Archive
2019 IN REVIEW – The Worst of the Year (…and also the ones in between)
Alright, so 2019 wasn’t the year I wound up kicking back into high gear with my writing, but I’m determined to get my list of best and worst movies reviewed before this early Oscars ceremony, and, dammit, if I have to cut out talking about the ones in the middle this time, I will!
First, though, I want to give a preview of the films you won’t be seeing on either list. These are films I saw and either liked or disliked, but didn’t particularly find to be extraordinary. If they are on the following section, they are anywhere from just mundanely bad to good, not great — at least in my opinion, of course…
| TITLE | RELEASE DATE | RATING (x/5) |
|---|---|---|
| Escape Room | 1/04/19 | 2 |
| The Upside | 1/11/19 | 2 |
| The Kid Who Would Be King | 1/25/19 | 3.5 |
| Cold Pursuit | 2/08/19 | 2 |
| What Men Want | 2/08/19 | 2 |
| Isn’t It Romantic | 2/13/19 | 3 |
| Alita: Battle Angel | 2/14/19 | 3 |
| How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World | 2/22/19 | 3 |
| Greta | 3/01/19 | 2.5 |
| Little | 4/12/19 | 1.5 |
| Missing Link | 4/12/19 | 3 |
| The Hustle | 5/10/19 | 1.5 |
| Pokémon Detective Pikachu | 5/10/19 | 3 |
| Brightburn | 5/24/19 | 2.5 |
| Ma | 5/31/19 | 3.5 |
| X-Men: Dark Phoenix | 6/07/19 | 2.5 |
| Late Night | 6/07/19 | 3 |
| Men in Black International | 6/14/19 | 2.5 |
| Child’s Play | 6/21/19 | 3.5 |
| Annabelle Comes Home | 6/26/19 | 3.5 |
| Stuber | 7/12/19 | 1.5 |
| The Lion King | 7/19/19 | 2.5 |
| Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw | 8/02/19 | 2.5 |
| Dora and the Lost City of Gold | 8/09/19 | 3.5 |
| Good Boys | 8/26/19 | 3 |
| Hustlers | 9/13/19 | 3.5 |
| Abominable | 9/27/19 | 2.5 |
| Pain and Glory | 10/04/19 | 3 |
| Let It Snow | 11/08/19 | 2 |
| Last Christmas | 11/08/19 | 2.5 |
| Noelle | 11/12/19 | 1.5 |
| Lady and the Tramp | 11/12/19 | 2.5 |
| Charlie’s Angels | 11/15/19 | 2.5 |
| Queen & Slim | 11/27/19 | 3.5 |
Right, so with all that out of the way, let’s get on to the real meat of this and present… my top 22 picks for the worst movies I saw from 2019…
Read more…
2018 IN REVIEW – The Worst Movies of the Year
Alright, so I’m going to beat the Oscars, I just know it! … Personal goals aside, I did figure out that there were plenty of movies I liked or at least was indifferent to from 2018, much more than I hated. That being said, any year will have its stinkers, and here are 24 of them in rough order. I mean, it could change with time, but I feel good about this, currently, and definitely feel good about my top pick, so take this as kind of a list of terrible or even just really bland, boring movies from the year that leads up to the one to rule them all.
Read more…2017 IN REVIEW – The Worst Films of the Year
They can’t all be winners, and, as with any year, 2017 had some real stinkers. For the most part, I actually tried avoiding a lot of some of the apparent worst, but a few managed to either slip by me or, God help me, I sought them out just out of morbid curiosity.
The movies below are listed according to an admittedly somewhat arbitrary order based on gut instinct and memory, but while some of these may shift around a bit over time and even from day to day, you can bet these are all pretty terrible, with the top contenders being… well, some of the worst movies of 2017.
2016 IN REVIEW – The Worst Movies of the Year
Alright, so… I went a bit off the deep end this year, I think. I think I’ll exercise a bit more restraint for 2017. No point in stopping this year, though, when I’ve already started!
2016 was a crappy year, so here’s a list of all the crappy films I saw from it – all 43 of them, complete with answers for why I hated them, in approximately the order in which they sucked, in order of increasing suckage – though, really, what’s the difference between placement in 35 and 36? So, some of these are practically draws. Also, as always for these lists, I have included the Rotten Tomatoes score as of this writing, ’cause it’s always fun to see just how hated (or, in some movies’ cases, how confusingly liked) a movie is compared to my own ranking, right?
