2013's Weirdest Movie Trends

Metal Madness

The Weird Trend: Iron Man 3 and Man Of Steel prove that, in the cinematic version of 'Animal, Vegetable or Mineral,' there's only one way to go for the superheroes: metal!

Countdown

The Weird Trend: At the beginning of the year, we had Movie 43 . Coming soon is 42 . It can only be a matter of time before the release of 41 Samurai or whatever.

Turning Japanese

The Weird Trend: In recent years, Hollywood has looked to China ( Looper , The Karate Kid ) for its Far East locations. In 2013, it's the turn of Japan, playing a prominent role in G.I. Joe: Retaliation and The Wolverine .

A Load Of Bull

The Weird Trend: Let's hope the audiences for Belgian art-house cinema and Sylvester Stallone action movies didn't get confused in January, when Bullhead was released within weeks of Bullet To The Head .

Colonic Irrigation

The Weird Trend: To lose one colon from a film title ( Oz The Great And Powerful ) may be considered a misfortune. To lose two ( Star Trek Into Darkness ) looks like carelessness.

Morgan And Melissa

The Weird Trend: April 2013. You basically couldn't walk into a cinema without seeing Morgan Freeman and Melissa Leo, with the duo uniting in Olympus Has Fallen and Oblivion .

The C-List

The Weird Trend: The names read like the golden age of 1970s cinema: Cronenberg, Cassavetes and Coppola. But actually, it's their kids who all have films out this year: Brandon Cronenberg's Antiviral , Alexandra Cassavetes' Kiss Of The Damned and Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring .

Highbrow Horror

The Weird Trend: For the discerning horror movie, simply adding a '2' onto your sequel isn't enough. Hence the forthcoming The Last Exorcism Part 2 and Insidious Chapter 2 .

More Than A Name

The Weird Trend: Telling us about the character in the title is all the rage, as cinemagoers watch the adventures of Jack ( The Giant Slayer ), Oz ( The Great And Powerful ) and John ( Dies At The End ).

Stoked

The Weird Trend: You wait a lifetime for the word 'Stoker' to crop up in a film title and then two rock up within two months. Park Chan-wook's bonkers noir Stoker is not to be confused with Alexey Balabanov's Russian crime drama The Stoker .

Psyched Out

The Weird Trend: Two Oscar-winning directors turned their attention to psychiatry in as many months earlier this year, with Steven Soderbergh's Side Effects quickly followed by Danny Boyle's Trance .

Word Comma Repeat

The Weird Trend: Superfluous word alert! Both The Way, Way Back and Runner, Runner double-up their words, with only a strategically placed comma to separate them.

Diesel Power

The Weird Trend: What is this, 2002? Vin Diesel cements the unlikely rejuvenation of his fortunes as the sixth film in the resurgent Fast And Furious franchise is joined by sci-fi trilogy capper Riddick .

Just Add Olga

The Weird Trend: There must be something about Olga Kurylenko that screams 'love triangle,' given she found herself fighting another lady for her fella's attention in both Oblivion and To The Wonder .

If It Ain't Broke

The Weird Trend: Yet another title coincidence saw Broken ( British , gritty) released within a week of Broken City (American, shiny) in cinemas.

A Lotta Liotta

The Weird Trend: When Killing Them Softly was released last year, it was sad to see Ray Liotta playing a crumpled, pathetic wreck. Then came this year's double-whammy of The Place Beyond The Pines and The Iceman , and he's back to his menacing, Goodfellas -era best.

It's A Kind Of Magic

The Weird Trend: Remember how, in 2006 and 2007, cinema went ga-ga for magicians ( The Prestige , The Illusionist , Magicians )? Well, it's happening again this year, with The Incredible Burt Wonderstone , Now You See Me… and even Oz The Great And Powerful .

Switching Sides

The Weird Trend: One minute, Walton Goggins is being racist and violence to slaves in Django Unchained . The next he's a Civil War-era politician presented with the opportunity to end slavery in Lincoln . That's versatility.

One Year A Slave

The Weird Trend: While we're on the subject, it shouldn't go unnoticed that a year that began with Django Unchained and Lincoln will end with Steve McQueen's own take on American slavery, Twelve Years A Slave .

Too Late

The Weird Trend: At least when the world ends, you can enjoy the next stage in mankind's journey through the post-apocalypse with Tom Cruise in Oblivion and Will Smith in After Earth .

Money, Money, Money

The Weird Trend: Leonardo DiCaprio continues his habit of doubling up his films. After the 'dead wife' duo of Shutter Island and Inception , The Great Gatsby and Martin Scorsese's forthcoming The Wolf Of Wall Street comprise a 'dodgy deals' diptych.

Remake Rebels

The Weird Trend: Remaking classics is nothing new, but hiring talented auteurs is still quite rare... and yet new versions of Carrie and Oldboy are being handled by Kimberly Peirce and Spike Lee, respectively.

Gang Related

The Weird Trend: Bizarre real-life criminal gangs are the subject of new films by Sofia Coppola ( The Bling Ring , who rob celebrities' homes) and Michael Bay ( Pain And Gain , about bodybuilders involved in extortion and murder).

Ahoy McAvoy

The Weird Trend: After being a Hollywood superhero, James McAvoy came back home to position himself as an authentic British hero with back-to-back leading roles in Welcome To The Punch and Trance … not to mention his acclaimed turn as Macbeth on stage.

I Feel Love

The Weird Trend: Directors have porn on their mind in 2013, with Michael Winterbottom's The Look Of Love , Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Don Jon and Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman's Lovelace .

School's Out

The Weird Trend: Vanessa Hudgens has graduated from High School Musical by donning a bikini and robbing some banks in Spring Breakers . Not to be outdone, her one-time co-star Zac Efron let Nicole Kidman piss on him (literally) in The Paperboy .

