I continue to try and avoid things I know I will
dislike – so some of the bigger turkeys this year aren’t here – but there are
still a lot of them.
Also
Bad: Aftermath (Elliott Lester) was a rather limp
revenge drama, which wastes a dramatic Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Bad Batch (Ana Lily Amirpour) was a
cannibal/dystopian/horror/comedy/western that really tried to do a whole hell
of a lot, and ended up not doing much of anything. Baywatch (Seth Gordon) at least tried to be fun and funny – but the
jokes were too hit or miss for it to be good. Bokeh (Geoffrey Orthwein & Andrew Sullivan) has an interesting
premise, but ends up going nowhere. The
Discovery (Charles McDowell) has a lot of ideas, and yet they all lead
nowhere. The Circle (James Ponsoldt) seems
to completely miss the mark in terms of building a paranoid thriller – and ends
up bland, with only a great Tom Hanks performance in its favor. Fist Fight (Richie Keen) has an
appealing cast, but the jokes let them down too often. The Foreigner (Martin Campbell) is too serious to be much fun, but
not serious enough to take seriously. Ghost
in the Shell (Rupert Sanders) seemed to spend all its time trying to look
great – and none on anything else. The
Great Wall (Zhang Yimou) was overly complicated, and somehow didn’t even
have great action sequences, despite being from the director of Hero and House
of Flying Daggers. I, Olga Hepnarová
(Petr Kazda & Tomás Weinreb) was an overly dour tour of European
misery. Jigsaw (Spierig Brothers) is not a very scary, or good, sequel/prequel/reboot
of saw. Kingsman: The
Golden Circle (Matthew Vaughn) didn’t bring anything
new – except the glorious Julianne Moore – to the series, and didn’t even have
an action sequence as good as the church one in the original – so is basically
a waste of time. The Most Hated Woman in
America (Tommy O’Haver) tells a fascinating true crime case, but in the
most lifeless way imaginable. The Nut
Job 2: Nutty by Nature (Cal Bruckner) doesn’t even rise to the standard of
the not very good original. Resident Evil;:
The Final Chapter (Paul W.S. Anderson) hopefully really is the Final
Chapter of this series that some people love for reasons that continue to
escape me. Rings (F. Javier Gutierrez) is
the final nail – a decade too late – in this horror series. Rough Night (Lucia Aniello) wastes a
cast full of very funny women in a lifeless comedy. Salt and Fire (Werner Herzog) is another awful non-doc from Herzog,
who will hopefully stopping making those soon. Smurfs: The Lost Village (Kelly Asbury) was uninspired – even by
the low standards of this movie series. Staying
Vertical (Alain Guiraudie) goes around and around in circles and goes
nowhere very slowly. Suburbicon (George
Clooney) is a confused mishmash of styles that never comes together into a
cohesive whole. Table 19 (Jeff Blitz) is
stuck in the middle of being a comedy and a drama, and does neither well. To the Bone (Marti Noxon) has good
intentions, telling the story of bulimia – but is the too clichéd ridden to
have much of an impact. The Void (Jeremy Gillespie & Steven Kostanski) is a horror film that goes
from boring to off the rails. War
Machine (David Michod) never finds the right tone in its
attempt to be a satire on the military industrial complex. War on Everyone (John Michael McDonagh) tries very, very hard, but
is an overwritten, over directed, over acted film that becomes borderline
unwatchable at times. We Are The Flesh
(Emiliano Rocha Minter) takes place in an underground hell scape and really
wants to be a disturbing exploration of our modern world – but is immature and
silly. Wilson (Craig Johnson) takes
the brilliant graphic novel and turns it into a limp, Sundance dramedy. Wonder Wheel (Woody Allen) is another
uneven, late Allen film – but this one with a very icky real world correlation.
Woodshock (Kate Mulleavy & Laura
Mulleavy) looks great, but makes zero sense – and wastes Kristen Dunst. XX (Jovanka Vockovic/Annie Clark/Roxanne Benjamin/Karyn
Kusama) is a horror omnibus by four woman directors – an idea I love – but
only one of the segments (by Kusama) actually works. xXx: The Return of Xander Cage (D.J. Caruso) is goofy, but somehow
not quite goofy enough to be over-the-top fun.