Anyway, forgive me if I’m a bit jaded and out of it this past year. I think I might write my list of favorite films while having a few beers…
REVIEW – Darkroom (2013)
Directed by: Britt Napier
Produced by: Britt Napier, Ron Stein
Written by: Michaelbrent Collings
Edited by: David Leonard, Jim Mol
Cinematography by: Frederic Fasano
Music by: Anthony Lledo
Starring: Kaylee DeFer, Elisabeth Röhm, Christian Campbell, Tobias Segal, Geneva Carr, Britne Oldford, Natalie Knepp
Year: 2013
Alright, so let’s get this point out of the way before I begin discussing this movie: Yes, I went to school with the star of this movie. I did not, however, know her very well, and I didn’t even have many of the same classes as her during the time she was there, and so I am in no way claiming to know intimate knowledge – and, even if I did, I wouldn’t divulge, because I am not writing for a gossip rag, and I am not a shitty person. That being said, it’s still kind of weird knowing that I very briefly crossed paths with someone in such a tiny school (43 people or so in my graduating class – she moved halfway through high school, so there’s that, too) who went on to be a recognizable actress. Not the biggest, mind you, but she had a prominent enough role in Gossip Girl for a couple seasons (I didn’t watch it, but I know I’m not the only person who watches things), and she once played Michael Rappaport’s daughter in a shortlived Fox sitcom called The War at Home, wherein she kissed Seth MacFarlane. He apparently remembered her well enough to invite her to do some voice acting on Family Guy. Heck, she was even one half of an actually crucial puzzle piece in Ted meeting the mother on How I Met Your Mother. That’s not unimpressive at all! So, yeah, there are people who will point at her and say, “I recognize her!” and so it’s still a noteworthy anecdote from my life (and anyone’s lives, really, from our class), especially considering that I once briefly played one of the gravediggers from Romeo and Juliet alongside her in our freshman year of high school for a school assignment – during which I cut my hand pretty badly on the jagged metal pipe I was using as a prop shovel. No wonder which one of us went on to act for a living and which went on to merely talk about people acting… for a hobby. Read more…
2015 IN REVIEW: The Worst Movies of the Year
Here it is! I know, it’s been a long time coming. But it’s finally here: my list of Worst Movies of 2015.
These are the 2015 movies I hated most, for one reason or another. Most of them lost points for being boring, while others lost points for being just plain stupid. There’s a good chance that you will not be entertained by any of these films, and if you do, then it’s most likely for ironic reasons. I saw a lot of bad movies in 2015, though – almost 40 of them! – and while I could’ve just narrowed it down to a Top 10 list or something, I chose instead to just flat out warn you about all the terrible movies I saw from 2015 until the time of publishing this.
I’ve ranked them in order of approximate awfulness, but, as always with these things, ranks can change probably in the future. There’s one thing I’m certain of, however, and that these are just… just terrible. Don’t see the movie on the list? I guess I didn’t hate it that much. Or I didn’t see it. I’m sure that there were plenty of other films I missed that were much worse than these. Heck, I’m sure that my list of favorite movies of the year will have some that people think belong on this list for one reason or another. That’s the internet for you. That list is coming, though, and you can feel free to complain then. Until that time, though, here are the movies I hated most from 2015…
Read more…
THEATRICAL REVIEW: Fantastic Four (2015)
Directed by: Josh Trank
Produced by: Gregory Goodman, Simon Kinberg, Robert Kulzar, Hutch Parker, Matthew Vaughn
Screenplay by: Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater, Josh Trank
Edited by: Elliot Greenberg, Stephen E. Rivkin
Cinematography by: Matthew Jensen
Music by: Marco Beltrami, Philip Glass
Starring: Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey, Tim Blake Nelson, Dan Castellaneta
Based Marvel Comics characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Year: 2015
This review contains spoilers.
So this must be how it feels to be one of the Man of Steel haters… Read more…
GRUDGE MATCH REVIEW: Fifty Shades of Grey vs. Old Fashioned
FIFTY SHADES OF GREY (Unrated)
Directed by: Sam Taylor-Johnson
Produced by: Michael De Luca, Dana Brunetti, E.L. James
Screenplay by: Kelly Marcel
Edited by: Anne V. Coates, Lisa Gunning, Debra Neil-Fisher
Cinematography by: Seamus McGarvey
Music by: Danny Elfman
Starring: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Eloise Mumford, Jennifer Ehle, Marcia Gay Harden, Victor Rasuk, Luke Grimes, Rita Ora, Max Martini, Callum Keith Rennie, Andrew Airlie, Dylan Neal, Anthony Konechny, Emily Fonda, Rachel Skarsten
Based on the book Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
Year: 2015
OLD FASHIONED
Directed by: Rik Swartzwelder
Produced by: Nathan Nazario, Dave DeBorde, Nini Hadjis, Rik Swartzwelder
Written by: Rik Swartzwelder
Edited by: Jonathan Olive, Phillips Sherwood, Robin Katz
Cinematography by: David George
Music by: Kazimir Boyle
Starring: Elizabeth Ann Roberts, Rik Swartzwelder, LeJon Woods, Tyler Hollinger, Nini Hadjis, Maryann Nagel, Lindsay Heath, Joseph Bonamico, Dorothy Silver, Ange’le Perez, Anne Marie Nestor
Year: 2015
This review contains spoilers, including the movies’ endings.
Alright, everyone, listen up! Things are about to get ugly in here! I’m going to be fanning the flames of a culture war, and it’s bound to make some people kind of angry!
In one corner, we have the inexplicably popular, smutty to a fault movie adaptation of a book that was itself originally an online Twilight fan fiction, written by someone who didn’t seem to catch on to that franchise’s coded abstinence message: Fifty Shades of Grey! In the other corner, we have that film’s chaste, Christian-targeting, message-laden morality tale counterpart, meant to provide a more wholesome alternative for anyone who proudly proclaims that they’ve kissed dating goodbye: Old Fashioned!
