2013's Best And Most Overrated Movies

Cena's Little Helper

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I'll make a proper non-spam thread about this (or hopefully someone else will) once near Oscar nominations, but I really want to post my 10 best and 10 most overrated movies of 2013. Here they are:

Ten Best
1, Tie) The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears
1, Tie) Her
3) 12 Years A Slave
4) Nebraska
5) Gravity
6) The Wolf of Wall Street
7) Blue Jasmine
8) The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug
9) Blackfish
10) Stoker

Ten Most Overrated
1) American Hustle
2, Tie) The World's End
2, Tie) Blue Is The Warmest Color
4) Fruitvale Station
5) Dallas Buyers Club
6) Captain Phillips
7) World War Z
8) Elysium
9) Man Of Steel
10) Labor Day
 
I'm only going to do best since I don't think I could really form an overrated list with any sort of authority. Also, my best list is more a list of my personal favorites.

Best
1) Gravity
2) Blue Jasmine
3) 12 Years a Slave
4) Star Trek: Into Darkness
5) Short Term 12
6) American Hustle
7) Kick Ass 2
8) The Way, Way Back
9) Fruitvale Station
10) This is the End



Explanation/Response to Tdigs

Elysium definitely belongs on the Over(something) list, but I'd say it was more overhyped than overrated. I was one of the many that was super stoked for Neill Blomkamp's follow up to the phenomenal District 9, and like virtually all of our kind, I was disappointed in Elysium. Damon was boring, the story was mediocre, and the visual effects, while spectacular, didn't make up for the fact that everything else in the movie was unspectacular.

American Hustle doesn't deserve to be on the top of your list. I agree that it's overrated, but that's only because the, "Everything Jennifer Lawrence Does is Fantastic," train is still going strong (though perhaps it should be), and because David O. Russell actually made a movie that was just as good as (if not better than) his hit Silver Lining Playbooks. American Hustle will get plenty of attention from the Academy, and it definitely should. Is it the best movie of the year? No.

I also don't think Fruitvale Station belongs on the overrated list at all. Considering this was Ryan Coogler's first feature length film (and clearly had the budget of a guy doing his first feature), this was a huge success. I honestly can't name another director that made such a fantastic feature on their first go of it.

Gravity was the best movie of the year for my money... literally. I saw it twice, and both times it was amazing. Those visuals were just unbelievable, and it took very little suspension of disbelief on my part to believe that they were actually in space.

Blue Jasmine should be higher on your list. If Cate Blanchett doesn't win the Oscar for Best Actress, the system is broken.

I probably wouldn't class The Hobbit II in the top 10 best films of the year, but I wouldn't put it in the overrated category either. But considering this forums' ridiculous anti-LOTR/Hobbit base, expect some rebukes for that one.

I liked Dallas Buyers Club a lot, but I can see why one would call it overrated. McConaughey and Leto will get nominations for their work, and they both deserve it, but their acting is what really drove what was otherwise a good, but not great movie. Still, I'm of the mind that a couple of great performances can and should elevate a film from good to great.

I haven't seen a few of the films on these lists, but I'd be tempted to throw Star Trek Into Darkness onto the best list. The first installment of Abram's Star Trek was entertaining, but I was never hooked the way Cumberbatch's Khan had me hooked. I reckon that Khan may be the best movie villain of 2013, though a case for Fassbender's Edwin Epps could be very easily made.

Your best list is a little light on comedy. I guess it wasn't a great year for comedy (though there are no shortage of laughs from Blue Jasmine), but I really enjoyed The Heat, which I saw as a spiritual successor to Bridesmaids.

I'd also like to give a big shout out to Short Term 12. If you haven't seen this movie, get on it. Brie Larsen puts on a great performance in this sweet, but very serious movie about troubled children in a recovery center. That would probably me on my best list.

Also, I really liked Kick Ass 2, so fuck you guys.
 
Best:

Philomena
The Conjuring
About Time
Gravity
Rush

Overrated:
Lincoln (I don't care how well made it is, it's overlong and dull)
The Hobbit (It's just getting a bit old now)
The Evil Dead (People seem to actually rate it)
Man Of Steel (So, so Superman)
Pacific Rim (Should've been sillier)
This Is The End/The World's End (Hit and miss apocalypse shit)

Nice Surprises:
The Lone Ranger
Jack The Giant Slayer
The 1D film
Schwarzenegger's return
James McAvoy (Man of the year!)

Biggest Disappointments:
The Rock & The Stath's movie output in 2013
Wreck-It Ralph/Animation in general
The Wolverine/Machete Kills/G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Why you not more fun?)
Elysium
Having to go to Manchester to see Only God Forgives
 
Blue is the Warmest Colour sounds neat and all, but a three hour French language film really, really requires me to be in the right mindset - hence why I haven't seen it.

I've only got one more 2013 film to see - All is Lost - but it could warp my entire list (which can't be found anywhere). Best to keep my cards close to my chest for now.
 
Can anybody name one good thing about Elysium that wasn't Sharlto Copley?

