Year in Review 2013: The Most Shocking Movie Moments

“Spring Breakers”: Alien and friends sing Britney Spears
There are countless eye-opening moments in Harmony Korine’s dreamy, depraved, and drug-fuelled college drama “Spring Breakers,” but nothing could have prepared audiences for the film’s most jaw-droppingly awesome scene: A heartfelt performance of the Britney Spears song “Everytime.” Rapper/criminal Alien (James Franco) and his gun-toting, bikini clad companions (played by Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine) jam to the 2003 pop ballad as a montage of their crimes plays out on screen.

“Blue is the Warmest Colour”: One very, very long sex scene
French filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche’s coming-of-age drama “Blue is the Warmest Colour” turned heads at Cannes this year -- not only for being a great movie (it won the coveted Grand Prix), but also for featuring an extremely graphic, ten-minute sex scene involving its two leading ladies. What made the lengthy lesbian love scene even more controversial is the fact much of the sex may have been real, an issue that Kechiche, Exarchopoulos, and Seydoux have all been cagey about. Ooh là là!

“Iron Man 3”: The Mandarin Revealed
One of the best bait-and-switch movie reveals in recent memory! “Iron Man 3” may have set up The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) as the film’s big villain in the trailers and commercials, but the character turned out to be anything but a terrorist mastermind. The Mandarin was, in fact, Trevor Slattery, a struggling English actor with substance abuse issues and no hard feelings towards Tony Stark. The film’s real threat was Guy Pearce’s villainously named-scientist Aldrich Killian.

“Safe Haven”: Ghost BFF
You know that best friend of yours that you’ve been spilling your guts to for months? Yeah, she’s actually a ghost. That’s precisely the situation that befalls Julianne Hough’s in the big screen adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ romance novel “Safe Haven.” After moving to small town North Carolina, the mysterious Katie (Hough) befriends her new neighbour Jo (Cobie Smulders) and begins to fall for a widower named Alex (Josh Duhamel). Jo, who encourages Katie’s new relationship, later turns out to be the ghost of Alex’s dead wife. It’s like “The Sixth Sense,” only with the girl from "How I Met Your Mother."

“Man of Steel”: Super Murder
Superman has a reputation as being something of a boy scout. The Man of Steel is a polite “please and thank you” type who makes a point never to kill any of his foes - even though he could very easily do so with just the flick of his pinky finger or a blast from those laser eyes. That’s part of what made the climax of director Zack Snyder’s recent Superman reboot “Man of Steel” so shocking. At the end of his Metropolis-destroying throwdown with General Zod, Superman snaps the crazed Kryptonian’s neck to save a family. In context, the superhero’s split-second decision to kill Zod made sense, but it also happened to go against 75 years of established character history. Oops!

“Gravity”: Space Ghost
The offscreen death of astronaut Matt Kowalski early in the harrowing space thriller “Gravity” probably came as a surprise to many, given star George Clooney’s A-list status. But it’s the character’s reappearance later in the film that really got people talking. Alone and seemingly out of options, Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) resigns herself to the fact that her disastrous first mission will probably be her last - until Kowalski unexpectedly shows up, pops the Soyuz capsule open, gives her a much needed space pep talk, and then vanishes. Kowalski’s sudden return as a figment of Stone’s imagination made many viewers wonder if the wise crackin’ space jockey was ever real to begin with.

“12 Years a Slave”: The hanging of Solomon Northup
Pretty much everything about Steve McQueen’s acclaimed slavery era drama “12 Years a Slave” is shocking, but there were a few brutal moments in particular that left a lasting impression on moviegoers. Prime among them is the scene in which kidnapped freeman turned slave Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is bound, hung by the neck with his feet barely touching the ground, and left hanging for hours as he struggles for air. Perhaps even more disturbing is the scene in which Epps (Michael Fassbender) forces Solomon to whip fellow slave Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o) before brutally finishing the job himself. It’s really difficult to rank such cruel and unusual punishment, so let’s call those two scenes a tie, as far as shock factor goes.

“The Counselor”: She did what with a car?!
Despite its incredible cast and Pulitzer Prize-winning screenwriter, most people didn’t see director Ridley Scott’s crime thriller “The Counselor.” The reason? The movie (which stars the likes of Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz) just wasn’t very good. And, of course, there was the scene in which Diaz’s character has sex with a Ferrari. Yes, you read that correctly. We’d love to go into more detail about the truly wacky scene, but we, like Bardem’s drug dealer character Reiner, are trying to forget.

“This Is The End”: A wild Channing Tatum appears!
The star-studded apocalyptic comedy “This is the End” has more celebrity cameos in it than maybe any movie ever made, but one uncredited appearance in particular stole the show (sorry, Backstreet Boys!). Towards the end of the movie, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, and James Franco run into their old pal Danny McBride, who, after being ejected from Franco’s house, has become a “Mad Max”-style cannibal. Even worse, Danny proudly reveals that none other than Channing Tatum has become his leather-clad, post-apocalyptic sex slave.

“Ender’s Game”: Not a training exercise after all
In the not-too distant future, humanity barely survives an alien invasion and is preparing its youth to fight off the next attack from the ant-like race. One such youth is Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield), a gifted young tactician who is selected to command Earth’s counterattack. Ender goes through months and months of brutal training and what he believes are intense simulations to prepare for the coming battle. What Ender doesn’t realize (until it’s too late) is that during those highly realistic simulations, he was actually commanding Earth’s distant fleet and had completely annihilated the aliens' homeworld. Nothing like tricking a teenager into committing genocide!