2023 was a very turbulent year for the film industry.
In an event that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the basis for its own movie
later on down the line, the impeding threat of artificial intelligence on
people who actually work to create things led both of the major Hollywood
unions, the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild, to jointly go
on strike. Deals have since been struck, but between codifying the frankly
surreal situation that the industry is in right now post-COVID, and the delays
and marketing muffles that resulted from the strikes, it’s a situation that
will likely ripple out into 2024 and beyond.
That defining moment goes some way to explain how weird the
bad moments of the year had gotten (not saying that media creatives wanting a
fair wage and job security is a bad thing, but them being in the position of
needing to negotiate for them sure as fuck is). Films with decent and even high expectations fell short, filmmakers try to go big and just wound up embarrassing themselves, and fan-favourite franchises, IPs, and even entire sub-genres hit such a low point that I found myself completely souring on them. Truly, this was a time of sudden, jarring changes.
Compared to last year’s list, there’s also more
entries on here that go beyond mere dissatisfaction and right into active
irritation and even anger at times, meaning that quite a bit of what’s on here
is likely worse than what showed up there. So, let’s join together and flip off the previous year’s
trash as it shrinks in the rear view, with a look at my picks for the Top 20
Worst Films of 2023.
2022 saw the world slowly start to return to normal (or
whatever can be considered ‘normal’ for us nowadays) after COVID threw
everything out of whack across 2020 and 2021. Public spaces were opening back
up, the collective mood was much less dire, and the cinemas were
bringing back the big tentpole blockbusters that usually mark the year as it
passes. At a time when the life expectancy of the physical cinema was beginning
to look like it’s on its death knell, between streaming and their closure
during lockdown, film releases began to feel like events again. And on
top of that, some of those event releases turned out really damn good,
and we’ll absolutely be looking at a few of those when we get to the Best Of
list.
Of course, with that return to normalcy also came the return
of the usual bleh-ness of mainstream cinema, where a lot of the year wound up
just being ‘okay’ or slightly-less-than, and I say that as someone who still
liked most of what I saw this year. There was a larger amount of disappointment
to the year’s produce as well, where I found myself really looking forward to
films that wound up falling short.
Hell, this might be the first time I actively went out of my
way not to watch movies, turning down FilmInk commissions to review Amsterdam
and the new Fantastic Beasts sequel because, quite literally, you couldn’t pay
me to give any kind of attention to the shitpersons at the heart of those
productions. As such, this list won’t be as vitriolic as in past years, since
most of what I consider this year’s worst films land more on the underwhelming
and disappointing side of things than outright making me angry. Oh, rest
assured, some of these still got me riled up, but not nearly as many as I was
expecting.
But even with how many I passed on, I still managed to watch
enough films to fill up this list. As such, let’s go over my picks for the Top
20 Worst Films Of 2022.
Like a rubbish sequel to an already miserable original, 2021
was not a great year. More of the same time-haze where every day just seemed to
blur into each other from the isolation, only it seemed to hit me harder the
second time around because I wound up with a bad case of quarantine brain. I
spent a fair amount of the year in creative burnout, meaning that I wound up
seeing significantly fewer films than usual. And yet, because running on half
power (or no power, as was the case for a few days in December) still
isn’t enough to stop me, I still managed to see enough films to fill out my
usual end-of-year list.
Sure, making such a list is just pointing at unpleasant
things from the past just to point out how unpleasant they are, and it’s not as
if the world is deprived of things to feel bad about these days. But quite
frankly, making fun of bad movies with this annual list is pretty much the only
joy I get out of still remembering that these features happened at all. One of
the side effects of writing about every new film I see is that my memory of
them is tied to something tangible, and they tend to be easier to recall as a
result. And since forgetting about wrong things is a pretty sure-fire way to
ensure that they keep happening, I reckon it’s worth taking some time to
reflect on what I can only hope will be mistakes that are learnt from rather
than repeated. As such, let’s take a look at my picks for the Worst Films of
2021.
