The Big Picture: MovieBob's Best of 2013

[walsfeo]

Wow, seeing Iron Man 3 as a runner up was really surprising, but I felt a bit left behind considering a couple of those movies weren't reviewed in Escape to the Movies.

While I'm glad Bob didn't give some of those full reviews because they don't really seem to fit the viewership of the site all that well I'm glad to see they made his list and get a short summary of them. There were three on his top 10 that I am actively disinterested in, but it was great to hear his positive spin on them, even the Michael Bay entry.

 

[Mrmbe]

Pacific Rim is a god-awful movie, i can't remember when was the last time i was genuinely embarrassed while watching something and i haven't found a single person who actually liked it that could explain it. That movie is at the bottom of some 'uncanny valley'

 

[daibakuha]

Wait a minute. You hated The Purge but liked Atlas Shrugged? I think i should stop watching you now....

Cloud Atlas, not Atlas Shrugged. Two very different movies.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Wait a minute. You hated The Purge but liked Atlas Shrugged? I think i should stop watching you now....

Cloud Atlas, not Atlas Shrugged. Two very different movies.

The Atlas Shrugged movies are awful by all accounts though.

 

[Stabby Joe]

Hmm, well I did enjoy Pacific Rim so that one is hard to argue with, great stuff. I would argue against Pain and Gain, interesting ideas sure but the fact Michael Bay made something above average doesn't let him off the hook yet.

In regards to Blue is the Warmest Color, I don't think the lesbian angle was even remotely shocking. It's hardly the first widely known story about homosexuality, let alone first in general. It seems to narrowly be on the supposed graphic sex scenes. Personally I haven't seen it yet although when I do my main point of interest will be seeing how the leads are written. Seriously, lesbians have to be some of the most poorly written characters in media (IE either just bi-curious or man hating feminazis).

 

[synobal]

Pacific rim is fun to watch once, but after that it just doesn't hold up. There are so many glaring problems with the story that thinking about it for more than 5 minutes kinda ruins the entire movie.

 

[Strazdas]

Wait a minute. You hated The Purge but liked Atlas Shrugged? I think i should stop watching you now....

Cloud Atlas, not Atlas Shrugged. Two very different movies.

whooops, no idea how i got those two mixed up. Especially since i did like Cloud Atlas.
I noticed BOB is pretty good at most of his movie reviews, but whne it comes to comedy movies i think doing the exact opposite of what he says is best.

 

[TheOneGuyInNebraska]

How in the hell is 12 years a slave only an honorable mention!
It was one of the best (though also the most obviously depressing) movies of the year!

 

[Tim Chuma]

I saw very few movies on commercial release earlier in the year. Was not working and could not even afford the "cheap" Tuesday.

Made up for it by seeing 20 sessions in 10 days at a local film festival while also working. Didn't do much else at that time. The best films were the documentaries including Blokes You Can Trust (history of the band the Cosmic Psychos) and The Act of Killing with executive producers Werner Herzog and Errol Morris. The WTF! Shorts program and animation program were excellent. I also got to see John Dies at the End in a proper midnight screening.

Also flew up to Brisbane to see some of the Action, HK Style screening program at QAGOMA. John Woo lent some of his personal collection of 35mm prints to be screened but I did not go up that weekend.

Due to six months of working on website migration, I started listening to podcasts at work. The main ones of these were Podcast on Fire (Hong Kong and Asian films), The Gentlemen's Guide to Midnite Cinema (genre and trash cinema) and Silva and Gold (who even knows?) I have found out a lot of new films from these and as I have seen a couple of hundred Hong Kong movies it is great to still find things I have not heard of. Some of the communities for the podcasts are pretty funny. One had an outbreak of people posting photos of them licking knives and another had a karaoke competition that ended up being a no-contest when the resident "Sly Stullone" did a video that changed all the words of the song to being about him working out 20 hours a day and his muscles and veins. Sly rings up the Silva and Gold podcast weekly.

The most surprising movie I saw this year was the re-release of the long thought lost movie "The Telephone Book" by Vinegar Syndrome. I only found out about it as I like to go through the trailers on the Cinefamily website to see what is coming up and they often cut their own trailers. I am probably not allowed to link to their site, but it is a surprise to see how much work they put into the re-mastering of these movies as they were made to cash in on the sexploitation boom in the 1970s and not well preserved.

 

[GrimSoup]

I like Pacific Rim. But I don't rate Charlie Hunnam as an actor. I can't get past his smug face and attitude in every role he plays.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Well I'm glad you didn't put Iron Man 3 in your top ten. It was easily the worst movie I've seen this year. There were so many gaping plot holes. I might have forgiven its bad story if it had had amazing action but even that was sub-par.

Also, kinda surprised you didn't at least give Elysium a runner up spot considering your review was pretty glowing.

 

[Markunator]

I cannot disagree with MovieBob any more than when it comes to Only God Forgives. How anyone can put that disjointed poorly directed, overwrought mess on even a runners up list is a mystery to me. The rest of the list was fine, but seriously, Only God Forgives?

I haven't seen it, but I've heard wonderful things about it from critics all over.

That being said, anyone who saw it who wasn't a critic absolutely HATED it.

Probably some disconnect in what is being looked at as "good".

OT: Can't disagree with the list from what I saw this year, still trying to play catch-up though.

Only God Forgives is easily my film of the year.

Gravid with meaning, subtext and thematically potent action, and with a suave look that's consistent and exciting. Really a film for people sick of the usual Hollywood shite.

Runners up are Lords of Salem, Pacific Rim and Under the Skin.

Actually, Gxas, most critics didn't care for Only God Forgives one bit.

