OK its that time of the year.....the end. So in honor of that I've put together a few lists of the best and worst in movies and television that I've seen this year. Now before you go sending messages about omissions and such let me clarify. This is a listing of movies and TV I've actually seen this year. While there may be better movies or shows out there since i didn't see them yet they're ineligible for this list. Anyway now that's we cleared that up here's my list of top 5 worst movies of 2016!
5. Suicide Squad
Movie trailers are a funny thing, they can really make chicken salad out of chicken shit....which is exactly what they did for "Suicide Squad" where the 2 minute trailer is by leaps and bounds better then the finished product. This movie is an absolute mess from top to bottom. First off the whole plot concept is ridiculous. Now i can see the logic in forming a super villain team to combat supernatural threats but with one exception this team has no enhanced abilities whatsoever. I mean the threat in this movie lays waste to waves of highly trained and armed special forces operatives but a girl in hots pants and a baseball bat backed up by a guy throwing boomerangs gets by unscathed? Too say nothing of the fact the villain is a former team member who broke bad about 5 seconds into the movie. Besides the terrible plot (good thing the bad guy stalled on their plan long enough for the team to grab a drink and chat halfway through) the CGI is bad as well, most notably in the big final fight scene where i could have sworn i was watching a mid-90's action movie by the CGI monstrosities that were assaulting my eyes. They do realize this movie is in HD right? Oh but lest we forget the thing that ties the entire horrible package together.....Jared Leto's Joker. Boy oh boy did that not work. Now I'll give them credit for taking a big ole swing with this interpretation and some parts have potential but just the visual look alone is so distracting it completely takes you away from the performance. I mean the tattoos, the teeth, just the whole general Halloween costume look of the thing just didn't work. Wasted potential is the real theme of this movie, do yourself a favor and stay away.
4. The Witch
Its becoming clearer lately that when you hear the words "creeping dread" in a description of a horror movie what they really mean is "slow and boring" because that's what you got here with "The Witch". It all starts out well enough with a old fashioned baby snatching in a pretty intriguing set-up of Puritan era America but then decides to take the next hour and a half and fill it with lots of close-ups of goat heads and call it horror. Now I'm not saying you have to have monsters running around or a lady in a pointy hat making threats to have add terror but "The Babadook" showed the proper way to build suspense and dread while also sprinkling in some pay-offs throughout the movie. "The Witch" seems uninterested in that and decides to go more of a character study route which is not the direction to go in with material this dry. All this can be forgiven however if in the end there's some big payoff waiting for us......but there's not. Quite the opposite actually as just as the movie starts to pick up some steam and get interesting we get the always terrible cut to black ending! This is made even more egregious when you realize the movie is barely 90 minutes long and they really could have given a proper ending without being overlong. Considering the pretty good acting and interesting setting its a shame this movie took too long to get where it was going and became nothing more then a bore.
3. Independence Day: Resurgence
What happens when you make a sequel no one wants 20 years too late and take away the charismatic lead from the original? Why "Independence Day: Resurgence" that's what. Not even Jeff Goldblum using all his Jeff Goldblum powers can save this stinker. Now I'm not gonna bag too much on the plot, this is an "Independence Day" movie after all, but i mean guys were you even trying at parts of this? You literally have a character drive across the country from New York City to Nevada in less the 12 hours, this in the middle of an alien invasion mind you so never mind the traffic issues alone. Then instead of focusing the movie on our established hero and letting Goldblum headline the movie, he has done it successfully before, you decide to introduce way to many new characters that no one cares about nor will they. I can see introducing new young actors to maybe take the reins of the series but why a misfit group of kids in an RV? Why spend time that could be spent on plot development by introducing new cannon fodder we don't care about when you have several returning cast members that can serve the same purpose? While the effects are pretty good things like the space fighters and energy weapons now used by Earth come across as cheesy and give the whole affair a kind of B-movie sci-fi feel. It doesn't help that the majority feels like it was shot on a green screen which further gives it a sanitized SyFy channel feel. With a price tag of around $200 million that is inexcusable. Just watching it you can't help but wonder why did they even bother since it almost seems no one was really taking it seriously and that's why you should avoid it as well.
2. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
When it takes 7 years to get a movie off the ground and finished that's strike one. When that delay means the book its based on is no longer pop culturally relevant that's strike two. Finally when you're on the tail end of a string of Zombie based movies and TV and you melt into the crowd you're done for. "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" was based on a 2009 book and has been stuck in development hell for 7 years and after seeing the finished product you can see why. The idea is simply bonkers, a zombie story mixed with the Jane Austen "classic", but its the execution that determines this to be a failure. While it can at times look visually interesting you soon find yourself realizing just how hollow it is. It takes lines of dialogue right out of the book but anyone who has read Jane Austen knows that's not always the most audience captivating thing to do. The idea of these people seemingly going on with their lives semi-normally even with an in progress zombie outbreak is just.....stupid. I mean I'm having a hard time even writing this synopsis because the whole set-up is just boring and dumb. That's not aided by the unconvincing acting either. This whole movie could have been helped by any member of the cast realizing what kind of movie this was and playing it a bit looser and playfully. Instead we get a cast of people almost playing the ridiculous concept totally straight and it turns the whole thing into more of a parody then the serious tone they were going for at point. In addition this serious tone makes even less sense when then action kicks in and all the daughters are kung-fu and wire-working their way through waves of the undead. The whole idea of that screams campy but for whatever reason the Director doesn't lean into that and plays it straight instead, big mistake. Another glaring mistake is why are all the zombie gore effects CGI? This is post "Walking Dead" here guy, not saying you can't use CGI to enhance the look as the show does but when all your zombie effects are digital it further takes away any tension you may inadvertently create. Things like a entire room full of zombies being taken out by the sisters but not a single drop of blood getting on any of them completely destroys any suspension of disbelief you may have built up. If they're not even going to bother with small details like that why should i give their terrible premise a chance in return? This movie is an example of a concept/movie missing its window but still stubbornly released anyway. Do yourself a favor and stay away.
1. Gods of Egypt
If i wrote nothing else here except the fact Gerard Butler and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau play Egyptian gods that would be sufficient explanation as why "Gods of Egypt" is the worst movie i saw this year. In fact it doesn't stop there as unless you're a slave there's not a single Egyptian person in this movie. In fact besides Elodie Yung (French Cambodian) and Chadwick Boseman (African American) this entire cast is lily white as can be! Troublesome racism and whitewashing aside (Butler doesn't even try to hide his Scottish accent at all) this movie doesn't get any better once it gets going. For a $140 million budget the effects are complete garbage. You can easily tell the entire movie was shot on a green sound stage as everything has that too smooth look to it that immediately tells your eye "this is fake". The fact that this whole movie boils down to a robot bird fight in the end, yes you read that right, gives you a glimpse of what we're working with here. Now i will give the actors credit that they all give it their all, Boseman actually seems to get what kind of movie this is and leans into it, but even they can't save an at times pointless script. There's more then a few plot lines that go nowhere that are inserted for seemingly no reason and do nothing except bloat the run time to over 2 hours! You can also tell they had franchise in mind when writing this as in addition to plots that go nowhere some are just kind of dropped to be handled or explained later, that's shameless even for me. So we have an unfocused plot, terrible effects and subtle racism right off the bat. Oh did i mention the gods are 25 feet tall so half the time two people in a scene together aren't even filmed at the same time, you can imagine what that does for timing and rapport. Listen at this point its just beating a dead horse but for your own sake just take my word for it and stay away from "Gods Of Egypt"
No comments:
Post a Comment