MONG'S TOP MOVIES OF 2013

7th Spring Film Festival
01-10 February

The Piano In A Factory - Zhang Meng
The Space Dream - Wang Jia / Shen Dong
Golden Times
The Storm Warriors - Danny Pang / Oxide Pang
Jasmine Women - Hou Yong
2 Become 1 - Law Wing-Cheong

Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival 2013

26 July - 04 August

Amor Y Muerte - Ces Evangelista

Ekstra - Jeffrey Jeturian

Porno - Adolfo Alix Jr.

Sana Dati - Jerrold Tarog

Liars - Gil Portes

Babagwa - Jason Paul Laxamana

Debosyon - Alvin Yapan

Instant Mommy - Leo Abaya

Nuwebe - Joseph Israel Laban

Purok 7 - Carlo Obispo

Quick Change - Eduardo Roy Jr.

Rekorder - Mikhail Red

The Diplomat Hotel - Christopher Ad Castillo

Transit - Hannah Espia

SHORTS: Katapusang Labok - Aiess Alonso / Onang - JE Tiglao / Pukpok - Joaquin Pantaleon /      Sa Wakas - Ma. Veronica Santiago / The Houseband's Wife - Paulo O'Hara

Cinema One Originals Festival 2013

11-19 November

Alamat Ni China Doll - Adolfo Alix Jr.

Kabisera - Borgy Torre

Bendor - Ralston Jover

Angustia - Kristian Cordero

Iskalawags - Keith Deligero

Islands - Whammy Alcazaren

Ang Pagbabalat Ng Ahas - Timmy Harn

39th Metro Manila Film Festival New Wave

18 - 24 December 2013

Mga Anino Ng Kahapon - Alvin Yapan

Dukit - Armando Lao

Island Dreams - Aloy Adlawan / Gino M. Santos

Maestra - Joven Tan

Saka Saka - Toto Natividad

SHORTS

Gapos - JMK De Guzman

Hintayin Mo Sa Sequence 24 - Jezreel Reyes

#NoFilter - Luigi Del Rosario

Ang Lalong Ni Kulakog - Omar Aguilar

Gayuma Ni Maria - Gabriel Villalon

Kaleh And Mbaki - Dennis Sebastian

Mamang Pulis - Hannah Espia

Origin Of Mang Jose - Apollo Anonuevo

39th Metro Manila Film Festival

25 December 2013 - 08 January 2014

10,000 Hours - Joyce Bernal

Girl, Boy, Bakla, Tomboy - Wenn Deramas

Kimmy Dora: Ang Kiyemeng Prequel - Chris Martinez

Pagpag: Siyam Na Buhay - Frasco Mortiz

My Little Bossings - Marlon Rivera

Kaleidoscope World - Eliza Cornejo

Pedro Calungsod: Batang Martir - Francis O. Villacorta

Boy Golden: Shoot To Kill, The Arturo Porcuna Story - Chito S. Roño

MONG'S TOP MOVIES OF 2013

102. The Diplomat Hotel - Christopher Ad Castillo

101. Slumber Party - Emmanuel Dela Cruz

100. Admission - Paul Weitz

99. Broken City - Allen Hughes

98. The Man With The Iron Fists - RZA

97. The Hangover Part III - Todd Phillips

96. The Counselor - Ridley Scott

95. The Lone Ranger - Gore Verbinski

94. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters - Thor Freudenthal

93. Horror Stories 2 - Min Kyu-Dong / Kim Sung-Ho / Kim Hwi / Jung Bum-Sik

92. Hummingbird - Steven Knight

91. Call Center Girl - Don Cuaresma

90. Snitch - Ric Roman Waugh

89. Four Sisters And A Wedding - Cathy Garcia-Molina

88. Oz The Great And Powerful - Sam Raimi

87. Bromance: My Brother's Romance - Wenn V. Deramas

86. Insidious: Chapter 2 - James Wan

85. The Grave Bandits - Tyrone Acierto

84. The Last Stand - Kim Jee-Woon

83. At Any Price - Ramin Bahrani

82. Afternoon Delight - Jill Soloway

81. Kick-Ass 2 - Jeff Wadlow

80. In Nomine Matris (Sa Ngalan Ng Ina) - Will Fredo

79. White House Down - Roland Emmerich

78. Jack The Giant Slayer - Bryan Singer

77. The Bling Ring - Sofia Coppola

76. Odd Thomas - Stephen Sommers

75. It Takes A Man And A Woman - Cathy Garcia-Molina

74. Instant Mommy - Leo Abaya

73. Carrie - Kimberly Peirce

72. Byzantium - Neil Jordan

71. 2 Guns - Baltasar Kormákur

70. Riddick - David Twohy

69. Anna Karenina - Joe Wright

68. Status: It's Complicated - Chris Martinez

67. Oro, Plata, Mata - Peque Gallaga

66. Mama - Andrés Muschietti

65. Pee Mak - Banjong Pisanthanakun

64. The Great Gatsby - Baz Luhrmann

63. Elysium - Neill Blomkamp

62. Turbo - David Soren

61. Ender's Game - Gavin Hood

60. The Heat - Paul Feig

59. Tuhog - Veronica Velasco

58. Now You See Me - Louis Leterrier

57. Stoker - Park Chan-Wook

56. Trance - Danny Boyle

55. The Butler - Lee Daniel

54. The Wolverine - James Mangold

53. Pororo: The Racing Adventure - Young Kyun Park

52. Disconnect - Henry Alex Rubin

51. Side Effects - Steven Soderbergh

50. Evil Dead - Fede Alvarez

49. Alagwa - Ian Loreños

48. World War Z - Marc Forster

47. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 - Cody Cameron / Kris Pearn