2020 was a shit year. Duh. However, this was a shit year
even beyond the metrics that other recent years have been shit, like the
one-two-punch to our ideal of cultural heroes over 2016-2017. As terrifying as
it already is to be under constant threat of plague all bloody year thanks to
COVID-19, the extent to which it affected our lives and even our entertainment
was something else entirely. It felt like large-scale hubris for 2019, the
Omnicorp-isation of Disney, and then in comes a plague no-one seemed properly
prepared to deal with, that threw a monkey wrench into a system everyone was
far too confident could withstand whatever came at it.
The release schedule was in a continual state of shuffling
throughout, meaning that a lot of big-name productions got delayed ‘til next
year, and with varying degrees of lockdown worldwide, cinema attendance took a
sharp dive, to the point that not only were there more classic movies being
shown than anything new just to fill up the cinemas that were still open, but a
lot of independent cinemas likely won’t survive if this continues for much
longer. And at a time when all we had was our screens to alleviate the cabin
fever, it felt like we were more in need of entertainment than ever.
As a result of all this, a lot of what makes up the worst
that 2020’s cinema had to offer comes down to a matter of releasing anything
and everything that could be spared just to keep butts in seats and eyes on
screens, meaning that there was quite a bit of disposable garbage that filled
in the margins. Not only that, but there were a lot of astonishingly
miscalculated attempts to say something meaningful so that this year wasn’t a
total waste as a pop culture moment, which only ended up making this whole
situation feel even worse. And since all that time indoors gave me plenty of
space to write up more reviews than any previous year, there are quite a few
movies that surely deserve to be on this list, but only just missed the
cut. Jeff Wadlow should be counting his blessings that Fantasy Island got
passed up because, as you’re about to see, I have no mercy in stock for the 20
that made it in. As such, let’s stop waffling on and get into my picks for the
20 Worst Films Of 2020.
Where 2018 as a year was
characterised by filmmakers looking back on the past and seeing where they
could improve, 2019 was characterised by filmmakers looking back and seeing how
much worse they could do. The main theme with the worst of 2019 was films that
made me look at films I had written off years ago as bad ideas, and making me
realise I didn’t know how good I had it because the new take is that much
worse. These are the films that defied the prevailing sense of disappointment
that populated the rest of the year, but only because the main response was “how
did you screw up this badly?!” Strap in for some raw anguish fuel as I
count down the top 20 worst films of 2019.
While most of the cinematic world was collectively
deciding to get its shit together, some filmmakers had other ideas.
Specifically, they had some truly baffling, who-in-the-hell-thought-these-were-good
ideas, the results of which gave us some outright garbage movies. I am somewhat
thankful that this list was relatively easy to draw up, since there weren’t that many films that qualified for the
absolute worst of the year. But man, the ones that did made for some truly
despicable moments. Let’s get to burning this garbage pile as I get into my Top
20 Worst Films of 2018.
It may be possible to overstate this point, but it still
stands: The Nostalgia Critic may be one of the single most important people in
my life in terms of my own personal growth. Ever since I first watched one of
his videos after being shown it by a friend in high school back in April of
2010 (hence why Meta Month is set during April), I have grown a sense of
respect and appreciation for cinema that I doubt I would have ever found elsewhere. It is because of
him that this entire blog exists to begin with, not to mention the numerous
amazing experiences I have had watching films in the past 6 years that wouldn’t
have had the impact that they did without his involvement. And dear lord, of
all the video critics that I make a habit of regularly watching, he also has
the best track record for outright pissing me off. No, I am not talking about
drama involving Channel Awesome and its questionable business practices, nor
anything else related to Doug’s actions as a person. I mean strictly in terms
of his product, this guy sure has a way of getting under my skin. As such, time
to kick whatever sense of loyalty and restraint I have been showing over the
past month to the curb as I count down my picks for the Top 10 (or Bottom 10,
depending on your outlook) Worst
Episodes of the Nostalgia Critic. Why only 10? Because even this many just
plain hurts to recollect and I’d rather reduce the amount of pain I’m
intentionally subjecting myself to this time around. Also, I haven’t felt a
real need to emphasize this particular point yet but, considering who I’m
dealing with, I might have to this time around: These are just my own personal
picks and in no way an objective list of his absolute worst; I’m going by gut
instinct on a lot of these, so don’t freak out if one of your favourites is on
here.
