2013 is over and done with. See ya later, alligator! So, instead of just throwing out my favorite movies of the year for everyone to disagree with me, I've also included a super fun list of random platitudes for your reading pleasure. In case you just want to check out my favorite films of the year, it's down there too. Please be kind.

Movie Not as Funny as Everyone Says
This is the End

Single Best Scene of the Year
Leonardo DiCaprio versus his car, The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Scene Stealer
Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle

Actor That Truly Deserves All the Accolades That Follow
Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave

Movie That I Can’t Stop Thinking About
Her

Blockbuster That is Actually a Good Movie Too
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Movie That Broke My Heart the Most (and Made Me Put Down My Cheeseburger)
12 Years a Slave

Movie That Should Never Have Made as Much Money as it Did
Identity Thief

Hands-Down Worst Piece of Trash I Saw in 2013
The Hangover III

Best Scene in an Otherwise Shitty Movie
The train sequence, The Lone Ranger

Most Pleasantly Surprisingly Good Movie
The Kings of Summer

The Other Quiet Movie About Teens That I Liked More Than I Thought I Would
Spectacular Now

Movie I Really Wanted to See But Still Haven’t and Feel Terrible About
Before Midnight

Movie That Made Me Cry For Reasons I Didn’t Think it Would
About Time

Movie Most Worth its 3D Upcharge
Gravity

Movie I Liked More Than Most People
The Great Gatsby

Most Underrated Performance of an Actor in a So-Called “Supporting” Role
Daniel Bruhl, Rush

Best Movie That No One Will Remember Actually Came out in 2013 and Not 2012
Place Beyond the Pines

Movie Everyone Loved that I Absolutely Hated
Frances Ha

Favorite Movies of the Year (in alphabetical order)
12 Years a Slave

American Hustle

Blue Jasmine

Frozen

Gravity

Her

Inside Llewyn Davis

Kings of Summer

Place Beyond the Pines

The Wolf of Wall Street

-- Darcie Duttweiler

When Jennifer Lawrence won her Oscar last year, I rolled my eyes a little bit. Sure, she was good in Silver Linings Playbook, but was it Oscar worthy? I didn’t know if I’d go that far. But her brash performance as the bored, depressed housewife of a con man in American Hustle is practically transcendent. She lights up the screen whenever she’s around, and no one else can even attempt to meet her level of bravado. It’s truly incredible.

Does that sound like enough hyperbole for you? Needless to say American Hustle (directed by David O. Russell) is better than I thought it would be. I heard the hype, but I didn’t expect it to live up to it (I’m a cynical dame, what can I say?). It totally does! The movie is sharp, well-directed, and has amazing performances from the likes of Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, Louis C.K., and more.

American Hustle is the sorta true-ish story of the ABSCAM scheme in the ‘70s that involved the FBI, some con artists, and crooked politicians. Sure, Russell has beefed up the plot and the drama here, and there’s even a disclaimer that “Some of this actually happened.” What follows is a ‘70s crime romp that harkens back to the early glory days of Martin Scorsese.

Okay, so some of the plot is kinda convoluted and can be slightly hard to follow, but the jist is that Bale is a con artist who falls in love with Adams’s character and brings her into his weird loan scheme while his housewife (Lawrence) raises his son. Cooper is an eager FBI agent who busts them and coerces them to help him catch politicians taking bribes in order to avoid jail time. That’s where Renner’s clueless mayor character comes into play. Along the way, Jennifer Lawrence mucks up some of their plans when she catches the eye of a mafioso.

American Hustle might, on paper, sound like a crime drama, but it is one of the funnier movies I’ve seen all year. Christian Bale goes for broke with his fat, paunchy belly and ridiculous combover, Jennifer Lawrence is electric, and Bradley Cooper could teach a class in manic coked-out-dom (Well, him and Leonardo DiCaprio, who also similarly shines in Wolf of Wall Street).

The movie might be a little over-the-top and a tad messy, but it’s also a love letter to the quirky and weird characters before us. American Hustle is infectiously fun and zany, and it will hustle its way into your heart.

-- Darcie Duttweiler

Saving Mr. Banks is the so-called “true” story of how the great and powerful Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) finally brought P.L. Travers’s (Emma Thompson) beloved children’s book, Mary Poppins, to the silver screen. What follows is the weaving of pre-production between Mrs. Travers, as she prefers to be called, and Disney’s team of songwriters, the Sherman Brothers (played by BJ Novak and Jason Schwartzman), along with scenes from her childhood in Australia with a super fun but destructive and drunk father (Colin Farrell), which are used to explain why Mary Poppins is so near and dear to her heart.

