Top 10 Most Favorite Movies in 2013

Admittedly I'm unique when it comes to movies I like. That is another way of saying I don't have exquisite taste or sharp instinct to distinguish a good movie from a bad one, like most critics do. I only know to differentiate the one I enjoyed from the one I did not. I enjoyed The Lone Ranger (come on, it's not that bad), for example. So tell me, how can I pick just 10 movies as my favorite? Luckily, I found a loophole to do so, and you'll see soon enough what I meant.

I don't like to spend too much time on ranking the movies, as it will always differ depending on my mood at the time I rank them. So I decided to name just ONE as my ultimate favorite, and the rest will be in no particular order (not even alphabetically, I like to be random).

YOU ALMOST MADE IT...
but not quite, I'm sorry. You're just outside my Top 10.

Captain Phillips: I want this to be in the Top 10, but I can't find a way to cheat it in. For now, it's on the outside looking in. About a month from my first viewing I can still remember Tom Hanks' last scene after he was rescued (Oops! Spoiler alert: he survived).

The Place Beyond the Pines: It's quite uneven. The Ryan Gosling part is cool while the Bradley Cooper part is boring, but I like the third part enough for it to earn a place here.

Side Effects: Just when you think you know the story and you have the movie all figure out, you don't. Jude Law has never been so good since... well since forever.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: I wanted to like this so much more than I actually do, but the truth is, I like the trailer much more than the actual movie. The actual movie itself is less fantasy and magical than I expected it to be, but the sceneries were amazing.

Zombie twins alert - Warm Bodies & World War Z: Wow, zombie movies are actually entertaining! I didn't expect that.

The Impossible: Another one I can't find a way to cheat it into Top 10. Tell me you didn't cry when the kids and their father finally reunited.

Ender's Game: I am genuinely surprised by how much I like this movie.

Special tech award for beauty: The Great Gatsby

Chinese movie award: I didn't watch a lot of Hong Kong / Taiwan / China movies but of the few I did watch, I'll pick The White Storm to be my personal favorite. Hollywood can make hundreds of action thrillers starring Jason Statham or Dwayne Johnson but I'll say the best are from HK.

Summer Blockbuster award: You know how summer movies are. Superheroes, aliens, white house blown up, sequel, prequel, sequel to a prequel, prequel to a sequel, blah blah blah. Nothing special this year, but to totally ignore the whole season of movies felt wrong so I give Star Trek Into Darkness a special mention here.

Special "Next Year You'll Be The Champion" award: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. I refuse to view The Hobbit as 3 separate movies, so I made up my mind: the trilogy will be my champion next year (yes, I am bias). Until then, this special mention would be all it gets. What? You didn't think I will make a list without mentioning The Hobbit, did you?

Blast from the Past: Every year I discover new gems from the pile of old movies through DVDs. To name all of them would be crazy so I pick one: Fiddler on the Roof. I love this musical so much I wonder why Hollywood does not make this kind of musical anymore.

Now, on to the Top 10 list.


Now You See Me: Now this is a unique summer movie. The cast is wonderful, the plot is head-scratching to a certain degree, you see Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman not revolving around Batman, you get your magical moment, your action moment and your solve-the-mystery moment. What more can you ask for?

About Time: It got a certain charm that made me fall for this extraordinary tale of time traveling.

Rush: It's not just about car racing, it's also about rivalry / friendship.

Coming-of-age triplets - Mud, The Way Way Back, The Kings of Summer: Cheat no. 1 - I like all three of them equally so I group them together as one. I love kid movies 'cause I'm a kid at heart, but none of the kid movies made it to my list this year so these three are as close to "kid" as it gets.

The Thieves: A truly entertaining ensemble piece from Korea. I didn't like the Ocean's series but this one I like.

Prisoners: So dark and serious, yet two and a half hour passed by in a blink of an eye. The ending was a bit unsatisfying though.

The-end-of-the-world quartets: The World's End, This is the End, Judgment Day (世界末日), It's a Disaster: Cheat no. 2 - It's like they were not happy that the world didn't end in 2012, they vowed to make it happen in 2013 all over again. These four were not the only apocalypse films released this year, but these are the only four I enjoyed enough to put them on the list.

Zero Dark Thirty: On paper, this story of a ten-year hunt for Osama bin Laden sounds like a borefest. However, it turned out to be an awesome movie. It features one of the most memorable quotes this year: I'm the motherfucker that found this place.

12 Years a Slave: This movie did what Django Unchained failed to do: put a heart to its story.

THE CHAMPION
Cloud Atlas: Right from the moment this movie was released, the reaction had been polarized. I am at the extreme positive end of the spectrum. This movie has a unique way of telling the story (according to some readers of the original novel it was impossible to adapt the book into a movie due to the complicated structure of the book); the same actors and actresses playing multiple characters; combining all elements like thriller, action, drama, comedy etc. into a 3-hour movie. Someone complained that it was too high art and they couldn't understand the movie, but I'd say this is preconception. Just sit down and watch it like any other movies, you'll grasp the beauty.

So that's it, my favorite movies of 2013. Before I end this post, let's see the worst of 2013.

Twilight-wannabe triplets - The Host, Beautiful Creatures, City of Bones: When will they learn for every Hunger Games there will be hundreds of turkeys like these three?

Elysium: The only thing I remember from this film is how terrible Jodie Foster was.

Silver Linings Playbook: It's not exactly bad per se, but it's absolutely overrated. Really? J Law won an Oscar for this? Over Jessica Chastain from Zero Dark Thirty? It's even more crazier than the Bradley Cooper character in this film.

After Earth: The only thing I remember from this film is how terrible Jaden Smith was. Like, really really terrible.

Grown Ups 2: "Hello, it's Adam Sandler, what do you expect?", you might say. Actually I expected a funnier comedy. This one is just one slapstick after another he does not even care to link all the jokes together to form a proper storyline.

Bad CGI - Jack the Giant Slayer, Oz the Great and Powerful, The Smurfs 2: Actually, their problems were so much more than just the bad CGI. It's the story, it's the cast, it's everything. But the fact that they failed to even make a good CGI in a movie that supposedly relied heavily on visual effects annoyed me. Mila Kunis in green? Really?

Okay, now you do the calculation. How many movies have I mentioned? I warned you, I cheat!

Happy 2014!