I've been staying in this past week, generally watching movies. Trying to save money at the moment generally means not going out (or buying games I don't need), but I've been watching a lot of movies.

I rewatched Argo and Avatar, two of my more recent favorites. But I also took chances with Anna Karenina and Beasts of the Southern Wild. With that said, my initial list of best movies of 2012 read like this:

10. Expendables 2
9. The Avengers
8. Looper
7. Hitchcock
6. Zero Dark Thirty
5. Cabin in the Woods
4. Moonrise Kingdom
3. The Dark Knight Rises
2. Django Unchained
1. Argo

It's time to revisit that list and retool it a bit, so

10. Looper
9. Hitchcock
8. Cabin in the Woods
7. Moonrise Kingdom
6. The Dark Knight Rises
5. Zero Dark Thirty
4. Anna Karenina
3. Django Unchained
2. Beasts of the Southern Wild
1. Argo

This will likely change as I continue to catch up with other 2012 movies that I'm waiting to hit on Blu-ray, including Les Miserables which I'm just dying to see, Lincoln, Life of Pi, Silver Linings Playbook, The Master and others. I watched Moonrise Kingdom a second time, which is why it dropped. It's a magical little movie, but it doesn't hold up.

In fact, I'm almost certain once I rewatch Zero Dark Thirty that it will rise again, but at the moment I am in absolute awe of both Anna Karenina (which I watched twice in two days) and Beasts of the Southern Wild which ended up defying all of my expectations and is just one of the most surreal and beautiful movies I have ever seen.

Rewatching Argo confirms what I already knew though. I believe Argo to be one of the greatest American movies of the past decade. This is the first time since The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King that I started jumping around and cheering for a Best Picture winner.

Some people tell me it should have been Zero Dark Thirty, as they compare the two. But Zero Dark is really less entertaining and more about showing a serious subject matter. It's a heavy movie that should be seen, but I also loved Argo's moments of humor and the fun that the team had with the script. It still remains a serious movie and yet it still never took itself too seriously. Zero Dark Thirty would never have that luxury with its subject matter, but it also kept it from being nearly as entertaining as Argo, while still enlightening the viewers about a very serious subject.

As for Anna Karenina, this might be one of the greatest love stories I have seen play out in a movie in years. It's a beautiful movie and one which I believe should have been nominated for Best Picture despite some critics not enjoying it as much as others. I understand The Master had the same problem, with some folks truly fallling in love with it and others shrugging it off. But I think Anna Karenina is not only a movie that spares no expense in how beautifully everything is constructed, but it also beautifully tells its story in an almost experimental way while still have multiple character arcs, each all play out as different parts of love. It's a wonderful movie and it also blew me away.

That top five of mine so far is must-see. The bottom five is fun fluff. I think Hitchcock should have received a nomination for acting and Moonrise Kingdom needed something for production design and maybe even screenwriting, but it was a strong year this year, so I'm not sure it should have made it anyway.

But that top five of:

5. Zero Dark Thirty
4. Anna Karenina
3. Django Unchained
2. Beasts of the Southern Wild
1. Argo

These are all five genuine classics and I have not enjoyed movies as much as these in years. Here's to seeing the others: Life of Pi, Les Miserables, Silver Linings Playbook, The Master and Lincoln. Because I have the sneaking suspicion that they'll likely round out my top 10, kicking out stuff like Looper, Batman, etc.
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I've put in 2.3 hours into Half Minute Hero, it's a fun game. A nice spoof of the RPG genre and a charming little adventure that parodies some of the major problems with RPG writing (like destroying the world). I like it, but it isn't designed for marathon play in any way at all, it's very much, pick up and play a little here and there. It's portable roots really show. But I enjoy it a lot.

Again, thanks to Legolas_Katarn, who gave it to me as a Christmas gift.

I'm also trying to figure out whether I want to start Dark Souls, Borderlands 2 or Mark of the Ninja right now. I viewed the intro to Borderlands 2 the other day, and it was really lame, so that put a downer on my mood. XD