I’ve missed a lot of movies that are winding up on people’s worst of the year list. Since I’m busy with the Television Critics Association and Sundance in January, I’m spared from a lot of January movies now. Over the summer and fall I also missed the likes of Paranoia, Delivery Man and other likely candidates. Otherwise, if you see a bad movie missing from this list, there are two possibilities. One is that I actually liked it because that’s been known to happen. A lot. The other is that I simply missed it. The Lone Ranger ekes by for that one good action scene. The Strange Little Cat was horrible but it’s such an obscure festival movie it won’t really help anyone else if I include it here.
Read William Bibbiani’s picks for The Worst Films of 2013.
Read Witney Seibold’s picks for The Worst Films of 2013.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
Fred Topel Picks the 12 Worst Films of 2013
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12. The Last Stand
On paper this looked like the perfect comeback. After 10 years as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger made cameos in the Expendables movies to remind audiences who he was. For his returning star vehicle, he played an aging character and chose a hip Korean director for a new twist. The result was just sad and boring. Bursts of excessive violence in the otherwise lethargic action scenes didn’t provide the punchline they were supposed to. The whole production looked cheap with an empty border town. It was not the “I’ll Be Back” moment I was hoping for. That same month, Stand Up Guys was a worse movie but I had less personally invested in it being good, so The Last Stand was more heartbreaking.
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11. Twice Born
The worst kind of important movie. It just revels in the tragedy of the Bosnian war and the grief of parents who can’t conceive, but with nothing constructive to say about either issue.
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10. Kick-Ass 2
Certainly the most reprehensible movie, if not quite the least entertaining. Kick-Ass 2 thinks rape is funny as long as it’s only attempted rape, because the movie doesn’t understand that attempted rape is still rape. For the record, I am unequivocally against rape, since apparently that needs to be specified now. Not that it was a good movie before that point. It was still a mediocre sequel with uninspired action scenes, but it gets really ugly.
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9. The Internship
I wanted to see the Wedding Crashers reunite. The premise was solid, grown men competing with college kids for an internship. Why did Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson think we’d want to see them play buffoons, when their whole inspired chemistry was based on being the alphas in a group setting? I go into much more detail in my Blu-ray review but can we please declare a moratorium on people singing old pop songs in comedies? It’s not funny.
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8. The Host
It’s just so boring. Even given the semi-interesting premise of aliens invading our planet and taking over our bodies, the whole movie is set in a cave! It’s two hours of the end of The English Patient. I liked Store though.
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7. Only God Forgives
I should really watch this again, but I haven’t yet so my first impression stands. We got Refned. We got Refned hard.
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6. 21 and Over
Only elevated from the very bottom of this list because three things in the movie made me laugh. It’s like Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, saved from dead last place because of the ever memorable shrim. Put it this way, for me to say 21 and Over is more reprehensible than Kick-Ass 2 takes a lot. See my full review for my philosophical issue with the film’s worldview.
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5. Frances Ha
Probably my most controversial pick on my worst-of list. A lot of people liked Noah Baumbach’s latest, and for most of his arthouse fans it should fall in line. It crossed a personal line for me in its glorification of an entitled class of youth that just aren’t as cute as they think they are.
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4. Ain't Them Bodies Saints
Wow, what a boring nothing of a movie. Twice Born was insufferable and over two hours long, but it still moved faster than the 90 minutes of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints. I love a movie about grief and dealing with loss, but if you’re a grown man or woman and you’re moping around being all melancholy because things didn’t work out the way you wanted them to, just grow the hell up.
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3. The Starving Games
Yes, I should have known better. This was my own fault. I’m just including it for the record, validating that it is indeed the low point of the Friedberg/Seltzer cycle. Well, maybe Vampires Suck is worse, because Starving Games at least had a good lead actress channeling Jennifer Lawrence.
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2. A Haunted House
Yet if The Starving Games is the nadir of spoof movies, Marlon Wayan’s contribution this year sinks even lower. If you think that lower than the nadir is impossible, then take an already unfunny spoof and then drag it out in long single takes because it’s “found footage.” By comparison, Scary Movie V was delightfully mediocre. I went into a lot of detail on this one in my Freditorial.
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1. Snitch
I actually saw Snitch at the end of 2012 and I thought, “Please don’t let there be a worse movie than this next year.” And there wasn’t. Even the bad spoofs and the indulgent issue movies didn’t reach the laughable drama and boring machinations of The Rock’s “serious” movie. Oh, Snitch had something to say, and it made sure to tell you over and over again. The stakes are quite high, though you wouldn’t know it by the way The Rock dismissively refers to the lasting consequences in the final scene.
