The 20 Worst Movies of 2013 Part 1

Good Golly, miss Molly, this was not a good year.

It's usually a tradition that every year, I make a list of 10 of the best and 10 of the worst movies of that year.

But this year, I can't even really pull together 10 movies that really left that big an impact on me and even the ones that I wanted to see, I missed that boat and now have to wait for next year if I'm going to see them (e.g. "12 Years a Slave," Philomena").

But do you really want me to list this year's best films? Easy: "Mud," "Gravity," "Star Trek: Into Darkness," "Spring Breakers," "The Conjuring," "The Way, Way Back," "Captain Phillips," "The Heat," "Frozen" and "The Lone Ranger" (no, I'm being serious about that choice.)

But this has also been a rather bad year financially as I made mention before, over 20 movies failed to make it's box office returns domestically, leaving the foreign market to pick up the pieces to at least pay back for advertising and the  people who were just trying to make an honest paycheck by setting up lights, making costumes, carrying the cameras and making the special effects. Some of them, at best, are just okay, others, which will appear on this list, either annoyed me or I felt they could have been so much better.

And that pretty much sums up my thoughts on the movies we got this year.

They could have been better.

Last year, we got a lot of really interesting movies, a lot of very entertaining movies and a lot of movies that truly pushed the boundaries of cinema. Sure, we had some of them this year, but we had so few of them this year that I couldn't really pull together a collective Top 10. 

So to make up for it, here's a Top 20 Worst Movies of 2013 so i can finally put behind all the movies I saw and want my money back.

Before starting, I want to get a few things straight:

#1: Movie 43 will not be on this list.

Why? Because it's not a "movie," it's just a collage of unfunny sketches that should have been seen on television, not on the big screen with this huge cast of big-name actors who wish they could have said no. The movies on this list have to have what can be described as a narrative with actual characters you see all the way through.

#2: Direct to video will not be included.

I'm excluding the likes of "Sharknado" and "A Christmas Story 2" because they were not intended to theatrical distribution.

20. Scary Movie V

Seven years between the last Scary Movie (which, let's be honest, they were slightly better when the Wayans were not involved with them…slightly…better…), the market had been overfilled with "things" from the schlock masters Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg that can't even be described as comedies in the slightest since they make no legitimate effort to say anything about the genre they're mocking, further contradicting the concept of a parody movie if the movies make no effort to actually mock the genre they claim to spoof. Meaning, even when this film came around, nobody wanted to touch it, but it still made it's money back, well, someone has to pay for the cheap costumes and cameras, hey that stuff ain't cheap kids! Movies are a business and this year, a lot of people didn't get their money because the movies these people worked on flopped hard.

But if Scary Movie V has shown anything, it's that the series has no more air to pump in it's tires. The movies they reference date the movie considerably (ex. Black Swan, Inception, Rise of the Planet of the Apes) and even the movies they do reference, they don't say much on it rather than "here's something silly happening with the kids who act like animals." What does "Fifty Shades of Grey" have to do with scary movies in general? Nothing at all, it's here because it's popular, but it never makes any comment or satirically says anything about it.

But if you strapped me to a chair and tortured me, I would confess that I did have moments that made me chuckle, but those moments were solely based on physical comedy of character beating each other up, like a fight with the spanish maid, yeah, it's pointless, but damn it, I grew up with Tom and Jerry, physical comedy in the form of violence is hard not to chuckle at.

But the other one bit of prize I can give the movie is a moment where it does legitimately spoof the horror genre.

It's this bit where Snoop Dog and Mac Miller, who should have been the real stars of the movie, find Charlie Sheen's cabin and Mac Miller reminisces that it reminds him of a movie with a cabin in the woods and Snoop Dog starts naming off films that have characters in a cabin in the woods. This may seem trivial, but this the closest the movie gets to actually being self-aware of the genre it's spoofing and openly acknowledging that the genre of kids in a cabin in the woods isn't new.

Too bad the rest of the movies isn't this clever or amusing.

