what better time than now to start watching the series and getting caught up? So I looked on Netflix. But Veronica Mars was not available. So I looked on Hulu, but Veronica Mars was also not available there either. My options seemed to be that either I could buy the episodes on iTunes at $2.99 each, or I could buy them on Amazon for $2.99 each — after which I would be completely broke. There are 64 episodes, 64 times $2.99 is $191.36. Good golly that’s not going to happen.

I do want to stop and reflect for a…

Join TJ and Chad for a brief bit of talk about the whole “Armond White heckling Steve McQueen situation” and be sure to follow the links to the recommended listening of Dave Chen’s interview with White. Basically TJ and Chad think the guy is nuts. Then there’s movies that are turning 30 this year and it makes TJ feel old to realize that he was alive when these classics were made. And for this podcast, TJ and Chad talk over their list of films that they liked and loved from 2013, and then move on to anticipate what’s coming up in 2014. 2013 was a great year for film and maybe 2014 can be too.

12 Years a Slave was my favorite film of the year, so I was pretty disappointed when I read in outlets such as The Guardian and Variety  that former /Filmcast guest Armond White had heckled Steve McQueen during the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. Sure, White was no fan of 12 Years a Slave, as demonstrated in our /Filmcast review of the film with him. But shouting down a man during an evening meant to praise him? It struck me as wildly inappropriate. The Chair of the NYFCC, Joshua Rothkopf, agreed and issued a public apology. 

You can listen to some low-quality audio of the incident…

I love good marketing and this is the best. If I had any hesitation before, it’s gone now, I will most definitely see this film. This is just great!

Hey, so speaking of looking foward to Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, we’ve got a new clip from the upcoming film. It’s not much really, but you know you take what you can get sometimes.

In this clip it looks like Cathy (Keira Knightley) is not too happy with Jack (Chris Pine) for keeping his work secret. Then Jack’s Boss (Kevin Costner) basically tells them to suck it up because lives are at stake, including their own.

This Kenneth Branagh directed reboot of the Jack Ryan films hits the theaters in just eight days on January 17.