DrogeMiester's Top 10 WORST Movies of 2013

After released my top 10 best movies of the year a few days ago, it's now time to reverse course and review the top 10 worst movies of the year. Before we go any further, there are some movies that looked so bad that I purposely avoided. A few examples of those would be Movie 43, Scary Movie 5, Grown Ups 2, and The Smurfs 2 (I saw the first Smurfs and hated it -- I had no desire to see the sequel). So I suppose this could be called a list of movies that were most disappointing because for one reason or another I decided to give these movies a shot, but meh, semantics. I'll keep the current title. There's a lot of movies that I complained a lot about, so this should be fun for me as it gives me one more time to publicly rant and complain about these movies.

10- Star Trek Into Darkness

I'm not one that shies away from being a part of a minority, but it brought me some relief when it came out that Trekkies had voted Star Trek Into Darkness as the worst Star Trek movie ever made. Yes, you heard that right. Star Trek Into Darkness is the worst Star Trek movie ever made according to Trekkies. And no, I didn't just make that up. Let me tell you why. First off, it suffers from much of the same problems as the first one. It doesn't feel like a Star Trek movie. Star Trek is a series that focuses more on deep, thought provoking principles and less on the action. Into Darkness was an action movie with little thought. Into Darkness is led by a whiny, stuck-up Kirk that doesn't shine a light to William Shatner.  Into Darkness has a great Spok, but Spok's relationship is awful and is hard to watch. Those are all similar problems that the first one had. Here's why this one was a lot worse. Most Trekkies will agree that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn is the best Star Trek movie ever made. Into Darkness is a cheap, poorly done remake of Wrath of Kahn. Benedict Cumberbatch is actually a fantastic Kahn, but his character is completely messed up in terms of the writing. Also, I won't get into the ending of this movie, but it is extremely insulting to the Star Trek universe. It's like if they remade Empire Strikes Back and completely made a mockery of the iconic Luke and Darth Vader. Star Wars fans would hate that. That's what Into Darkness does to the Star Trek universe. And they do it all in the name of "this is an alternate universe." Cop-out. And that's why Trekkies hate Into Darkness. For me, hate is a strong word, but this is definitely deserving of this list. When my favorite scene of the movie is the villain beating the crap out of the hero, you know the movie has problems.

9- G.I. Joe: Retaliation

What normally happens when you make an embarrassingly awful movie that is just painful to watch, that in general is considered a hated movie? Normal movie franchises will put that movie in the rear-view window and try to do better with their next project. Completely disregarding that logic is how we ended up with this G.I. Joe sequel. The first G.I. movie was a complete and utter disaster. In making Retaliation, at least the filmmakers realized this and did a complete makeover -- cast, director, everything. Well, except for their most popular character in the previous movie. They bring him back... even though they killed him in the first? What? Yeah, no explanation; he's just back. And oh yeah, Channing Tatum became popular since they finished the film, so they shot five more minutes with him. Then killed him. What? I kinda appreciate the effort actually. They tried to make a likable movie. I like Bruce Willis and Dwayne Johnson. I also love Adrianne Palicki (she's in my current favorite TV show Supernatural). For a while in this movie, I was kinda enjoying it, but then it just sputtered out and died. It's a movie that will somewhat entertain you, but after a week you'll have forgotten you actually saw it. Yeah, in creating this list, had I not kept track of all the movies I saw this year, I would've totally forgotten this movie happened. It's just so forgettable that it feels like it actually came out five years ago. I even had to go re-read my review to remember what I didn't like about it.

8- Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

The Percy Jackson series is very comparable to the Inheritance series when you compare their movie adaptions. The Lightning Thief and Eragon are both decently enjoyable movies unless of course you have read the books and realize that the movie completely butchered the book. I have read and love the entire Inheritance series and in my personal opinion is that Eragon is the one of the worst book-to-movie adaptions ever. That said I have never read the Percy Jackson books, so I actually somewhat enjoyed The Lightning Thief. The big difference, of course, between Percy Jackson and Inheritance is that Eldest was never made. For some reason, Sea of Monsters was. Being that I enjoyed the first movie, I gave this one a shot, hoping it would be the same story. Boy was I wrong. Making it through this movie was like trying to walk through a huge pool of sludge. The acting wasn't horrible, but the pacing and execution of this movie was just so off that it was incredibly boring. I have a desire now to actually go read the Percy Jackson books, but I may be done with these movies if they end up making more. When the best part of your movie is Nathan Fillion complaining that Firefly got cancelled, you know your movie has problems.

7- 47 Ronin

A Japanese Samurai movie based on the true story of the 47 Ronin? Sounds interesting right? Unfortunately this movie is a disaster. And I'm not even talking about the reports that Universal could lose as much as $175 million on the project. The movie was postponed re-shot at least once each, and the result of that looked like they gave up on trying to fix it more, deciding to just take the hit as they knew this movie was going to be bad. The truth about the matter is that there was practically nothing redeemable about this movie. The story was slow and boring. For a Samurai movie there was surprisingly little action, so it wasn't even one of those movies you could just turn off your brain and enjoy an action-packed movie. The acting, especially with Keanu Reeves, was really flat; the actors looked bored with movie. They decided to make the awful decision to make this a fantasy movie mixed with a Samurai movie. Towards the beginning the Samurai are walking through the woods and suddenly there is this huge, weird mythical creature that starts chasing them and the whole scene you are just wondering what in the heck is happening. Not to mention that for such a high-budgeted movie, the CGI is surprisingly lazy. If you are going to spend so much money making a movie, at least make it look pretty. Nope. Sad story is that the radio station I listen to has been constantly giving out free 47 Ronin tickets. Poor people. Worst prize ever from a radio staion.

6- The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

I usually like magic movies. Now You See Me made it on me best movies of 2013 list. I also usually like comedy movies, and with a cast of Steve Carell, Jim Carrey, and Olivia Wilde, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone seemed like a home run. I couldn't have been more wrong. The biggest problem is that it was supposed to be a comedy and I didn't laugh. All the jokes fell flat and were just stupid. It's a good thing that Steve Carell redeemed himself with Anchorman 2 later in the year, because he was just outright putrid in this. There were others in this movie that did a decent job, but the problem is that they were given nothing to work with. The story is about a duo of magicians that do the exact same act every time and their biggest new rival is a sadistic magician that likes hurting himself? Why would anyone in real life watch either of these magicians? Add to that, you have a story that extremely unoriginal and predictable. The best part of the movie was when the end credits rolled and I got to listen to Imagine Dragons.

