Added by MaxL on 31 Dec 2013 05:17

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My Top 10 Least Favourite Movies of 2013

Sort by: Showing 11 items

Decade: Rating: List Type:

1856

6.5

7.1

Man of Steel

This isn't actually on the list, but I couldn't let it go without a special mention. Let's ignore the injustice done to the Superman character and just look at it as a standalone movie. It keeps building up that Superman will be a beacon of hope, an inspiration to the people. Well, too bad the movie doesn't practise what it preaches! Because dear God, this is one of the least inspiring movies I've ever seen! Everything about it is dull, depressing and soulless. Needless to say, I'll take the Richard Donner movies and the Animated Series any day. I tried my best to keep this on the list, but there just turned out to be ten movies that I hated more.

And here they are…

MaxL's rating:

562

6.2

6.6

The Heat

I was really dreading this one, not just from the promotional content, but because it's from the director of Bridesmaids, another movie I despised. And, while it turned out not to be as excruciating as I feared, it was mostly kind of messy, especially with a false transition to the third act that made the movie seem overlong. The opening scene royally pissed me off for making every cop unprofessional and incompetent just to make Ashburn look better, and the scene where Mullins rants about the captain's balls was a joke that went on way too long. Still, the climax was admittedly pretty good.

MaxL's rating:

575

6.4

Pain & Gain

Because of my seething hatred for Michael Bay, this is probably the one I wanted to see the least. It's not as sickeningly loathsome as Bad Boys or Transformers 2 or anything, but it is agonisingly boring for the most part. It's a two-hour movie, but it feels more like four! I think it's mostly because the characters are such idiots that it's just not interesting to watch them constantly making such blinding mistakes. But, much like The Heat, it does perk up a bit towards the end; the scene where they're trying to dismember the bodies is actually pretty funny.

MaxL's rating:

679

4.4

4.8

After Earth (2020)

I get the feeling this was a pet project of Will Smith's: to make a movie with his son in the starring role. But what they came up with is one of the worst executed sci-fi concepts ever. The script is beyond awful, with more lapses in logic than I can even count. For example, last I checked, baboons and bison didn't live in the same area! But the big one that constantly drove me nuts is how the duration of those air filters is so inconsistent. And I can predict the "fear is a choice" thing becoming another infamous Shyamalan meme.

MaxL's rating:

782

4.9

5.2

A Good Day to Die Hard

To say this is by far the worst Die Hard movie is an immense understatement! This is one of the dullest, blandest, most generic action movies you'll ever see, complete with the constant shaky cam that pollutes the action genre today. The plot is so poorly established that it's at least half an hour before you have a clue what's going on or what's at stake. The hero might as well not even be called John McClane. The original Die Hard is one of the most perfect action movies ever made, so it's really disheartening to see the franchise degenerate to this point.

MaxL's rating:

549

3.8

4.3

Movie 43

This is a movie that mistakes plain and simple vulgarity for humour. The result is an anthology of some of the most unfunny, repulsive sketches you'll ever see in your life, be it Anna Faris asking her boyfriend to "poop" on her like it's the equivalent of proposing engagement, or Hugh Jackman sporting a scrotum on his neck! So why isn't it higher on the list? Because, as hard to watch as it was, I was actually kind of bizarrely fascinated by it: like, "How did they come up with this shit?!" The top five, however, elicited violent emotional responses; they made me angry.

MaxL's rating:

281

5.2

5.3

Passion

Boy did this one piss me off! It's a remake of the French-language film Love Crime, which I haven't seen, but it must surely be more fleshed out than this piece of shit! This movie is so shallow and oversimplified that it's almost like it was purposely made just to annoy me! The characters, especially the smug manipulative bitch Christine, are so one-dimensional that it strips their rivalry down to complete bare bones, and it just leaves me angry at the creative team for expecting me to take it seriously. The only redeeming factor is Dani, the only sensible character in this entire travesty.

MaxL's rating:

5.2

Walking with Dinosaurs (2013)

I hated this movie from the moment I first saw the trailer – not just because it's a misguided, annoying, condescending mess, but because it took something that I genuinely cared about, something I loved as a child, and violated it! Walking with Dinosaurs was a serious documentary miniseries that attempted to portray dinosaurs as they really were; now they've turned it into a crass would-be comedy with talking dinosaurs [groan!] and an all-too-familiar Moses story. Words can't even begin to describe how betrayed I feel! They took Walking with Dinosaurs… and made it a children's movie! They completely destroyed everything that it stood for!

