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Wylie Writes’ Ten Worst Movies of 2013
By: Addison Wylie
As the Oscars approach this Sunday, the time is finally here to reflect on 2013 through a pair of lists – my picks of the best and the worst. Let’s get the duds out of the way to make way for the flicks that’ll be remembered for years to come.
2013 introduced me to a new type of “bad”. It was a sub-version spawning off of the type of hatefulness I only save for my bottom three choices. These films treated its audience like imbeciles and expected us to lap up what they were serving and laugh our faces off – no questions asked. Instead, they were either smug or flat-out negative. You can expect to see those soiled diapers at the end of this role call.
Even though I have a main “bottom ten”, I made sure I included some dishonourable mentions in order to cover those who thought they were saved by the odd late entry. However, there were plenty of stinkers that fell off that additional listing as well. So, let’s talk about them.
I appreciate filmmakers wanting to be brave with how to tell their film’s story, but some approaches left me befuddled. In The Wagner Files, someone thought it was a good idea to portray composer Richard Wagner’s life through a broody soap opera with CSI inspired cutaways. With Thursday Till Sunday, the idea of realistically showing a crumbling family through a mundane road trip backfired immensely because, well, it made the film a bore as well.
Mainstream films took weird chances too, thinking the audience would applaud their efforts to connect to movie goers. “Audiences loved Wedding Crashers and adore the Internet, so let’s make a movie called The Internship and have Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson work at Google. Hilarity is bound to ensue, right?”
This logic also applied to smart aleck genre bending films. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters flopped because it wanted to have its cake and eat it too by offering audiences a parody of what movie goers would expect and balancing it out with Resident Evil inspired action sequences.
Funny or Die’s iSteve, an attempt to make a satirical biopic about Steve Jobs, was amusing for the first few minutes, but soon ran out of steam as each joke was pounded into submission.
Children weren’t safe either. Disney’s haphazard cash-in on the Cars franchise Planes was a wreck without a single sign of creativity in sight. From Up on Poppy Hill had the visual zest of a vibrant family film, but managed to lull it’s audience into a nap with miscast dubbing and laboured storytelling.
I won’t lie. I kind of wished my list would have a Lindsay Lohan triple play. It would just make matters a bit more interesting with an added novelty. Unfortunately, I saw worse things than Paul Schrader’s confused drama The Canyons. Lohan does, however, make two appearances on my bottom ten.
So, without further wait, let’s take a look at the worst of the worst. Just remember filmmakers, this was a year where James Nguyen made a sequel to his unintentional cult hit Birdemic: Shock and Terror. Notice how I haven’t mentioned Birdemic 2: The Resurrection until now? Nguyen made a better movie than all of you. Think about that for a moment.
Overrated Movies:
The Broken Circle Breakdown
The Conjuring
Fast & Furious 6
Frozen
When Jews Were Funny
Dishonourable Mentions:
#15. Pain & Gain
#14. The Great Chameleon
#13. Jack the Giant Slayer
#12. The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology
#11. InRealLife
Wylie Writes’ Ten Worst Movies of 2013
Trying to piece together the film after watching it is a mission in itself. Trying to follow it as it unfolds on screen is damn near frustrating.
Nikola Curcin’s romance is unjustifiably cruddy and a cross between a travelogue and a family vacation home video circa 1992.
#8. Peeples
Peeples is an atom bomb of a comedy and one of the worst Tyler Perry productions movie goers have seen yet.
#7. Scary Movie 5
Scary Movie 5 is not a funny movie. I have a hard time justifying this rush job as “a movie”.
Getting a deservedly short theatrical run, The Frankenstein Theory is an uninspired and stupefyingly obvious play-by-play of 1999′s The Blair Witch Project.
#5. Fondi ’91
I feel embarrassed for Fondi ’91 and for all who were involved with its ill-fated production. This is a prime example of a movie that needed more rehearsals and more pre-production planning before heading into its slapdash shooting.
