Sure, it's been less than 3 months since I've started this blog, and I've only reviewed a handful of movies since then, but that doesn't mean I haven't seen my share of unbearable dreck as I look back on the year that was 2012. this year in movies, I feel, we've seen more good movies than I have bad. Hell, Les Miserables, a movie I had pegged would be the most overrated film to come out of the holiday season, was surprisingly good, despite its flaws, but i'm getting ahead of myself and will talk about the musical later this week. Today, as most of us are looking foreword to a new year, I'm going to spend this week looking back on the best and the worst last year had to offer. Today, I take aim at the movies that pissed me off last year; the movies that deserve nothing but the one-finger salute.
10. The Amazing Spider-Man - Of all the movies that are on my worst list. this one I had a hard time putting on my list because I didn't think the reboot was a terrible piece of crap. However, The Amazing Spider-Man commits a slightly bigger sin that made me put this on the list: Marc Webb's reboot of the teenage crime-fighting web slinger doesn't cover any new ground. It's a note-for-not retelling of the Sam Rami version of Spider-Man back in 2002, minus Toby Maguire as Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield now fills that role), no Mary Jane Watson (Emma Stone now plays the other love interest in Peter's life, Gwen Stacy) and no goofy wrestling match between puppy-eyed Maguire and Randy "Macho Man" Savage.
Peter is the high school outcast.
He's in love with a girl who barely notices him, and he gets bullied constantly.
During a field trip to a scientific research facility, he is bitten by a genetically engineered spider, giving him superhuman abilities and restructures his DNA; at the same time, the ambitious scientist has an accident of his own, as he tries to reach the peak of the human physical condition.
Peter tragically loses Uncle Ben to a petty criminal, seeks to avenge his death, then has an epiphany and decides to use his powers to thwart crime in the city.
Blah, blah, blah. We've seen this story before, and it was better done the first time we saw it.
9. Pitch Perfect - This unfunny, mostly predictable, and sometimes offensive tripe, along with the the Spider-Man reboot, share the honor of being the most overrated film of 2012. I'm sorry, but when your Bring It On meets Glee knockoff has to stoop to puke jokes for laughs and clichéd characters - the rebel outcast (Anna Kendrick), the bitchy control freak/leader of the group, the oddball with the most memorable lines in the movie the understanding, sympathetic romantic interest, the rival leader who's a total asshole, etc. - who learn the predicable life lessons beyond singing acapello in order to win over the audience, your movie isn't light, peppy, funny or a crowd-pleaser: it means it's bloated, predictable and it mostly sucks.
8. Liz and Dick - Has there ever been a more shocking and pitiful fall from grace like Lindsay Lohan's? Liz and Dick is the story of the tumultuous, decades-spanning romance between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, but you would have sworn it was it was another poorly-scripted and badly acted Lifetime TV movie that was trying to make fun of today's obsession of celebrity culture and marginally talented female stars who piss away their fame and fortune to drugs, booze and Hollywood's fast lane, and not a biopic of two lives that kept the tabloids busy for years with their on-again, off-again love affair. Lohan's heart was in the right place in wanting to honor one of her idols, but the script and her acting did the late great acting legend a disservice. Taylor deserved better.
7. 2-Headed Shark Attack - The Asylum is known for ripping off popular movies (Transmorphers, Sunday School Musical, Sherlock Holmes) and for making B-level monster movies (Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is a masterpiece of B-Level schlock in my book). Trouble is, they've never really made anything as fun as watch a big-ass shark take on a big-ass octopus. Sure, there was Mega Piranha, Mega Shark vs. Crocosarus, but those movies weren't as entertaining as MSVGO. 2-Headed Shark Attack, maybe the worst monster movie The Asylum has ever made: It's features some of the worst special effects i've seen from the company (and believe me, that's saying something), the characters are mostly unlikable sacks of shit with no real personality outside of the stereotypes they're been given: Bland, Brainy, Prick, Hot Girl, Leader, and the rest are just Dead Meat to fill out the body count, and they make some of the most implausible choices that wind up getting themselves killed. This is just a lazy and idiotic clone of other better B-movie flicks the Asylum has done, but without the humor, the fun or the self-realization that this is supposed to be a terrible movie and decide to run with it.
6. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - I loved the idea of making a film about our 16th president being a bad-ass slayer of bloodsuckers, even more when Timur Bekmambetov, the man behind 2008's stylish action-thriller Wanted, was directing the project, and even more when Tim Burton was acting as producer. Unfortunately, the film tries to take itself seriously and be a campy, genre-blending splatter-fest, and because of these two conflicting themes, it ultimately fails to succeed at both. What should have been a bloody fun time at the movies turned into a lame Inglorious Basterds copy-cat without any of the hypnotic dialogue or engaging characters. It's a sad state of affairs when The Asylum's mockbuster Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies is a more enjoyable movie than this.
5. Total Recall - The only recognizable thing in this remake of the 1990 sci-fi action flick is the prostitute with a third breast. Otherwise, this is almost unrecognizable to even Philip K. Dick's short story, We Can Remember If For You Wholesale, as director Len Wiesman and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer take the original source material and made it as boring and generic as possible. The visual style is impressive and Colin Farrel isn't that bad playing a man who realizes he's been given a false life and is actually a secret agent, but where's the fun when the filmmakers took out the confusion of Douglas Quaid's struggle to figure out his own reality and put the rest of the story on autopilot?
4. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part II - Or, as I like to say, "How Much Worse Can This Series Get?" Well, give screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg and director Bill Condon this much credit: they saved the worst for last. The final installment of this tepid, irritating franchise butchers what was left of the vampire lore by making them rejects from the X-Men series (One can control the elements, one can cause earthquakes, etc) as newly-turned vampire Bella (Kristen Stewart), her hubby Edward (Robert Pattinson), and pussy-whipped wolf-boy friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner), must make a final stand against the Volturi, who have come to kill her, the Cullens, and their newly growing child (the baby vampire is one of the most hilariously bad CGI creations i've ever encountered). I don't think I can even get mad at the movie anymore, mostly because it finally wallows in it's own shameless mediocrity, even though most of the audience (unless your a fangirl of the series) knew it all this time. The tagline to the movie is "The epic finale that will live forever." I think they meant in the trash bin of pop culture.
3. LOL - When not even Lions Gate Films, the same studio that gave us Jigsaw and Madea, won't even attempt to market your shitty teen drama, you fucked up. Maybe they took in one viewing of the American remake of the French comedy hit LOL - Laughing Out Loud and realized that even they couldn't positively spin a film in which spoiled, privileged white kids got to bitch about being spoiled, privileged white kids. Maybe they saw that Miley Cyrus and Demi Moore and the rest of the cast came off as a bunch of unlikable sods who needed a swift kick up the ass and decided to back off. And maybe they realized they were hopelessly screwed when they got the bad luck of being released on the same day as Marvel's The Avengers back on May 4, coupled with the huge success of The Hunger Games, and thought it was best to let a bad English-language remake slip through and hope no one would notice. I noticed, and as a former teenager, I found this to be pretentious and insulting.
2. Battleship - The best thing I could say about this Michael Bay clone is that it doesn't descend to using racial stereotypes/caricatures in order to get laughs, and that pop star Rihanna isn't as terrible as I thought she would be in her acting debut as a smart-mouth Petty Officer. Other than those aspects, this has all of Bay's trademark features as a filmmaker: loud, bombastic and pointless violence that doesn't really add anything to the story or movie the plot along in any real way; bad acting from the leads (Taylor Kitch has had a real crap year, with John Carter and Savages all being commercial and critical flops) and veteran actors clearly phoning it in (Liam Nesson); and cliched dialogue that's more wooden than the characters themselves. The worst thing I can say is that this isn't a Michael Bay flick: It's director Peter Berg, a guy who should know better, having that he's done fun, exciting popcorn flicks like Hancock and The Kingdom before. Here, all the fun he had on those movies are nowhere to be seen. What the audience is left with is an empty, soulless product placement for the U.S. Navy and Hasbro.
1. That's My Boy - I'm going to make this as short as I can, because i've already said everything I've wanted to about this piece of shit: This is the worst American-made movie since Michael Bay's bombastic, misogynistic and ugly Bad Boys II. It's everything I loathe in a film: it takes a sick and distrusting scenario and tries to turn it into comedy, the gags are nauseating and cringe-worthy (note to the screenwriters - a teacher fucking her 6th grade student, two middle-aged men tag teaming granny in the sack, and incest aren't funny!) the half-hearted attempts at sentimentality come across as false and insulting, and the performances are beyond terrible to the point of downright un-watchable. Adam Sandler gives the worst comedic performance i've ever seen since Tom Green in the shockingly vile Freddy Got Fingered, and it's the movie where I had decided to never again fork over $9.50 to watch him show his contempt for the audience. This is the kind of horrendous tripe that people need to stay away from at all costs.
