2013 Movie Patterns (Boom)

Notice a few common ties in this past year’s movies?  Will and Jaden Smith did, as did I:

• Indecipherable Nick Nolte: Gangster Squad; Parker; The Company You Keep
• Birds Fly Into Houses: Dark Skies; The Last Exorcism Part II
• Internet Sleuthing in need of Librarian Assistance: Snitch; Dark Skies
• Fathers Make Emotionally-Charged Shotgun Purchases: Snitch; Dark Skies
• Robert Patrick with a Regional Dialect: Gangster Squad; Identity Thief
• Digs at Ayn Rand: Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare; Identity Thief
• Digs at Nancy Reagan: Beautiful Creatures, Lee Daniels’ The Butler
• Ghostly Endings: Safe Haven; Phantom
• Catherine Zeta-Jones Behaving Badly: Broken City; Side Effects
• Unintentional Dark Shadows Allusions: Mama; Beautiful Creatures
• Morris Chestnut with a Badge: Identity Thief; The Call; Kick-Ass 2
• Paul Dano gets beat up: Prisoners; 12 Years a Slave
• “You love your phone with email more than you love me”: Frances Ha; Her
• Reminder of the particular charms of “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)”: This Is the End, Girl Most Likely
• Grown men who can recite lyrics from the Flashdance soundtrack: The Internship; The Way, Way Back
• Grown men showing the women in their lives their wardrobe of many colors: The Great Gatsby; Spring Breakers
• The Power of “Every1’s A Winner” by Hot Chocolate (Good Movie Edition): Frances Ha
• The Power of “Every1’s A Winner” by Hot Chocolate (Bad Movie Edition): Anchorman 2
• Veteran actors bent on proving that an excellent 2012 was a fluke: Bruce Willis (A Good Day to Die Hard; G.I. Joe: Retaliation; RED 2); Robert De Niro (The Big Wedding; The Family; Last Vegas; Grudge Match)

What other patterns did you see in your 2013 moviegoing and what commonalities do you think we’ll see in 2014?