All right, now for the top three. It was actually really hard to choose between these ones, because they were all absolutely atrocious. But here's the order I settled on…

MaxL's rating:

143

5.2

5.9

Free Birds (2013)

It's about turkeys who travel back in time to try and stop people from eating turkey at the first Thanksgiving! It's every bit as moronic as it sounds, and the fact that it's so painfully unfunny makes it even more unbearable! The President pardoning a turkey, a turkey somehow speaking English to order pizza, the turkeys of the past being Native American allegories for some reason… practically every single scene had me facepalming! This movie should become a poster child for the sorry state of children's entertainment these days. It just blows my mind that anyone would greenlight this, would actually invest money in it!

MaxL's rating:

699

5.7

Only God Forgives (2013)

I've heard this movie was booed at Cannes, and I don't blame them! Forget the disgracefully slow pace and the uncomfortable level of red in the colour scheme; the movie's biggest sin is how it handles its depravity. The characters are completely devoid of personality, so all you're left with is the actual horrible acts they commit. Simply presenting violence without any context is just downright unpleasant and mean-spirited. I particularly lost it when the mother tries to defend her son's raping and murdering a teenage girl: I actually said out loud, "NO! No, there is no excuse for that!" It's a truly reprehensible film.

MaxL's rating:

837

5.3

5.7

The Purge

Fuck me, this is a dumb movie! Other people have already detailed how ludicrous the whole concept of the Purge is; even a sieve doesn't have as many holes as this plot! It's trying to make a statement about poverty by pretending it understands the criminal mind. But more importantly, the characters are complete morons! The invading party makes it clear that the family will be left alone if they just give them the guy they want, so why young Charlie insists on hiding the guy, risking killing the whole family, is quite beyond me! It's just all-around one of the most insufferably stupid movies I've ever seen, and that's why it gets my vote as the absolute worst movie of the year.

MaxL's rating:

Voters of this movie list - View all

Well, it's that time of year again. The time when I, along with so many other people, look back on the year that's passed and pick out my favourite and least favourite movies. This is the first of a pair of lists going over my own picks.
Now, depending on what country you live in, your perception of what came out this year may be completely different from someone else's – particularly if, like me, you live in the British Isles, where movies from the States can sometimes take months to cross the pond. So perhaps I'd better explain my own criteria for what qualifies for my end-of-year recap. Unlike IMDb, I judge strictly by when a movie is released to the general public. So films that have, as yet, only seen the light of day at film festivals are ineligible in my book. I also don't count movies that were released in one country in an earlier year but didn't make it into another until the year in question. This is so I don't cheat and include movies like Django Unchained and Wreck-It Ralph, which were released in the US late in 2012 but didn't make it to the UK until the first couple of months of 2013.
And keep in mind that this is going purely by what I've seen myself. I do try to see as many movies as possible for the sake of these lists, but there will obviously be some that, for whatever reason, I never got round to.
But before I start, I feel compelled to sum up 2013 cinema as a whole. Honestly, this was a terrible year for movies! It had a greater number of soul-crushing low points than any other year I can think of, and even the best-of list had a miserably subpar line-up of candidates compared to previous years. I hardly saw any movies that struck me as real masterpieces. Hell, there were only a couple that I even gave five stars!
Well, now that I've got the general remarks out of the way and delayed this as long as possible, let's get to the actual lists! :)

I don't know about you, but I prefer to start with the bad news so that the good news seems so much more rewarding. :) So here come my top ten least favourite movies of 2013. Among a year chock full of failures, these are my picks for the worst of the worst.
But first, I'd better spotlight a few movies I haven't seen for which I've heard a lot of negative buzz, movies that you might be disappointed aren't on my list. For example, there are several sequels that I avoided simply because I haven't seen their predecessors yet: The Last Exorcism Part II, Fast & Furious 6, The Smurfs 2, Machete Kills, Red 2, and above all, Grown Ups 2 and Scary Movie 5. Neither did I see Ender's Game (because I want to read the book first), The Call, Insidious: Chapter 2, the Oldboy remake, Getaway, Stranded or RIPD, just to name a few. I also want to give a special mention to Suddenly: bad enough that it's an Uwe Boll movie, but it's also a remake! And then there's Jobs and Paranoia… neither of which show any sign of a British release yet.
All right, enough stalling! :) On with the list…

Runners-up:
The Bling Ring
Diana
The Host
Man of Steel (which I mention in the list itself)
Olympus Has Fallen
Stoker
World War Z