2013 Worst Movies (Page #25)

A multi-layered tale about transparency in the information age and our ever-elusive search for the truth. Detailing the creation of Julian Assange’s controversial website, which facilitated the largest security breach in U.S. history, the film charts the enigmatic Assange’s rise and fall in parallel with that of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the brilliant, troubled young soldier who downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents from classified U.S. military and diplomatic servers.

In his first lead role after decades of playing supporting characters, James Cromwell gives a tour de force performance in Still Mine, an exquisitely crafted and deeply affecting love story about a couple in their twilight years. Based on true events and laced with wry humor, Still Mine tells the heartfelt tale of Craig Morrison (Academy Award® nominee Cromwell), who comes up against the system when he sets out to build a more suitable house for his ailing wife Irene (Academy Award® nominee Geneviève Bujold). Although Morrison uses the same methods his father, an accomplished shipbuilder, taught him, times have changed. He quickly gets blindsided by local building codes and bureaucratic officials. As Irene becomes increasingly ill – and amidst a series of stop-work orders – Craig races to finish the house. Hauled into court and facing jail, Craig takes a final stance against all odds in a truly inspirational story.

Follows the influential 1970s band Big Star. The band was formed in 1971 in Memphis by former Box Tops lead singer Alex Chilton and Chris Bell. Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel filled out the original lineup. While the band never achieved mainstream success, it became a big influence on the likes of REM, the Flaming Lips and more.

Follows the true story of Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years.

Mads Mikkelsen plays Lucas, a highly-regarded school teacher who has been forced to start over having overcome a tough divorce. Just as things are starting to go his way, his life is shattered. An untruthful remark throws the small community into a collective state of hysteria. The lie is spreading and Lucas is forced to fight a lonely fight for his life and dignity.

Based on a true story, when Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, facing international pressure, calls for a referendum on his presidency in 1988, opposition leaders persuade a brash young advertising executive, Rene Saavedra (Gael García Bernal), to spearhead their campaign. With scant resources and constant scrutiny by the despot’s watchmen, Saavedra and his team devise an audacious plan to win the election and free their country from oppression.

Set in the Los Angeles of the slight future, Her follows Theodore Twombly, a complex, soulful man who makes his living writing touching, personal letters for other people. Heartbroken after the end of a long relationship, he becomes intrigued with a new, advanced operating system, which promises to be an intuitive entity in its own right, individual to each user. Upon initiating it, he is delighted to meet “Samantha,” a bright, female voice, who is insightful, sensitive and surprisingly funny. As her needs and desires grow, in tandem with his own, their friendship deepens into an eventual love for each other.

On New Year’s Day 2009, Bay Area Rapid Transit police detained Oscar Grant, a young black man and then shot him in the back and killed him with many bystanders recording the event on their cell phone cameras. Protests and riots surrounded the ensuing trial and its verdict.

Written and directed by Sarah Polley, the documentary weaves together home movies, interviews and narration to examine the repercussions of her family's long-held secrets that finally are coming to light.

In the 30 years since The Shining's film release, a considerable cult of Shining devotees has emerged, fans who claim to have decoded the film’s secret messages addressing everything from the genocide of Native Americans to a range of government conspiracies. Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 fuses fact and fiction through interviews with cultists and scholars, creating a kaleidoscopic deconstruction of Kubrick’s still-controversial classic.

Left to fend for themselves after their SS officer father and mother, a staunch Nazi believer, are interred by the victorious Allies at the end of World War II, five German children undertake a harrowing journey that exposes them to the reality and consequences of their parents' actions. Led by the eldest sibling, 14-year old Lore (striking newcomer Saskia Rosendahl), they set out on a harrowing journey across a devastated country to reach their grandmother in the north. After meeting the charismatic Thomas, a mysterious young refugee, Lore soon finds her world shattered by feelings of both hatred and desire as she must learn to trust the one person she has always been taught to hate in order to survive.

For the first time ever, six former heads of Israel's domestic secret service agency, the Shin Bet, share their insights and reflect publicly on their actions and decisions. Since the Six Day War in 1967, Israel has failed to transform its crushing military victory into a lasting peace. Throughout that entire period, these heads of the Shin Bet stood at the center of Israel's decision-making process in all matters pertaining to security. They worked closely with every Israeli prime minister, and their assessments and insights had - and continue to have - a profound impact on Israeli policy.

Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is a divorced soon-to-be empty-nester wondering about her next act. Then she meets Marianne (Catherine Keener), the embodiment of her perfect self. Armed with a restored outlook on being middle-aged and single, Eva decides to take a chance on her new love interest Albert (James Gandolfini) - a sweet, funny and like-minded man. Things get complicated when Eva discovers that Albert is in fact the dreaded ex–husband of Marianne. This sharp insightful comedy follows Eva as she humorously tries to secretly juggle both relationships and wonders whether her new favorite friend's disastrous ex can be her cue for happiness.

This chilling and inventive documentary examines a country where death squad leaders are celebrated as heroes, challenging them to reenact their real-life mass-killings in the style of the American movies they love.

When the Indonesian government was overthrown in 1965, small-time gangster Anwar Congo and his friends went from selling movie tickets on the black market to leading anti-communist death squads in the mass murder of over a million people. Anwar boasts of killing hundreds with his own hands, but he's lived in his country with impunity ever since. When approached to make a film about their role in the genocide, Anwar and his friends eagerly comply-but their idea of being in a movie is not to provide reflective testimony, but to dance their way through musical numbers, twist arms in film noir gangster scenes, and gallop across the prairies as yodeling cowboys.

Set in a romanticized 1920s Seville, Berger's Snow White is Carmen (Macarena García), the daughter of a famous bull fighter, who lives under the tyrannical rule of her monstrous, evil stepmother, Encarna (Maribel Verdú). She escapes and joins a troupe of bullfighting dwarves, where her beauty and natural talent in the ring attract notices from the press. But soon the news reaches Encarna, who at last she knows where to find Carmen, and she prepares for the final showdown.

As a rowdy young Neo-Dadaist artist in Tokyo, Ushio yearned for international recognition, so in 1969 he set sail for New York City. Nineteen-year-old Noriko came to New York to study art, where she met and fell in love with Ushio, 21 years her senior. Putting her own artistic ambitions on hold, Noriko dedicated herself to supporting her husband's career. Over the course of their marriage, the roles of assistant and artist have slowly begun to transform. Now 80, Ushio, widely known for his boxing painting, is obsessed with establishing his artistic legacy, while Noriko is at last finding her voice as an artist with a series of drawings entitled “Cutie and Bullie,” depicting her own chaotic relationship with Ushio.

The cargo ship MV Rozen is heading for harbour when it is hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. Amongst the men on board are the ship’s cook Mikkel (Pilou Asbæk) and the engineer Jan (Roland Møller), who along with the rest of the seamen are taken hostage in a cynical game of life and death. With the demand for a ransom of millions of dollars a psychological drama unfolds between the CEO of the shipping company (Søren Malling) and the Somali pirates.

1975. In Rome, Claude Lanzmann filmed a series of interviews with Benjamin Murmelstein, the last President of the Jewish Council in the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, the only "Elder of the Jews" not to have been killed during the war. A rabbi in Vienna, following the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, Murmelstein fought bitterly with Adolf Eichmann, week after week for seven years, managing to help around 121,000 Jews leave the country, and preventing the liquidation of the ghetto.

2012. Claude Lanzmann, at 87 – without masking anything of the passage of time on men, but showing the incredible permanence of the locations involved –exhumes these interviews shot in Rome, returning to Theresienstadt, the town “given to the Jews by Hitler”, a so-called model ghetto, but a ghetto of deceit chosen by Adolf Eichmann to dupe the world. We discover the extraordinary personality of Benjamin Murmelstein: a man blessed with a dazzling intelligence and a true courage, which, along with an unrivaled memory, makes him a wonderfully wry, sardonic and authentic storyteller.

Through these three periods, from Nisko in Poland to Theresienstadt, and from Vienna to Rome, the film provides an unprecedented insight into the genesis of the Final Solution. It reveals the true face of Eichmann, and exposes without artifice the savage contradictions of the Jewish Councils.

Ellis, a 14-year-old boy, is determind to help his friend Mud, a dangerous yet charismatic fugitive, escape from both the law and some very serious bounty hunters.

The story of a small Alabama town by the Tennessee River, where a man named Rick Hall overcame crushing personal hardship to put together a recording studio and house band (the Swampers) that became legendary for its electrifying musical chemistry. Luring some of the biggest figures in 20th century pop music, like Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, theStaples Singers, the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Simon and Garfunkle, the studio produced all time classic songs like “Mustang Sally,” “I Never Loved a Man,” “Wild Horses” and many more, uniting black and white musicians in the deep south during an incendiary period of racial hostility.