Yahoo Picks: Don't fear Friday the 13th! Here are the best movies with the unluckiest number in the title.
We pick six lucky movies with "13" in the title from "Apollo 13" to "District B13."
Today is Friday the 13th, which means you've gotta ask yourself a question — do I feel lucky? Well, do ya? Don't worry: we're not about to go all Dirty Harry on you. It's the same question we here at Yahoo Entertainment ask ourselves when the unluckiest day of the month falls on a Friday. And that's doubly true when the month happens to be October, the time of year that bad luck can seem downright spooky.
I'll admit to not being overly superstitious about the Friday the 13th thing personally. But I have noticed that movies tend to shy away from labeling themselves with the dreaded "13." You can find plenty of threes — the number good things come in. Eights aren't too shabby either, crazy or not. But 13 is a rarer number to see in the wild... apart from the never-ending Friday the 13th series, anyway.
Luckily, you don't have to spend multiple hours with Jason Voorhees to find some quality 13-branded movies. (Honestly, the only one you need to watch in its entirety is Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, the last and best of Jason's early murder spree.) These six films are my go-to examples of why 13 ain't nothing but a number.
6. The Thirteenth Floor
Something was clearly in the water in 1999. Months after The Matrix had us all questioning the nature of our reality, along came Josef Rusnak's neo (not Neo) noir in which the heir to an Apple-like computer company awakens to the fact that he's living in a world of 1s and 0s. Loosely inspired the pioneering '60s sci-fi novel Simulacron-3 — also a seminal text for Lana and Lily Wachowski — The Thirteenth Floor is admittedly flat-footed and clunky compared to The Matrix's still-remarkable mix of next-gen spectacle and storytelling. But watched more than two decades later, it's an oddly charming relic of a world on the cusp of Y2K, the cinematic equivalent of a tattered '50s sci-fi novel with a cool cover that you might find in the dollar bin at a used book store.
The Thirteenth Floor is currently available to rent or purchase on Prime Video and Vudu.
5. Assault on Precinct 13
John Carpenter's Halloween understandably gets more play when the calendar turns to October. But before he unleashed Michael Myers on the world, the fiercely independent director dropped this kinetic all-guns-blazing bit of '70s action cinema. A modern version of the "lawmen under siege" Westerns that Carpenter grew up loving, Assault on Precinct 13 pits a small band of South Central cops against a heavily armed street gang. Carpenter's film was remade on a bigger budget and with bigger stars in 2005, but the original is the one that endures, influencing the language of action cinema as much as Halloween rewrote the horror movie textbook.
Assault on Precinct 13 is currently streaming on Peacock, Tubi and YouTube.
4. Apollo 13
Apollo 13 isn't my favorite Ron Howard movie — that award goes to the eternally underrated The Paper, the real best picture starring Michael Keaton as a journalist. But this ticking-clock space odyssey is his most complete directorial vision with all the individual elements — from the specificity of the visual storytelling to the cohesion of the ensemble cast to the craft team's rigorous recreation of the era — coming together to form a crowdpleasing whole. In hindsight, Apollo 13 should have won all the Oscars that went to Braveheart... as well as all the statues that later went to Howard's A Beautiful Mind as a belated make-good.
Apollo 13 is currently available to rent or purchase on Prime Video and Vudu.
3. 13 Assassins
With apologies to the late James Brown, there was a period in the late '90s and early '00s where Takashi Miike was the hardest working man in show business. In 1999 alone, the cult Japanese auteur directed four feature films, two television series and a direct-to-video production. By the time Miike got around to making this bloody samurai epic in 2010, his output had slowed to two films a year, but that doesn't mean he went any less hard. A remake of a popular 1963 film, 13 Assassins depicts the pitched battle between the titular killers and the 200-man army of the clan leader they've targeted for death. Despite the 141-minute runtime, Miike plays it lean and mean, with a body count that's higher than most horror movies.
13 Assassins is currently streaming on Hulu.
2. 13 Going on 30
I grew up watching Big, but even the mighty Zoltar couldn't fulfill our collective wish to make certain parts of that 1988 comedy less cringey today. The lucky 13-year-olds growing up with 13 Going on 30 won't have that problem when they hit 30. This sparkling rom-com neatly sidesteps the age-gap issues that sink the Tom Hanks-Elizabeth Perkins relationship now by using the power of time travel — and the emotional lure of an unrequited childhood crush — to put Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner on more even footing as an adult and a teen in adult clothing respectively. My always Poised colleague Raechal Shewfelt put it best: It's a movie that never gets old.
13 Going on 30 is currently streaming on Max.
1. District B13
It's easy to make fun of the world's brief freakout over parkour. (Thanks, The Office.) But the sport's short-lived popularity did result in two lasting pieces of pop culture: the opening chase sequence of Daniel Craig's inaugural 007 outing, Casino Royale, and the 86-minute entirety of Pierre Morel's fleet-footed 2004 action picture. Set in the dystopian future-past of 2010, the negligible story has something to do with a gang member teaming up with an undercover cop to save the former's kidnapped sister. Really, though, District B13 is about watching actual parkour practitioners nearly kill themselves for our enjoyment by running, jumping and flipping through windows and across rooftops. Don't try any of this at home kids. Seriously.
District B13 is currently streaming on Hulu, Prime Video and Tubi.
