Pop Quiz, Hotshot: There’s a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?!

Whoa. Wait. Sorry, that isn’t the question I want to ask – I just got carried away thinking about Dennis Hopper in Speed. What I really want to know is: how many movies have you seen this year?

Me? I’ve seen 89. That’s 89 movies in a little over six-and-a-half months, which means out of the 210 days of the year so far – I’ve spent 7.4 days devouring new movies. With less than six months left in 2013, I decided to do a top ten list of my favorite films of the year so far.

There are still tons of highly-anticipated films on the way – Elysium, Gravity, Ender’s Game, Anchorman: The Legend Continues, The Wolf of Wall Street – but, until then, consider checking out the films below. OK, enough talking, let’s get on with the show. Without further ado, here’s my list of the 10 best films of 2013 so far”¦

Upstream Color
Director: Shane Carruth
Screenwriter: Shane Carruth
Cast: Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth, Andrew Sensenig, Thiago Martins, Kathy Carruth, Meredith Burke

Synopsis: A young woman is abducted and seemingly brainwashed via an organic material harvested from a specific orchid. She later meets a man and after the two fall for each other, they come to realize he may also have been subjected to the same process. The two search urgently for a place of safety within each other and struggle to assemble the fragments of their wrecked lives as they are unknowingly drawn into the life cycle of a presence that permeates the microscopic world, moving to nematodes, plant life, livestock, and back again.

Shane Carruth‘s Upstream Color premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to an abundance of hype. Carruth’s follow-up to his fantastic 2004 time travel film, Primer, Upstream Color screened as part of SXSW‘s opening night festivities at The Stateside Theatre and ran the gauntlet of audience reaction. As moviegoers left the screening I heard “brilliant,” “profound,” “confusing,” and “fucking atrocious” within seconds of each other – a divisive, peculiar film that feels equal parts Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life), Mike Cahill (Another Earth), and Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko).

This year’s South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) (03/08 – 03/16) features a lineup of 109 films, including 69 world premieres, as well as 14 North American and 5 United States premieres, with 68 of those titles from first-time filmmakers. Every March, the SXSW Film Festival attracts thousands of fans, filmmakers, press, and industry leaders to Austin, TX, to revel in the celebration of cinema by enjoying a gauntlet of new, exciting movies with the best film audiences in the world.

This year I’ll be covering SXSW for Geeks of Doom and plan on seeing around 20 films during my time in Austin. I’ll be updating Geeks of Doom daily with reviews, exclusive Skull-Face Island podcasts, daily journal entries, and filmmaker interviews including director Josh Johnson of the VHS documentary, Rewind This!.