Special Mention: Any
time he brings up TMZ
This isn’t relegated to a single video, instead being spread
clean across two along with a few miscellaneous mentions then on, but it
highlights one of Doug’s biggest issues that I’ll get into far greater detail
about later on down the list so the discussion as a whole gets a special
mention. That, and the main videos where this gets brought up (Top 11 South Park Episodes and his review of Steven Spielberg’s A.I.) aren’t that bad on
their own terms.
This review, much like a few others on this list, did at
some point take up a spot on my list of his best, but then got dropped for one
reason or another. For this one, it’s because of fellow reviewer Chris
Stuckmann, who did a very detailed breakdown of the same film and explained why
he holds it as near and dear to him as he does. Honestly, after that compelling
of an argument, hearing the Critic stumble over those same potholes isn’t
nearly as enthralling. It honestly started to feel like a Bad Movie Beatdown
episode for me, where my enjoyment of the thing is hindered by just how much I
can correct the critic in question on concerning the film. What? I’m already
showing apparent disdain for one critic; might as well throw another one under
the bus while I’m at it.
#9: Congo
With this one, it’s just a matter of not having the right approach
to the subject. I’ll rarely if ever say this, but Roger Ebert was dead-on about
this film: This was intentionally
silly. I mean, between getting big name B-movie actors like Bruce Campbell and
Joe Don Baker, Tim Curry’s phenomenally silly accent, the ape who loves being
tickled, the fucking laser rifle?! If
there was any inkling that he knew that this film had any sense of
self-awareness, this would be fine, but no; he takes all of it at face value,
in effect doing the film itself somewhat of a disservice. This should get
somewhat higher a spot on the list, since an argument could be made (not by me)
that this is a matter of incompetence, but as the Critic would actually
acknowledge this point in a later video, it gets some mercy for him potentially
calling mea culpa. The rest of these videos? Not so much.
#8: Turbo: A Power
Rangers Movie
Doug has always tried to convey the idea that there
shouldn’t be such a thing as a ‘guilty pleasure’, as no-one should feel guilt
or feel abnormal in any way for liking certain media, something I seriously
commend him for… when he sticks to it. Otherwise, in reviews like this, he
comes across as astoundingly patronizing and condescending to the fans of the
original material. That’s a pretty big accomplishment when you’re discussing a
film that even fans of Power Rangers don’t seem to like, and you still come across as a judgmental
asshole. This unfortunately will not be the last time that this uglier side of
the Critic will be shown on this list.
The initial concept of Doug in character as Optimus Prime
reviewing the original cartoon is a fairly interesting approach to take with
it. And then a wave of subpar jokes come marching in and… well, you have a
video worthy of being on this list. However, more than anything else, it’s the
teeth-grinding banality of Soundwave’s want for a romantic comedy that
officially shoots whatever good this video had going for it square in the face,
leaving it to just twitch its way to completion. Seriously, it’s rare that
you’ll ever see a joke drag so damn much that, before too long, you’ll be
praying for the rapid-fire wit of a Seltzerberg production.
#6: Osmosis Jones
To quote Oancitizen: Everything is a remix; originality is
overrated. Case in point, this review that spends its entire time comparing the
titular film to the then-recent release of Inside Out and pointing out the
numerous similarities between them. It gets exceptionally tedious with how
often its brought up, but what makes it even worse is that it ends on a note
where the similarities are acknowledged and then brushed aside with “Well, this
film did them better”. That’s a
pretty spiteful way to close out what could’ve been a more nuanced take on the
subject that I know for a fact the
Critic is capable of doing.
I freely admit that this review actually has some fairly
funny jokes, especially when he gets to the lunacy of Ice-T as a kangaroo. But
one of the jokes he makes about how the money used for the extravagant musical
number could’ve been used to feed starving children crosses the line between
cringe comedy and just plain unfunny. Nevermind the fact that the joke itself
is extended beyond its welcome, this is a statement that you could make about any film ever made. Yeah, instead of
making films, why don’t we use that same money to feed starving children? That
is a very slippery slope to take.
