Year in Film Review Day 3: Bad Movies

It was a bad year for movies. So many movies were so bad, I got rid of my usual "The Year's Best Bad Movie" because there were too many bad movies and none of them guilty pleasures; just guilty. And I've gotten rid of the outright worst film for reasons that will become clear. But at least, in all of this, I came up with a good idea for Godfather 5.

MOST INEXPLICABLY WELL-REVIEWED FILM

• The End of the Tour - More artless art about art. 
• Ex Machina – The “evil robots will kill us all” movie that worked, finally convincing everyone that zombies, even zombie beavers, are not nearly as terrifying as amoral sexy machines locked up in Oscar Isaac’s basement. A decent movie betrayed by an empty ending. HAL9000 was 40 years ago and still more chilling.
• It Follows – The latest over-reviewed horror movie that is a metaphor for teen sex. We should reward movies for having ideas, but isn’t every horror movie about teen sex?
• The Gift – Whoever decided bullying was the next big issue has enough clout to turn those reviewer thumbs upside down. I am reminded that a study of bullying awareness campaigns demonstrated that they have had no effect except to teach bullies how to do their thing better. Critics can be bullies…maybe they weren’t so much sympathetic to the message as taking notes?

WINNER: Ex Machina. So if this movie isn't about technology but rather, like all movies this year, about feminism, it becomes a lot more interesting…if uncomfortably hateful. Still...ending the movie with an off-kilter shot of the lead lying on the floor...not exactly Kubrick.

THE LAST EVER ADAM SANDLER AWARD FOR SHOCKINGLY UNFUNNY COMEDY AND WORST OVERALL MOVIE:

Ridiculous Six

Pixels

WINNER: Adam Sandler. He has reached a new level of unfunny where I can’t nominate anyone else ever again. Nor can I choose between yet another “Remember the 80’s?” movies and his appalling “Remember Indians?” digital debut. One was offensive, neither was funny, both made a lot of money. The market is not the ally of good taste; Netflix signed him to do several more of these movies. I am hereby retiring the award until Adam Sandler passes away or Marvel’s Molly Shannon Plan B lands her a deal with Hulu and puts someone back in the same universe. 

BEST IDEA POORLY EXECUTED

• Focus – Will Smith and Margot Robbie do Ocean’s 11…surprisingly poorly.  
• The Intern – A retired Robert DeNiro mentors a refreshingly strong female lead CEO…plus twenty minutes of small talk that should have been edited out and a lot of missed opportunities for humor.
• The Man From U.N.C.L.E. – Two surprisingly leaden “next big stars” work for Guy Ritchie in a remake of a TV show no one remembers, hoping that 60s + British = cool squared. I'm reminded of a delightful remark that a woman at a party made to me when I spat out a mixture of champagne and grenadine. I was explaining to her, "I figured I liked each individually, I didn't expect them to not work together." "Ah," she said, "Like sex in the shower." The Man from UNCLE is like bad 60's sex in a cold British shower...with a bad Russian accent.  
• The Hateful Eight – Quentin Tarantino makes a movie with 2 great characters...and 6 others.
• Tomorrowland – The Martian without the hope. The Disney Borg tries to reassimilate a sense of Walt's original wonder and possibility about the future…

WINNER: Tomorrowland…by making a movie about a dystopian police state of environmental Cassandras. Hey kids…want to believe in the future again? Watch TV’s Most Famous Doctors square off to re-do Terry Gilliam’s Brazil!

THE SMART MOVIE FOR STUPID PEOPLE AWARD

Anomalisa – Everyone’s the same. A desperate affair to escape that sameness is ultimately unsatisfying. Cincinnati makes some weird chili. Only one of those three “ideas” is potentially novel, and yet this is not a movie about why Cincinnati puts chili on pasta...which I would watch. And which would have been much better than Claymation sex, two things which no one ever thought would go together well. 

MOST RIDICULOUS MOMENT – San Andreas unapologetically lifts the climax from The Abyss, nearly frame for frame, and does it much, much worse. 

PHANTOM MENACE AWARD FOR COLOSSAL DISAPPOINTMENT

• Jurassic World – Christ Pratt gets to have fun for 3 lines. The rest is crashing dinosaur toys together.
• Pan – Warner Brothers borrows from Disney’s fail-now business plan of robbing boomers' childhood memories by ineptly modernizing the story.
• Spectre – Merely OK Bond movies are no longer acceptable. Daniel Craig probably made 1 (ok 2) too many Bond movies. But let’s do one more just to be sure?
• Terminator Genisys – A bad enough movie that made itself worse by announcing its twist in the preview. This franchise now has more bad movies than good.

WINNER: Terminator Genisys. It’s like they made two more bad Godfathers and in the last one Al Pacino time-warps back to Robert DeNiro’s time as Vito to set himself up as a rival Don, only it’s not nearly as good as Heat because otherwise this is actually a pretty good idea for a movie.