Also I very much doubt McConaughey will get a nomination. Leto will. However McConaughey is against a three way race between Bruce Dern, Robert Redford and Tom Hanks with dark horses in Leonardo DiCaprio and Chiwetol Ejiofor. I just don't see him making the cut.
 
The Best:

12 Years A Slave
Blue Jasmine
Gravity
Frozen
The Wolf Of Wall Street
The Way Way Back

I still need to see All Is Lost, Dallas Buyers Club, Nebraska, Her and inside Llewyn Davis. American Hustle is probably the most overrated film I've seen this year.
 
I didn't see many films this year but the one that stuck out to me was Prisoners.

Oldboy remake disappointed big time, then again it did get 35 minutes cut out of it.
 
How was Superman overrated when I know of about 5 people who like it?
 
American Hustle wasn't overrated you stupid piece of shit

Unsure if you're taking the piss or not. A quote I read the other day pretty much sums up my feelings for it; It's a 3 star film featuring 5 star performances. It's not a bad film at all, but it doesn't hold a candle to some of the other Oscar contenders that were released this year.
 
Oscar contender season is the worst season, having to check out bland drama after bland drama to see if any of them actually live up to the hype. 12 Years A Slave and American Hustle sometime soon!
 
I have not seen a single film listed, guess that film review blog is going to have to wait
 
Oscar contender season is the worst season
What about that season between Oscar contender season and summer blockbuster season? Nothing's worse than when I occasionally force myself to go to the cinema during those months.
 
What about that season between Oscar contender season and summer blockbuster season? Nothing's worse than when I occasionally force myself to go to the cinema during those months.

If only there were some kind of soon to be launched streaming/on demand service with hours upon hours of wrestling to keep you entertained, at an equivalent monthly cost of going to the cinema once.

On topic - Anchorman 2 was pretty dam bad. What's worse is people constantly quoting the awful lines from it and giving you that big eyed 'why aren't you laughing with us?' stare.
 
If somebody quoted Anchorman 2 at me I'd give them a blank, wide-eyed stare because that film has long since been forgotten by me.
 
'Bats being chicken of the cave' was chuckle worthy. And the amount of cameos are the only things that I remember. And I saw it on Wednesday
 
If only there were some kind of soon to be launched streaming/on demand service with hours upon hours of wrestling to keep you entertained, at an equivalent monthly cost of going to the cinema once.
Not soon enough for me!
 
Definitely not soon enough for me; I'm going to drop £23 on the best of 2013's pay-per-view matches.
same.gif


At least you're not in Britain. Fucking year long delay.
I'm Canadian, eh?
 
I'm just going to post my comments on the 10 best films here, aggregate them, and post them in my non-spam thread when I have given reason for all 10 films:

1, Tie) The Strange Colour Of Your Body's Tears: I had the good fortune to catch this one at AFI's European Union Film Showcase in early December. This film won't have a proper release in Europe until March, and it may never be released in North America (even on DVD), so let me make it clear here that if you're a fan of the likes of Gaspar Noe, David Lynch, Peter Greenaway, or Dario Argento, you need to scour torrent and filesharing sites after for this film after its European theatrical release. Even though it's not all that important to its aims, The Strange Colour Of Your Body's Tears plot revolves around a Belgian businessman who returns from abroad to find that his wife is nowhere to be found in their Brussels-based apartment. Not particularly close to his very eccentric neighbors, his interactions with them only result in the telling of equally confounding stories of the apartment complex's strange goings-on.

There is really not much else to share with you story-wise regarding this film, and those of you who require a film to have a concrete plot with a logical climax and a strings-all-tied ending will almost surely be sorely disappointed. The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears is what all experimental filmmaking to this point has tried to be: an orgiastic assault on the senses that fully commands your attention without relying on the crutch of storytelling. Besides being the most visually stunning film I have ever had the pleasure of watching, The Strange Colour Of Your Body's Tears made me realize that there are still great strides to be made in filmmaking and that there has been, to this point in time, an overvaluation of a script's importance in the evaluation of a film. I am not saying here that we should focus on the medium of film itself while giving a big fuck you to screenplays, but I am definitely saying that we have overlooked how much the medium of film itself can contribute to the greatness of a film.

1, Tie) Her: Her got royally screwed by AMPAS this year. This film should be the hands-down winner for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay. Ultimately, I think AMPAS only tepidly received Her because it was incorrectly marketed as a "love story." Her is not romantic in the least; it is a prophetic and bleak glimpse into what our future is going to look like. While information technology has undoubtedly changed our lives for the better, we have accepted its usefulness without paying serious attention to its most insidious and detrimental consequences: the erosion of our social skills and our refusal to deal with the hardships that necessarily come with the most meaningful of intimate relationships.

For instance, I have become close with a few people on this website, but, unless such relationships are further pursued in real-life, they can only go so far in meeting the social needs that we have as human beings. Thus, while I can use this forum to relate my experiences to you, I cannot truly share these experiences with you. We must not be deceived into thinking that the social opportunities that the Internet affords us can adequately replace those that real-life affords us; unfortunately, it looks like we're already headed down this road and have no way of turning back.
 

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