5- R.I.P.D.

R.I.P.D. is a movie where there are a lot of monsters that are secretly hidden on earth and two agents have to go stop those monsters. Sound like Men in Black? Yep, that's what this is. Except Men in Black is actually a fun movie. The whole premise of R.I.P.D. is just awful. The Rest in Peace Department consists of losers in life who are given a second chance to redeem themselves. They just have to go out and find the "deadies" that slipped through the cracks and avoided judgment. Because apparently there have been too many people dying that have caused some to slip through the cracks. Yup. That's actually the plot of the movie. Add to that, our two main losers are played by Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds. Not bad actors, but the two just have zero chemistry and Jeff Bridges' voice in the movie got really annoying really fast. Also the CGI was embarrassing. The first Men in Black did a better job. All these could've been forgiven to a certain degree if this was a PG movie directed at kids. However, they tried to make this appeal to both adults and kids. Turns out they end up missing both. It's too stupid for adults and has too much adult content for kids. Swing and a miss. Thus the movie is labelled as a cheap Men in Black ripoff.

4- Walking With Dinosaurs

Remember the show Mystery Science Theater 3000? If you don't let me refresh you. You have a group of characters that get together and purposely watch really stupid movies, but throughout the movie they make hilarious commentary and thus the whole experience is a blast. Now imagine if a crew like that sat down and tried to do a dinosaur documentary, but instead of doing hilarious commentary, they tried to be completely serious. Yup, that's what we got with Walking With Dinosaurs. Apparently the documentary this is based off of is a really good documentary, but the movie is just embarrassing. You have these really well done CGI dinosaurs that are cool to look at and learn about, but suddenly you start hearing voices coming from the screen. They are supposed to be coming from the dinosaurs, but the dinosaurs aren't lip-synced at all, so it just seems weird. Add to that, only four of the characters get voices and apparently the rest of the dinosaurs just don't have the ability to talk. Thus we get the Mystery Science Theater 3000 feel. The movie tries to be educational at first, but then they just stick with doing this weird love triangle of a story line with very little drama or substance at all. This movie might be entertaining for a 3 year old on a weekday morning, but for everyone else it's worth skipping. Just check out the actual documentary.

3- After Earth

These final three movies come from three of my least favorite directors currently still making movies. At number three is a man whose career started off very strong, but somewhere along the lines he forgot how to make movies. And for some reason, he keeps trying. Yes, I am talking about M. Knight Shyamalan. Going into this, I was nervous about giving Shyamalan another chance, but I was also hopeful that it would be a success because Will Smith helped with making of the movie. Can't go wrong with Will Smith, right? The man is notorious for being very selective with the movies he acts in, and thus most all of his movies end up being really good. Or at the very least, his acting job in the movie is good. Unfortunately, though, it appears that not even Will Smith is perfect. Yes, I put a lot of the blame on Shyamalan because all his movies now just suck, but I will also blame Will Smith for this disaster because he had a big role in this with both writing and acting. Poorly written? Yes. Poorly acted? Yes. That's the first time I've had to say Will Smith's acting was bad and hopefully that will be the last. The rest of the movie? Horribly boring and dull. We got on a post-apocalyptic binge this year due to last year's "end of the world" drama. There were several interesting movies like this that happened. After Earth was the worst. Yes Will Smith was bad in this movie, but his son Jaden was even worse. I thought the kid did great in The Karate Kid, so I have nothing against him. But this was just a terrible performance for him. Also the movie was probably the most generic and predictable sci-fi movie I've seen in a long time. It tried to have heart, but it had none. Sadly there was zero chemistry between Will and Jaden, and that's embarrassing.

2- Pain & Gain

Michael Bay is my next victim. I don't know who let Michael Bay do a crime drama, but that was a very bad idea. Personally, I love crime dramas. One of my favorite current shows is Criminal Minds. I also love other shows like NCIS, Bones, Numbers, Castle, Sherlock, Luther, and Psych. There are also plenty of crime drama movies that are excellent, so it's really unfortunate for me when a crime drama comes around that had so much potential, but ended up being a complete disaster. Pain & Gain is based off a true story of a Sun Gym gang in Miami in the 1990's. And when I say "based off a true story" I mean in this instance it was very, very, very loosely based off a true story. The movie tries to get you to believe that it's extremely accurate. In fact, it shoves it down your throat the whole movie. Don't listen. It's so far off the actual events that it is despicable and borderline offensive. If you want to read the true story of the Sun Gym gang, you can do so here. It's a very long read, but worth it. Basically what happened is that Daniel Lugo and Adrian Doorbal were genius criminals. The two of them led a small gang of three to five people wherein they kidnapped, tortured, and forced a very rich man to sign over everything he had to them. Then they tried to kill him, making it look like a suicide. By what can only be described as a miracle, the man survived crashing his car, having his car explode, and being ran over twice. He fled the country for a while, and when he was brave enough to come back, no one believed him. A certain detective finally decided to investigate, and after a long investigation, the gang only got caught because they tried to do it a second time, but made some critical mistakes along the way. Lugo and Doorball got the death penalty, while the other minor players served from 10 to 20 years. In terms of the movie adaption, had Michael Bay taken the Prisoners or Zodiac type of approach, this movie would've been amazing. But no. First off, all the characters were portrayed wrong. Lugo was portrayed as an idiot. Doorbal was portrayed is a whiny freak show. The rest of the gang were all combined to form one fictional member of the gang. The victim of the whole thing was portrayed as a crazy idiot. The movie was a comedy, which was totally absurd. The movie actually actually makes you sympathize with the gang to a certain extent while making you think the victim was a lunatic. There's a reason why the actual family threatened to sue Michael Bay for this movie. It's an outright offensive disaster. No, I don't fully blame Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Mackie, and Dwayne Johnson, except for maybe taking on the roles. I fully blame Michael Bay and anyone else who worked on the production of this movie.