What cinema does that real life cannot is whitewash history and make everything tie together in a sweet little package. Saving Mr. Banks does this in spades, and it IS a nice package, but….it tries so desperately hard to put all the puzzle pieces together for you and then does a pirouette and shoves some jazz hands in your face that you can’t help but feel ever-so-slightly turned off by the whole thing.

The story is a decent one: a curmudgeonly author demands authority over the screenplay of her beloved book and learns to let go a little once overcome by the spectacle of Disney. We all know how it ends because we grew up with the wonderful Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins, but Saving Mr. Banks fails to capture any magic of the musical I grew up with, save for one scene when the Sherman brothers play “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” for Travers, who finally warms up to it. Even my heart grew three sizes.

Thompson is fantastic as always. Prickly, contentious, British, and stern. I love a grumpy character more than a sunshiney one, and she does the trick. She only softens really in the presence of Paul Giamatti, who is her hired driver and says weird, schlocky things like “The sun came out to say hello to you!” and gives her a sob story to make her heart thaw a little. It’s a cinema trick that works for many people, but for me it feels forced, and that made me feel a little sad.

I wanted to like Saving Mr. Banks more. I love Emma Thompson. I adore Tom Hanks, and I loooooooove Mary Poppins. Hanks and Thompson do their best here, and they are both their usual talented selves, but even they can’t overcome the heaping spoonfuls of high fructose corn sugar that is dumped down our throats.

Go just to see Emma Thompson shine, but know that you’ll leave wanting to just read Mary Poppins (or see the movie that Travers hated so much) instead.

-- Darcie Duttweiler

Let me preface this with the statement that I actually enjoyed the first Hobbit film, An Unexpected Journey. Sure, it was bloated and slightly monotonous, but I thought it was mostly a good, fun time. That being said...I REALLY wish I would have revisited that film before checking out the next film in line, The Desolation of Smaug, which begins at the exact moment we left off with our dwarf, hobbit, and wizard friends.

All that being said, too, The Desolation of Smaug is better than its predecessor, perhaps marginally though. While still bloated with a somewhat monotonous pace (how many times can these dwarves really get captured and then escape?), the film does offer a truly spectacular action sequence involving barrels, orcs, a raging river, and elvish archers that is possibly one of the most exciting action sequences I’ve seen in a looooooong time and definitely elevates the movie on a whole.

But I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself. In case you have forgotten The Hobbit trilogy is the story of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), a solitary hobbit who enjoys his quiet life until the great wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) urges him to go on a quest with a dozen dwarves to reclaim their Misty Mountain home that was stolen from them by a greedy and scary dragon. All Biblo has to do is sneak into the mountain undetected and steal some glowing stone that will allow Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) to ascend to his rightful throne.

Well, the last film ended on the dwarves escaping some goblin hole thing (I’m going off of memory here just to again urge you to go revisit the first film) and being chased by some scary orcs, who are doing the bidding of some Necromancer, who NO ONE knows the true identity of (hint hint). Biblo has tricked Gollum out of the One True Ring, and they’re all forging ahead towards the mountain.

I appreciate Peter Jackson trying to fuse The Hobbit trilogy together with The Lord of the Rings, but, for me, it creates some slight plot holes (as someone who just battled the fires of Mount Doom on a 12-hour extended edition LOTR movie marathon). That I can overlook. It’s fine. Whatever. I can appreciate him writing in Evangeline Lilly to be a badass elvish warrior, and I definitely welcome the return of Legolas (Orlando Bloom), but it just sometimes feels too slightly pieced together in the hopes of making one giant cohesive world. And why did they have to make the lady elvish warrior have to fall in love? Bah humbug.

What I don’t appreciate? That you have a movie called The Hobbit, and there is actually very little Bilbo action. You have Martin Freeman! Use him.

The main issue with The Hobbit trilogy is that it’s largely a “heist” film broken into three bloated parts. The LOTR trilogy was a HUGE quest. Every scene mattered, whether we were following Frodo and Sam and their journey to Mordor or focusing on Aragorn and his rise to the throne or even all that jazz about Helm’s Deep. The Hobbit’s storyline just stops and starts so drastically and follows the exact same plot again and again, that you can’t just help but wish it was quicker-paced.

