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10. Bad Grandpa
The interminably stupid “Bad Grandpa” makes you feel as though you’ve been unwelcomely yanked back into the mid-2000s. A virtually plotless stream of unfunny gags, many involving the prosthetic genitalia of an octogenarian played by Johnny Knoxville, it tries and fails to rehash the punk-the-public formula popularized by the “Jackass” team and Sacha Baron Cohen. Apart from Knoxville’s convincing age makeup, this is the year’s laziest film, reliant on dusty gags that no one laughs at anymore.
9. Baggage Claim
Starring the hopelessly unlikable Paula Patton in a screwball role she can’t do justice, “Baggage Claim” often feels like it deals in surrealism, until you realize such scenes as a tryst reeking of paperback-romance sleaze is not, in fact, a dream sequence. The film is terrible for women, hinging plot on a heroine’s need for a man to find completion, then peddling her independence, then dropping her into a man’s arms nonetheless. It’s like a punching bag for feminists, or anyone with good taste.
8. Oblivion
Realized with pristine art direction and effects, “Oblivion” is ultra-handsome to look at — a sci-fi film with a complete sense of environments and gadgetry. Too bad the rest is both derivative and overly twisty, and that’s well before we get to the nail in the coffin. (Spoilers ahead.) The only thing worse than another Tom Cruise vanity project is one whose big reveal is that Cruise is the prototype to save mankind — a human male who’s been cloned ad infinitum because he’s the ideal. Wait, we’re still talking about life on planet Earth, right?
7. Adore
The synopsis: Two best friends (Naomi Watts and Robin Wright) begin sleeping with each other’s sons (Xavier Samuel and James Frecheville), building a secret life and even continuing the affairs after the sons have married younger gals and fathered children. This may sound too scandalous to resist, but “Adore” approaches the material with such preposterous stoicism that the unintentionally laughable results are catastrophic. Watts and Wright act their butts off to help rescue the story, but their efforts only highlight the strain of this movie’s asinine tone.
6. Jack the Giant Slayer
There were plenty of spectacles this year that waved their wasting of fortunes in viewers’ faces, but none did so more dishearteningly than “Jack the Giant Slayer.” This needless action fantasy cost upwards of $200 million to make, but it looks like a SyFy original, with dime-store CGI, and costume design reminiscent of a Renaissance faire. What’s more, the film drags endlessly with little purpose but to hurl more stuff at you, i.e. shoddy effects that aren’t worth the price of admission, much less enough to power a small nation.
5. Battle of the Year
Don’t come looking for a dance movie with “Battle of the Year,” as this fictionalization/bastardization of Benson Lee’s excellent breakdancing doc “Planet B-Boy” spends too much time with team-building bathos to actually get down to busting moves. There’s one scene that excels in presenting the team as a cultural melting pot, but mostly, the film, which aptly co-stars Chris Brown as a misogynistic hothead, is a seen-it-all-before bore, made worse by having a lily-white coach (Josh Holloway) boss around a crew of minorities.
4. Dallas Buyers Club
“Dallas Buyers Club” is widely hailed as one of 2013’s best, anchored by “brave” performances from gaunt Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto. Look again, and you may see one of the most toxic “prestige” films in recent memory — the first major AIDS movie since 1993’s “Philadelphia,” but one that positions a straight, homophobic redneck as its protagonist. Sure, AIDS hasn’t strictly been a “gay disease,” and it’s good to dispel the myth that is has been, but it is an integral part of LGBT history, and the fact that community’s stories aren’t being told in the mainstream is a grave problem. And, sorry, tossing in Leto as a transgender lapdog, stereotypically freakish and doomed by addiction on top of illness, isn’t helping matters.
3. Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s
We may have reached a post-recession period when it’s OK to make films that celebrate elitist, capitalism-defining empires like Bergdorf Goodman, but there’ll never be a right time for Matthew Miele’s “Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s,” a tasteless, shoddily made documentary that all but kneels on the New York department store’s sidewalk and bows in exultation. A needless parade of so-called pundits blab about nothing, while the store’s own camera-conscious puppeteers expose their disconnect from humanity. Even the Bergdorf’s legendary windows are cheapened, preached as a unifier for the haves and have-nots, while depicted as a wall that keeps the rabble out of the throne room.
2. Lovelace
An off-puttingly grim and skeevy look into the making of 1970s porn flick “Deep Throat,” which starred the infamous Linda Lovelace, this alternately campy and stomach-churning period piece leaves you aching for fresh air, followed by a shower. Starring Amanda Seyfried (who needs a new agent, like, yesterday), “Lovelace” is a constantly drab misfire that can’t even make the clothing feel right, whether it’s donned or crumpled on the floor. Even if meant as a cautionary tale, this might be the unsexiest sex movie ever.
1. Jobs
Most people know by now that Steve Jobs was equal parts genius and jerk, but Joshua Michael Stern’s “Jobs” couldn’t have botched that balance more epically, standing as one of history’s worst biopics, and by leaps and bounds the worst film of 2013. “Jobs” tugs at audience allegiances with the force, ineptitude and gracelessness of a bipolar drunkard, showing its legend as god and demon, sometimes in the same poorly articulated breath. Making the world’s sleekest software company look unattractive to boot, “Jobs” also rests entirely on the shrill and tragically ill-equipped shoulders of Ashton Kutcher, who’s miles out of his league and should’ve never been cast in the first place. What’s that sound? Oh, it’s just Jobs screaming obscenities from his desecrated grave.
Dishonorable Mention:
“The Colony,” “Getaway,” “The Host,” “The Lone Ranger,” “Man of Steel,” “Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters,” “Touchy Feely,” “Unfinished Song,” “What Maisie Knew” and “White House Down.”
Coming next week: Check out the Dec. 26 edition for R. Kurt Osenlund’s 10 best films of ’13.
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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