MatsVS, I haven't seen either Only God Forgives or The Lords of Salem, but I've heard mostly bad things about the former and almost exclusively bad things about the latter. Korey Coleman of what was formerly Spill.com said that people just assumed The Lords of Salem must be good because they couldn't understand it, and also said that the dialogue was so bad it hurt his ears.

Here, I'm posting The Cinema Snob's reviews of both films:

Lords of Salem (review starts at the 54-minute mark):
http://blip.tv/the-cinema-snob/catching-up-7-6-2013-wizard-world-chicago-announcement-6612954

Only God Forgives
http://blip.tv/the-cinema-snob/reviews-only-god-forgives-and-sharknado-6619157

Nice to see Pain and Gain get a shout out here. Looking back, it was definitely one of the most enjoyable movies that I saw this year and it deserves a little more attention than it's been getting.

I did not care for Pain & Gain. I went in with reasonably high hopes, at the least expecting it to be an enjoyable bit of nonsense. I just found it really difficult to get into though. I can maybe see how people could enjoy it for what it was, but I wasn't one of them.

Mark Kermdode also went into Pain & Gain with an open mind, and he ended up finding it to be the worst film of 2013; more than just bad, but downright evil:

Seriously, lesbians have to be some of the most poorly written characters in media (IE either just bi-curious or man hating feminazis).

You just haven't watched the right stuff. Watch the Swedish films Show Me Love and Kiss Me (With Every Heartbeat) as well as the TV series Orange Is the New Black and Skins (there's a lesbian couple in the third and fourth season).

 

[Britpoint]

I would of liked to see Frozen be a bit more higher especially as the only animation but also because its so revolutionary for Disney but at the same time being so restrained in Disney fashion.

Its a stunning animation and does highlight that Disney can still create great fairytails.

I don't get where people get this is some big revolution for Disney or some big one-eighty. Haven't they seen Tangled or Wreck-it-Ralph?

Well, Frozen is considered a revolution for Disney in the sense that it takes the "traditional Disney fairytale" and makes changes to the formula. Tangled was fantastic, but still followed the classic plot recipe, and Wreck-it-Ralph again was great, but wasn't a fairytale so it doesn't get discussed in the same terms.

Frozen is the first one that follows in the steps of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast etc. to actually try and adjust the underlying themes for the more modern audience.

I do agree that pretty much everything they've done since John Lasseter was put in charge after the Pixar buyout has been great though. Nice to see the house of mouse on the up!

 

[PuckFuppet]

Seriously, lesbians have to be some of the most poorly written characters in media (IE either just bi-curious or man hating feminazis).

You just haven't watched the right stuff. Watch the Swedish films Show Me Love and Kiss Me (With Every Heartbeat) as well as the TV series Orange Is the New Black and Skins (there's a lesbian couple in the third and fourth season).

Babylon 5, Ray Donovan, Orphan Black.

I could go on.

 

[KissingSunlight]

Snip

I agree with Mark Kermode's critic friend. I had a serious issue with Crash, but loved Pain & Gain. The difference between the two was the honesty they dealt with their subject. Michael Bay showed the warts and all of what their protagonists were doing. While Crash have their characters change their racial attitude to suit whatever would advance the plot without having any basis in realty.

 

[daibakuha]

Wait a minute. You hated The Purge but liked Atlas Shrugged? I think i should stop watching you now....

Cloud Atlas, not Atlas Shrugged. Two very different movies.

whooops, no idea how i got those two mixed up. Especially since i did like Cloud Atlas.
I noticed BOB is pretty good at most of his movie reviews, but whne it comes to comedy movies i think doing the exact opposite of what he says is best.

Comedy is perhaps the most subjective genre of movie, since the only thing that makes a comedy good or not is whether or not YOU find it funny.

 

[hexFrank202]

While expecting institutionalized xenophobic dickheadedness to completely cease using homophobia as an outlet is fairly reasonable*, why is Bob acting like cops being evils dicks in bizarre ways a few of times in the news every year is ever gonna stop happening? I mean it is crime, after all.

*I didn't say that people would stop being xenophobic dicks! The world is in NO WAY moving towards a more tolerant society; it's just becoming not as intolerant to the particular few groups of people that it most notably was in the 20th century. The kind of haughty, holier-than-thou attitude that most publicly represents 'tolerance and equality' in the modern western world is directly telling of the direction rotten, bitter, intolerance is gonna take in the following generations.

Bob; all my other favorite internet personalities display true acceptance and open-mindedness. James Rolfe, Doug Walker, Conrad Collins and Roger van der Weid all show what being actually nice and accepting to others is like. You, since episode 1 of The Game Overthinker, have sorted all the people you talk about into groups and judged them accordingly.

 

[Stabby Joe]

You just haven't watched the right stuff. Watch the Swedish films Show Me Love and Kiss Me (With Every Heartbeat) as well as the TV series Orange Is the New Black and Skins (there's a lesbian couple in the third and fourth season).

TV does seem to be better than film in this instance, Skins for example was well done there. From what I gather now though, Blue seems to be the "young bi-curious" angle. Again, have yet to see it but I'm skeptical.

 

[Markunator]

You just haven't watched the right stuff. Watch the Swedish films Show Me Love and Kiss Me (With Every Heartbeat) as well as the TV series Orange Is the New Black and Skins (there's a lesbian couple in the third and fourth season).

TV does seem to be better than film in this instance, Skins for example was well done there. From what I gather now though, Blue seems to be the "young bi-curious" angle. Again, have yet to see it but I'm skeptical.

Good to know you liked the lesbian romance in Skins, too! Just out of curiosity - what, specifically, did you like about it?

 

[Silverspetz]

As I expected. Tons of people judging Bob as the worst critic ever because he dared to put Pacific Rim as his personal favorite this year.