The Top 10 Worst Movies of 2013

2013 was a weird year for movies. Here you have a year that gave us countless movies that have had audiences split down the middle about whether they liked it or not. Man of Steel, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Iron Man 3, and a lot of other movies are just the tip of the iceberg. Hell, even The Wolf of Wall Street is leaving people split on whether they liked it or not. So when making a worst movies of 2013 list, not one list is going to be the same, which I find really interesting. Each list is its own beast and reflects on a person's tastes, and when you have a year with so many movies that have the potential to leave audiences disappointed, there's no limit as to what movies could be in the Top 10. Hell, I've seen lists where Man of Steel and American Hustle can be called "the worst movies of 2013". So the long and short of it is, my list is my own opinion. If you agree with some entries, more power to you. If not, that's perfectly fine. Enjoy the movies that you like, but understand why I would call it a bad movie. My only rule for being on this list is making it a movie that I've seen that was released this year.

Dishonorable Mention: The Conjuring

Just barely scraping off the worst list was the biggest horror movie of the year, The Conjuring. 2013 served as a big resurgence for the horror genre, giving us a big hit every month is seemed like. Movies like Insidious 2 and The Purge were successful, but they didn't make as much money as The Conjuring. However, even though it made a lot of money, it forgot to, you know, be an actual scary movie. Scares were few and far between in this movie, and the only thing this movie had going for it was a tense atmosphere, and even then that atmosphere was completely wasted when the evil ghost possesses a person and just rages as a screaming monster. Because horror isn't about getting into the audiences head and making them be afraid, no no! Horror is about having a scary monster float upside down and spit out blood. I give it credit for having a good atmosphere, but that's all that can be said about this movie. And I'll probably be putting its sequels on the list as well, since this is going to be a franchise it seems. Yay for me.

Number 10: 47 Ronin

Talk about disappointing. I had hopes that this would be a fairly decent action movie with a focus on Japanese legend and lore, but instead I got a movie that pulled focus away from what it was actually supposed to tell a story about. Everything about this movie isn't necessarily bad per se, but it's not done well and just leaves a sense of yearning. When the credits rolled, I thought that this movie didn't have any meat or packed any punches with it. Hell, it had potential to be a fairly interesting movie, but instead it wastes all of its opportunities. It could focus on the 47 ronin themselves and the themes around honor and loyalty, but instead we get Keanu Reeves being accepted by the ronin and saving the princess from the dragon. Oh, but at least it has fantasy elements, so that'll get people to see it instead of making a good character drama in Feudal Japan. I don't hate this movie for what it is, but I hate it because it wasted every opportunity to be a good movie. The ronin deserved better than this.

For an extended thoughts, read up on my review here.

Number 9: Carrie

If 47 Ronin was a slow burn of disappointment, Carrie burned me out in the first ten minutes. The biggest crime that Carrie commits is being boring as tears, which shouldn't happen with a movie like this. It's a movie about bullying and revenge and coming of age. There is so much material to be taken out from this concept, but instead we just get a lifeless movie that can't even bother to have interesting characters. Everyone is painted in broad strokes as being either goody goods or reprehensibly evil with no subtlety in between. It all builds up to a giant climax, which while it still is cool to see Carrie enact revenge on her tormentors, doesn't come off as genuine when the rest of the movie is just so lifeless. Also, Carrie White is not Chloe Grace Mortez. My believability for Carrie being bullied because she's not pretty and is a freak gets thrown out the window when she looks just as good, if not better, than the girls who torment her. Next time, leave the classic horror movies where they were and don't touch them.

For extended thoughts, read the original review here

Number 8: Gangster Squad

No one remembers this movie? No one...? I'm the only one who does...? Alright, fine.

Can anyone say that they actually remember this movie? I may have harped on Carrie for being boring, but there's a key difference between these two boredoms. Carrie was boring because it took a nice concept and made it uninteresting. Gangster Squad was boring from the get go. I feel like there's not much I can say besides "It was a boring and bland movie that doesn't have anything going for it." I mean, what else is there really to say. Well besides let it be known that you can earn a spot on my worst list for making me fall asleep during the movie. Yes, it's that boring. Don't see it, and even if you do, you probably won't remember what happened in it anyway.

Number 7: Movie 43

It's no surprise that Movie 43 is on the worst list. This is the movie that gave Hugh Jackman neck testicles, so we're obviously exposed to a smart comedy that breaks downs barriers between class... or we can watch an animated cat jerk off to his owner. I mean, that works too. While most would expect this movie to rank lower, and I mean MUCH LOWER, on my list, I don't have any strong feelings towards this movie. Yeah it's bad, but its badness isn't on the same level as The Room or Birdemic. It's just a move that feels like it's a bunch of really bad SNL skits rolled into one movie. It's just penis jokes, balls jokes, and a bit of sodomy thrown in there as well. It tries to be edgy with its humor, but it just comes across as something that a stupid teenager would think is funny, then made a feature length movie of it. But you wanna know the worst thing about this movie. Because it's cast are all A-List celebrities like Uma Thurman, Emma Stone, Gerard Butler, Hugh Jackman, and a ton of others, this movie technically has more Oscars working in it than The Wolf of Wall Street and Inside Llewellyn Davis combined. I need a minute...