#4: The Matrix
Reloaded
He had a potentially cool idea and completely pissed it away.
The first Matrix review had a premise in its storyline segments involving an
underground of people who don’t like the Matrix movies, something that honestly
sounded kind of interesting even as a person who honestly loves the series
(okay, save for Revolutions, which even I
can’t find the wherewithal to defend). It at the very least managed a decent
level of parallel between the film’s narrative and the film’s reception. And
then came this review, which sabotaged that entire concept with some backhanded
connotations that the people who actually do
like the movies are in some way brainwashed to do so. Way to combine two things
that I hate seeing you do (wasting potential and back-pedalling on your own
morals) into a single unlikeable package, dude.
#3: It
My gripes with this review are mainly of a personal nature,
given my sheer admiration for the film in question. That said, this marks an
important part of my growth as a film buff as this was the first time that I
had the feeling that maybe, just maybe, what a critic says isn’t gospel. And
indeed, his constant showcasing of what I consider to be blatant
misunderstanding of the material given and endless mocking that ends up
reaching points of seriously uncalled for, was such an occasion. This is
another review that flip-flopped with me on what I thought of it, and it does
have some decent jokes, but after so much time thinking it over I’ve come to
the conclusion that I flat-out hate
this video. I’d even go so far as to say that this tapped into a specific vein
of fanboy rage that I hadn’t felt this strongly before or since. Well, at least
until Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby came out.
#2: Airborne
I’m kind of surprised that this guy could honestly get to me
on a purely ethical level, but here we are. His comments about the main
character’s very 90’s ‘dude, just chill’ faux-philosophizing are founded and he
makes some decent points… except the majority of his comments appear to be
attacking the fact that he is a pacifist. Throughout the entire review, the
Critic keeps bringing up the character’s stance of non-violence as him being a
wuss, which I take some serious issues with and it really shows the Critic to
be a bit of a jackass. Except where such things could usually be guarded by the
fact that he is playing a character, that doesn’t quite excuse the fact that this
goes beyond just character mockery and starts making the Critic (and by
extension Doug to a certain extent) out to be the kind of person that would
shoot flower-carrying protestors in the face. It’s fucking abhorrent and, no,
it being a joke doesn’t excuse the matter.
#1: Eight Crazy
Nights
This marks the absolute nadir of Doug’s attitude concerning
letting people enjoy what they want to enjoy, with a video that outright mocks
the fan base of the given film and does everything it can to belittle people
who commit the heinous crime of finding joy in something like this. Nevermind
that his mockery of Whitey gets especially grisly when it isn’t called for, and
his joke about calling Adam Sandler goes on for way too long; this tops the
list because it betrays a core principal of Doug’s film-going philosophy, even
more so than he had already done, and it reaches a level of hypocrisy that is
usually reserved for only the truly loathsome pieces of human refuse out there.
No, I don’t care if this is a Happy Madison production that we’re talking
about; I would be saying this exact same thing regardless of whoever’s name is
attached to it. Unlike Mr. Walker here, I will not go back on my words as I say
them: No-one, I repeat no-one,
should be made to feel guilty/stupid/any way inferior for liking anything meant
for popular consumption. You are not less of a person just because you like
Adam Sandler movies, in much the same way that you are not less of a person if
you happen to like any of the videos I have so far listed; that's your right. When
someone time and again continues to belittle people for their tastes, that is
where I rather vehemently put my foot down and no more so than with this utter
waste of time and energy.
Good God, it actively hurts to think about all this crap and
the fact that this guy means as much to me as he does only makes it worse. You
know the old saying: Never meet your heroes. Well, for the three of you that
are still reading this and aren’t already spewing bile in the comments section,
next time will be a return back to our usual cheery selves as I look into the
more positive works of the Nostalgia Critic and, hopefully, better explain how
this guy could leave such a massive impact on me.
Time to air out the last of the dirty laundry as I delve
into the Top 20 worst features I had to sit through last year. Why Top 20?