46. Metro Manila - Sean Ellis

45. Warm Bodies - Jonathan Levine

44. Otso - Elwood Perez 

43. Bakit Hindi Ka Crush Ng Crush Mo? - Joyce Bernal

42. The Croods - Kirk DeMicco / Chris Sanders

41. Thor: The Dark World - Alan Taylor

40. Metallica: Through The Never - Nimród Antal

39. Man Of Steel - Zack Snyder

38. Kabisera - Borgy Torre

37. This Is The End - Seth Rogen / Evan Goldberg

36. Ang Turkey Man Ay Pabo Rin - Randolph Longjas

35. Flight - Robert Zemeckis

34. Les Miserables - Tom Hooper

33. Babagwa - Jason Paul Laxamana

32. Kung Fu Divas - Onat Diaz

31. Dragon Ball Z: Battle Of Gods - Masahiro Hosoda

30. Despicable Me 2 - Pierre Coffin / Chris Renaud

29. Fast & Furious 6 - Justin Lin

28. Iron Man 3 - Shane Black

27. Ekstra - Jeffrey Jeturian

26. One Piece Film: Z - Tatsuya Nagamine

25. Pacific Rim - Guillermo Del Toro

24. The Place Beyond The Pines - Derek Cianfrance

23. Badil - Chito S. Roño

22. Aparisyon - Vincent Sandoval

21. Zero Dark Thirty - Kathryn Bigelow

20. Transit - Hannah Espia

19. Monsters University - Dan Scanlon

18. The Impossible - J.A. Bayona

17. Prisoners - Denis Villeneuve

16. Rush - Ron Howard

15. Before Midnight - Richard Linklater

14. 3 Idiots - Rajkumar Hirani

13. The Conjuring

Director: James Wan
Cast: Patrick Wilson / Vera Farmiga / Ron Livingston / Lili Taylor
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Release Date: 21 August 2013
Box Office: PHP 58,267,959
                    $318,000,141 (WW)

"A sensationally entertaining old-school freakout and one of the smartest, most viscerally effective thrillers in recent memory."

Justin Chang, Variety

12. Lincoln

Director: Steven Spielberg
Based on Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of
          Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis / Sally Field / David Strathairn
          Joseph Gordon-Levitt / James Spader / Hal Holbrook
          Tommy Lee Jones
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: 20 February 2013
Box Office: PHP 7,070,553
                    $275,293,450 (WW)

"Lincoln is one of those rare projects where a great director, a great actor and a great writer amplify one another's gifts. The team of Steven Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lewis and Tony Kushner has brought forth a triumphant piece of historical journalism, a profound work of popular art and a rich examination of one of our darkest epochs."

Colin Covert, Star Tribune

11. OTJ (On The Job)

Director: Erik Matti

Cast: Piolo Pascual / Gerald Anderson / Joel Torre

          Joey Marquez

Distributor: Star Cinema

Release Date: 28 August 2013

Box Office: PHP 13,459,037

                    $427,890 (WW)

"On The Job is a real treat, if only because it is the rare local mainstream film that treats its audience as adults. Its pleasures are complex and heady, built on an expertly constructed sense of atmosphere, incredible production values and a story that bucks the expectations of its viewers."

Philbert Ortiz Dy, ClickTheCity.com

10. Sana Dati

Director: Jerrold Tarog

Cast: Paulo Avelino / Lovi Poe / TJ Trinidad / Benjamin Alves

Distributor: Metric Films

Release Date: 25 September 2013

"The film understands that there is more to love and romance than what the movies typically deliver. It is, in the real world, often far more imperfect, and far less dramatic. But it is real, and it is what we have. And the film puts that up on screen, in all its imperfection. And it is beautiful."

Philbert Ortiz Dy, ClickTheCity.com

9. The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug

Director: Peter Jackson

Based on The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Cast: Ian McKellen / Martin Freeman / Richard Armitage

          Benedict Cumberbatch / Evangeline Lilly / Lee Pace

          Luke Evans / Ken Stott / James Nesbitt / Orlando Bloom

Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures

Release Date: 11 December 2013

Box Office: PHP 76,460,328

                    $756,634,000 (WW)

"It’s pleasing to see a filmmaker this in love with storytelling, this committed to creating entire worlds and exploring them in such detail for not only our enjoyment but his own. That’s a rare thing indeed, and for it to turn out so well is even more rare. It’s a sight to behold, and you won’t be sorry you did."