Number 6: Birdemic 2: The Resurrection

 Yes, the movie is so-bad-it's-good, but it fails horribly at it. Say what you will about the original Birdemic, and my God you can say a lot about the original Birdemic, but it was funny for just how inept it was. When you look at it, you see a movie that is so inept that it became a terribad phenomenon. As in, the reason why birds have gone berserk and explode while shooting bird acid is because of global warming. You can't make that stuff up! The sequel however, is fully aware how terrible the first one was, and tries to one up itself in terms of awfulness, but without the same charm. There's a bit too much nudging and winking at the camera for me to laugh at how much the movie is failing, because it's intentionally trying to fail. It's trying to be bad, which isn't as good as it trying to be good, but being bad in the process. Hell, this movie includes zombies and cavemen for no other reason besides "We need to top ourselves somehow. Quick! What can we do to make things even more stupid???" I still laughed at it, because how couldn't you, but there wasn't as much staying power as the original and just left me wanting a better worse movie. When bad movies become self aware, that's when it all goes downhill.

For an extended thoughts, check out the original review here

Number 5: Don Jon

This is probably the first movie that's on my list that people are going to have an adverse reaction to for being on a worst list. I can understand that. However, in order to understand why this movie is bad, I need to talk about a common criticism of video games. Video games are often criticized for being "repetitive". For gamers, if a game is repetitive, it means that game is forcing you to do something dozens upon dozens of times with little variation, which wears the player out and has the player lose interest in the game. "Why should I play this game if I'm just going to do the same thing for 3 more hours?" A movie should NEVER have one of its criticisms be "repetitive". That's an oxymoron in itself, because a movie needs to convey a story in about 2 hours, but when you spend those two hours doing the same thing again and again, there's little progress made in the story, and it's leaving the audience frustrated that nothing is happening. That's Don Jon for me. It's a repetitive movie that does the exact same actions again and again with no variation. I get that it was used to show Jon's change as a character, but that change is irrelevant when the biggest change he goes through at the end of the movie is that when he goes to the gym, instead of lifting weights, he plays basketball. 2 hours of my life wasted on having a guy change his fitness routine. And that's not even getting into the questionable misogyny that's thrown in. Above all else, Don Jon just made me mad at it. The main character is a complete jerk, the movie is repetitive, and it just comes off as a misogynistic movie that I wouldn't want to sit through again.

For more on this movie, read my review of it here

Number 4: Iron Man 3

I can't even put into words how much this movie frustrates me. Hell, even after I've seen this movie 8 months ago I'm still grinding my teeth at it. Of all the movies that came out this year, this was the biggest justification for why this was the year of split critics. This movie fails in 2 different areas. As an action movie, it fails badly. There are only around 2 or 3 big action scenes in the whole movie, while the rest of it is spent with Tony Stark on a character piece seeing how he copes with the events after The Avengers. We just seeing Tony walking around with his PTSD and being snarky, but it's just not interesting or what we came to see. We wanted to see Iron Man, not Tony Stark. But expectation is what this movie has going against it. As a Marvel movie, it's even worse. You take The Mandarin, one of Iron Man's most memorable villains that has taken on The Avengers at several points, and make him into a joke. Our real villain is a pretty boy Guy Pearce, and nobody wanted that. Instead of being a Mandarin movie, we get an Extremis movie, and not a very good one at that. I went into this movie expecting a fairly solid action movie to live up to being the first Marvel Phase 2 movie after The Avengers. Not only did Iron Man 3 drop the ball, but it dropped it hard. Above all else, this movie is just the purest form of wasted potential. If it focused on the Mandarin as the main villain, then I'm sure it could have been a pretty good movie. Instead, we just get a slap to the face to the comics and leaving the audience shocked at the movie, but for all the wrong reasons.

Number 3: Identity Thief

I hate this movie. Oh God do I hate this movie. The hardest thing about this list was choosing the Top 3, and even though I fully stand by what's above this movie, I still think this movie got off too easy. This movie is horrendously awful. On every single level, this movie fails. The characters are boring and uninteresting, the villains are nonexistent and don't even matter in the grand scheme of things, and is way, way too long. What's worse is that this is supposed to be a comedy. None of the jokes work, and though this may sound hard to believe, I laughed more at Movie 43 and Birdemic 2: The Resurrection than I did this piece of crap. Yes, movies that are absolutely terrible are funnier than this. The biggest sin of a comedy is that nobody laughs at your jokes. And when your movie is long, then that makes it all the more brutal to sit through. I can't adequately explain just why this movie is bad, because it would require a play by play of the entire movie, and lord knows I never want to do that ever again in my life. This movie is so bad, I swore off Melissa McCarthy for a while. I know she's a great person and she has done some funny stuff, but I just can't deal with her after seeing her as this annoying, self centered, and overall mean spirited person. There's just so much a man can take! I may have ranked two films that are worse than this, and believe me they are absolutely worse than this waste of space, but I will stand by that this is the the worst put together movie of the year. If I see this movie again in my life, I most likely will go to a library and read the phone book, because lord knows that'll be more interesting than this movie! God this movie sucks!