Because how many Top 10 film lists have you seen with 10 'honourable mentions'?
Might as well cut out the middle man if I’m going to do that. Just like last
year, this list is comprised solely of theatrical releases: If it was released
during the year through DVD, NetFlix or elsewhere on the Web, it doesn’t get
counted. This is just reserved for the celluloid trash that the studios, in
their infinite wisdom, decided was worthy of getting a proper release. These
are my picks for the 20 worst films of 2015.
Before getting into our list proper, I want to give out a couple of
dishonourable mentions; these are films that, by all means, should be on this
list but only came out here in Australia on DVD, thus making them ineligible. First
off is Keith Lemon: The Film,
one of the worst ‘comedies’ I have ever seen. I should not be able to predict as many of the terrible jokes as I did with
this film. The other mention goes to The Starving Games, a
Seltzerberg parody film so lazy that I’m not even going to dignify it with any
real analysis.
And now, with those out of the way, time for the top 20
worst theatrically-released films of 2014:
#20: 300: Rise Of
An Empire
When the scene with the best acting in it is the sex scene,
something is seriously wrong with your movie. Aside from that, and one of the
best unintentional laughs of the year which I’m fairly certain was just me
laughing out of desperation at how the soldiers yelled out “Rocks!”, everything
about this film is done ineptly: The CGI blood looks fucking horrible, the male
lead is the store-brand knock-off of Leonidas with zero added charisma, the
writing reads like bad fanfiction complete with the lack of character restraint
that some of the more notorious works out there have, and the less said about
the tacked-on sequel baiting, the better. I’m glad I got to see Eva Green be
her psycho-sexual persona on screen again, but this film doesn’t do her any
favours.
#19: The Giver
As a big fan of the original book, I was definitely sceptical about this but it was actually working for me at first: Jeff Bridges
is great as the titular role and the additions made in the adaptation process
made sense in terms of stretching out the story. Unfortunately, once the third
act comes around, the enhancements made start to lose their grip: The Chief
Elder and Fiona, who get beefier roles in this version, open up massive plot
holes with their very presences in the story and the ending, which tries to
keep the same tone as the source material, makes no sense in context to this film because of the changes made to
the story. Aside from the issues involving adaptation, the acting is extremely
weak for the most part especially from Jonas, Fiona and Asher, our central
characters. As much as I applaud Bridges for how hard he worked to get this
adaptation off the ground, I can’t help but feel that he has wasted his time if
this is all he has to show for it.
#18: Transcendence
For the one guy out there who watched The Eternal Mind
episode of Amazing Stories and thought that that episode wasn’t long enough and
featured too much characterisation, this film is perfect. For everyone else,
this completely fails to live up to its premise. Any attempts it makes to raise
questions about the nature of artificial intelligence are never fully fleshed out,
nor does the film even attempt to answer most of them. Given how one of the bigger
questions is whether or not Will as a personality still exists within the
machine, it is extremely poor in how they characterised him and the resolution
to that question feels tacked-on and rushed, despite the more than sufficient
running time. To make matters worse, the film is book-ended by a prologue that
spoils the ending and an epilogue that makes what happened in said ending
pointless. Will Pfister undoubtedly has a good eye for visuals and this film is
at least pretty to look at, but he should think twice before directing again.
#17: Deliver Us
From Evil
I have to admit, given how badly this film manages to come
together, it should be placed several spots further down the list, but the amount
of unintentional laughs I got from this movie bumped it up a few places. It feels
at times like it’s aware of how stupid it is, given how often it tries to be
funny at its own expense, but other times it genuinely wants the audience to
think that an exorcism scene where The Doors’ ‘Break On Through’ is playing is
terrifying and not hilariously out-of-place. Throughout the running time, the
amount of jump scares we get is ludicrous and, on occasion, rage-inducing. The
only legitimately good part of this film is Edgar Ramirez, who is not only the
best actor in this film but also gets the character that’s the best written as
well, making for one of the few things that had me engaged throughout. However,
with all that said, this is the only film on this list that I actually
recommend for readers to check out because this is one of those films that is
perfect for bad movie nights where you can get friends together to do your own
MST3K routine. Otherwise, deliver yourself from Eric's performance, among other things.