1- Man of Steel 

And here it is! Man of Steel is my least favorite film of 2013. If you knew me or talked to me about this movie throughout the year, you'll know this doesn't come as a surprise at all. I love Superman. No, I have no allegiance to the Superman comics, let's get that out right now, but what I do have allegiance to is the Richard Donner Superman movies, specifically the first two. Yes they were made in the late 70's and early 80's and thus are a bit cheesy, with less than superb special effects. But the story is just absolutely beautiful. The characters are very well written and very well acted. Specifically, the actual character of Superman is the best written Superman ever. First off, is he perfect? No. He's pretty unstoppable, but there are a lot of mental and emotional challenges that he has to go through as a character who is one of  the last of his kind on a planet that is not his own. At one point he even gives up his powers to try to become a normal human being, not knowing what his purpose is. So beautiful. So touching. There is also a lot of messianic symbolism that comes with the character Superman. He loves the people. He protects the people. He saves the people from evil. The people love him back. He is their savior. I could go on about these movies and this character for a long time, but I'll stop. Overall these Richard Donner Superman movies are some of my favorite movies ever made. I expected Man of Steel to be a bit different. I was actually really excited for the movie. But when I finally sat down in that theater, I quickly became appalled and offended. Every second of the movie was painful for me to watch. They almost literally got EVERYTHING wrong. It was as if Man of Steel was written for the intent purpose of pleasing those who hated the Richard Donner Superman movies, because all the beauty and all the symbolism that these movies brought to the movie and character of Superman were completely destroyed and twisted around in Man of Steel. Superman wasn't a messianic figure. He was a whimp. He hid from the world and only came out because Zod threatened to destroy the earth. The people didn't love him, they treated him like a Batman-esque fugitive and tried to arrest him. That's great for Batman, but not for Superman. Superman didn't care for the people. In fact, when Zod came to fight him in the city, Superman was personally responsible for millions of dollars of damage to the city and millions of deaths. Speaking of which, the movie was non-stop action that was way too over top. The villain Zod was ruined. None of the actors did a terrible job, but none of them shined a light on the performances by the actors in the Richard Donner Superman movies. I haven't even begun to mention all the confusing scenes, all the plot-holes, and all the over-the-top product placement. After reading this huge paragraph, it's probably hard to imagine that I have only scratched the surface with my complaints on this movie, but I think I've said enough. Not only was this my least favorite movie of the year, but I don't know if I've ever watch a movie in which I was more offended and appalled as I watched. I'm not going to give the absolute on this final statement, but instead I will say that Man of Steel is one of the worst movies I have EVER watched. It's as if they let my least favorite director Zack Snyder do a Superman movie. Oh wait. That is what they did.

DrogeMiester's Top 10 BEST Movies of 2013

This year in movies has been a really good year in my opinion. Now that the year is over, it's time to do what I look forward to every year -- making my list of favorite movies. Simply stated, this is my own personal list of the movies that I enjoyed most this year. I'm in no way prejudice in only including critically praised movies, Oscar contending movies, big box office hits, or movies that no one has heard of. This is just a list of my personal favorite movies, regardless of what anyone else thinks. I don't do this to impress anyone or to brag. I just wanted to share with you my favorite movies of the year. No, I haven't seen every movie, but I did see a lot of movies this year, so this list was actually really hard to create. There's a lot of movies that I wanted to include that I simply had to leave off because there wasn't room. Feedback and conversation is always fun, especially because the beauty of movies is that everyone can like different movies for different reasons; so once you read this, let me know what you think! Also, feel free to share with me your own personal favorites! Let's begin!

10- Saving Mr. Banks

The trailers on this one led me to believe that it was going to be a different movie than what it was. Trailer fail. But movie win. I love the movie Mary Poppins. However, I never really looked into the meaning of the movie that much. It was just a fun movie with fun music. Saving Mr. Banks is a movie that gave me a lot more insight to Mary Poppins. Specifically, author P.L. Travers had a very special, yet unique relationship with her father. Yes, he was a drunk. Yes, he had problems with his wife and his job. But he loved his little daughter and his little daughter loved him. That made P.L. Travers' book Mary Poppins very special to her for certain reasons, and to me learning of that relationship and watching it unfold was really beautiful and inspiring. I wanted to cry right along with Emma Thompson at the end. Speaking of which, Emma Thompson's performance as P.L. Travers was amazing. Definitely one of my favorite performances from an actress this year. Yes, Tom Hanks did great as Walt Disney, but this wasn't his film. This was Emma Thompson's film. I hope she wins an Oscar for this.

9- About Time

Imagine for a second if you had the ability to travel through time to events that happened in your life. You can't change history, but you can go back and change things that you have done. Maybe I'm just a sucker for time travel, but I thought this premise was really interesting. Specifically, our main character uses this ability he learns that he has to try to get a girlfriend. There's the second connection that this movie had with me. What if you had a poor encounter with a girl and you could just go back in time a few minutes before that encounter happened and change something that you said? I think I would be able to put that to good use. I won't give away much about this movie, but I went in expecting a chick flick with a time travel twist. I walked out with a lot more than that. This movie is actually less about the guy and the girl, and more about the guy and his father, who introduces him to this idea that the men in their family, once they turn 21, have the ability to go back in time. The movie had a lot of depth to it and a lot of heart. The acting was superb and the overall message that it taught was very inspiring.

8- The Book Thief

The Book Thief is based off the critically acclaimed book of the same title. I have not read this book, but after seeing this movie, that is something that I want to change. Eventually. This is a World War II movie, but a very unique one in that it tells the story from the perspective of people who were good people living in Nazi Germany during World War II. These people don't support the Nazi party, but they go with the flow so that they can survive. It was a super interesting premise that was really interesting to follow. This is actually a very slow-paced movie, but in this instance I appreciated it because I was able to get emotionally attached to this family that we followed. Specifically, our main character was the most adorable little girl that has been adopted by this older couple living in Nazi Germany. The little girl is played by a young actress named Sophie Nelisse and I wish her a long and prosperous acting career because she was absolutely fantastic. Really, the acting from everyone is superb and that's what made this movie work so well.

7- Nebraska

In case you haven't noticed, I have a theme going here. It wasn't intentional actually, but when I decided on my final order, I realized that most of my top movies were movies that had touching stories about family. I guess I'm just a sucker for these family movies. Yes, this theme continues with the movie Nebraska. I imagine that there are a lot of you that haven't seen this movie yet, and that's because it didn't get a huge release. Luckily for me, this movie showed up in a little theater in my hometown, so I caught. Whenever it gets to you, I'd highly recommend you give it a shot. It has a lot of Oscar buzz around it, and for good reason. What it is is a father/son movie. This family consists of a middle aged son who goes on a trip with his crazy old father to the state of Nebraska because his father thinks he has won a million dollars. Once again, it's a slow-moving movie that is actually shot in black and white. But all the actors do a terrific job and thus you become attached to this family. Bruce Dern plays the old, crazy father and Will Forte plays the son that gives in and goes with him to Nebraska. I loved Bruce Dern in this movie and I also loved his wife in the movie, June Squibb, who steals the show every time she shows up. Both of them will be up for Oscars here in a bit, and I wish them both luck. I also highly respect Will Forte because he usually does comedy and in this instance he does excellent in a completely serious role.