All anyone can do at this point is hope the next Scary Movie will actually be more consistent and actually focus on horror films instead of trying to drag together all these different genres and movies that have no relation to one another other than they're popular. For instance, I hear there's a movie called "I, Frankenstein" coming out next year, why not make fun of Frankenstein- oh wait, that's right, we already have that movie.

Oh well, nevermind then.

19. Pacific Rim

I was actually ready to put this on my #9 spot until I had a lovely conversation with a man whom I'll just refer to him as "The Crider."

See, The Crider has been a family friend for YEARS, how long? He went to the same college my parents did and has remained friends with them after all this time.

The Crider runs a record label, Estrus Records, which he has been operating for the past 30 years and responsible for producing surf, trash, punk and garage rock music such as The Mono Men (which is The Crider's band), Coyotemen, Federation X and others you might want to check out.

But The Crider also a very passionate fan of monster movies, namely the films by the likes of Roger Corman and Toho International and we all know what Toho makes best right? Godzilla. Going through his house, you'll find posters, film strips framed on the walls and even a model of Godzilla in his office.

So naturally, movies about monsters destroying cities are his cup of tea, so he came to visit recently so I asked him what he thought about the movie and the conversation I had with him allowed me to rethink my original listing choice and move it way down the list than I originally intended.

So for everyone who threw a fit that I nominated this as one of the year's worsts, you can thank The Crider for having this go way down the list…but it still is on this list of the Worst films this year.

It seems literally everyone praises this movie is because it's the "only giant robot movies that doesn't force in the Michael Bay tropes of Patriotism, racism, misogyny, etc." That, to me, isn't really saying much, literally ANY other giant Robot movie would be better than Transformers, hell, even the animated Transformers movie from the 80's is better than Michael Bay's Transformers, so saying Pacific Rim is better than the Transformer movies, isn't really a stretch.

Say what you will about Bayformers, at least it has an identity to it that allows the audience to recognize who directed it, you wouldn't get that Guillermo del Toro directed Pacific Rim as it is so stripped clean of any sense of identity that only the visual look of the Kaiju would be the only clue to this being a Guillermo del Toro film.

The characters are blocks of wood sprouting the same dialogue we've heard a million times and doing what even a smart person would practically predict would happen. Hell, even some of the minor characters, I read fanfictions that gave them more character development than this movie actually did. For all the visual grandeur, when the movie is focusing on it's story, it feels empty, when the robots are on screen, then everything becomes fun, too bad there are only three big fights scenes between the main robots and the Kaiju.

I will give it this, the movie is, without a doubt, the best-looking film of 2013, but, I think The Crider said it best "it should have had more fighting and less story." Couldn't have said it better Crider, by the way folks, Youtube The Mono Men, their stuff is actually pretty rad.

18. The Host

Once again, Stephanie Meyer makes my Worst of list, somehow, I'm not even surprised.

But it's okay, there aren't sparkly vampires this time.

We just have to deal with alien inhabiting our bodies and some chick who had guys fawning over her because "she's special."

I take that back, this is just the same crap all over again, only far more lifeless and this time, you can't use the excuse that "it's because they're vampires so of course they're lifeless."

I never read the book for this one, but from what I hear, it's a book filled with poorly developed characters and an unfocused story, well by gum, looks like they got that part right at least. Everyone has this blank look on their face and that's not just from the people who have been infected by these "aliens" or whatever, it tries to play itself off as being "commentary on society," but when you're using a message that has been utilized by the likes of Phillip K. Dick, it really makes your message seem insignificant in comparison to the influence of a society of brainless drones.

The only enduring legacy this movie will ever have is being the last movie Roger Ebert reviewed before this death on April 4, 2013.

17. A Good Day to Die Hard

The appropriate title for this movie should be "A Lousy Day for This Franchise To Die Hard."

Here's an honest question to ask, when anyone was watching this movie, was the thought going through your head "This is still a Die Hard movie, right?"

The answer to your question is no.

No it is not.

This is not a Die Hard movie.