Mark Hughes, Forbes

8. Star Trek Into Darkness

Director: J. J. Abrams

Based on Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry

Cast: Chris Pine / Zachary Quinto / Benedict Cumberbatch

          Karl Urban / Simon Pegg / John Cho / Zoe Saldana

          Anton Yelchin / Bruce Greenwood / Alice Eve

          Peter Weller / Leonard Nimoy

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Release Date: 15 May 2013

Box Office: PHP 61,194,767

                    $467,365,246 (WW)

"If galloping around the cosmos is a game for the young, Abrams and his perfect cast have re-energized the franchise’s new prime directive: Make it smart, keep it moving and don’t sweat the past."

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News

7. Silver Linings Playbook

Director: David O. Russell

Based on The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

Cast: Bradley Cooper / Jennifer Lawrence / Robert De Niro

          Jacki Weaver / Anupam Kher / Chris Tucker

Distributor: The Weinstein Company

Release Date: 27 February 2013

Box Office: PHP 27,754,163

                    $236,412,453 (WW)

"Silver Linings Playbook is an enormously entertaining, crowd-pleasing winner from the director whose comedic edge has never been sharper. But none of this works without some carefully developed, and perfectly pitched performances from the  leads, and Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, who both arguably give career best, awards-worthy performances. "

Kevin Jagernauth, The Playlist

6. Django Unchained

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Cast: Jamie Foxx / Christoph Waltz / Leonardo DiCaprio

          Kerry Washington / Samuel L. Jackson

Distributor: Columbia Pictures

Release Date: 13 March 2013

Box Office: PHP 5,588,097

                    $425,368,238 (WW)

"I can only say Django delivers, wholesale, that particular narcotic and delirious pleasure that Tarantino still knows how to confect in the cinema, something to do with the manipulation of surfaces. It's as unwholesome, deplorable and delicious as a forbidden cigarette."

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

5. Frozen

Director: Chris Buck / Jennifer Lee

Based on The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen

Cast: Kristen Bell / Idina Menzel / Jonathan Groff / Josh Gad

          Santino Fontana

Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Release Date: 27 November 2013

Box Office: PHP 88,149,015

                    $639,938,000 (WW)

“Frozen is a great big snowy pleasure with an emotionally gripping core, brilliant Broadway-style songs and a crafty plot. Its first and third acts are better than the jokey middle, but this is the rare example of a Walt Disney Animation Studios effort that reaches as deep as a Pixar film."

Kyle Smith, New York Post

4. Life Of Pi

Director: Ang Lee

Based on Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Cast: Suraj Sharma / Irrfan Khan / Tabu / Adil Hussain

          Rafe Spall / Gérard Depardieu

Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Release Date: 09 January 2013

Box Office: PHP 84,310,351

                    $609,016,565 (WW)

"Life Of Pi is a miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery. Inspired by a worldwide best-seller that many readers must have assumed was unfilmable, it is a triumph over its difficulties. It is also a moving spiritual achievement, a movie whose title could have been shortened to life."

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

3. Captain Phillips

Director: Paul Greengrass

Based on A Captain's Duty by Richard Phillips

          with Stephan Talty

Cast: Tom Hanks / Barkhad Abdi

Distributor: Columbia Pictures

Release Date: 23 October 2013

Box Office: PHP 34,995,020 / $209,286,129 (WW)

"But at the risk of hyping its impact, when Hanks comes out the other side of his real-life character's blood-spattered experience, there's a scene as strong as any I've seen this year, and as strong as any either Greengrass or Hanks has managed in other sorts of movies. It's not a long scene. It is, however, just about perfect in its wrenching emotion, expressed by an actor clearly up to the challenge of acting in a Paul Greengrass docudrama — which is to say, acting with as little capital-A Acting as possible."

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

2. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Director: Francis Lawrence

Based on Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence / Josh Hutcherson / Liam Hemsworth

          Woody Harrelson / Elizabeth Banks / Lenny Kravitz

          Philip Seymour Hoffman / Jeffrey Wright / Stanley Tucci

          Sam Claflin / Jena Malone / Donald Sutherland

Distributor: Lionsgate

Release Date: 21 November 2013

Box Office: PHP 253,151,906

                    $830,888,000 (WW)

"Very few people will take in this spectacle of a society amusing itself to death, of reality games and the vapid media hysteria that surrounds them, and not draw a parallel to our own televised bread and circuses. At its best, Catching Fire is a blockbuster that bites the culture that made it."

Ty Burr, The Boston Globe

1. Gravity

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Cast: Sandra Bullock

         George Clooney

Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures

Release Date: 03 October 2013

Box Office: PHP 86,129,617

                  $663,444,000 (WW)

"Cuar‪ón shows things that cannot be but, miraculously, are, in the fearful, beautiful reality of the space world above our world. If the film past is dead, Gravity shows us the glory of cinema’s future. It thrills on so many levels. And because Cuar‪ón is a movie visionary of the highest order, you truly can’t beat the view."

Richard Corliss, Time