6- The Croods

It was a fantastic year in animation in my opinion. I loved Frozen. I loved Despicable Me 2. I also found myself surprisingly entertained by Monsters University, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, and Epic. But in my opinion, Dreamworks hit the big home run this year with The Croods. I wasn't expecting much with this movie, which shows that Dreamworks advertising wasn't that great, but I was super surprised by how much I loved it. Not only was the animation done very well, but the characters were extremely well written. In the movie, we follow a caveman family whose cave gets tragically destroyed, so they have to venture out into the world to survive. The voice acting is top notch. Specifically, Nick Cage does an amazing job as the father, and Emma Stone does an amazing job as the rebellious daughter. The movie made me laugh really hard throughout and it almost made me cry at the end. What gave it even more kudos was that it has the rewatchability factor, which for me is really important for animated movies especially. I saw this movie four or five times in theaters and every time I laughed just as hard and got even closer to crying at the end. Owl City does the main song Shine Your Way. I have that song downloaded and it is a commonly listened to song by myself. Not only is this my favorite animated movie of the year, but it is also up there as one of my favorite animated movies that Dreamworks has ever done. Yes, it's right up there with the likes of Shrek and Kung Fu Panda for me.

5- The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Leading up to the first Hunger Games movie, I was hearing a lot of hype for the movie because of the book. However, I hadn't read the books before I went to go see the first movie. After seeing the movie, I was instantly converted and quickly picked up the books and read the whole trilogy. When I got to Catching Fire, I was completely captured. I literally couldn't set it down. I read the whole book in just two days, which for me is super good. I ended up enjoying the whole series, including the often hated ending, but Catching Fire was my favorite book of the series. Needless to say, I was really excited for the movie, yet I was crossing my fingers that they would do it right, because if they did it had the potential to be a super good movie. Turns out they hit a grand slam as far as I'm concerned as this is one of the best book-to-movie adaptions ever made. Their pacing was perfect. Quite honestly, the book moved a bit slow in the beginning, but I loved that the book did so because it allowed for some character building. I was worried that the movie would rush the beginning and jump quickly to the arena. They didn't. They took their time and beautifully built up all the characters, just like in the book. Another slight concern I had initially was with Jennifer Lawrence. And before you freak out, I loved her in the first movie. Katniss in the first book was pretty good at keeping her emotions to herself, thus she came across as fairly emotionless. Jennifer Lawrence pulled this off perfectly. In the second book, though, is when Katniss starts to become emotionally unstable and thus freaks out at everything. I was simply wondering how Jennifer would pull that off. And by goodness she did it perfectly. Kudos to the rest of the cast, though. The returning cast was all excellent, just like in the first one. I was hoping the new cast members would pull it off, though, because Catching Fire introduces several new key characters that are very important to the finale. Once again, all the new cast members fit in perfectly and also nailed their characters. Specifically, I am talking about Philip Seymour Hoffman (Plutarch), Jeffrey Wright (Beetee), Sam Claflin (Finnick), and Jena Malone (Johanna). Story-wise, I was worried that the movie might go outside Katniss' perspective more than they should, but they didn't. They kept the twist ending a complete surprise for audiences who hadn't the book. I was very pleased with how this turned out.

4- Now You See Me

I could go on for a long time with this movie, but I'm not going to because what made Now You See Me so brilliant in my opinion is something that would require me to spoil the whole movie. This is a movie about a group of magicians that get brought together by an unknown person to put on a series of magic performances, all of which require doing things that aren't exactly legal. What happens is rather brilliant, but a huge part of the experience is going in to the movie knowing nothing about it. So I won't even begin to explain why I liked it so much. What I will say is that it had an excellent cast. Our four magicians are played by Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, and Dave Franco. The chemistry between those four is perfect. Also we have the always fantastic veteran actors of Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. Mark Ruffalo leads our FBI crew and he is supporting brilliantly by a bunch of different lesser-known actors led by Michael Kelly from the wrongly cancelled show Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior. Think there's lots of plot holes? Think it's very illogical? If you answered yes to either of those, you may have missed the whole point of the movie and you need to come talk to me privately so I can explain this movie's brilliance.

3- The Great Gatsby

Here's a movie that, if you recall, I didn't initially give it a high grade when I first saw it. However, for several months the movie just wouldn't leave my mind. I thought a lot about the events of the movie, and then when I rented it on DVD and watched it again, that is when it blew my mind. The novel of the same title written by F Scott Fitzgerald is considered a classic, and although I never read it, I understand why. The book was written in the 1920's and is a reflection of society for that time period. It's also a reflection of society today. The fact that it stand the test of time like that, being still relevant to us today, makes the story brilliant. In the story, you have four main characters. You have the main girl who only cares about money. You have the husband of the girl who cheats on her, yet is a hypocrite because he expects her to not do the same. You have the old boyfriend who was rejected by the girl, and so he tries to change who he is to impress her again, not caring that she is married. Finally you have the friend who is more of an onlooker to all this. He doesn't really participate in all of this, but yet he does nothing to stop it, helping it along when he is asked to. All these are four very different characters all with different moral problems. Who's good? Who's bad? That's open to a lot of discussion there, but it is brilliant to see all of these characters interact and clash with each other. The characters in the movie are played by Leonardo DiCaprio, Joel Edgerton, Carey Mulligan, and Tobey Maguire. All four nail the characters perfectly. Also the soundtrack for this movie is amazing, topped by the beautiful, yet haunting song Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Rey.

2- 12 Years a Slave

12 Years a Slave is a movie that will stick with me for a long time. We all have heard how slavery was via our history books and our education, but since it was abolished long before our time, none of us have personal experience with it. This movie gives us a realistic take on how it was like to be a slave. Being realistic, it is quite graphic at times and super hard to watch for much of it. The movie pulls at all your emotional strings as you watch certain slave owners in the movie treat their slaves like property and livestock. It's horrible watching these human beings being treated like dirt, and it's even worse as we see that some people really didn't see them as human beings. The story is also heart-wrenching because we follow the true story of Solomon Northcut, a man who was born free, but later in life got kidnapped and sold into slavery for 12 years, leaving his wife and two children behind. It's such a sad story. However, despite it being hard to watch, I would recommend that this is a movie that all adults should watch. No it's not a children's movie, but watching this movie has given me more insights into slavery than anything I read in a history book. Also the movie is heavily boosted by a terrific cast, all of whom do an excellent job with their roles. This movie has a lot of Oscar awards coming its way and they are all deserved.

