At any rate, I am not immune to the human tendency toward reflection at this time of year, nor to the tendency toward ranking and cataloguing things, so I thought it would be a fine idea to start things off in predictable fashion by listing my top 10 films of 2013.
The trouble is, I'm not quite ready to do that.
Partly, that's because there were a lot of great movies last year and I'm having trouble narrowing the list down. The bigger reason is that I still haven't had a chance to see every movie I'll see that might deserve consideration. In particular, I'll be seeing both Dallas Buyers' Club and Her within the next week or so, and I'd like to hold off on any pronouncements until after that.
I do, however, feel comfortable about choosing my least favourite films. So as much as I don't want to start things off on too negative a tone, I've prepared a bottom five list.
A couple things to note about the list: First, it is in no way intended to name the worst films of the year. Even limiting things to movies that were shown here in Edmonton, I haven't likely seen many of the actual worst films, because I'm much more likely to go to movies that seem likely to be good, and most unlikely indeed to go to, say, Movie 43 or Bad Grandpa. Second, even among those movies I did see, these still aren't necessarily the "worst" in any objective sense—indeed, several of them have notable strengths. Instead, these are the movies that I found the most disappointing, frustrating, or infuriating, and whose flaws most stuck with me over time.
With that in mind, may I present:
My 5 least favourite films of 2013
5) Man of Steel
A long, tiresome slog that poses some interesting questions about what it means to be human and then never gets around to answering them, it also barely has a story to speak of. I can't really consider it a superhero movie, because heroism arises from choices, and Clark Kent/Superman hardly makes a bloody decision the entire movie. Even with his climactic choice that ends his battle with Zod, he was really only doing a) what he had to do, and b) what Zod told him he had to do. He has no real agency throughout the movie, and the other characters don't fare much better.
4) Star Trek Into Darkness
Star Trek (2009) was certainly not perfect, but I quite liked it—it was fun and energetic, and put together a solid cast that had me excited for the sequel. Wow, was I ever let down. STID started out basically entertaining, and J.J. Abrams' direction certainly brings a certain energy to each scene, but by the end the whole movie had devolved into an extended, unearned, and infuriating reference to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, a much better movie. The reveal of Khan as the villain was meaningless if you take the movie on its own terms, because here none of the characters had any idea who he was. The plot is astonishingly stupid. Carol Marcus as a character serves no purpose to the story other than to extend the reference to Wrath of Khan, and one of the scenes with her serves especially no purpose other than to provide a shot of her in her underwear to include in the trailer. As a bonus, that scene includes sexual harassment played for laughs! It's just a complete mess of a film that should have been so much better.
3) Despicable Me 2
I really liked the original, and the minions proved to be cute and hilarious yet again in this sequel. Unfortunately, nearly everything else about it was infuriating. Not only is it full of lazy and stupid ethnic stereotypes, but it's thematically essentially the opposite of the first movie. That one saw Gru and the girls coming together, despite having been strangers meeting in less than ideal circumstances, because they grew to love each other; that love was enough to make them a family. But then along comes this movie to say, oops, it turns out they're not a real family, because there's no mother! So finding a mother becomes the main purpose, and a potentially interesting secret agent character quickly devolves into a useless damsel in distress, even getting kidnapped and literally tied to a rocket.
2) 21 & Over
I don't think I even chuckled once throughout this boring, inane "comedy". The screenplay aims for heart by having the characters repeatedly state a stupid moral that only insane people would actually take from the events of the film. It also plays sexual assault for laughs on more than one occasion.
1) Upside Down
It's not as offensive or infuriating as some of the other entries on this list, but it's the one movie I saw last year that just went spectacularly wrong right from the opening seconds and never recovered. The film opens with a narration explaining the rules of its unique setting—there are two worlds, separated by a short distance, with equal and opposite gravity such that they're each looking up at the other, and their respective matter and gravity interact or not in some weird ways. The first big problem is that we're told all of this before we've met a single character or seen a single location—there's nothing at all to connect us to the setting, so all we have to focus on is the rules, and unfortunately, the rules are really stupid. This puts the viewer in an almost antagonistic position toward the movie right from the beginning, and makes it nearly impossible not to notice all the times that events seem to contradict the rules as stated. It doesn't help that the plot turns out to be a boring romance with over-obvious political themes, featuring mugging actors and eye-rolling clichés.
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