The Big Picture: MovieBob's Worst of 2013

[Bravo Company]

I feel that The Purge was my biggest letdown. That movie had so much potential to be turned into a terrible horror thing.

Could you imagine if Michael Haneke (Funny Games) had done The Purge?

I'm really bad with keeping up with directors, and I've never seen Funny Games so I dunno how it would be. Couldn't be any worse...

 

[Gezzer]

Aren't there two more die hards confirmed?

NO!! Please No! Not if they resemble the travesty of that last total fck job.
While I only watched some of the movies on Bob's list, for me the last Die Hard was a steaming pile that should never of been screened. For anyone. Ever. Even being shown to death row inmates would be considered cruel and unusual punishment.
In every other Die Hard you could suspend belief enough to go with it, even if it all didn't make sense. But even Bruce "I can deliver any line no matter how nonsensical and stupid with a modest amount of believability behind it (see Red 2)" Willis, couldn't make the experienced cop father of an obvious CIA operative sound convincing as he constantly berated, belittled, and basically bawled him out in every scene they shared for the amount of the film I could stomach. After the "lets see how many cars we can wreck in one sequence" ended I turned it off and started wondering if a class action suit for wasted time had a shot. I still think it might.

 

[endtherapture]

Man of Steel was my favourite film of the year.

Suck it.

 

[Sejborg]

""Wouldn?t everybody be a whole lot better off if Superman never landed on Earth?? That?s not a question anyone should come out of a Superman movie asking."

Ehh? Why not?

 

[Kittyhawk]

Good that us humans can change our minds.

I have to disagree on Man of Steel. I enjoyed it. I feel there's too many people getting butthurt because it doesn't match up to their idea/dream of Superman. Its a damn sight better that the last (Brandon) Superman movie too, where in MoS he actually kicks some ass.

I think that hardcore comic fans will never be happy either way, and while I'm one of them (I don't read much of or collect super hero stuff) and was skeptical at first, I was happy to be blown away in 2013 by Man of Steel (Pacific Rim and Enders Game). I also think many enjoyed this movie, because it was switch off brain fodder. Sometimes we need something like that.

I'm gonna look forward to the next Superman flick. Nice that we can disagree on something too.

Do agree on some of the other duff flicks like After Earth, though.

 

[Saidan]

I respectfully disagree with Top 1, and it's simple because no Superman movie can be worst than the hideous thing that was Returns. Did Man of Steel manage to make forget Returns? Yes. Still hope the second one improves everything you saw wrong on the first.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

Superman didn't even have a "code" in this movie, so he didn't break shit. Hence why that "ermehgerd so emotional" neck breaking scene is so asinine and stupid. We KNEW Batman has a code against killing, so when the Joker is constantly taunting him to kill him, it means something. This movie doesn't establish shit, so why should he care if he has to kill Zod? Just fucking do it without the boo-hooing (how did you EXPECT your city destroying punching contest to end, dumbass). Why should WE care if he has to kill Zod? He's clearly the single-minded bad guy threatening to destroy everything, so did they want us to feel empathy or tragedy for him or something?

I fail to see how Superman "lost" anything...mostly because he didn't.

This movie gave a middle finger to actual character development and just went on Assumed Empathy; the movie knows an audience was watching and has their own preconceived notions of what a Superman film should be (or what a Disney animated musical should be in the case of Frozen) and does something stupid not because it makes sense in the context of its own universe, but because it's trying way too hard to be all "Look at us we're so clever and deconstructionist for flipping your expectations!" The (incorrect) preconceived notion is that Superman doesn't kill (for reasons that everyone constantly gets wrong), so they thought they were SOOOOO edgy by just having him do it because, hey, he doesn't NORMALLY do it so we're so smart for making him do the opposite for no particular reason other than you "didn't see it coming" TEEHEEHEEHEE! It's just bullshit from filmmakers insulting their audience's intelligence and thinking they're smarter than them.

Yeah, now that I think about it, Superman's development wasn't great, so I see the issue with the aftermath of Zod's death.

I still don't get the hate, but I at least understand the gripes with that one issue.

 

[emeraldrafael]

Honestly considering the last superman movie I didnt have any high hopes for man of steel, and the more I hear about superman vs batman the more Im beginning to think its even more likely to be bad because they're thinking of doing the tried and failed method of "lets just shove as much in here that can be its own movie because god knows if we're going to make another and we hve to compete after how stellar our competition did" as seen in Spiderman 3 (which in the end ws just meh but considering the previous two a let down) and The Amazing Spiderman 2. it feels like both movies are just tryng to be the avengers without a setup series of films.

 

[Olas]

Sigh... I had a feeling that intro exclaimer was just Bob giving himself an excuse to put Man of Steel at number one. What exactly is the point of making a list of worst movies if you're not even going to pretend to put movie's actual merit into the equation and just use it as another excuse dump on movies that pissed you off personally?

Nobody thinks Man of Steel is the worst movie of the year, not even Bob by his own admission, and putting it at number one just because he was more "disappointed" by it than any other movie just makes this list doubly subjective and incredibly unprofessional.

 

[pearcinator]

Gotta agree with Die Hard there...

My favourite action movie is Die Hard and DH2/With a Vengeance were also very good.

So then came Die Hard 4.0 and I thought it was ok but could have been better if it had the violence of the originals...at least it still felt like Die Hard to me.

When I saw the trailer for DH5 and read it was going to be violent I was stoked!...then I saw the movie. BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME! I was so disappointed because IT WASN'T DIE HARD!!

