Whether it was to kick off the year-end list-making game earlier than ever or just to get a fan site off his back, Quentin Tarantino has named his favorite films of 2013 so far. The new QT honorees are alphabetized by title rather than ranked, and they mostly fall into neat little quadrants of sensibilities Tarantino has been known to admire and/or utilize. They are…

• Jill Soloway’s Afternoon Delight
• Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight
• Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine
• James Wan’s The Conjuring
• Joe Swanberg’s Drinking Buddies
• Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha
• Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity
• Jeff Wadlow’s Kick-Ass 2
• Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger
• Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s This Is the End

Can we assume Quentin waited till Gravity had been out a full 24 hours before releasing his list? Surely he had a private screening — just him, Alfonso, and an IMAX-brand bong — and has been thinking about it every day for months, but didn’t want to brag and be that guy who gets to see the life-changing movie before you have a chance. The last couple of lists show plenty of precedents for this year’s choices — Kick-Ass was Tarantino’s 11th fave in 2010; Baumbach’s Greenberg came in eighth that year. Midnight in Paris made it onto Tarantino’s 2011 list, and horror flicks like The Conjuring and directors like James Wan are never a surprise from the man who made half of Grindhouse. Nothing’s a surprise, really: QT digs movies. Maybe these are only the ones he saw more than twice. Maybe no one should be shocked that he enjoyed the $215 million Lone Ranger mega-flop that ruined childhoods, seeing as he gave love for The Green Hornet and Green Lantern in a single year. (Disclosure: Disney made The Lone Ranger, and also owns Grantland.)

Unstated but understood about the list: Quentin’s real favorites include Django’s White House Down, Calvin Candie’s turn as The Great Gatsby, Broomhilda’s Peeples, and Dr. King Schultz’s Oscar speech (it counts as a movie). As for the rest of 2013: Machete Kills was ineligible because Tarantino and Rodriguez are now legally brothers; QT already dislikes the Oldboy remake because (a) it’s Oldboy, and (b) Spike Lee didn’t give Django a chance; QT already hates the Carrie remake because it doesn’t star John Travolta. But don’t be surprised if, on January 1, Quentin shoots a message to The Quentin Tarantino Archives, with the subject line “More movies” and reading “​american hustle/august osage county/out of furnace/keanu reeves samurai flick/keanu martial arts flick also really good. plus saw marty’s WOLF OF WALL STREET last june; motherfucker of a movie.”