This is like if Hollywood thought that The Asylum was making
too much money with their mockbusters and decided to make their own: The
effects are cheap and sometimes even worse than some Asylum productions, the acting
is pretty much non-existent throughout with a pathetic male lead and some of
the most blatant ripping off of 300 I’ve seen yet.
#15: And So It
Goes
You know you’re in a classy film when it’s below an M rating
and it has a rape joke within the first five minutes. The writer seems to have
forgotten that, when you make a crotchety old man character, you need to at
least make him funny as all the jokes in this movie fall with a very audible
thud to the ground. The story is completely devoid of focus and aside from the
couple of scenes with Diane Keaton singing, there’s not much to give credit to
this movie for.
Admittedly decent actors let down by absolutely awful
material. The setting is painfully generic and feels like it was ripped
straight out of several other movies, the plot is not only idiotic but actually is ripped right
out of another movie (Van Helsing), the characters constantly make dumb decisions
because the plot needs them to and the effects are among some of the worst this
year.
To contrast the previous pick, this has some of the best effects work of the year.
Unfortunately, it is let down by incredibly stupid studio meddling to include
bad voice acting, insipid narration and an almost unbelievably juvenile script.
While the effects work should keep this off the list entirely, out of merit
that it shows more effort was put into this than almost every other entry here,
it makes it this far down the list purely because of how much of a colossal
screw-up this film became in comparison to how good it could have been.
95% dull, with little to no actual plot to speak of and
instead just meandering through its relatively short running time. Then it gets to
the ending and not only effectively wasted our time because how much of the
film wasn’t real, but also personally offended me because of its portrayal of
the male lead’s mental breakdown. It, for some reason, thought that this guy
going into a psychosis for two years was a good
thing because it helped him build his confidence; I am kind of taken aback at
just how offensive this film became, given the incredibly bland majority of it.
The ending is just that bad that it
alone warrants this film’s place on this list.
Being a bad adaptation is one thing; doing so while having
zero respect for your source material, while simultaneously trying to convince
your audience of how much better you are than previous adaptations, is
something else entirely. While the cast is mostly decent and there were a
couple of good musical ideas floating around in the production, the soundtrack
is bland pop garbage complete with Auto-Tune, which should be made illegal in
musical films, and any attempts to go into this film with an open mind and
ignoring the 1982 version are futile, considering how often this film tries to
be cute and poke fun at it itself. Rarely do I see a Hollywood film be this kind of pretentious.
While having a rather mouth-watering cast list, their
performances are only good within the context of a stage production; as a film, it’s way too
over-the-top and melodramatic to take seriously. Not that I see the original
play being all that good anyway given this script, its need to make every
character unlikable and its abject failure at getting us to pity them when bad
things happen to them. I believe that this is meant to be a black comedy as much as I believe
that The Room was meant to be a black comedy.
#9: Planes: Fire
And Rescue
It’s hard to imagine a film being worse than the original
Planes but at least that film had a couple of interesting characters, even if
they were shoved to the side for most of it. This film has all of the problems
of the original: A script that thinks endless vehicle puns are the height of
comedy, a roster of stereotypes pretending to be characters, a plot that is
recycled from countless other movies, an arc for the main character that goes
nowhere, a setting that makes little sense given how its presented and
animation that is unbearably cheap-looking, especially for a
theatrically-released film. No joke, after watching both this and its
predecessor, I was so burnt out that I considered giving up on film watching
entirely; it’s that bad.
#8: 22 Jump Street
After how much I enjoyed the first movie, I was hyped for
this one. What I ended up getting, however, was an overload of gay jokes and
innuendos and fewer deconstructive jokes that are just beaten into submission
until they are completely unsalvageable. The literal best joke in the film is
the end credits, where the writing is at its sharpest making fun of movie
sequels, but this has since gone flat after it was announced that 23 Jump
Street was indeed being made. Knowing that Lord and Miller, the same duo who
brought us the surprise juggernaut of The LEGO Movie, were behind this one is
very disheartening and I can only hope that this is a one-off in an otherwise
promising filmography.