All that aside, the scenes between Bilbo and the stupendous Smaug (voiced by the one and only Benedict Cumberbatch) are visually incredible and fun to watch. And did I mention that, OH MAN, the barrel scene is pretty awesome?

Go into The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug knowing it’s a “good” movie but just not as GREAT as The Lord of the Rings, and that’s okay.

-- Darcie Duttweiler

Look, contrary to all rumors I am not a 13-year-old boy. While I can enjoy video games and action movies like the guys, I reach my limit when I watch a movie that is oh-so clearly targeted at pubescent boys (or older fanboys of a book series). Ender's Game is just such a film. Not to say that the film doesn't have its moments, but I'm just really, really, really not the right demographic here, folks.

I'm not all-that familiar with Ender's Game books. I have mainly only heard rumblings that its author, Orson Scott Card, is a raging homophobe. (Side note: he had nothing to do with the movie, apparently, and the studio is urging people to not let Card's awful views spoil your attendance at the movie.)

But, anyhoo. I digress. The movie takes place 50 years after an alien race almost wiped out Earth until a heroic pilot saved our planet. Now, children are being trained at a young age in the hopes of becoming the next Messiah to save the humans. Ender (Asa Buttefield) is a shy, weird little dude who also happens to be crazy smart and gifted in strategy and tactical maneuvers, so Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford at his gruffest) and psychologist Major Anderson (Viola Davis) have decided he's "THE ONE." They, therefore, ship him off to combat school up in space in the hopes of training him to become a great general.

Up in combat school, Ender is faced with more bullies, basic boot camp-type training, and a Quidditch/Paintball/Pong hybrid game in zero-g that somehow determines which child is the best leader/soldier/savior of the human race.

So, basically, to sum up everything I just said: Ender's Game is essentially Harry Potter mixed with Star Wars mixed with children playing paintball mixed with The Matrix. Sure, many of those things came out well AFTER the books were published in 1985, but Ender's Game (the movie) might suffer the same troubles as John Carter did: so many people have ripped it off before its adaptation made it to the screen that it just seems completely recycled itself.

Okay, this isn't to say the movie is bad. It isn't. The visual effects are really quite cool. There are definitely some themes in Ender's Game that are a wee bit heavy, making it slightly MORE intelligent than your average movie for teens. There are even some amazing actors in the film—I already mentioned Ford and Davis, and Sir Ben FUCKING Kingsley even pops up.

Buuuuuut...the movie is anchored by pre-pubescent boys that are just really hella awkward in their changing bodies, and it's super hard to take Ender seriously when he's facing off against Colonel Graff as he has the gangliest of mannerisms. Maybe I'm just being an asshole here, though?

Ender's Game feels much like many of the blockbusters thrown our way this summer: bloated and kinda cold. It's not bad, but it sure ain't great. Did you hear that About Time is also opening this weekend? Go see that instead.

—Darcie Duttweiler

I am ashamed to admit that I, at first, refused to watch District 9 because the trailers made it look too scary. When I finally caved and watched it, I was shocked at how expensive it looked and how much that movie said with so little. Elysium, director Neill Blomkamp's second feature, is almost the opposite: it has SO much going for it, and it sometimes squanders much that it has...but it doesn't mean it's not a dazzling movie to watch with engaging performances, gosh-wow visuals, and a Aesop fable-like moral propelling it forward.

The year is 2154, and two classes of humans exist: those who can live in the pristine Elysium orbiting the Earth with the ability to cure themselves should they ever fall ill, and the poor, unfortunate souls who are forced to live in an impoverished, polluted, and over-populated Earth and struggle to keep healthy. Matt Damon plays Max, an ex-con who's trying to stay on the straight and narrow path by taking a job in a factory. On an exceptionally shitty day, droids pull him aside merely for being a parolee and break his arm before he heads to work, where he accidentally gets exposed to lethal radiation that will kill him in five days time. Wee! Max then decides the only way he can survive is by sneaking onto Elysium and finding himself into a magical pod that can cure him--but in order to do that, he'll have to attach a heavy duty exoskeleton thingy to himself and hijack some codes out of a Elysian's head, not knowing that said codes could change the course of history...

Also along for the ride are Jodie Foster as a diabolical Defense Secretary of Elysium (one with a SUPER questionable accent) and Sharlto Copley as a rouge sleeper agent on Earth who's gone a little batshit insane and will stop at nothing to make sure Max doesn't reach Elysium alive. Of course, it wouldn't be a summer action movie if there wasn't a dame, and Alice Braga plays Max's childhood friend who, naturally, has a dying daughter of her own.