1- Gravity

As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, there are a lot of movie that were excellent this year. Despite that, though, picking Gravity as my top movie was the easiest choice I had to make while putting this list together, as seeing Gravity in 3D was easily the best theatrical experience of the year for me and quite possibly one of the best theatrical experiences of my life. Note the careful wording with that. Favorite movie of all time is different than best theatrical experience. What this movie did was take me into space. And the 3D aspect of the movie was what made it actually feel that way. I normally don't like 3D movies, but the 3D in this movie is the best 3D movie ever. Yes, there are a lot of movies about space, but this movie portrayed space better than any movie has ever done. There was an astronaut's review that I read that said this. He admitted that it wasn't 100 percent perfect, but it was the most realistic that he had ever watched. In doing so, it showed me how scary space actually is. If you get lost, there is very little hope for you. Space is extremely dangerous and completely unmerciful. Like many people, I have always thought it would be fun to go into space. Nope. Not anymore. However, this movie isn't just about all the realistic space visuals. This is a movie where Sandra Bullock plays an astronaut that runs into some serious problems and has to fight to survive. With how realistic the portrayal of space is added to the fact that the 3D makes you feel like you are up in space with Sandra Bullock, you become immediately attached to her character and you aren't just watching her character suffer and hoping she survives, but you are living the story with her. You become terrified as the soundless explosions start happening and all the chaos begins. There were times where I was unsure if I was going to make it out of the theater alive. I personally am not going to tell you what happens to Sandra Bullock's character outside of mentioning that it actually wasn't that predictable, but I will mention that I am proud to announce that I personally made it. I survived space. Yes, this was my favorite movie of the year. Nothing even really came that close.

DrogeMiester's Top 10 Albums of 2013

Yes, I listen to a lot of music. If you haven't been following my blog recently, in the last few weeks I have created three different music lists. Those would be the Most Popular Songs of 2013, my personal favorite Songs of 2013, and my personal favorite Music Videos of 2013. This upcoming list is the grand finale of all these music of 2013 lists, and that would be, as the title suggests, my personal favorite albums of the year. This list actually took a long time to make, not because I was struggling to come up with a specific order, but rather because I didn't listen to as many full albums this year as I did individual singles. Yes, there was several that I had listened to, and I had a top 5 ready, but I wanted to make a top 10, so I spent a lot of time in the last week or so sampling a bunch of different albums this year and finding the ones that I liked the best so I could come up with a good solid top 10. In the other lists, I posted the songs and music videos with each choice so you could listen to the song as you read why it made the list. With this being full albums, I'm not going to post a link. Instead I'll just post the album art and let you go find a place to listen to the album yourself, like YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, or wherever you go to listen to music. Enjoy!

10- "Bad Blood" -- Bastille

You may know their hit single, Pompeii, but let me tell you that Bastille is a really good new band. Not every one of the songs on Bad Blood is blow you away awesome, which is why this album only comes in at number 10, but all the songs are good, and there are several songs, Like Pompeii and Icarus that are very excellent. The sound of Bastille is really chilling. In some ways, they remind me of those old Gregorian chants mixed with recent pop music. Or maybe I'm just crazy by saying that. Either way, the sound of this album is rather awesome.

9- "Atmosphere" -- Kaskade

And here we go! If you know me, or have listened to the songs from my favorite songs list, you'll know that I have a type. I love electronic music. And even though I do think that this particular list does include plenty of non-electronic music, thus showing the versatility in my musical tastes, I won't shy away from mentioning the electronic albums that I personally enjoyed, even if I am the only one that did. Ryan Raddon, known by his stage name of Kaskade, is really awesome. I learned recently that he attended the same University that I am currently attended, that of Brigham Young University. What does that have to do with this album of his? Nothing really. Just a fun connection. The album itself I think is super beautiful. He sings some, but does his DJ-ing for most of it. It may not be as creative and mind blowing as some other albums higher on this list, but the whole album has a beautiful feel, like say the feeling of you gliding through the atmosphere.

8- "Intense" -- Armin Van Buuren

Here we have our second electronic album in a row. After that, we will take a break from the genre for a while. I think the two albums right here, Atmosphere by Kaskade and Intense by Armin Van Buuren, are pretty similar albums. Kaskade's album is a prettier sounding album, however I give the nod to Intense  as the slightly better album because while Atmosphere is much of the same for the whole album, Intense is a more versatile. While not nearly as creative as a later album that blew my mind, there are a lot of different sounds and voices on this album, thus making it really fun to listen to.

7- "Pure Heroine" -- Lorde

It's been a huge year for Lorde as the 17-year-old's first single quickly become one of the biggest songs of the year. Most people her age have only begun to consider what they want to do for their career. I was quickly impressed with how talented this young girl is. I'm also surprised by how mature her music is. Had I not known before, I would've never guessed that she is as young as she is. When I first listened to Royals, I wasn't completely blown away. However, the more I listened to it, the more I liked it. Her whole album is the same style that Royals is. Once you get used to her style, you quickly fall in love with all her music. It's fantastic.

6- "All That Echoes" -- Josh Groban

Out of all the voices in the musical world, Josh Groban's voice is my favorite. I just get blown away every time I listen to him sing. This recent album of his may not be as good as his past albums as there's not a whole lot of songs that you will remember for a long time after you listen to it, but it's still Josh Groban. That voice is still amazing. Even though Brave is the only the only song that really gets stuck in my head afterwards, the whole album is still great to turn on, listen to, and relieve all the stress from the day.

5- "Kveikur" -- Sigur Ros

I first heard of Sigur Ros when they did the music for the movie We Bought a Zoo. Not only was that movie excellent on its own, but the absolute beautiful music in the movie made it that much better. I've been in love with Sigur Ros ever since. I know that means I'm probably late on the band wagon, but oh well. This most recent album I can't understand anything that's being said and I don't even know exactly what genre to label it as, but that doesn't matter. I just call it beautiful music.

4- "In a Tidal Wave of Mystery" -- Capitol Cities

As I mentioned when I put the song Safe and Sound on my favorite songs list, when I first listened to the song I was thinking that it was a fun, but generic pop song, but then the trumpet anthem came in and I was super impressed. Then I listened to the whole album and was really impressed because the whole album was super creative in the way they used different instruments in their songs. It reminded me a lot of fun.'s first album. Just a creative and fun album to listen to in both instances.