#4. After Earth
Hollow and wooden, with very little to latch on to. I can’t comprehend After Earth and I’ll never understand it.
#3. Grown Ups 2
Grown Ups 2 has a neanderthal brian. It’s another one of these movies where it eventually turns into the cinematic equivalent of Sandler looking at himself in the mirror and winking.
#2. Identity Thief
Identity Thief is a recipe for disaster – and the movie has no idea. Who thought it would be a good idea to generate laughs from an irksome, hoarding, annoying, selfish sociopath?
Infomercial spokesperson Vince Offer has somehow managed to weasel his racist tirade into cinemas for the world to endure. Or, for those masochists who boldly seek ways to stress out their patience. It’s a movie that makes you angry at everyone involved. It’s not bold or audacious- just terribly crass and stupid.
If Movie 43 is the worst movie you’ve seen all year, then you’re not ready for InAPPropriate Comedy. And, I say that because I care about you.
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‘Ten Worst Movies of 2013 ‘ Artwork by: Sonya Padovani
Jack the Giant Slayer
By: Addison Wylie
Throughout Jack the Giant Slayer, our title character played by Nicholas Hoult has a look on his face that seems like it should be accompanied with the phrase, “are you #*@#ing kidding me?”.
Surely, this is supposed to be aimed towards a giant beanstalk leading towards an army of grotesque giants that live in the sky, but it’s a more appropriate telling of what I was asking myself while watching Bryan Singer’s latest action/adventure.
The script for Jack the Giant Slayer is supposed to combine elements from two fairy tales, ‘Jack the Giant Killer’ and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, while also making the darker material more suitable for younger moviegoers.
After the script had been written, it was re-written, re-tooled, re-shaped, and Singer himself also made some changes here and there. The team behind Jack the Giant Slayer may have been pleased with the final script going into production, but what made it onto the screen still feels disheveled.
We’re introduced to Jack, a poor farmhand, as well as other towns folk including monks and royalty. The most interesting character is the conniving Lord Roderick (played by the always memorable Stanley Tucci) who is set to marry Isabelle, the King’s daughter, who would rather kiss a frog than to marry Roderick.
Beans are exchanged and accidentally planted, a beanstalk grows, and Princess Isabelle (played by Eleanor Tomlinson) is swept up in the chaos and into the clouds. And so, Jack and a team of the kingdom’s best men – and Lord Roderick – take to the beanstalk to rescue Isabelle.
They climb…and climb…and climb some more, for what feels like a third of the film. One of Jack the Giant Slayer’s very few strengths is this beanstalk. It may become an unpleasant haul watching this team search, but this mystical plant is detailed very well and Singer does a good job with its scale from the ground. Seeing this in IMAX 3D, you definitely start to develop a fear of heights.
Action pieces are spaced out awkwardly, which is a drag for those families wanting a mindless romp featuring plenty of fights. In fact, Jack the Giant Slayer wraps up without a climactic giants vs. humans brawl. However, it’s almost as if the screenwriters noticed this, didn’t want to make anymore changes, and threw in a haphazardly fight to make use of its passable 3D and to attempt to wake audiences up.
This is a swashbuckling adventure. There needed to be more action to liven up the pacing, generate excitement and create hero statuses for Jack and his motley crew. Watching these men search high and low while rambling and finding ridiculous clues is undoubtably the opposite of this in a flick that promises “non-stop fun”.
The film is silly – and knows it – but, the tie-ins to the original fairy tales in Jack the Giant Slayer are dopey and will have your eyes rolling around in your head. For instance, the main Giant’s go-to goons are named Fee, Fi, Fo, and Fum. That’s not clever. That’s a clunky mechanic to create a relationship with this story to something we’re familiar with.
Jack the Giant Sayer is a crummy equation. Mix poor screenwriting with dull direction, embarrassing performances, and special effects that utilize motion capture technology that look less than “special”, and you have an action/adventure that’s fee, fi, fo, dumb.
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