10. The Amazing Spider-Man - Of all the movies that are on my worst list. this one I had a hard time putting on my list because I didn't think the reboot was a terrible piece of crap. However, The Amazing Spider-Man commits a slightly bigger sin that made me put this on the list: Marc Webb's reboot of the teenage crime-fighting web slinger doesn't cover any new ground. It's a note-for-not retelling of the Sam Rami version of Spider-Man back in 2002, minus Toby Maguire as Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield now fills that role), no Mary Jane Watson (Emma Stone now plays the other love interest in Peter's life, Gwen Stacy) and no goofy wrestling match between puppy-eyed Maguire and Randy "Macho Man" Savage.
Peter is the high school outcast.
He's in love with a girl who barely notices him, and he gets bullied constantly.
During a field trip to a scientific research facility, he is bitten by a genetically engineered spider, giving him superhuman abilities and restructures his DNA; at the same time, the ambitious scientist has an accident of his own, as he tries to reach the peak of the human physical condition.
Peter tragically loses Uncle Ben to a petty criminal, seeks to avenge his death, then has an epiphany and decides to use his powers to thwart crime in the city.
Blah, blah, blah. We've seen this story before, and it was better done the first time we saw it.
9. Pitch Perfect - This unfunny, mostly predictable, and sometimes offensive tripe, along with the the Spider-Man reboot, share the honor of being the most overrated film of 2012. I'm sorry, but when your Bring It On meets Glee knockoff has to stoop to puke jokes for laughs and clichéd characters - the rebel outcast (Anna Kendrick), the bitchy control freak/leader of the group, the oddball with the most memorable lines in the movie the understanding, sympathetic romantic interest, the rival leader who's a total asshole, etc. - who learn the predicable life lessons beyond singing acapello in order to win over the audience, your movie isn't light, peppy, funny or a crowd-pleaser: it means it's bloated, predictable and it mostly sucks.
8. Liz and Dick - Has there ever been a more shocking and pitiful fall from grace like Lindsay Lohan's? Liz and Dick is the story of the tumultuous, decades-spanning romance between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, but you would have sworn it was it was another poorly-scripted and badly acted Lifetime TV movie that was trying to make fun of today's obsession of celebrity culture and marginally talented female stars who piss away their fame and fortune to drugs, booze and Hollywood's fast lane, and not a biopic of two lives that kept the tabloids busy for years with their on-again, off-again love affair. Lohan's heart was in the right place in wanting to honor one of her idols, but the script and her acting did the late great acting legend a disservice. Taylor deserved better.
7. 2-Headed Shark Attack - The Asylum is known for ripping off popular movies (Transmorphers, Sunday School Musical, Sherlock Holmes) and for making B-level monster movies (Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is a masterpiece of B-Level schlock in my book). Trouble is, they've never really made anything as fun as watch a big-ass shark take on a big-ass octopus. Sure, there was Mega Piranha, Mega Shark vs. Crocosarus, but those movies weren't as entertaining as MSVGO. 2-Headed Shark Attack, maybe the worst monster movie The Asylum has ever made: It's features some of the worst special effects i've seen from the company (and believe me, that's saying something), the characters are mostly unlikable sacks of shit with no real personality outside of the stereotypes they're been given: Bland, Brainy, Prick, Hot Girl, Leader, and the rest are just Dead Meat to fill out the body count, and they make some of the most implausible choices that wind up getting themselves killed. This is just a lazy and idiotic clone of other better B-movie flicks the Asylum has done, but without the humor, the fun or the self-realization that this is supposed to be a terrible movie and decide to run with it.
6. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - I loved the idea of making a film about our 16th president being a bad-ass slayer of bloodsuckers, even more when Timur Bekmambetov, the man behind 2008's stylish action-thriller Wanted, was directing the project, and even more when Tim Burton was acting as producer. Unfortunately, the film tries to take itself seriously and be a campy, genre-blending splatter-fest, and because of these two conflicting themes, it ultimately fails to succeed at both. What should have been a bloody fun time at the movies turned into a lame Inglorious Basterds copy-cat without any of the hypnotic dialogue or engaging characters. It's a sad state of affairs when The Asylum's mockbuster Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies is a more enjoyable movie than this.