3- "Britney Jean" -- Britney Spears

Britney Spears? Really? I know that's what you are all thinking when you see this. Yes. Britney Spears. And I'm proud of it. Britney was the bane of my existence when I was in Elementary School. I hated her and I hated her music. However, I think that she has matured a lot as she has gotten older, at least in terms of her music. The first time she caught my attention musically speaking was with her song I Wanna Go. Not the best lyrically, but I found that I really enjoyed the sound of it. After many years of despise and hatred towards her music, my heart began to be softened. I wasn't extremely impressed with the rest of her Femme Fatale album, but I wasn't opposed to it either. On the eve of her release of Britney Jean, I became curiously excited, especially after I liked the song she wrote for Smurfs 2 and the lead single Work from Britney Jean. When the full album finally came out at the end of November, I found myself very pleased. Britney has said that this is her most personal album and it really shows. It's also a very clean album, which is different from some of the stuff she has done in the past. And last but not least, I love the sound. The album has a lot of electronic influence and, as you know, I really enjoy that. David Guetta is one of my favorite electronic musicians and he actually collaborated with Britney on this album. So essentially it's Britney's lyrics and voice with David Guetta's sound. If me loving this album didn't make sense to you before, it should make perfect sense now that you have that in mind. David Guetta is magical. He has the ability to work with any musician that I have not liked in the past and make me like their music.

2- "TRUE" -- Avicii

Earlier when I was talking about Armin Van Buuren's album Intense, I made reference to an album that was super creative that I would mention later. This is it. The beauty of Avicii's music is how creative he is. When you listen to this whole album, you'll notice that he doesn't purely make an electronic album. He experiments with a whole bunch of different genres and styles of music, with a bunch of different instruments. Then he implements a lot of different singers, both male and female, as the voices. Then after doing all that, he mixes his electronic sounds in with the music rather cleverly. You can definitely appreciate each individual song if you listen to them without the rest of the album, but once you listen to the full album together, it will just completely blow your mind. Each song has a different feel and a different style, and thus each song you listen to is a brand new musical experience. It is rather impressive. Also of note, Avicii doesn't sing. Yet he doesn't give credit to his singers in the title of the song. On first listen, some people will hear a song like Wake Me Up! and say after it ends that they were really impressed with Avicii's voice. I personally laugh at that, but eventually they find out the voice was actually Aloe Blacc. Some people then get mad at Avicii for not crediting him. That there is silly. Aloe Blacc doesn't care that he's not credited. He actually enjoys the anonymous hit. Avicii does give credit in the album credits, so he's safe legally, but it's just his style. He's not the first to do it that way.

1- "Random Access Memories" -- Daft Punk  

I've always enjoyed Daft Punk's music. Back in the day of their first albums, they did have their audience, but generally speaking they got little attention. Several years went by before they came out with Random Access Memories this year, and lucky for them they are one of many beneficiaries of the rise of electronic music. Their lead single from this album, Get Lucky, ended up being one of the biggest songs of the year and concurrently made their album Random Access Memories one of the biggest albums of the year. In fact, Random Access Memories is up for a Grammy this year for best album. All this makes me super happy as I love this album. In this instance, it's actually not me going with the flow of popularity, but rather it's the rest of the world deciding they like the music I like. Ironically, though, Get Lucky is my least favorite song on the album. The rest of the album is super beautiful and is one of the few albums these days that actually works best when you listen to the whole album together. The theme is the future. Towards the beginning of the album there is a song called Georgio by Moroder, which is very unique in the sense the main part of the song is Georgio Moroder himself telling the story of his life. Georgio Moroder is one of the pioneers of electronic music and in his monologue in the song, he tells the story of no one told him of any music rules, so he just did his own thing and when he came up with this style of music, he tells that this, he believed, was the future of music. Daft Punk takes that message and really makes it the theme of their whole album. The whole album has a futuristic theme, culminating with the song Touch, which essentially tells the story of a robot in the future remembering what it was like to have the sensation of touch as if the future has become such that we have lost this and been taken over by robots. This just makes the whole album actually quite beautiful and amazing. I hope it wins best album in the Grammys because it certainly has my vote for favorite album. It would be nice if the public agrees with me for once.

About Time Review

If you don't know already, I am a big fan of the British singer Ellie Goulding. Recently she released an extended version of her Halcyon album entitled Halcyon Days. No this is not a review of that album, but there is a song on that album entitled How Long Will You Love You. It's a very sweet, romantic song. My first thought upon listening is that I want the song played at my wedding. Pretty soon after the release of Halcyon Days, I learned that this song will be featured on the movie About Time. I know that's a silly reason to be excited about a movie, but that's what happened. When I finally got around to seeing this movie this past week, I was rather disappointed. The song was on there, but it was sung by someone else. The guy didn't do a bad job singing it, but it still wasn't Ellie. That aside, I'm actually glad that I was motivated to see the movie in that way because I ended up loving the movie.

About Time looked like it was simply a chick flick, so I didn't put it high on my list to see. Turns out that it wasn't a chick flick at all. I mean, chicks will like this flick, but the typical chick flick formula doesn't exist. There's a romance storyline, but the couple falling in love isn't even the main focus of this movie. The movie is more focused on the relationship between the father and the son. The premise of the movie is that the males in this particular family, once they turn 21, have the ability to travel in time in their own personal lives. There are plenty of conditions to this that the movie gets into more as it goes along, but I won't jump into those. Our main character Tim has just turned 21, and his dad takes the time to break the news to him. Initially Tim thinks this is stupid, but quickly learns it is actually true. Tim decides to do what most single men in their early 20's would use this to do. Get a girlfriend.

Imagine for a second if you were on a date and you said something really stupid, but had the ability to go back a few minutes and fix that. Or perhaps you had a really bold question you wanted to ask a certain someone, but you were too nervous to ask. Wouldn't you like the idea of asking the question with no shame, then going back in time if things blew up in your face? Like say, pretend you had a girlfriend, but you didn't know if she wanted to marry you or not and suddenly you had an old girl from your past come into your life that showed genuine interest. What if you could just go propose to your girlfriend, and if she said no, you could go back in time and fix things with this other girl? Yes, I got that example from the movie. Like that idea? Or do you think that is really shallow? Think people should just learn to do things on their own without cheating their way through life. Think people should just learn to enjoy life as it comes? Yeah, I'm getting there. This movie isn't a shallow movie about time travel. It has a lot of depth to it and I loved the overall message that it was trying to get across.

