There's only a few hours left in the year, and I've got just enough time to dish out the top five movies that deserves nothing by my one-finger salute in closing up shop for 2015.
4. Fifty Shades of Grey - When watching scenes on Porn Hub of women getting down and dirty are more titillating than the supposed "kinky" sex play between Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), you seriously fucked up. Brief perving aside, the real problem with this film adaptation of the popular adult novel of the same name is that it's simply boring to watch from start to finish. Dornan is supposed to be this billionaire bad boy with a fetish streak several miles long, but he's about as interesting as his namesake; Anastasia should be drawn to his charm and sexual magnetism, yet hesitant in wanting to get sucked into his world, but her inner conflict rarely comes through in translation. There's one funny scene where the pair have a business meeting of sorts on the do's and dont's of what could be their sexual relationship (captured beautiful by DP Seamus McGarvey), but that's about it, in terms of me giving a crap about this movie.
3. Terminator Genysis - "I'm old, not obsolete," Arnold Schwarzenegger says, reprising his role as the guardian T-800 Terminator model, now nicknamed "Pops" by Sarah Conner (newcomer Emilla Clarke of Game of Thrones fame). Oh, I beg to differ, Mr. Governator: this fifth entry into the Terminator franchise proved that it is old and obsolete, by hitting the reset button on a series that wrapped up at the end of James Cameron's T2: Judgment Day over 20 years ago, and doing nothing remotely interesting with the characters, except create huge plot-holes as he, Sarah and Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) travel though time to stop the Machines from taking over in the form a software app called Genysis, created by....John Connor (Jason Clarke), now transformed into a highly advanced Terminator by the powers of bad screenwriting. Add in uninteresting action scenes and CGI-overload and you have a reboot/remake that I wished would be terminated by the T-800 of the past.
2. The Ridiculous 6 - This year, Netflix has begun making their own original films with the explosive and sobering war drama Beasts of No Nation, which has earned rave reviews for it's handling of dark and mature subject matter on child soldiers in Africa and ruthless, self-righteous bastards ripping away at the innocence of youth and a stellar performance by British actor Idris Elba. They also gave Adam Sandler a four-picture deal through his comedy of horrors stable, Happy Madison Productions, to make direct-to-streaming films for the company, And this offensive, vile, racist and soul-sucking western-"comedy" (I'm using Comedy in the loosest of terms here) is the unholy result of their union. Words cannot describe just how dreadful this piece of shit is (and I'll be getting to this review in the new year, mark my words...), but for now, I'll say that this is, by far, the worst comedy I've seen since...well, 2012's That's My Boy, another Sandler film filled with sophomoric gags, more mean-spirited humor, and revolting depictions of female characters. Stay away at all costs.
1. Fantastic Four - Once in a blue moon do you come across a film so awful that you can't take your eyes on how everyone involved could have gotten it this wrong. And director/co-writer Josh Trank's reboot on Marvel comic's First Family is an endeavor that film students, fans of the medium and everyone else in between will be discussing for years to come. Who thought taking the group of Reed Richard (Miles Teller), Sue Storm (Kate Mara), Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) and Ben Grimm - aka: "The Thing (Jamie Bell) and turning the universe, which was colorful, funny and filled with family dysfunction, into something from Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy? Who's bright idea was it to turn Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell), one of Marvel's most devious, calculating and ruthless villains, into a pretentious, hipster Millennial douchebag? And why would Trank, who did a solid job playing with the conventional tropes of a origins superhero tale in Chronicle, use such abysmal effects to craft this superhero flick, along with make such a sloggish, tediously dull comic book movie? Maybe we'l find out later in time, but for right now, this movie takes the crown previously held by Joel Schumaker and the disastrous Batman & Robin as the new lowlight of the superhero movie genre.
5. The Boy Next Door - Jennifer Lopez is a decent actress when given the right script and a juicy story to sink her teeth into (see: Selena and The Cell). Starring in an erotic thriller about a recently divorced high school teacher having a regretful one-night stand with the hunky boy next door, Noah (Ryan Guzman), sounds like a good idea, but the execution from screenwriter Barbra Curry and director Rob Cohen (xXx, Stealth, The Fast and the Furious) was a huge miss: yes, Lopez and Guzman are both attractive leads and they do hold some chemistry on screen, but the acting is too melodramatic to the point where it begins to feel like self-parody, which begins to bleed over into the section where Noah begins to become obsessive and gradually humiliates her in order to reignite their sexual affair - i.e. photobomb her classroom of the two fucking, manipulating her son into hating Clair's cheating ex-husband (John Corbett), etc. The action and the drama are also over-the-top, making what could have been a steamy, sexual thriller into a Lifetime movie parody. But I'll say this: at least The Boy Next Door had moments of eroticism, unlike the next film on this list....
3. Terminator Genysis - "I'm old, not obsolete," Arnold Schwarzenegger says, reprising his role as the guardian T-800 Terminator model, now nicknamed "Pops" by Sarah Conner (newcomer Emilla Clarke of Game of Thrones fame). Oh, I beg to differ, Mr. Governator: this fifth entry into the Terminator franchise proved that it is old and obsolete, by hitting the reset button on a series that wrapped up at the end of James Cameron's T2: Judgment Day over 20 years ago, and doing nothing remotely interesting with the characters, except create huge plot-holes as he, Sarah and Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) travel though time to stop the Machines from taking over in the form a software app called Genysis, created by....John Connor (Jason Clarke), now transformed into a highly advanced Terminator by the powers of bad screenwriting. Add in uninteresting action scenes and CGI-overload and you have a reboot/remake that I wished would be terminated by the T-800 of the past.
2. The Ridiculous 6 - This year, Netflix has begun making their own original films with the explosive and sobering war drama Beasts of No Nation, which has earned rave reviews for it's handling of dark and mature subject matter on child soldiers in Africa and ruthless, self-righteous bastards ripping away at the innocence of youth and a stellar performance by British actor Idris Elba. They also gave Adam Sandler a four-picture deal through his comedy of horrors stable, Happy Madison Productions, to make direct-to-streaming films for the company, And this offensive, vile, racist and soul-sucking western-"comedy" (I'm using Comedy in the loosest of terms here) is the unholy result of their union. Words cannot describe just how dreadful this piece of shit is (and I'll be getting to this review in the new year, mark my words...), but for now, I'll say that this is, by far, the worst comedy I've seen since...well, 2012's That's My Boy, another Sandler film filled with sophomoric gags, more mean-spirited humor, and revolting depictions of female characters. Stay away at all costs.
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