These are the 10 worst of the movies I have seen this year. Again, it’s my subjective choices and it only includes those I have actually seen. So (for example) Fifty Shades Darker doesn’t make the list because I didn’t waste my time watching it.
10. Geostorm
So bad it makes Suicide Squad look coherent. I think it might be possible to enjoy it if you are very very drunk…But I’m not going to try. What a waste of two hours.
The biggest disappointment of the year because I’m a huge DC fan and I wanted to love it. It’s not uniformly awful and for once I don’t think it’s Zack Syder who ruined it. Rather studio interference. As much as I disliked Batman v Superman, if Justice League had kept that tone it would have been a better film because it would have been consistent with the other DCEU films. Instead they ruined it with frat-boy humour and a wildly incoherent tone.
8. A Cure for Wellness
It starts so well! But as the movie goes on, the weirdness and tension build and for me the growing dread wasn’t what horror lurked in the shadows but rather a growing conviction that this was going to be one of those movies where the payoff simply couldn’t live up to the build up. Alas, I was not wrong.
7. Dunkirk
Who the hell casts an actor as accomplished as Tom Hardy and then doesn’t let him act? Over-hyped, overblown, the score was intrusive and the characters mostly boring.
6. The Snowman
It’s not a great book, but the adaption is terrible. At least in the book the reveal sort of makes sense. The movie cuts out all the real clues in favour of misdirection so the end makes so little sense even Fassbender can’t save it.
5. A Quiet Passion
I wanted to like it. I love Emily Dickinson’s poetry but while I do understand that she didn’t live an action-packed life, this biopic was simply tedious.
4. The Mummy
There were some good moments but overall it’s pretty awful. As an action movie it’s passable but as a Mummy movie… No. Just no.
3. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
Slicker and better made than the original but lacks its power and reads more like an ego stroke than a call to action.
2. Pitch Perfect 3
I haven’t written up a review but basically it takes everything good about the first two films and chucks it out. Very disappointing.
You know, when I originally reviewed this, I thought maybe I was being a bit unfair. But the more time passes, the more angry I am with the misogyny of this film. Smart plotting and gorgeous cinematography, if anything, makes it worse because those things show that it could have been so much better. That the most developed female characters are literally sex toys is infuriating. The savage murder of a nude “newborn” woman felt like a scene ripped from Hostel or Saw. And the “shocking” reveal that the leading female character’s apparent character development is only sophisticated programming is a huge fuck-you to every woman watching. Unforgivable. Also it’s about an hour too long, glacially slow and boring. But beautiful, sure.