2013 movies I didn't want to see but saw anyway

Why didn't I want to see it? Michael Bay directs a steroid-fueled movie about bodybuilders who party a lot while committing crimes. This didn't exactly strike me as the high-brow stuff Armageddon was but more like that catastrophe called Bad Boys II.

Why did I see it? The critical response was really, really strong. People were calling it a satirical masterpiece. Everyone was raving about Bay redeeming himself as a director.

Was it any good? Kinda. It's a very tricky film to discuss in the context of whether it's good or not. Technically, it is. The actors are all in on the joke, Bay's boombastic editing and rhythm go well with it, and the jokes are funny. But hot damn, is this movie mean and glamorizing of all the wrong things. If there was ever a film thoroughly morally objectionable, this is it. It alters the actual events it's inspired by so we could sympathize more with the lead characters, who kill, torture and abuse everyone and -thing around them at their will. That's kind of a fucked up thing to pull.

Why didn't I want to see it? I've read the book and this movie looked like hot garbage, and those zombies are nothing short of fugly.

Why did I see it? The missus likes zombies.

Was it any good? Sure. Brad Pitt can carry bad films like a pro, and the tempo of this movie is through the roof to an extent that I couldn't much stop to ponder the ways in which I dislike it as I was too busy getting my palms sweaty. Now that I think about it, that sounds a bit dirty. I didn't masturbate to zombies, honest. Oh, and those Zs totally look fine on the big screen. The scale goes very bad in a home viewing.

Why didn't I want to see it? The trailer for this movie is fucking terrible, it looks ugly as can be and mostly sports Baz Luhrmann doing what Baz Luhrmann do.

Why did I see it? I write for a film website and figured this was a release of enough importance to see it in a press screening and write about it.

Was it any good? Ehh. You know, that book. It isn't the best book. The story is not what makes it a classic. It's Fitzgerald's prose. The book is a description of social class and parties not through dialogue or events by just descriptive text. Hence, when you make a movie about it, and it's someone like Baz Luhrmann, you won't get that. You'll get the love story, which is so straight it's pretty boring. They try to incorporate the prose directly with narration, which is a terrible solution. Overall it's a middling film, but at least it rarely looked as ugly as that initial trailer - yet again thanks to the gravitas the silver screen lends to any film. That rap music was horrible though.

Why didn't I want to see it? I hate Kick-Ass. I like the comic to an extent, but that went to shit after the first storyline, and this looked like a combination of that shit and a continuation of everything I disliked about the first movie.

Why did I see it? Same reason as above, I thought it might be worth writing about. It wasn't.

Was it any good? Nope. Kick-Ass 2 is better in my eyes than Kick-Ass, but only because it doesn't infuriate me as much as it's predecessor. This might be entirely because I have no relationship with the source material of the sequel unlike with the first one. It's a really worn-out film, with most jokes falling flat and basically everything feeling boring. The movie mostly feels like this weird spin-off in the vein of what American Pie-movies did. I was just so horribly uninterested in everything it showed me, which is a shame, because violent, bloody action is a thing I usually dig.

Why didn't I want to see it? It was marketed as a semi-sequel to The Pirates of the Caribbean -films, which I loathe.

Why did I see it? It bombed and I'm always interested in anything that fails to meet super-high expectations. Hell, I watched John Carter, didn't I?

Was it any good? Sure! Heck, it's Gore Verbinski having fun with a boatload of money in a western-setting. Rango this ain't, but still pretty cool nonetheless. The big problem is that it was so heavily marketed as this PotC-thing that when the audiences go in and see this deadpan Johnny Depp making really fucking dry jokes in a fairly long western and a 15-minute climax set entirely to the William Tell Overture, it's a bit of a letdown, isn't it? Also, it's damn dark for a Disney-movie, with implied rape and corpses all over the place. But still, I liked it. It's a fine action film and that climax is so insane it rocked my socks off.