The Hyperbole Squad

The Weird Trend: No more Mr Average. Burt Wonderstone is Incredible , the Now is Spectacular , and Gatsby and Oz are Great . Oh, and the latter is also Powerful .

Franchise Thief

The Weird Trend: For years, nobody was quite sure what to do with Dwayne Johnson on-screen. Now they've decided: he's the go-to guy for revitalising tired franchises, with Fast And Furious 6 and G.I. Joe: Retaliation showcasing his gatecrashing ability.

Get A Room, Brad and Jen

The Weird Trend: A decade ago, we'd be talking about Pitt and Aniston. This year, it is Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, who have followed Silver Linings Playbook by reuniting in Serena and American Hustle . She's in The Hangover Part 3 as well, probably.

Viva The 1980s

The Weird Trend: Anybody entering a cinema at the beginning of the year might have been forgiven for assuming they'd slipped back in time to a branch of Planet Hollywood, with Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Willis all releasing old-school action movies.

Daddy Issues

The Weird Trend: In The Place Beyond The Pines , Dane DeHaan has dad issues to contend with when he discovers who his father is. In Man Of Steel , Henry Cavill's Clark Kent has much the same deal.

The Direct Approach

The Weird Trend: One is the British-born 'Master of Suspense' who revolutionised the Hollywood thriller. The other is the French painter's son who defined art-house cinema. Both - Hitchcock and Renoir - have biopics out this year.

'cock Action

The Weird Trend: Did we say one Hitchcock biopic? Actually, there were two: the cinematically released Hitchcock , and the HBO/BBC TV film The Girl .

Shiver Me Timbers

The Weird Trend: The modern-day re-emergence of piracy off the coast of Somalia finally gets onto screens this year, both in art-houses (Danish thriller A Hijacking ) and multiplexes (the forthcoming Paul Greengrass / Tom Hanks collaboration Captain Phillips ).

Girl Power

The Weird Trend: Bad girls are 'in' this year, with Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers and Sofia Coppola's forthcoming The Bling Ring both themed around criminal gangs composed of young ladies.

Super Who?

The Weird Trend: Once upon a time, you could rely on superheroes being consistent. But twice this year we have examples of indecisive identities: Don Cheadle switching his name from War Machine to Iron Patriot in Iron Man 3 - and Christopher Mintz-Plasse rebranding Red Mist as The Mother Fucker in Kick-Ass 2 .

Merry Men

The Weird Trend: A trend in one film, as Man Of Steel casts Robin Hood (Russell Crowe) as Superman's dad...and Robin Hood (Kevin Costner) as Superman's stepdad.

Who Are You?

The Weird Trend: Gross-out comedy Identity Thief and chilling real-life drama Compliance both involve protagonists who claim to be other people to get their kicks.

Korean Invasion (part 1)

The Weird Trend: Park Chan-wook with Stoker , Bong Joon-ho with Snowpiercer , Kim Ji-woon with The Last Stand . Are there actually any directors still working in South Korea, or have they all moved to America?

Korean Invasion (part 2)

The Weird Trend: Islamic terrorists are yesterday's news. In 2013, the bad guys in Hollywood action movies come from North Korea, in Olympus Has Fallen and Red Dawn - the latter re-edited to change the villains' nationality from the first choice of being Chinese.

Before They Were Infamous

The Weird Trend: A TV duel based on classic films. In the red corner, Psycho prequel Bates Motel . In the even redder corner, Red Dragon prequel Hannibal .

2013 Is The New 2012

The Weird Trend: All the most anticipated films of this year...were meant to come out last year. Well, The Great Gatsby , Gangster Squad and World War Z were, anyway.

I Wanna Be Adored

The Weird Trend: A Summer Stone Roses revival sees Shane Meadows' documentary Made Of Stone followed by comedy Spike Island , about a gang of lads attending the band's seminal 1990 gig.

Hello London

The Weird Trend: OK, it started last year with Skyfall and The Sweeney , but Welcome To The Punch and Trance have continued an obsession amongst home-grown directors to fetishise modern London as a Heat -style metropolis where cops and robbers duke it out.

Bye Bye London

The Weird Trend: What have we done to deserve this? In G.I. Joe: Retaliation , Star Trek Into Darkness and Thor: The Dark World , London gets pulverised from enemy aggressors.

Last Orders

The Weird Trend: The apocalypse is nothing new in cinema, but to have two similarly-themed comedies ( This Is The End , The World's End ) about a group of friends trying to survive it is something different.

Four Squares

The Weird Trend: The letters Q U A R T E T have been pulled out of the Scrabble bag twice in recent months, with Dustin Hoffman's Quartet quickly followed by Yaron Zilberman's A Late Quartet . Honourable mention, too, to fellow 'elderly musicians' movie A Song For Marion , but points off for not finding four actors to allow it to use the Q-word.

The Ford Production Line

The Weird Trend: Virtual recluse Harrison Ford, who has only 12 credits since the Millennium, has FOUR films out in 2013: 42 , Ender's Game , Paranoia and Anchorman: The Legend Continues .

Incident At 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

The Weird Trend: Attacks on the White House are de rigeur this year. No sooner has Gerard Butler seen off the Koreans in Olympus Has Fallen , than Channing Tatum has to save the day in Roland Emmerich's forthcoming White House Down .

2004: The Sequel

The Weird Trend: In 2004, Shane Carruth unleashed cult time-travel drama Primer , Will Ferrell introduced Anchorman to the world, Jesse and Céline met up again in Before Sunset and Vin Diesel told The Chronicles Of Riddick . Nine years later, finally, all of those films get their follow-ups.