George Washington Bridge? Who does that?

Another year in the can, my 60th, more than half of them as a serious-in-need-of-intervention cinejunkie. At my age, I can be honest with you: this exercise is mainly just to remind me what I've liked this year. You're welcome to join me, but I'm not sure why you would.

January is, of course, traditionally a wasteland enlivened only by late arrivals of the year-end Oscar® fodder--but of course by my rules (year of my first screening is all that matters), those are eligible for lauding and listing. My first notable, in fact, was a 2010 release from Greece, the delightfully quirky Attenberg. Highlight of my first (of only 2) M4 was Barbara, love and betrayal in East Germany.

February began my devotion to Michael Apted's amazing "up" series: no reviews for the shorter 7 & 14 installments, but something (typically lots) to say about the features at ages 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, and (new in 2013) 56. I called Amour "the best film of 2012 that I'm aware of." Soderbergh went out with a bang, not a whimper with the Hitchcockian Side Effects.

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga is probably not a great movie, but I have a real soft spot for the Herzog doc. And it was the best new thing I saw for most of March, until a trippy downtown double feature of Like Someone in Love and John Dies at the End. Highlight of the 2nd and last M4 was the sexual repression-via-exorcism Romanian film După dealuri (Beyond the hills).

April began with the discovery of Leo McCarey's 1937 Depression riff on King Lear, Make Way for Tomorrow. Habemus papam (We have a pope) was a gentle delight, like Bartleby the pope. Mud, late in the month, was, I guess, the first 2013 studio film of the year about which I got really excited--with another 19-century American hook, this to Huck Finn.

In May, Baz did Gatsby, and I was mostly wowed.

June brought the best is-it-a-documentary? of the year, Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell. Then the International Festival of Arts & Ideas brought Spike Lee and his moving-in-unexpected-ways 1997 doc about the Birmingham church bombings, 4 Little Girls. Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing was gorgeous in black & white. Céline & Jesse came back again, wonderfully, painfully, and, of course, verbally, in Before Midnight.

Scarcely saw anything in July, but a colleague and I agree that Fruitvale Station and Michael B. Jordan's performance therein got robbed, award-nominations-wise.

Initial enthusiasm for Blue Jasmine seems to have dissipated; August is not the time for serious grown-up movies. It's a good time for smart teen movies, though, and The Spectacular Now is one of the best ever. In a World . . . made us want to see lots more of Lake Bell, and then that New York cover came out, and damned if we didn't!

Saw a bunch of stuff in September, but only Nicole Holofcener's Enough Said really made an impression. Damn, but we'll miss the big guy.

October: Captain Phillips: remarkable and unbearable.

November: 12 Years a Slave: remarkable and unbearable. All Is Lost: again; this one evokes another Am Lit classic, The Open Boat.

Reliable December goodies. In Nebraska, Alexander Payne goes to Oz. In American Hustle, David O. Russell goes to the '70s and Jennifer Lawrence takes a hilarious holiday from Panem. And in Inside Llewyn Davis, Ethan and Joel go to the Village in the '60s.

Shall I rate? I suppose it would go something like . . .

9. Mud
8. Beyond the Hills
7. Before Midnight
6. All Is Lost
5. Nebraska
4. Inside Llewyn Davis
3. Stories We Tell
2. 12 Years a Slave
1. American Hustle

Pretty conventional, huh? Best 2012 leftover: Amour. Best weird: John Dies at the End. Oh, and one more thing: the balcony is closed.