Well, as I've only seen three good movies in the theater this year, I'd rank them

1. Gravity
2. Les Miserables
3. Iron Man 3

Star Trek Into Darkness doesn't merit mention.

Haven't seen Her, Inside Llewyn Davis, or Wolf of Wall Street yet, so I can't give a definite answer. This is the list as of right now, though.

1) Blue is the Warmest Color
2) 12 Years a Slave
3) All Is Lost
4) Prince Avalanche
5) Frances Ha

As for the WORST films I saw, I can definitely that this is my list. I can't see it changing for any reason.

1) Elysium
2) Salinger
3) Now You See Me
4) Escape From Tomorrow
5) The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

Last edited by Doctor Submarine (2013-12-09 22:14:14)

Hmm. Interesting that Gravity is topping a lot of lists. I don't think it's in my Top 10. It was a major technical achievement, and a thrilling piece of cinema, but other than that it wasn't anything special, in my opinion. What about it did you guys fall in love with?

1.  Prisoner of Azkaban
2.  Deathly Hallows Part 1
3.  Order of the Phoenix
4.  Half Blood Prince
5.  Sorcerrer's  Stone

*shakes head really fast*

Sorry about that.  Here's my real list.

1.  Act of Killing
2.  Gravity
3.  Stories We Tell
4.  Captain Phillips
5.  Prisoners

1) Fast and the Furious 6
2) Man of Steel
3)The Wolverine
4) White House Down
5) Pain & Gain

This list might seem sarcastic, but I only watched 6 movies this year. The 6th was Delivery Man.

This may change after I see Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle. That being said:

1. Gravity - basically renewed my faith in cinema after an atrocious year of movies. Astounding.

2. Upstream Color - Was sure this would be my #1 until Gravity hit. Carruth is a master at short-hand visual storytelling. Hypnotic, beautiful, seen it 6 times and can't wait to watch it again.

3. Europa Report - In many ways this is the hard sci-fi movie I've always wanted to see. Smart characters, accurate science, just an interesting what-if that makes the most of it's smaller budget. Great score too.

4. Fast & Furious 6 - best action movie of the year, also the best superhero movie of the year. This movie incorporates character development into its action scenes better than almost any big budget series out there.

5. Riddick - Awesome piece of R-rated sci-fi action. First 1/3rd in particular is amazing, some of the best stuff I've seen this year. It suffers from starting out original and great, and then getting more and more conventional as it goes along, but it's still solid. Kind of this year's Dredd, though not quite at that level.

Honorable Mention: Oblivion as the biggest surprise of the year, and being waaay better than it had any right to be.

Worst:
1. Star Trek Into Darkness
2. Red 2
3. Pacific Rim (seriously internet, WTF)
4. Elysium
5. Man of Steel

Last edited by bullet3 (2013-12-10 00:27:37)

OH!  I want to add Uptream Color!  FOrgot it was this year.

Ya, it was such an early release (March?), I hope people don't forget it for their year-end lists. It's the kind of movie that gives you hope that the whole "anyone has the tech to make a movie" thing will actually result in some legitimately great, original films, instead of just endless fan films and video-game parodies.

Last edited by bullet3 (2013-12-10 00:53:09)

Going through the list of what was released in 2013....let's see...

The ones I legit enjoyed:
1) Monsters U
2) The Croods
3) Escape From Planet Earth
Sensing a theme yet?
4) Epic

And everything else I saw that was released this year:

1) Oz The great and Powerful - Loathed the ever living shit out of. Truly a horrible horrible thing.
2) Star Trek Into Darkness - Didn't hate it, probably cause the loathing from the peanut gallery was so rampant before hand that simply having moving pictures with sound roughly in sync could only serve to impress.

And that's everything I saw from 2013.

Yah.

I'm a little behind.

Might as well share my 6-15 I guess. I see way too many movies.

6) The World's End
7) Upstream Color*
8) Short Term 12
9) Side Effects*
10) Computer Chess*
11) This is the End
12) Gravity
13) The Hunt
14) Captain Phillips
15) Much Ado About Nothing

Honorable Mention: Catching Fire

Btw, if you find yourself unable to get out to the theater too often, iTunes is your friend. You can rent movies for like five bucks, and they'll have a lot of smaller recent films that never came to a theater anywhere near you. That's how I saw, like, a third of the movies on my list. Also, Netflix has a ton of great 2013 films available (at least in the US). I marked those with a *. Frances Ha, my #5, is also on Netflix.

This Is The End makes my list purely on number of laughs. I've seen it several times and it's still incredibly funny. The fact that it has all these stars playing themselves but NEVER feels self-indulgent (not intentionally, anyway) is amazing. There's genuine self-deprecation here, and I was expecting the kind of self-deprecation where they ultimately come out looking pretty good. Nope. These guys are playing the most selfish, greedy, awful, hilarious versions of themselves. By the time they got to the shot-for-shot parody of Rosemary's Baby, I knew I was in love.