The cast in this movie is really good. Our main male protagonist, Tim, is played by Domhnall Gleeson, best known for his role of Bill Weasly in the Harry Potter movies. His main love interest is the lovely Rachel McAdams, who I've noticed somehow ends up in like every romance movie. Both of these characters do a really good job of acting, but another thing I noticed was how well these two have aged. They play characters who are supposed to be in their 20's and, despite Gleeson being 30 and McAdams being 35, they pull it off real well. In fact, later in the movie time fast forwards and they are supposed to be older. I was going to complain that they didn't look old enough for the roles they were playing later in the movie. When I looked up the actors' ages, I was pleasantly surprised that they were actually older than I thought. However, like I said, the love story between Gleeson and McAdams isn't the main focus. The focus is more on the relationship with father and son, and the great Bill Nighy, who manages to make it into every movie I watch, also does a fantastic job as the dad.

In the end, this movie really surprised me. With how strong the reviews were, I expected a moving and perhaps charming love story mixed with time travel. I got that, but I also got a movie that was a lot more. About Time is well acted, well shot, and was touching and inspiring enough to almost make me tear up in the end. If the movie doesn't end up making my top 10 movies of 2013, know that it will have at least gotten close. I give About Time a 9 out of 10.

12 Years a Slave Review

Slavery was awful. It's horrible to imagine that people actually treated other human beings like property or livestock. Just plain horrible. I think it's safe to say that all of us have learned about slavery in the United States through our history books and other sources, but witnessing a realistic portrayal of slavery in a movie is definitely a totally different and new experience. The movie is 12 Years a Slave. It's getting a ton of Oscar buzz and is the likely choice for best picture. After going through the experience myself, I would say it's definitely worthy of all the awards it will get. I would recommend this movie to all adults. It's a must see.

12 Years a Slave is the true story of Solomon Northup. His story is an amazing one, but in no good way, as Brad Pitt's character puts in late in the movie. He was born a free man and had a wife and two kids when he was kidnapped and sold into slavery. As the movie title suggests, he lived the life of a slave for 12 long years. Being straight up and honest, this movie is very difficult to watch at times. The movie perfectly portrays what life was like back in the day for a slave. They were inspected and sold as property. Once sold, they were treated like livestock or worse. Some of the slave owners were nicer than others, but yet they still were all slave owners. Every day was spent out in the fields picking cotton or doing other chores. If they didn't do a good enough job, they were whipped. The movie shows all this in a very realistic manner. Though hard to watch, it's a movie that I will remember for a long time.

There was a lot of great acting in the movie. Leading the way was Chiwetel Ejiofer as Solomon Northup. As a fellow slave with his master that he's with longest is Lupita Nyong'o. Both of them totally nail their roles as the main slaves focused on. Both deserve Oscar wins. There are several different slave owners focused on in the movie and they are played by Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, and Michael Fassbender. It was interesting to see the different personalities of the slave owners. Cumberbatch played a slave owner that treated his slaves with a lot more respect than the others. Dano portrayed a man that was ruthless and unfair, although he wasn't the head owner. Finally, Fassbender plays the slave owner that Solomon ends up with for most of the movie. He's not as crazy as Dano, but he is very tough and strict. All three of these actors do a great job and portraying their different characters. Finally, Brad Pitt shows up towards the end of the movie and does an excellent job in his role, of which I won't give away.

Yes, 12 Years a Slave is a movie that is very hard to watch. But it's a movie that I would consider very important to watch because it gives the audience great insights on the history of the United States. It has a great score, a perfect tone, great cinematography, and A+ performances from everyone all around that all carries the movie. It's nearly perfect all around and left me almost in tears at the end. Like I said, this is a movie I will remember for a long time, so I am awarding it a 10 out of 10.

Movie Preview: January 2014

I'm currently in the process of catching up some final movies from 2013 so that I can create my best and worst movie lists from this past year. After that, I will look forward to the movies of 2014. In the meantime, though, a new year means that a new month has begun, so let's quickly take a look at the movies coming out in January of 2014. January is typically a dumping ground month for movies and this January looks like it's no different. However, there still is a chance that a movie or two could end up entertaining audiences, so let's begin!

January 3rd - 5th - 

The Christmas holiday was a very crowded one, and with this first weekend of January being the final weekend for everyone's holiday break, it's likely that the holdover movies, like Frozen and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug will be the movies dominating this weekend. However, there is one movie that will be joining the crowd, and that is Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. The first Paranormal Activity was quite the breakthrough. Not only did it make the found footage genre even more popular, but it was a horror movie that only took $15,000 to make, yet it earned $193 million worldwide. What happens when you have a horror movie that had a profit of nearly $200 million? You get a whole ton of sequels. Being that the three sequels have combined to earn over $500 million on a combined budget of $13 million, these movies aren't going to slow down anytime soon. After missing out on 2014, the franchise plans on making up for by throwing out two of them this year. While Paranormal Activity 5 hits theaters in October, The Marked Ones will try the franchise's luck in January. It's also not a direct sequel to the others, but rather it's just a spin-off. It's final total probably won't come near the others, but that doesn't matter. Given how little it takes to make these movies, earning a profit will happen rather easily. Also, horror movies in January have had good luck recently, so it could challenge for the top spot.

January 10th - 12th - 

For some reason, Hollywood has decided to go on a Hercules kick in 2014. Most people are aware of the Dwayne Johnson version coming out later in the year, but not many are aware of this January version of Hercules, entitled The Legend of Hercules. While Dwayne Johnson gets his shot later this year to portray the character, Kellan Lutz gets the first opportunity of the year. Who? Yeah, he is best known for his role as Emmet Cullen in Twilight. Most people know the Disney version of Hercules. This version will be quite a bit different than that, though. However, it's worth noting that Disney usually takes a story and twists it up quite a bit for their movies, so this version of Hercules will probably be a lot more accurate than the Disney version in terms of the actual story of Hercules, so don't let yourself be too confused when you watch this movie and it turns out to be nothing like the Hercules you think you know.