… Okay, I can’t keep up that boxing announcer façade. …
Anyway, I’m reviving a very old (and once-used) feature on this blog that I really didn’t enjoy doing the first time around but recently figured would be kind of interesting to try again. (It’s something I’d been meaning to try for a while, anyway, back when I thought about doing it for the original King Kong and its remakes.) The concept behind this grudge match review works pretty much like you’d expect. There will be a series of rounds in which I compare the two movies to one another, and there will be a winner for each round based on which movie succeeds more in that area. What will make this a bit more interesting, however, is the fact these two films aren’t remakes or adaptations of the same source material, but rather polar opposites! The marketing for Old Fashioned proclaimed “Chivalry makes a comeback,” while the BDSM-themed, sex-and-nudity laden Fifty Shades demanded audiences “Lose Control.” As if its obvious opposition weren’t enough, the films were only released one week apart, with Old Fashioned beating Fifty Shades to the punch in an effort to overtake it and likely to encourage people to not give in to the smut.
I’m of the opinion, however, that too often Christian films try to take on too much of a counterculture stance, to the point where they’re not even willing to study the very thing they’re opposed to or portray it in a fair light. As I’ve pointed out countless times before, I am a Christian, and yet I am more often than not finding myself at odds with the image the Christian pop culture industry and the people who consume it propagate for themselves, and flaunting it in non-Christians’ faces (and even the faces of Christians they disagree with), prideful in their willful ignorance. So, I am trying to do something different and see it from all sides in comparing the two movies. It’s actually kind of funny how they actually have some things in common! To be quite honest, though, I’m also trying to have a bit of fun at their expense, too. I mean… neither one of these movies is really any good, so I’m really not going to take this too seriously. I’m also just here to let you know which one is better than the other, too – or, in this case, which one is the least bad.
REVIEW: The Brady Bunch in the White House
Directed by: Neal Israel
Produced by: Armand Leo, Lloyd J. Schwartz
Written by: Lloyd J. Schwartz, Hope Juber
Edited by: Terry Stokes
Cinematography by: Robert Seaman
Music by: Laurence Juber
Starring: Shelley Long, Gary Cole, Chad Doreck, Autumn Reeser, Blake Foster, Ashley Eckstein, Max Morrow, Sofia Vassilieva, Tannis Burnett, Saul Rubinek, Reagan Pasternak, Dave Nichols, Joshua Peace, Noah Danby, Jef Mallory
Based on the TV series The Brady Bunch
Year: 2002
The following review was originally conceived as an impromptu Facebook rant after I decided to watch this movie out of boredom while browsing Netflix, so if this review seems kind of random, it was. It wasn’t long before I realized, however, that I’d essentially written an impromptu movie review instead, so I took it and punched it up a bit and decided to publish it officially instead.
I think I just watched one of the most bafflingly horrendous movies I’ve ever seen – The Brady Bunch in the White House. The first two movies that took the characters and placed them in the 90s weren’t exactly comedy masterpieces, but they were pretty witty and smartly put together satires of the original show’s absurdity by mostly having the wholesome characters be unchanged and defiantly unfazed by the explicit realities of the then-modern world (save for Alice, who, as an honorary Brady, was given a bit more of an edge). It was a fairly clever concept, dodging the pitfalls that most other TV-to-movie adaptations succumb to, and even on an artistic level, those movies got everything just right: a near perfect cast, the musical cues, the sitcom style camera angles, the kitschy costumes and sets, and just enough heightened reality to let you know the people making it were doing it all in good fun while making it tolerable and enjoyable for all people, regardless of whether or not they actually liked the original show. (I hated it.) This third film, though… Read more…
REVIEW: Paul Blart: Mall Cop
Directed by: Steve Carr
Produced by: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Barry Bernardi
Written by: Kevin James, Nick Bakay
Edited by: Jeff Freeman
Cinematography by: Russ T. Alsobrook
Music by: Waddy Wachtel
Starring: Kevin James, Jayma Mays, Keir O’Donnell, Bobby Cannavale, Adam Ferrara, Peter Gerety, Stephen Rannazzisi, Jamal Mixon, Adhir Kalyan, Erick Avari, Raini Rodriguez, Shirley Knight, Allen Covert, Jason Ellis, Natascha Hopkins, Mike Escamilla, Rick Thorne, Mike Vallely
Year: 2009
You know what the nice thing about Redbox is? They know that when a sequel to a film releases, a lot of people might want to see the original film, too. So they’ll distribute copies of the original film for rental again, no matter how old. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, as you may know, has been recently and inexplicably unleashed upon moviegoers this year after a six year gap since the last incident occurred, and Redbox was kind enough to still stock up on the original to remind us all why we should not feed into the box office of this completely unnecessary and, from all accounts I’ve heard, thoroughly putrid film. Thank you, Redbox. Surely those who gave the film the $88 million it’s accumulated so far at the box office were simply ignoring your warnings.
The Viewer's Commentary 