2013 wasn't a particularly outrageous year in terms of offensively bad films, and I find it almost ridiculous to complain about the bad films we did have thrown at us when there were so many wonderful movies released this year too. Yet, here I am. If anything, consider this list a cautionary tale of films to avoid at all costs- you don't want to sit through these movies.
Dishonorable mentions
(Not necessarily awful films, but movies that either missed an opportunity for greatness
or left me completely disappointed).
Admission * A.C.O.D. * Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues * The Bling Ring * The Counselor * Don Jon * Elysium * Pacific Rim * Star Trek Into Darkness
But none of those come close to these ten films...
10.) Labor Day (dir. Jason Reitman)
Putting a Jason Reitman film on a list that isn't celebrating the best films of the year is breaking my heart a little but, unfortunately, Labor Day is a movie having a massive identity crisis. The film has all the trappings of a sappy romance story, complete with an overly sentimental ending and overwrought declarations of love. But the film never seems to acknowledge the inherent creepiness of its story- and I'm not just talking about the fact that Kate Winslet's onscreen son makes her "Husband for a Day" coupons and reflects on the fact that he can never fulfill his mother's sexual desires. I'm talking about the fact that Josh Brolin's Frank is a criminal that takes a family hostage, only to become a hunky romantic lead twenty minutes later. Reitman seems to think that having Frank fill the shoes left behind by his hostage/love interest's ex-husband and showing young Henry how to do traditional "boy" things will make the audience forgive the fact that he is a convicted murderer taking advantage of a mentally challenged woman and a helpless boy. But none of that works, and the film constantly plays like a straightforward love story, making many sequences creepy and tonally uneven- especially when Frank is tying Kate Winslet's Adele to a chair so that she does not run away, an awkward moment that tries (and fails) to be a sensual moment between the two. Credit must be given to Winslet for trying her hardest to bring life to a poorly written character, but the film is a mess of outdated gender roles and tired clichés.
9.) Stoker (dir. Chan-wook Park)
What is Stoker? A moody horror film? A psychological thriller? A thinly veiled metaphor about a woman's sexual awakening? I'm asking because I literally have no idea. Stoker is a beautiful looking film, but a film needs more than nice cinematography to stand out in the crowd. Chan-wook Park's English language debut is the art house equivalent of a summer blockbuster- there are a lot of pretty things to look at, but nothing going on underneath. Stoker throws every possible subtext to the wall and hopes that some of it sticks, but it never amounts to much more than a silly horror-soap opera. There are individual moments that are visually pleasing, but you can say the same thing about any of the Transformers movies. A movie should leave you wanting to return to it, but searching "Stoker" on Google Images would be quicker, easier and cheaper than ever having to sit through this again.
8.) The Lone Ranger (dir. Gore Verbinski)
The Lone Ranger is one of the strangest summer blockbusters to hit the big screen in quite some time. Usually films this expensive try to connect with the broadest possible audience, often playing it safe and not doing anything all that new or interesting. Yet, The Lone Ranger, a film with a notoriously high budget and well documented production problems, seems to go out of its way to limit its appeal. One minute, we have a fart joke. The next, a character is threatened with castration. An ongoing gag involves a horse taking swigs of beer. An ongoing plot line involves a man who cuts out the hearts of his victims and eats it. Subplots include an innocent little boy learning about the titular hero, as well as a strangely disturbing look at the genocide of the Native American people. And while I don't have facts to back this up, I'd be willing to bet that this movie has the most threats of rape ever for a Walt Disney Picture. I'm fine with a film trying to be different, but a film can't bounce back and forth between trying to be traditional summer movie fare and an edgy, adult oriented western. And, of course, being about forty minutes too long doesn't exactly help its case.
And don't get me started on the fact that Johnny Depp played Tonto...