Even for a cheesy romance flick, this is horribly written.
Whatever themes of fate and love they were trying to convey are extremely
cookie-cutter and taken to rather ridiculous levels; the male lead is
wish-fulfillment personified without any attempt at hiding it; the editing is
shoddy and the ending is easily one of the most rage-inducing bits of fluff I've seen all year. This is a ‘chick flick’ in the worst possible sense of the term.
Even putting aside this film’s persecution complex that
makes GamerGate look rational by comparison, the writing here does a pretty
effective job at making everyone look bad, even its intended Christian
demographic: Atheists are complete monsters; Muslims are violent zealots; and
Christians are judgemental and self-righteous douchebags. Kevin Sorbo is the only
actor who seems to have any fucks to give about his performance and makes for
the most interesting part of the film, but even then he’s playing a completely
transparent straw man that will probably only serve to offend most Atheists and
be too over-the-top for most Christian audiences to take seriously… at least, I
hope that’s how they’ll see it because, quite frankly, thinking that this is
how Christians see non-Christians is kind of terrifying.
#3: Any Day Now
The only thing this film was missing was being set in Nazi
Germany for it to tick every single box for Oscar bait: A gay couple take in a
child with Down Syndrome after his drug addict mother goes to jail, the
mother believes that they are unfit to raise her son because of their sexuality
so they hire a black lawyer to defend them. However, it can’t even do Oscar
bait right since the writing keeps falling flat on its face. Every frame of
this film feels cold and calculated, designed to emotionally manipulate its
audience and while a lot of films are like this, it shouldn’t be this easy to
see through. Add to this an ending that exists for no other reason than for the
audience to feel sad, and the rather pathetic attempt to ground this film in
reality by saying it’s “based on actual events”, which is complete bullshit,
and not even Alan Cumming’s decent performance and singing can save this movie.
#2: Winter’s Tale
Hands down, the dumbest film of the year and easily one of
the dumbest of the last few years. The writing only has two modes: Nonsensical
and brain numbingly trite, with the writer clearly forgetting that, even in a
fantastical setting, there still needs to be a sense of logic in why things are
the way they are in-story. Instead, we get events happening out of nowhere with
no rhyme or reason, not to mention plot conveniences-a-plenty. Also, the
characters are all different varieties of badly drawn from the pretentious
Beverly who does nothing but spew Malick-esque platitudes to the moronic Pearly
whose plans to get the main character are the kind of thing that 50’s cartoons
were already making fun of. Aside from Will Smith as Lucifer, which I give
credit to for giving a well-done interpretation of the character, this film is
just a sink-hole of time, effort and any form of sense.
#1: Divergent
This may seem like a pretty odd pick for my worst film of
the year, especially given its competition, but here’s my reasoning: As bad as
every other film on this list is, as well as a few that didn’t make the cut, at
least they managed to convince me that their worlds existed. Their worlds would
be unfathomably stupid, but at least they did that well enough.
Divergent, on the other hand, has a premise and setting that are so flimsy that
I did not for one second buy into anything that I was seeing on screen. The
acting is definitely better than I was expecting, but the plot literally
requires for the characters the actors are playing to be one-dimensional
ciphers, showing how little this film understands about basic human nature and
good screenwriting. This is a film that fails at its concept and goes down from
there, and as a work of fiction that is unacceptable.
It’s
a bit of a double-edged sword seeing Australian names in mainstream cinema:
Sometimes you get James Wan, director of The Conjuring as well as the original
Saw; and sometimes you get Baz Luhrman, director of Moulin Rouge and Australia,
among other pieces of aggravating drivel. I love seeing this great (at times) country
I live in being represented in Hollywood, but it doesn’t always yield the best
results. With today’s film, we have Stuart Beattie as writer/director who’s had
a very murky track record of late, having been a co-writer on G.I. Joe: The
Rise Of Cobra, the aforementioned Australia as well as a re-writer on Punisher:
War Zone. Let's see how well he does here.
