Tube Enema!

THX 1138: low key early hard sci-fi effort from George Lucas, which I watched because I just read that it was the inspiration for the Toto song "99". If only Lucas had applied a similarly minimalist approach to dialog in his star wars prequels.

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace: 3-part BBC documentary on machines, philosophy and politics in the 20th century. There's some good stuff here: I particularly enjoyed the footage of objectivist whack-job Ayn Rand and interviews with some of her acolytes (sadly, her most notorious protege, one Alan Greenspan, declined to be interviewed). As the series progressed, however, it seemed to be lacking a coherent thesis, and in the end was overly fluffed up with sensational claims and dramatic sound-bites.

Looper (2012): look, given that I grew up claiming Back to the Future and Terminator as two of my all-time favourite film franchises, it was always going to be hard for me not to have a soft spot for any film involving time travel (heck, I even enjoyed Hot Tub Time-Machine!).

The History of the Eagles (2013): excellent documentary featuring extensive, unprecedented interviews with all band members. Pretty much essential viewing for anyone with even a passing interest in the ban or classic rock in general.

Killing Them Softly (2012): reasonably entertaining gangster yarn.

The Hobbit (2012): while it wasn't without a certain charm, it left me rather underwhelmed.

Django Unchained (2012): again, underwhelmed. Some brilliant performances (Samuel L. Jackson's in particular) but overall it didn't quite work for me.

Ted (2012): surprisingly funny.

The Wire: Possibly the last great cable tv series that I'll discover retroactively. Took me a long time to get around to watching it, and it took a while to get me hooked, but once it did I couldn't get enough. Quite simply a brilliant piece of work, with some really memorable characters. It's all in the game, yo.