7.) Thor: The Dark World (dir. Alan Taylor)
Thor: The Dark World might have the worst line of dialogue from 2013- "You must think I'm a piece of bread that needs to be buttered so heavily." But the film is so bland, unremarkable and poorly written that, by the end of the film, you'd be willing to forgive Anthony Hopkins for ever uttering a line so horrid if it meant getting out of the theater. While virtually every film ever made is a cash grab of some sort, you can practically feel the folks at Marvel reaching into your back pocket and taking all your money. Nobody here seems interested or passionate about what they're doing- the writing is uninspired, the direction is pedestrian, and the action scenes are nothing more than various CGI creatures smashing into one another. It also doesn't help that Chris Hemsworth is an awfully boring star, and that Natalie Portman gives new meaning to the phrase "phoning it in." But who can blame her? Portman, one of the most talented actresses working today, is stuck playing a woman who becomes unable to care about anything going on around her when her sort-of boyfriend leaves Earth. And the film's obsession with shoving Tom Hiddlestone down our throats grows tiresome. Yes, Hiddlestone is charming and likable, but when characters do stupid things just so the audience can get more time with Loki you are actually doing a disservice to your fans. Thor: The Dark World was meant to be an appetizer for 2015's highly anticipated sequel to The Avengers, but it only served as a reminder to what Joss Whedon brings to the table and all other Marvel films lack: strong female leads, interesting action scenes and stories that actually warrant being told.
6.) Paradise (dir. Diablo Cody)
Diablo Cody is one of the most polarizing figures to enter Hollywood in recent memory, but I've always been a fan of her creative dialogue and interesting characters. Juno was an excellent debut film, and one that has held up remarkably well, while 2011's criminally underrated Young Adult showed signs that the stripper-turned-blogger-turned Oscar winning screenwriter was growing more mature, and more intelligent, with age. So...what happened? Paradise, Cody's latest screenplay and directorial debut, feels like a huge step back for her. The film wants to be an edgy look at religion, focusing on the ridiculousness of mega-churches and uber-conservative Christians, while also remaining optimistic about life and showing the importance of believing in a higher power. But Cody's dialogue lacks bite, wit, well constructed ideas or interesting characters. Cody's scripts are typically confident, but she seems all too self-conscious here, with ideas that only feel half formed and attempts at satire that fall flat. It also doesn't help that her star, Julianne Hough, is hugely miscast. Ellen Page and Charlize Theron both knew how to use Cody's dialogue to their advantage, creating characters that feel quirky but believable. But Hough's narrations sound like a high school student struggling to understand the poem she's reading out loud. With Cody's last fluke, Jennifer's Body, we at least have Karyn Kusama to blame for the film's uneven tones. But, with Paradise, the blame lies solely on Cody's shoulders.
5.) Now You See Me (dir. Louis Leterrier)
Plot twists work because they are surprising, but believable. They have to be grounded in some sense of reality, or at least in the sense of reality created by the movie's screenwriters. That's what makes Now You See Me so frustrating- it has no sense of reality. The plot twists are surprising only because they happen independently of everything that has happened in the movie so far. It's like watching a "whodunit" mystery, only to have the killer be a character that was never mentioned before the big reveal. For a film with a massive ensemble cast of talented actors, it's pretty remarkable how little fun Now You See Me is. Granted, the script doesn't exactly ask these actors to do all that much, as these characters are incredibly one note and, in most cases, annoying as hell. Eisenberg in particular comes off as grating- his character is supposed to be the hero, but he constantly comes off as an annoying teenager you want to smack. But, really, Now You See Me just feels cheesy and poorly written. I have no interest in watching a film built around its twist ending only to find out that the twist was impossible for me to predict the whole time.
4.) Girl Most Likely (dir. Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini)
As you watch Girl Most Likely, it will seem pretty clear that the film is a comedy of some sort. After all, Kristen Wiig is a successful comedian, Annette Bening is doing wacky things and saying things that aren't socially acceptable to say, Darren Criss is singing the Backstreet Boys in eyeliner and Matt Dillon is wearing a weird looking mustache. But this comedy is missing one major thing: jokes. The characters in Girl Most Likely are all morons, and the film mistakenly thinks that watching these characters do and say stupid things will be amusing for the audience but, really, it's just sad. The "joke" sequences are all unbearably long and stretched out, creating scenes that are just embarrassing for everyone involved and, especially, the audience. Wiig's Imogene is one of the strangest characters of the year- a woman who is meant to be quirky, but is so bizarre it's a minor miracle she's managed to live a reasonably normal life for as long as she has. Meanwhile, the script shoves a totally unbelievable romance between her and Criss, a poorly developed mother/daughter subplot with a wasted Bening, and an ending that is so strange I can't believe people as talented as this would actually sign on. Thankfully, this film flew almost entirely under the radar as I'm afraid it'd destroy Wiig's credibility as a leading lady. It's a disaster.
