Top 10 Most Disappointing Films Of 2019

The 2010s, the decade that made me into the critic I am today, has officially concluded. And man, did it conclude on a whopper because 2019 was not a good year for movies. It certainly had its highlights, and we’ll definitely be getting into those later on this week, but for the most part, it was one marked by near-consistent disappointment. Middling features, underperforming productions that should’ve done better than they ultimately did, and Disney dominating the box office even more than any year previously; it’s been getting worrisome. So, to kick off our look at one of the bleaker years in recent cinema history, let’s count the top 10 films that, for one reason or another, didn’t match up with my expectations.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019) - Movie Review

In the history of the Fox-helmed X-Men films, this particular entry is an important one. Mostly because, now that Disney owns the entertainment sector of Fox, this is the last film this franchise will produce until Feig and company integrate the mutants into the MCU proper. Even though Logan basically served as the thematic conclusion for this series, this is where it officially ends (save for New Mutants, but that project has been held back for so long now, it’s anyone’s guess if we’ll ever actually see it).

But there’s also something else that gives this film importance, namely writer and first-time director Simon Kinberg’s reason for making it. He tried before to bring the story of the all-powerful Phoenix to the big screen through his work on The Last Stand, but since most audiences didn’t care much for it, he wanted to try again and get it right this time. As I got into at the start of this year, I have a fondness for cinematic redemption stories like that, ones where creatives look at past mistakes and seek to rectify them; doubly so since it’s a filmmaker correcting their own mistake in this instance. However, no matter which way you slice it, the background importance placed on this just doesn’t translate into the finished product. Like… at all.

Top 11 Biggest Disappointments (2017)

2017 was a very disappointing year. It revealed how much genuinely heinous behaviour was being kept under wraps, how desperate people were to excuse those actions (the double-team of Kevin Spacey and Australia’s own Don Burke was particularly gross in that regard), and how a person’s past actions can come back to bite them in the arse in a major way. 2017 wasn’t just disappointing because it fell below the median; it created disappointment in individual people, people that up until that point the general public gave the benefit of the doubt. It’s rather fitting then that, along with some surprising successes, the year’s cinema would turn out some unbelievable letdowns. Seriously, this is the year that created some of the biggest cinematic nosedives I’ve ever covered, and the legendarily weak box office receipts show that audiences definitely noticed.

However, we’re not talking about the obvious suspects. As bad as films like Fifty Shades Darker, Collateral Beauty and even The Emoji Movie are, it was a given that they weren’t going to turn so well in the first place. No, this list is dedicated to the films that showed a lot of initial promise… and then proceeded to spoil it in increasingly disastrous ways. Let’s test how much worse the phrase “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed” can be to blind rage and go over the Top 11 Biggest Disappointments of 2017… and oh boy, I had to do some serious trimming down to fit in only 11 this year.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017) - Movie Review

Blade Runner isn’t just a good film or even a great film; it is one of the few genuinely important science fiction films. Setting in stone the cyberpunk/neo-noir aesthetic that would give franchises like The Terminator their most iconic moments, its approach to both world-building and thematic context is one of the first real instances of the wider mainstream audience seeing that maybe there’s something to ‘genre’ films beyond just visceral nonsense. It took me a couple of viewings for it to really sink in, and I wouldn’t call it one of my all-time favourites or anything, but it’s a film that I have an entire truckload of respect for. This is one of those situations where making a sequel could turn out disastrously badly, much like most other attempts to make a follow-up to a decades-old film. 

However, after seeing director Denis Villeneuve make a triumphant step into the realms of SF with Arrival, which is still one of the single best films of the last several years, I have enough faith in him to pull this one off. Probably helps that not only is writer Hampton Francher returning from the original but he’s also aided by co-writer Michael Green, who helped give us Logan, a film that I am slowly starting to develop an even greater understanding of and appreciation for. Maybe this will turn out okay; it’s already being heralded as one of the greatest sequels of all time. Will I agree or will I have to be the bearer of bad news? Get out your torches and pitchforks, because I can already tell this is going to get ugly.

Top 11 Biggest Disappointments (2016)

Happy 2017 everyone! New year, new crop of films, same old dickhead set to talk about them, and in light of how the new year is where we’re supposed to do things differently than the year prior, I’m going to do something a little different with my year-end lists. I’m going to go over the films that were legitimately surprising in terms of quality, for good and for bad. What films in 2016 did I leave the cinema having gotten a lot more (or a lot less) than I was expecting? Well, time to find out. Now, this isn’t necessarily a list of the year’s worst; I actually still like some of these to a degree. It’s just a list of films from the year that didn't deliver to my personal expectations. This is my list of the Top 11 biggest disappointments from 2016… and chances are that a lot of you are going to hate my #11 pick.