January 17th - 19th - 

After a total of only two new wide releases in the first two wide releases, allowing plenty of time for Christmas holdovers to die off a bit more, January finally picks up pace with four new wide releases this weekend. Adding to the mix will be the fact that Oscar nominations will have been just announced, so those movies will also play into the picture, making this even more busy. The first new wide release is Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. This movie will be dedicated to the recently passed on Tom Clancy, who is the author of the Jack Ryan book series. If you aren't familiar with Jack Ryan, it is a series of nine books, four of which have been turned into movies. Those four movies are The Hunt For Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and The Sum of All Fears. Playing the character of Jack Ryan has been Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck. Shadow Recruit is an attempt to reboot the series with Star Trek star Chris Pine filling the big shoes of Jack Ryan. This is the first Jack Ryan movie that's not actually based on a specific, which is an odd choice. Adjusted for ticket price inflation, all four previous movies have earned over $150 million in the box office. This means that unless Shadow Recruit pulls of some serious January magic (only two January movies have ever made it above $150 million), this will probably be the lowest attended Jack Ryan movie yet.

Rivaling Jack Ryan for the top spot will be the year's first comedy in Ride Along. This is a buddy comedy starring Kevin Hart and Ice Cube. While Ice Cube has managed to keep showing up in various things, the big draw for this movie is comedian Kevin Hart. Last year, the stand-up comedy concert movie Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain became one of the highest grossing stand-up comedy concert movies ever, which shows the rising popularity of the comedian. Last year, Identity Thief became a huge hit early in the year, so there is hope for Ride Along.

January always seems to include at least one or two horror movies. This year there is two, with Devil's Due being the second after Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. Recently January has actually been very good to horror movies. Last year Mama opened in January and ended its run with $70 million. In 2012, The Devil Inside opened up on the first weekend of January with the third highest opening weekend ever for the month of January. That is positive news for Devil's Due, although horror movies are always hit and miss. Some randomly open huge while others get completely ignored, and there's almost no pattern to predict which will happen. Devil's Due hopes to follow recent January trends, but initial predictions aren't very hopeful.

Finally, the fourth wide release is animated movie The Nut Job. The voice casting in this movie is huge as it includes Will Arnett, Brendan Fraser, Liam Neeson, Katherine Heigl, and Gabriel Iglesias. The other advantage is that family audiences have really had no new options since Frozen. The problem is that this isn't made by one of the huge animation brands like Dreamworks, Pixar, or even Blue Sky and Illumination. It's more of an independently made animation. Distributor Open Roads also isn't known for huge releases and their biggest hit was 2012's The Grey, which earned a total $51 million. With The Lego Movie coming around the corner, family audiences will probably be patient and wait for that one while ignoring The Nut Job.

January 24th - 26th - 

After loading up on movies the previous week, January slows down with only one release in I, Frankenstein. It's been quite the journey for this movie as it was initially scheduled for last February before being pushed back twice. All that has resulted in confusing audiences when the trailer came out. Although Frankenstein is in the title of the movie and is the title character, played by Aaron Eckhart, this is more of a Frankenstein meets Underworld type. Being that the movie is from the producers of Underworld, that makes a lot of sense. It's also based on a graphic novel of the same title, so it's not something the makers are pulling out of nowhere. The previous three Underworld movies all came out in the end of January, opened in the $20 million range, and ended around $50 - $60 million. Look for I, Frankenstein to pull in that same type of crowd.

January 31st - February 2nd - 

The last weekend of January has more days in February than January, but as you know, I always include these types of weekends with the month that has the first day of the weekend. So this is in January. And before the month of February lights up the box office, this weekend gives us two releases that will probably be mostly forgotten about a few weeks after their release. The first of those two is Labor Day. Labor Day comes from director Jason Reitman, director of Juno and Up in the Air. It's also based on the book by Joyce Maynard. Starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin, the movie is about a messed up mother and her son who's lives get more complicated when they give a ride to an escaped convict.

The final movie of the month is the year's first raunchy comedy in That Awkward Moment. The main players in this movie are Zac Efron, Michael B Jordan, and Miles Teller. They play three best friends all in the same "awkward" situation. What is this awkward situation? It's that awkward moment in every relationship when you have to decide where the relationship. Yes, this is a raunchy dating/romance comedy. I'm sure there will be some that will be interested in checking this movie out, but not much compared to other raunchy comedies.

Inside Llewyn Davis Review

Much like Nebraska, the movie Inside Llewyn Davis has received a lot of Oscar buzz recently after having loads of success at various film festivals. Also, it hadn't shown up in theaters near me until I went home for Christmas break and found a theater that was playing both it and Nebraska. After I thoroughly enjoyed Nebraska, I became excited to see Inside Llewyn Davis. Unfortunately, though, Inside Llewyn Davis never seemed to take off for me. I kept waiting for something big and emotional to happen that warranted the high reviews, but it just never happened.

Inside Llewyn Davis is a take on the Folk music scene in the early 1960's. It follows title character Llewyn Davis, who is a fictional character that is based off the type of events that actually happened. The movie follows Llewyn Davis for a week. He was formerly in a duo, but his partner in that duo committed suicide, leaving Llewyn in somewhat of an emotional wreck. He is poor, his new solo album isn't selling, and he has no home, so is bumming off of various friends while he tries to get things in place. This seems like an interesting premise, but like I said, I kept waiting for something big and emotional to happen, but nothing did. We just followed Llewyn for a week while he bums off his friends, upsets nearly everyone, and loses all his money. There seemed to be no point to it. There were several funny scenes, like him chasing a cat he let get away and him getting constantly made fun of while in a car ride with John Goodman's character. But the overall story was boring to me.

Despite the story line of the movie being utterly boring and pointless, there was a couple of things that I really liked about this movie. The first thing is the music. Being that it is a movie about folk singers, there are a lot of times where they played their folk music, and that was really good. From what I hear, all the songs except for one were actually sung live in full length by the actors themselves in order to get a live performance feel. That right there is really cool. Also, the acting in the movie is perfectly fine. Oscar Isaac does great as Llewyn Davis, although if he gets an Oscar nomination I might be upset because others like Bruce Dern, Tom Hanks, Robert Redford, Forest Whitaker, and Hugh Jackman are much more deserving. In supporting roles, there was Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, and John Goodman. Timberlake isn't in the movie for too long, but he gets to be part of two songs, both of which were excellent performances by him. Carey Mulligan was fantastic in the movie as Llewyn's mainly pissed-off friend. The actor who steals the show in my opinion, though, was John Goodman. His scenes were absolutely hilarious. If anyone deserves an Oscar nomination from this movie, it should be him for best supporting actor.

Overall, Inside Llewyn Davis is a movie that isn't worth your time. It has good acting, but a boring and pointless story. If anything, instead of watching this movie, you should look up the soundtrack of the movie and give it a listen. It is great. For good music and good acting, I will give Inside Llewyn Davis a 7 out of 10, but I will put the label of overrated and over-hyped on it.