Now, Elysium is being billed as a thinking-man's summer action film, and this is definitely an accurate statement in that there is a bunch of political agenda wrapped into a sci-fi flick about the haves and the have-nots. There is gunfire and neato gadgets and space crafts and a bunch of really cool set pieces designed by the same dude who brought you dystopia at its finest in Blade Runner, all which add up to some pretty cool shit. There are even really fun hand-to-hand fighting and some really gross things happening to body parts, and while this is all really neat and exciting, at the end it all boils down to a climax everyone with a brain (or someone who watches a shit load of movies) can see coming a mile away.

But Elysium is a fun ride, nonetheless, with a decent performance by Damon, who spends most of his time limping around or passed out when he's not fighting Copley, who is (duh) one of the best things about this film. Can he just go around playing sadistic assholes for a living, please? It's the end of a kinda disappointing movie summer, and Elysium is definitely a nice little palate cleanser even with its faults. It's a great action flick for those who don't want to read into all the political mumbo jumbo, and it's a nice change of pace for those who are currently bored of all those comic book heroes at the moment.

-- Darcie Duttweiler

Written and directed by Jim Rash and Nate Faxon (the Academy Award-winning writers of The Descendents), The Way, Way Back tells the tale of Duncan (Liam James), a 14-year-old boy forced to vacation at his mom’s jerk boyfriend’s summer home and who is angry, insecure, and devoid of friends as his mom seems to be having some sort of weird adult spring break. He crushes on the neighbor’s daughter (AnnaSophia Robb) and rides his bike to the nearby water park in order to escape. It’s there that he meets Owen (Sam Rockwell), the manager of Water Wizz who has a certain confidence and joie de vivre that is infectious to young Duncan after being marginalized and put down by mom’s boyfriend (Steve Carell).

The Way, Way Back isn’t anything new really. Adventureland and Little Miss Sunshine both lend heavily as inspirations. This film may be a fairly generic coming-of-age story, but it has one ace in the hole: Sam Rockwell. Sure, he’s playing a similar character he always tends to play: cocksure, wacky, slightly unstable, and unreliable but full of heart and loyalty. His character brings out the confidence in Duncan to stand up for himself and go for what he wants. There are also some great supporting characters, like Rash’s sadsack Louis and Allison Janney as the lush neighbor. Toni Collette plays Duncan’s mom in a way that makes you really miss The United States of Tara. She can say so much with just a single expression.

But, the movie can’t overcome its genericness and the not-so-great acting of Liam James, who’s forced to carry a movie on his shoulders. No amount of charming Sam Rockwell dancing can truly compensate (okay, that’s not entirely true...). You should still go see The Way, Way Back, but just know you’re not going into a movie that will surprise you in the slightest. Luckily, you have some Sam Rockwell to make you smile along the way.

--Darcie Duttweiler

Disclaimer: I haven’t read World War Z, the “Oral History of the Zombie War,” written by Max Brooks (Son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft). So, I have absolutely no comparison for the novel and its big budget blockbuster adaptation, but from what I hear, they are nothing alike.

Oh well! C’est la vie, right? While the book apparently told the decades-long tale of how the zombie outbreak spread from China and toppled nations, the Marc Forster-directed tale follows one man (Brad Pitt), a former UN troubleshooter (no clue what his actual job was—it’s a little vague) who traverses the world to try to figure out how to stop the ongoing plague.

The movie starts off with a bang in Philly as we watch Gerry and his family escape the city as the zombies begin to takeover. From there, the film begins its formula: story + tense scene X one jump-in-your-seat moment and REPEAT. While I spent all weekend watching Greg play Last of Us and have watched all (mostly mediocre) seasons of The Walking Dead, I’m still not super equipped for tense scenes of undead villains. Luckily, World War Z gives you a little time to breathe in between each of these to try to...you know....build the story along.

So, long story short...World War Z ain’t bad. It has some truly gripping scenes, like one in a plane as an outbreak quickly turns the once safe haven incredibly deadly, or another scene in a grocery store as humans turn ugly trying to scavenge the last bit of water and medicine they can. But, still....it also ain’t great. The 3D is truly awful. The already dark movie is completely hampered by trying to make the film more intense. Avoid at all costs. The CGI is also not the greatest here. Swarms of zombies are actually less frightening than one incredibly scary biter chomping his teeth at our hero.