5. Total Recall - The only recognizable thing in this remake of the 1990 sci-fi action flick is the prostitute with a third breast. Otherwise, this is almost unrecognizable to even Philip K. Dick's short story, We Can Remember If For You Wholesale, as director Len Wiesman and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer take the original source material and made it as boring and generic as possible. The visual style is impressive and Colin Farrel isn't that bad playing a man who realizes he's been given a false life and is actually a secret agent, but where's the fun when the filmmakers took out the confusion of Douglas Quaid's struggle to figure out his own reality and put the rest of the story on autopilot?
4. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part II - Or, as I like to say, "How Much Worse Can This Series Get?" Well, give screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg and director Bill Condon this much credit: they saved the worst for last. The final installment of this tepid, irritating franchise butchers what was left of the vampire lore by making them rejects from the X-Men series (One can control the elements, one can cause earthquakes, etc) as newly-turned vampire Bella (Kristen Stewart), her hubby Edward (Robert Pattinson), and pussy-whipped wolf-boy friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner), must make a final stand against the Volturi, who have come to kill her, the Cullens, and their newly growing child (the baby vampire is one of the most hilariously bad CGI creations i've ever encountered). I don't think I can even get mad at the movie anymore, mostly because it finally wallows in it's own shameless mediocrity, even though most of the audience (unless your a fangirl of the series) knew it all this time. The tagline to the movie is "The epic finale that will live forever." I think they meant in the trash bin of pop culture.
3. LOL - When not even Lions Gate Films, the same studio that gave us Jigsaw and Madea, won't even attempt to market your shitty teen drama, you fucked up. Maybe they took in one viewing of the American remake of the French comedy hit LOL - Laughing Out Loud and realized that even they couldn't positively spin a film in which spoiled, privileged white kids got to bitch about being spoiled, privileged white kids. Maybe they saw that Miley Cyrus and Demi Moore and the rest of the cast came off as a bunch of unlikable sods who needed a swift kick up the ass and decided to back off. And maybe they realized they were hopelessly screwed when they got the bad luck of being released on the same day as Marvel's The Avengers back on May 4, coupled with the huge success of The Hunger Games, and thought it was best to let a bad English-language remake slip through and hope no one would notice. I noticed, and as a former teenager, I found this to be pretentious and insulting.
2. Battleship - The best thing I could say about this Michael Bay clone is that it doesn't descend to using racial stereotypes/caricatures in order to get laughs, and that pop star Rihanna isn't as terrible as I thought she would be in her acting debut as a smart-mouth Petty Officer. Other than those aspects, this has all of Bay's trademark features as a filmmaker: loud, bombastic and pointless violence that doesn't really add anything to the story or movie the plot along in any real way; bad acting from the leads (Taylor Kitch has had a real crap year, with John Carter and Savages all being commercial and critical flops) and veteran actors clearly phoning it in (Liam Nesson); and cliched dialogue that's more wooden than the characters themselves. The worst thing I can say is that this isn't a Michael Bay flick: It's director Peter Berg, a guy who should know better, having that he's done fun, exciting popcorn flicks like Hancock and The Kingdom before. Here, all the fun he had on those movies are nowhere to be seen. What the audience is left with is an empty, soulless product placement for the U.S. Navy and Hasbro.
1. That's My Boy - I'm going to make this as short as I can, because i've already said everything I've wanted to about this piece of shit: This is the worst American-made movie since Michael Bay's bombastic, misogynistic and ugly Bad Boys II. It's everything I loathe in a film: it takes a sick and distrusting scenario and tries to turn it into comedy, the gags are nauseating and cringe-worthy (note to the screenwriters - a teacher fucking her 6th grade student, two middle-aged men tag teaming granny in the sack, and incest aren't funny!) the half-hearted attempts at sentimentality come across as false and insulting, and the performances are beyond terrible to the point of downright un-watchable. Adam Sandler gives the worst comedic performance i've ever seen since Tom Green in the shockingly vile Freddy Got Fingered, and it's the movie where I had decided to never again fork over $9.50 to watch him show his contempt for the audience. This is the kind of horrendous tripe that people need to stay away from at all costs.
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