Bottom
10
10.
The Snowman (Tomas Alfredson)
The Snowman has already become one of those
legendary failures – and that’s because everyone involved in making the movie
is so talented, and the result is almost unbelievably bad. This is a serial
killer thriller about a killer who likes to toy with the police – except he
doesn’t really do that – and is obsessed with snowmen – for reasons that are
never explained. The plotting of the movie is nonsensical, so even the very few
things about the movie that do work – included some nice cinematography –
doesn’t really hold. The performances are basically one note, the characters clichés,
that the talented cast cannot save the movie from itself. At times, the whole
thing resembles a straight faced parody of the serial killer genre – except in
this case, they’re taking it deadly seriously. A grim, slow, slog.
9.
Brimstone (Martin Koolhoven)
Martin Koolhoven’s Brimstone is a long, dull, grim
slog of a film – one that unless it’s turning your stomach with its depiction horrific
violence – sexual or otherwise – is boring you to tears. The film runs
two-and-a-half hours, which is odd, since nothing much happens in the films –
it’s told in three chapters cutting back and forth in time and is about, well,
that’s the problem – I’m not sure. The film’s message is confusing and confused
(perhaps something about religious hypocrisy? Sure, let’s go with that). The
worst part is, that Koolhoven treats everything with grim delusion of grandeur
– as if his dark vision of the past was saying something important about the
future. It isn’t. A game cast cannot make this anything that a grim slog to nowhere.
8.
The Assignment (Walter Hill)
I have never been as big of a fan of Walter Hill as
many cinephiles are (I finally saw a Hill film I truly loved this year – 1978’s
The Driver) – but his latest film, The Assignment, truly may be the nadir of
his career. Here, Michelle Rodriguez plays a hitman who angers the wrong
people, who ends up giving him an unwanted gender reassignment surgery. The
film clearly doesn’t ponder its own implications very long – and to be fair,
had the action in the film been better, I may well not have cared. But the
plotting, action sequences, acting and dialogue is all so clumsy, that
basically, nothing about the film works – making the offensiveness of its
premise stand out all the more.
7.
Death Note (Adam Wingard)
The idea behind Death Note was always incredibly
silly – a teenage boy finds a book that if he writes down someone’s name, that
person will soon be killed. Yet, the series has a large, loyal fan base in both
its manga and anime form – both in Japan, and around the world, so it must be
doing something right. Adam Wingard’s Netflix remake – transplanting the action
to the American Northwest (and substituting in white characters for Japanese
ones) though is a mess. Wingard, who clearly can make great movies (see You’re
Next and The Guest) here appears like an amateur – the action sequence are
confusing, everything is cloaked in darkness and unclear. The performances are
bad – in part because the dialogue they have to speak poorly written. The film
never quite decides what it wants to be, or how far to push things. The result
is a limp, unscary horror film – that really has no reason for being. 
6.
Dark Night (Tim Sutton)
The talent of director Tim Sutton is undeniable –
out of all the film on my worst of list, this is clearly the best made film,
with impeccably crafted images, and wonderful sound design. The problem I had
with the movie is the approach it has to its subject matter. The film is about
a shooting at a movie theater, in the wake of the Aurora, Colorado shooting –
which we see many reports about in the background of this film. The film plays
guessing games throughout – showing us many lonely, isolated, potentially
violent people all living out their miserable lives, and has us in the audience
trying to figure out who’s going to snap. The whole thing left a bad taste in
my mouth, and felt exploitative. The film was said to be inspired by Gus Van
Sant’s Elephant – but that film didn’t play these silly games, and was richer
for it. This film felt cheap and offensive.
5.