World War Z (the movie anyway) isn’t going to change the lexicon of zombie culture, but it’s a not terrible distraction for two hours. Just seek it out in 2D.

--Darcie Duttweiler

I feel conflicted about the new Superman movie by Zack Snyder, Man of Steel, which I’ll get into further detail below. There is so much to really connect with during this movie, and there is a lot that just doesn’t feel quite as good as you hoped for. There is so much thrown at this movie that you’d expect to be engrossed for the entire (slightly bloated) run time, and that’s not quite the case.

Snyder’s rendition of Superman tells the tale of how Krypton doomed itself and Jor-El (Russell Crowe) sends his newborn son to Earth to keep him safe. In the midst of all this, General Zod (Michael Shannon) tries to throw a coup and lands himself in a spaceship prison while all of Krypton blows up (well, that worked out for him....) Flash forward 33 years, and the Kryptonion Kal-El (now known as Clark Kent) is running from job to job in order to keep his unique powers hidden...until one day Earth needs him to reveal himself.

Now onto what worked and what did not....

On one hand, I loved the scenes set in Smallville that show Clark Kent’s budding powers, his desire and obligation to help those in peril, and his relationship with his adoptive parents (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane) and how they shape him. But, the problem is that these scenes are peppered in sporadically, in attempt to create a non-linear story (thanks, Christopher Nolan), and I feel like they’d have more weight if the story was told in a more linear fashion. The scenes with Costner and Lane are just so downright moving that I wish we got more of an origin story than just a mere peppering of their stories.

On the other hand, Lois Lane (Amy Adams) just does not work for me in this movie. I liked that she was strong and determined like all Lois Lanes should be, but I couldn’t quite grasp her romance with our Man of Steel (Henry Cavill). It made zero sense. Plus, all of her cohorts at the Daily Planet are pretty wasted here too. I feel like they filmed more scenes but were left on the cutting room floor.

Also, Cavill, who realllllllly looks the part, is just sorta ho-hum. Where is his great sense of wit and humor he had in The Tudors? I get that Superman is sorta one-dimensional, and Cavill DOES bring out a little bit of Superman’s torment at having to enact violence on his enemies, but the little kids playing Clark Kent were much more emotive than he.

Of course, I adore Michael Shannon, and I do buy him as a villain hell-bent on destroying earth, but the real weight of his menace didn’t really hit me until the very end of the film. There are several battle scenes in the climax of Man of Steel, and the ones that really work are when it’s just mano-y-mano instead of Superman versus some weird tentacle machine thing (which will really send you back to the days of the Matrix).

On a whole, the emotional weight from the Kent family was enough for me to feel engrossed, but the tediousness of the Man of Steel definitely weighs on you towards the end. The spectacle of it all isn’t quite grand enough, even though it desperately tries by throwing SO MUCH CGI in your face, and the film is definitely bogged down by its 3-D.

So, go in looking for a Pretty Greatman, maybe just not a Super one.

--Darcie Duttweiler

You’ve seen Oblivion before—whether you know it or not. While it’s based on an original graphic novel from the director of TRON: Legacy, Oblivion’s plot definitely feels recycled.

Tom Cruise is Jack Harper, a drone maintenance worker with his memory wiped on Earth in 2077, decades after a massive war tore our planet apart. Part of an operation to extract resources, he’s stationed on Earth as one part of a couple putting in their last days before being sent home to the rest of the humans stationed either in a space station or living on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. But, standing in their way are leftover alien threats who sabotage drones left and right. When a mysterious spacecraft crashed onto Earth carrying a woman that Jack’s dreamed of—or is he remembering her?— all hell breaks loose.

While watching Oblivion, I found myself enjoying it, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a beautiful and slick film. The imagery is impressive with the Empire State Building almost buried in the ground and a football stadium in shambles. The house Jack and his sex partner Victoria live in above the clouds is straight up impressive looking. But that’s where the enjoyment ends. The film’s plot, which unfolds in pieces to try to make you think and figure it out, is mostly incoherent, and it borrows from much better sci-fi films, such as Moon and Blade Runner. The mood and feel of Oblivion is much greater than its plot and finished product.

Oblivion has the makings to be a great futuristic flick, but it just doesn’t quite live up to its potential. With a jumbled plot that rips off other (more coherent) stories, it feels like a spruced-up copycat that just isn’t better than the original—but it IS hella slick, though...

-- Darcie Duttweiler