Sure, it has Bruce Willis playing…pretty much the same Bruce Willis character he has played over the past 10 or 15 years, but he is not sneaking around foiling robbers poised as terrorists, he is just a cartoon character that runs around, shoots guys without any major injuries and not gives a flying chocolate bar about what's going on around him. Basically Jason Statham only older.

The story is a bore, the other major characters leave no impact whatsoever that you soon forget them and the movie's attempts at "character development," you'd sooner put your finger down your throat than have to listen to that crap.

Even the action isn't that spectacular, it's the case of "let's just fast editing to nobody can actually see that we didn't have anything planned out for a fight scene because who needs to see those details?"

You want to really know the moment the franchise dies? The moment when the movie shoehorns in John McClane's "Yippie-Kay-yay Motherf**ker" quote right after one bad one-liner and then drives a truck out the back of a helicopter.

At that point, there's no need to keep making more, the series has run it's course, the next one, I guarantee, won't even have Bruce Willis, it'll probably just star some nobody to play one of his kids and it'll become another dime-a-dozen shoot-em-up movies. Ugh, it drives me crazy.

But hey, only John McClane could drive someone that crazy and it's clearly not this John McClane.

16. Metallica Through the Never

After having to suffer from seeing advertisements for 3D concert movies for Hannah Montana, The Jonas Brothers, Justin Bieber and One Direction, somebody FINALLY turns the radio to the Hard Rock station and hears Metallica, realizing "This could be a gold mine of potential!"

What I won't deny is that this is probably one of the best soundtracks of the year and also one of the best uses of 3D to create the feel of being at a Metallica concert, if your ears aren't ringing as you leave the theater, the sound system sucks.

But why this makes me Worst list is the movie's confusing narrative and the choice of songs and their overall relation to the movie's story that plays during the concert footage.

Certain songs that play alongside the visuals such as "Fuel" while the Roadie drives down the streets of Los Angeles and the same Roadie seeing these victims being hung from their necks, leading into "…And Justice For All" make sense to me in both visually and, in a sense, thematically if you can see the subtext of the songs.

But why does this kid floating in water lead to "Ride the Lightning?" Why does a bit where the police fighting the rioters start off with "Wherever I May Roam" before suddenly cutting away to "Cyanide?" Is there a meaning for it? Why does "Enter Sandman" play when the Roadie faces off against the Rioter leader? Shouldn't "King Nothing" be playing?

Then there are things that only raises more questions in the movie's narrative.

How did the Roadie appear in an alleyway on fire getting his ass kicked and then suddenly appear on the rooftop of a parking garage with his small doll trying to wake him up? Did that doll drag him all the way up to this roof and for that matter, how did the Rioter Leader get up there? Did he pick up up, put out the fire, take him to the parking garage and leave him there to wake up so he could kick his ass? Why can this kid use a sledgehammer to make the entire city shatter when it established way back in the beginning that the kid was on drugs? 

See, I was willing to accept the idea that all the visuals the roadie sees are a product of his imagination brought on by drugs, but how does that explain this movie's ending? How does it explain the Metallica arena shattering, forcing them to play "Hit the Lights" with smaller amps even though the sound quality doesn't even sound like they are using smaller amplifiers. 

And all the weirdness this kid goes through is for what? A duffel bag that "Metallica needs for their show tonight?" Well gee, would you like to tell the class what you have that's so important that this kid has to set himself on fire for?

You never get to see it.

The kid just leaves the bag on the stage and it's never opened.

Even the lack of explanation as to what was in the glowing suitcase in "Pulp Fiction" was more satisfactory than this movie's climax.

I originally was going to blame Metallica for that ending, as they are credited co-writers, but as wrote this, I came across an interview with Lars Ulrich who, when asked about that ending, quoted: "I have no f*cking idea, the only person who knows what's in the bag is Dane Dehaan, I've got a feeling he may not tell."

And I'm strongly suspecting even Dane Dehaan may have forgotten what it was or why he wrote that.

But for all my criticisms, I still had a blast watching Metallica shred on the big screen with my 3D glasses with the sets around them forming as they go on, but the parts of the narrative, it left me wanting more than that, proving that you should put the story in more capable hands to write a screenplay that isn't as incoherent.