As it is our custom, we begin our yearly film review heads down in embarrassment by recalling the biggest disappointments the last twelve months of cinema brought us.
On a year whose offer has spoilt us for choice, there was little time to check those works dismissed by the critics, so many of the sequels, reboots, biopics, romcoms and overall bleak offering of a poorer than usual blockbuster season passed us by completely. This state of affairs meant that we missed out on the dubious charms of such unpopular releases as After Earth, where two generation of Smiths engaged in what’s been described as a love letter to Scientology, cementing M. Night Shyamalan’s reputation as the king of Hollywood flops; the incomprehensible entrapment of half of Tinseltown on a scatological succession of bad jokes in Movie 43 or the dependably bad Adam Sandler and his gang reaching new lows in Grown Ups 2.
The worst films we saw, in comparison, were so small in scope that hardly misled anyone to watch them. Among them titles like Suspension of Disbelief; Maniac or Isabel Coixet’s latest Yesterday Never Ends (Ayer No Termina Nunca).
Among some bigger examples we found three notable wastes of a fine cast, the “Shame goes to Hollywood” attempt to deal with the thorny subject of sex addiction in Thanks for Sharing, reuniting the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow; Mark Ruffalo; Tim Robbins and pop starlette P!nk! to leave a rather moralistic, self-help aftertaste; the Kennedy-era exploitation flick Parkland, where Paul Giamatti; Zac Effron; Marcia Gay-Harden and other luminaries portrait the events surrounding the president’s killing from the “I was there” angle of people who played a small role in them (Parade watchers; hospital staff; security forces and even Lee Harvey Oswald’s relatives) forming an unengaging mosaic of semi-connected vignettes; and Ruben Fleischer’s unsuccessful comic treatment of a classic genre in Gangster Squad, congregating Ryan Gosling; Nick Nolte; Sean Penn; Emma Stone and Josh Brolin, whose recent choice of roles hasn’t been the most fortunate, sadly becoming a fixture among the worst reviewed pictures of the year (see also Oldboy and Labor Day).
In the other side of the coin, a considerable number of long awaited auteur works, turned out decent enough not to be treated as full-fledged disappointments, but failed to live up to the high expectations surrounding them. Be it Pedro Almodovar’s half-baked return to comedy with I’m So Excited; Kim Ki-Duk bizarrely mixing explicit violence with religious imagery in the Venice winner Pieta; Steven Soderbergh’s pharmaceutical exposé turned erotic thriller Side Effects; Ralph Fiennes’ rather dull latest period drama The Invisible Woman and the highest profile title of the bunch, the adaptation of Tracey Lett’s acclaimed play August: Osage County, another superb ensemble cast who didn’t quite gel together; albeit giving both Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts their respective umpteenth chance for Academy recognition.
None of them can compare in the level of heartbreak and deception inducing to our final Top 10 selections. Check our choices for 2013’s hall of cinematic shame, after the jump