Number 2: My Little Pony: Equestria Girls

You know, just looking up the image for this movie to put on this list made me convulse, make unintelligible noises, and have to take a walk to clear my head. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

First of all, yes, I did see this movie. I had to sit in the theatre and watch it. I won't try and shirk my way around it. I saw it in theatres, and I screamed in my car after I saw it. This might not be the worst movie of the year, but it filled me with so much unbridled rage that if you saw me immediately after the screening, I would be trying to find the nearest glue factory to send these ponies to. Oh me oh my, let me count the ways that this movie makes me gouge out my eyes. *Deep breath*. Even though the movie is barely 90 minutes long it feel like it's way too long, it has countless tropes of having the main character Twilight Sparkle interact with human technology so we have classic gimmicks like "DUUUURRRRRR HOW DO COMPUTER WORK?", the other ponies do come with Twilight into the human world, there just so happens to be exact human versions of them that just so happen to have the same personalities as them and just so happen to be great friends with Twilight after only a few minutes of talking to her. The human versions of each ponies are not friends because of a dumb misunderstand that no one ever thought to address, so the characters are idiots. The main villain is an absolute idiot with the most complicated and convoluted plan I've ever seen in my life that involves way to many chances and just her being a stupid bratty teenager. Oh, and did I forget to mention that this is a musical with 6 songs in it. Yes, this movie is a musical with 6 TERRIBLE AND CRINGE INDUCING LYRICS AND SAPPY FRIENDSHIP SHIT GOD THIS MOVIE SUCKS!!!

But you know what, I think the show is decent. yes I've seen the show, and while it's not out of the park, it's a solid kids show that is better then most other kids shows on the market. But when there's a movie that is this dumbed down and is a concentrated version of everything wrong with the show, then I can't help but point out all of the flaws with it. Oh but my dear readers, we have not even begun to reach the lowest depths of entertainment this year. Join me, won't you?

Number 1: The Great Gatsby

From multiple perspectives, this is not the worst movie of the year. It's shot well, it's written okay, and it's not offensive by any stretch of the word. So why then is The Great Gastby the worst movie of the year? Simply put, it betrays the original book and makes a great story into an absolute joke. This is not Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This is Gatsby by Baz Luhrmann. Baz Luhrmann is one of those Hollywood directors that has a distinct style to him, and it's a style that not many people like. He doesn't do subtle. Instead he prefers big bombast and making things visually interesting instead of having any depth to them. Hell, Moulin Rouge! is a movie with a laughable plot with no subtlety to it in the slightest, but gets a free pass from people for having pretty songs in it. I can understand that, but I refuse to let that be the case for The Great Gatsby. This is a movie that is all about subtlety. This a movie based of a book that you can make a legitimate argument for being one of the best novels ever written. Each character has their own depth and complexity to them that makes them all fascinating to read about. What does the movie do? It boils down each character to their absolute basics and portrays Gatsby himself as a sympathetic and noble character is was misunderstood by everyone and just wanted true love. While those aspects of the book are there, it completely white washes every other nuance about the character and just makes him the outright good guy with no flaws to him.

That's. Not. Gatsby. Luhrmann is dead set on having his focus be comparing the 1920's to hip hop and rap society and how these two time periods aren't so different. Yeah that's fine, but immediately when you center that argument around The Great Gatsby, your focus is pulled away from the point you were trying to make and is instead centered on a story that is legendary. Focus pulls when it needs to, and having a modern retelling of The Great Gatsby is always more precedent than comparing two cultural generations. But the movie tried to pull the wool over your eyes by still giving fast and frenetic visuals that are over the top in order to distract from the fact that this is a bad version of one of the best books of all time. Everyone is boiled down to basic tropes, the audience isn't left to draw their own conclusions because the movie forcibly tells you what to feel through the framing device of Nick Caraway's memoirs, which are always on the side of Gatsby, and what we're left with is the most insulting and offensive movie of the year. It made not be the worst made, but it missed the point of the original source material and instead just became the Baz Luhrmann show. It made me say that The Great Gatsby is the worst movie of 2013. That's how bad this movie is. Taking a great story and turning it into proverbial mush. The worst kind of movie; a movie that is intellectually offensive.



That was 2013's worst films. Next time, we'll talk about something better from 2013. I promise.