3.) Gangster Squad (dir. Ruben Fleischer)
Watching Gangster Squad is like attending a really expensive Hollywood Halloween party, where all the stars invited have to dress as 1950s gangsters and drunkenly try to imitate the actors from that era. Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone and Sean Penn are all talented actors, but they are all embarrassingly bad in this overly stylized and incredibly uninteresting movie. The dialogue in the film is awful, the sets and costumes feel fake, and the film's uneven mixture of "do-gooder" heroism and disturbing violence becomes distracting and uncomfortable to watch. By the end, the film dissolves into nothing more than a contest between Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling to see who could possibly go more over the top with their roles, while Emma Stone is asked to do nothing but make sexual double entendres and look good in a red dress. Josh Brolin's hero is irritating where he should be inspiring, and the plot is almost entirely undeveloped. Do yourself a favor- if you're itching to watch good actors beat up bad guys in a period piece, rent The Untouchables. Or, if you really want to watch something good, check out Curtis Hanson's masterpiece, LA Confidential. But never, under any circumstance, rent Gangster Squad, unless you desperately want to discover how a two-time Oscar winner like Sean Penn could ever give a performance this bad.
2.) Texas Chainsaw 3D (dir. John Luessenhop)
I don't expect much from slasher films- stupid teenagers, ridiculously violent deaths and gratuitous nudity will usually be enough for me to enjoy myself in some way. But I do expect one thing from slasher films, and all films in general: competence. And Texas Chainsaw 3D is such an incompetent film that I almost can't believe somebody at Lionsgate watched it and thought, "Yep, this is fit for release." The movie feels unfinished. The film is directed terribly, features amateurish acting, and the death scenes all feel like they haven't even gone through the special effects or editing process yet. Dead bodies look like mannequins, and the gore looks like something you could buy at a local costume store around Halloween. But the most offensive thing about Texas Chainsaw 3D is the plot- a storyline so over the top and convoluted, yet so poorly thought out, that I'd almost prefer no plot at all. Please, slasher-remake writers, try to make up for the clichés of your genre with witty dialogue and interesting characters- don't try and surprise everyone with major third act twists. But, on the bright side, it did provide one of the funniest moments from every film this year. Unfortunately, that scene was not supposed to make us laugh.
1.) The Canyons (dir. Paul Schrader)
What do you get when you combine a porn star, a celebrated author turned hated Twitter user, the writer of Taxi Driver and Lindsay Lohan? Apparently, the worst movie of 2013. The Canyons is 99 minutes of nonsense. IMDb claims that there is a plot, but I failed to notice one. What I did notice was a never ending parade of sex scenes, full frontal nudity, inane dialogue masquerading as intellectual discussion and the horrifying objectification and misuse of a former child star with a drug problem. I'm told Bret Easton Ellis is an intelligent man, and the adaptations of his work lead me to believe that such a claim must be true, but his script does not do much to back up that claim. The film seems to be asking questions about society and the way modern technology has made us obsessed with the lives of others, but all that shows up on screen is a bunch of twenty-somethings complaining, typically while naked. And while the sex scenes are trying to be shocking and titillating, they often come off as boring or ridiculous- which is even more surprising given the fact that the film has porn star James Deen in one of the lead roles. But one can only listen to so much horrible dialogue and stare at James Deen's penis/ Lindsay Lohan's breasts for so long before they start to watch the clock and hope for the film's end credits. At the very least, the film reminds us that Lindsay Lohan is a fairly talented actress with a lot of untapped potential, and now that she's gone to rehab and has remained clean she has the potential for a major career comeback. It's just a shame that her latest film appearance is in a film this disgusting.
Well, there you have it. I'll be posting my Top 10 of the year this Sunday! Happy Oscar weekend, movie nerds. Thanks for reading!