 

[Sylocat]

Snip

Inside Llewyn Davis is one of the worst? Well, would you care to elaborate? Generally when someone has a very contentious opinion, they should elaborate so they don't look like an angry hipster.

I can do no better than quote J. Hoberman's (yes, yes I know) review of it:

An undeniably talented two-man band of brothers, the Coens take pleasure less in confronting their audience or authority in general, than in bullying the characters they invent for their own amusement.

Yes, it's a well-made movie, but I didn't enjoy watching it. That's all.

 

[Tim Chuma]

What happens if the best movie is also the worst in terms of what is puts you through whilst watching it?

Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Act of Killing" (executive producers Werner Herzog/Erroll Morris) shot over seven years follows mass killers re-enacting their crimes in the style of their favourite Hollywood movies. One of the main participants finally comes to realise what he put other people through.

The people involved are mass killers, but even relatives of the victims who have watched the documentary asked how the main protagonist was doing after seeing it. The very first scene of the movie the main character does the Cha-Cha-Cha at the scene of the killings and the very last it is a lot different.

The film maker never considered the people involved to be "monsters" as is often portrayed with this sort of documentary and it raises some hard questions as to what the accepted line is.

 

[DjinnFor]

You dislike Man of Steel's tone, but then praise the Hobbit, which takes a light hearted novel and makes it (and bleeds it out in my opinion) into a dour, moody trudge, where the character of Thorin is so miserable, he would more than likely die if he smiled.

This implies Tolkien had enough competency in writing to give his books a "tone". He was more a good historian (specifically, a philologist) than a good storyteller, and it shows in his writing.

 

[Phuctifyno]

I've mentioned as much on here before, Osage County didn't work as a play either.

 

[thehermit2]

Finally saw Man of Steel today. It was not that bad. I liked how they portrayed Lois Lane, although most of the rest of the Daily Planet cast were just window dressing and poorly contrived heroic disaster moments. The superfights were decent spectacles although the CGI was a little sloppy by today's standards (especially the way figures moved from standstill to high speed), and to be fair nobody, not even the Bruce Timm Superman Animated Series from the 90s (which I love), seems to be able to accurately portray how people super strength, flight, and invulnerability would actually fight each other (Superman battles always look like pro-wrestling to me, which is okay if you're into that, but I am not). What happened to Pa Kent was BS, but the same could be said about the comics; at least Zack Snyder didn't kill Superman and resurrect him. I would give Man of Steel three out of five stars.

My biggest disappointment of 2013 was Star Trek Into Darkness. Saw that in the theatre and it sucked so painfully I was squirming in my seat from start to finish. Man of Steel I felt pretty good about after having seen. Not great like with Avengers or Iron Man 3, but good.

 

[O maestre]

I am glad that you either changed your opinion or backpedaled after seeing how other people have reacted and analyzed MoS. I was frankly shocked after your review, that movie wrecked Superman and you gave it a pass back then. I don't say this often Bob, but Kudos to you for changing your opinion. I would imagine that a more stubborn person would have defended MoS to the death.

In regards to Star Trek it is hard to call it a disappointment especially given how reference heavy the first one was, it would have been a bigger surprise to see them do anything different or original. The villain surprise was stupid as everyone had already guessed that from the very start, J.J. Abrams is no where as smart as he or hollywood thinks, and definitely not smart enough for Star Trek. However I am still hopeful in regards to Star wars, as he will make something that is thematically similar to the original trilogy due to him not being capable of original thought.

 

[O maestre]

One thing / thought that bugs me a bit. You dislike Man of Steel's tone, but then praise the Hobbit, which takes a light hearted novel and makes it (and bleeds it out in my opinion) into a dour, moody trudge, where the character of Thorin is so miserable, he would more than likely die if he smiled. Along with a lot of other pointlessly shoehorned in drama. Just seems a touch incongruous to me.

There are alot of other things, many, many wrong with Man of Steel besides the tone of the film, but I agree the Hobbit should have had an (dis)honorable mention. I guess that people who have never read the Hobbit might have gotten a better time out of it, but I sincerely doubt it. You can clearly feel a thematic difference to all the added shit in contrast with the original story, more so in the desolation of Smaug than in the first one. While the first one did great work on the memorable scenes such as riddles in the dark the character evolution for Bilbo is sorely lacking in Smaug and the scenes that have been taken from the book feel weak and unenthusiastic , as if Peter Jackson couldn't wait to get back to his own bullshit instead of telling the story from the book.

 

[Banzaiman]

I've only recently seen Man of Steel, and I actually liked it a lot. Granted, I've not had enough time to get acquainted with Superman beforehand any more than just the goody guy who's also a god, but even then there are a few interesting ideas in there. The cuts were confusing, it lacked vitality several times, I was a bit confused as to exactly what Lane was doing sometimes, the motives of several of the characters confused me, but I liked it overall.

Ironically, I agree almost entirely with Bob's initial review of the movie: visually it's thrilling, but it's essentially shattered in terms of story and plot. A lot of reasons for certain things don't make sense, and there are some actions that just feel forced; the romance between Supes and Lois, Lois' pursuit of Supes and his history, things like that. I liked the idea of the genetic programming as it made a sort of functional sense why Supes was so special, but it did a crap job of explaining why that was necessary in the first place and probably could have done with less exposition in that regard. Also, Kryptonite.

But I'm looking forward to the next one, if only because I'm interested to see what they actually do with Supes next. There's a chance that, depending on how good Batman vs Superman - sorry, Justice League Alpha - turn out to be, Man of Steel could retroactively make a hell of a lot more sense. We'll see.