Bob Chipman - Moviebob's Best Movies Of 2013 lyrics

Hey, it's the end of the year! And since I'm a film critic, that means it's list-making time. Goody! This week, the top best movies of 2013. Next week...the other list. One quick thing before we get started. I don't keep a running, numbered mathematically-sound list of how I felt about every movie I saw all year long. I just don't. As such, you'll probably find lists by me or that I was part of elsewhere on the web (I am, for example, a member of the Boston Online Film Critics Association and was part of voting for this list) that look a bit different from this one. This list is how I feel right now, at this moment, looking back, nothing more empirical than that. So, don't get bent out of shape. With that said, here we go. First up, the runners up! In no particular order: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Stoker Oz: The Great and Powerful White House Down 12 Years A Slave Only God Forgives Iron Man 3 The Lords of Salem The Great Gatsby The World's End And now... 10. Gravity I am not as high on Gravity as other film critics are. I think it lacks a certain amount of confidence in its audience of its own material, as evidenced by the unnecessary backstory and life lesson stuff (What, because being trapped in space isn't a compelling enough movie?), and that really dopey business in the third act. But you just can't deny what an awesome ride this is, and since I let The Hobbit be on the list last year for being an awesome ride, yeah. Gravity kinda rocks. It's just sort of funny that in a movie that's made as one part arthouse character piece and one part Universal Studios movie ride, the spectacle is the part that works better. 9. Captain Phillips Tom "America" Hanks in the ripped-from-the-headlines story of just your average good-natured New England sea captain stuck in the middle of a hijacking-turned-kidnapping by merciless Somali pirates? That should be the least-nuanced, least-thoughtful movie of all time. But instead, thanks to smart directing, a terrific screenplay and the miracle casting of previously-unknown Somali-born actor Barkhad Abdi as the intimidating but complex pirate captain, it turns into a real highlight of suspense and human drama. Oh, and I guess that Larry Crown guy is pretty good in it, too. 8. Frozen I am as surprised as you are - a Disney musical? Another entry into the money-printing Princess franchise, no less, turns out to be the year's genuine cinematic highlights? But god damn, Frozen is the best version of exactly what it wants to be in a long, long time, buoyed by a fantastic central voice and music performance by Idina Menzel as Elsa, one of the year's most interesting female characters, animated or otherwise. I even liked the stupid snowman, and I was all set to hate the snowman! 7. Blue Is The Warmest Colour/La Vie D'Adele Is it art? Is it p**n? Look, it's sweet. It's poignant and it's immensely watchable. That's what'll be remembered when the brief dust-up over this movie being, for the moment, slightly more explicit than most stuff that winds up in theaters, goes away. It's a nice earnest, deeply-felt, if a bit overlong cla**ical love story that just happens to be between two women. Some day, that won't be particularly shocking either, but the movie will still be moving and compelling. A new romance for the new millennium. And, uh, if you did watch it just for the girls, well...I can't blame you there. But feel good that you got an actual good movie as a bonus, ok? Ok. 6. Pain and Gain Michael Bay made one of the best movies of the year. Michael Bay. One of the best movies of the year. Michael Bay. Best of the year. Yeah, that happened. This is the year where Michael Bay made a better fact-based movie about idiots getting over their heads in a criminal scheme...than the guy who made The Fighter. And his next movie has robot dinosaurs, which, by the law of robot dinosaurs, should be impossible to screw up! I...guys, I don't know what the world is any more! 5. You're Next This was a really good year for horror movies at the box office. Sometimes for really, really good movies, sometimes for really, really bad movies. This one...didn't do so hot. But it was my favourite, and you should really check it out. What starts out like a typical "family under siege" thriller turns into something like an ingenious dark comedy, with great suspense, excellent k**s, terrific gore effects and a mystery plot that actually manages truly surprising story turns and shocking reveals of both heroes and villains. You probably missed this in theaters, it's coming out for sale in a couple of weeks, you should watch it. 4. Spring Breakers Look, believe me or don't - it's good. A stinging meta-critique of Generation-Y excess and a fascinating portrait of emptiness unleashed exploding across the cultural wastelands of party scene Florida. Plumbing the depths and darkness of characters who mask sociopathic tendencies with vapid shallowness. Seriously, this was one for the age. And if it looks on the surface like something you'll absolutely hate, you're probably kind of the perfect audience for it. Give it a chance. 3. Fruitvale Station This is a dramatization of what a day in the life might have been like on the last day in the life for one Oscar Grant, a young man who was fatally shot in the back by a police officer while lying face-down on a subway platform in 2008, the cop claiming he had mistaken his gun for his taser. Given that background, the movie can't help but be quietly powerful, and it's buoyed by a terrific lead in actor Michael B. Jordan, who's currently in contention to be the new Human Torch. The movie is rough, gripping and tough to watch, but it's potent filmmaking and vital stuff, given how often this kind of thing just keeps on happening. 2. The Wolf of Wall Street This hasn't come out yet, so you'll get my full review pretty soon, actually. Until then, it's not my favourite movie of the year, so it can't be number 1, but The Wolf of Wall Street is the best movie of the year. At once a great drama and a great dark comedy. You kind of have to see it to understand how that works, but you will not believe how much fun it is to watch such great cast behave so badly. It is, no hyperbole necessary, astonishingly great stuff, do not miss it. 1. Pacific Rim But yeah, this was still my favourite. The basic world, premise and scenario of Pacific Rim are so inherently awesome that any remotely competent filmmaker would have probably still made a good movie out of it. But put a great filmmaker like Guillermo Del Toro at the helm, and you get something truly special. I really don't think we'll be able to fully appreciate just how ahead of the curve this movie was until we've seen just how predicted it was of what movies would look, sound and feel like in the emerging global future. Is it just a movie about giant robots punching giant monsters? Yes. But in its own way, it's every bit the movie of the future that the more narratively-ambitious Cloud Atlas was. And hell yeah, three cheers for Mako Mori, the other surprisingly-groundbreaking movie h**ne this year gave us. Alright, that's enough positivity for me. Happy holidays, kids, I'll see you back here next week...for the other list. I'm Bob, and that's the big picture.