Bright (David Ayer)
Bright is the kind of ridiculously dumb movie that
you almost cannot believe it exists. It tries to cross the world of a tough,
LAPD crime drama like Training Day, with a fantasy world that includes Orcs,
Fairies and other magical creatures, and somehow turn it all into an
entertaining action movie, and a treatise on racism. Nothing about the film
really works – I have no idea why Will Smith felt something like this needed
his immense, movie star charisma – which, to be fair, he doesn’t actually bring
in this movie (he seems bored) or what about be slathered in horrible orc
makeup appealed to someone like Joel Edgerton, as his partner. The movie really
doesn’t work on any conceivable level – it’s poorly written, directed, acted and
worst of all, it’s boring as hell. This was Netflix trying to move into
Blockbuster filmmaking – it didn’t work.
4.
The Dinner (Oren Moverman)
Oren Moverman is a talented filmmaker, has
assembled a talented cast including Richard Gere, Steve Coogan, Rebecca Hall
and Laura Linney, and here has adapted one of my favorite novels of recent
years by Herbert Koch. And yet, The Dinner is a downright awful movie – glib
and superficial. Part of the problem is that as talented as Coogan is, he is
all wrong for what is essentially the film’s lead role – that requires him to
go dark, violent and unhinged – and he doesn’t pull it off. Another part is
that in transplanting the action for The Netherlands to America, Moverman
decides to try and take the central action of the novel – the horrific killing
of a homeless man by two teenagers, whose upper class parents meet over a
hugely expensive meal to discuss – and tie to American history, which doesn’t
really connect to what the film is actually about. The result is a movie that
doesn’t really know what it is trying to say. Koch’s book, while hardly
perfect, was a blunt instrument that was very clear in its purpose. This
adaptation has no idea what it’s trying to say, and says it poorly at that.
3.
The Emoji Movie (Tony Leondis)
Many children’s movie – both good and bad – can be
made for cynical reasons such as brand extensions and its ability to market
toys to children. While I don’t particularly like this aspect of children’s
movies, you kind of have to except it, as its part of the whole package. But I
have my limits – and The Emoji Movie is it. The Emoji Movie is a gross,
cynical, lazy film, which doesn’t even really think through its very thin
premise to come up with a believable world. The film is basically product
placement and poop jokes for 90 minutes – it treats its audience as if they are
idiots. Yes, I know, you can argue that lots of kid’s movie – like say, Trolls,
is built upon the premise of selling toys to kids. Yet, while that may be the
purpose, the makers of that film also fill that movie with songs, and visual
humor, and lots of other things that are enjoyable. The Emoji Movie leaves it
all out.
2.
Fifty Shades Darker (James Foley)
The people making these movies know how silly and
stupid they are, right? After all, director James Foley has made some very good
films in his career – After Dark, My Sweet and Glengarry Glen Ross to name but
two – and star Dakota Johnson has been quite good in other films (to be honest,
she’s good in these movies as well – without, this probably moves up a spot on
this list). Still, I cannot be sure that they really do know how silly these
moves are – because if they did, they would treat them so deadly seriously,
would they? They wouldn’t make the sex in the films so joyless, cold and
sterile, would they? They would encourage leading man Jamie Dornan to be less
of a stupid block of wood, wouldn’t they? They get some joy out of the utterly
inane plot, wouldn’t they? Well, wouldn’t they? These movies were never going
to be great art – but the fact that they are not great trash is unforgivable. 
1.
Transformers: The Last Knight (Michael Bay)
I honestly don’t know what to say about
Transformers: The Last Knight – and that’s at least in part because I really
have no idea what the film was about. The film is essentially a loud,
incoherent mess for two and half hours – time in which a lot of visuals fly at
you, but nothing really happens. Could I explain the plot to you? I could not.
Who the characters are? Not the slightest clue. I can say that the Autobots and
Decepticons are fighting again – but wait a second, I’m not so sure about,
since I just remembered the weird robot woman back on the transformers home
planet, and I’m quite sure what they hell she wanted. I almost want to give
Michael Bay some credit and say that he’s become an avant-garde filmmaker of
the blockbuster set – making huge montages of unrelated images. But that cannot
be what he’s doing, can it? Regardless, this was the most miserable experience
in watching a film I had this year – and so, it’s the years worst film.
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