Regular readers of this blog may recall that I published a list of my top 10 films of the year (along with books and CDs) just before I took off for Christmas vacation. The list came with a caveat — those were my favorite films based on what had been released in the Tampa Bay area at that time.

Well, I saw a lot of movies in the San Francisco Bay Area during my time off, and a few since I've returned to Tampa. So with your indulgence, here are my pint-sized reviews of those films — some that have still not been released here, others that have, and some that never will be.

The Impossible
For those of us around in the 1970s, it truly was the Golden Age of the Disaster Film, led by producer Irwin Allen (Posidean Adventure, Earthquake, The Towering Inferno). These films actually felt somewhat realistic, and the special effects were cutting edge for the time. By the late 80s and into the 1990s, the genre had become a parody of itself (I'm talking about films like 1996's Independence Day, which upped the ante by bombing New York and D.C. a full 5 years before 9/11).

This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2013.