Posted January 18, 2019

I almost considered not writing my annual worst films blog this year.  

Someone on social media made a relatively valid point of mentioning to me that it would be a more productive usage of my time and energy to celebrate excellence in cinema and not wretchedness.  Plus, there's also the notion of needlessly kicking a bad film while it's already down.   

I get all that. 

Still, though, going to the movies is expensive.  Quite expensive, actually.  It's especially expensive for families.  And when movies are artistically bankrupt and inexcusably awful, I think they deserve to be called out, in one form or another.  When modern studios spend ridiculous amounts of money on some movies that probably shouldn't have made it past the early inception/pre-production phase...that frustrates me...and angers me to no end.  And these are the same studios that want your hard earned money and time to make a profit on these ultra terrible endeavors.  I'm a busy guy and value my time and money (a lot of which I do spend on going to the movies).  When studios fail audiences they should be held accountable.  Bad cinema shouldn't be ignored and swept under a rug.  And talking about bad movies is what will allow the art form to mature and evolve...for the better.   

Hopefully, at least.

That, and seeing the below listed ten movies...made me furious afterwards.  Some of them instilled in me feelings of worthlessness, and who among us wants that in escapist entertainment?  So, consider these these yearly posts a deeply cathartic experience for me.  Yes, I'm kicking these movies well after their down, but most of them deserve such treatment...and those of you that haven't seen any of them should be warned ahead of time to avoid them like the proverbial plague. 

My TEN WORST FILMS OF 2018 offers up an eclectic mixture of mediocrity.  Wrongheaded sequels, as they always do, make an appearance here (with one sharing a trend of its two predecessors also making my list for the worst films of their respective years).  There's putrid effort involving potty mouthed puppets, an abysmal murder/mystery thriller, an amateur fact based crime drama, a horrifically wasteful post apocalyptic sci-fi film, an ultra rare appearance of a Clint Eastwood directed drama, and one of the most needless and ill timed remakes of all time.  Oh, and the single lousiest Sherlock Holmes movie ever makes the dubious cut.   

DEATH WISH

Everything about Eli Roth's remake of the 1974 Charles Bronson starring original was not only insensitively timed and wholly unnecessary, but it also emerged as a thoroughly sleazy movie as well. 

This remake wanted to have its cake and eat it too in yearning to have thoughtful commentary about guns, gun violence, and vigilante justice, but it ultimately only ended up joyously celebrating its main "hero's" unrelenting carnage in sickeningly graphic detail by somehow making him come off as cool.  DEATH WISH also committed an unpardonable sin of bad taste in coming out weeks after the Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in Florida that left many teenagers dead via being gunned down by AR-15's (a weapon that Bruce Willis' vigilante brandishes with lethal enthusiasm).  This one-man revenge porn effort had no time for sobering discourse of its subject; it was all about embracing its protagonist's unrelentingly blood letting, justice seeking spree.  Roth appeared motivated by slimy B-grade luridness with DEATH WISH, and considering the real world gun related tragedies that have hit our world pre and post release of this film, there was something just puerile about a story featuring a white man of rich privilege hunting down and blowing away minorities.   

One joke premise movies usually never work as they rely on the initially funny angle of their premise to lead the charge, and all without carrying it forward to successful and hilarious fruition.  THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS is just such a lazy one joke premise film, but it never even generates any ample interest in its core concept - a hard boiled detective comedy that's set in an alternate world where people exist with puppets...and puppets that aggressively talk and act dirty. 

The very specifically titled THE HURRICANE HEIST contained, yes, a hurricane and a heist, both strangely homogenized together to form some semblance of a meaningful cinematic whole.  

And yes, it didn't work at all.   

Jim Carrey has become an iconic comedic actor over the course of his long career, but he's often overlooked for being a thanklessly decent and nuanced dramatic actor when given the right material to sink his teeth into.  

The opening paragraph of my original review for GOTTI read as follows: 

"GOTTI is the BATTLEFIELD EARTH of fact based mob dramas.  It simply has no business being as categorically awful as it is." 

(SHIVERS) 

I drew the BATTLEFIELD EARTH comparison because of the fact that John Travolta appeared in that putrid sci-fi thriller, and he appears in GOTTI as the titular Italian American New York based Mob boss that was - during the height of his criminal prowess - the most powerful and ruthless mafia figures in The Big Apples' history.  The sad part here is that Travolta was not altogether bad as the Dapper Don; he crafts a modestly layered and lived in performance.  Also, there's a sprawling and epic crime drama to be made from Gotti's life under the right directorial hands. Unfortunately, director Kevin Connolly (yup, E from ENTOURAGE) made one of the most amateurishly scripted and pathetically edited mob films...perhaps ever.  GOTTI was so thematically tone deaf, so idiotically handled, and so utterly disposable as a genre effort that I thought of something the late Gene Siskel suggested as a question to ask naive filmmakers about their bad films: "Is my film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch together?"   

This was the third and - THANK GOD ALMIGHTY!!! - last film in the FIFTY SHADES trilogy, and one that finally put a nail in the coffin of this series that was on critical life support within the opening few minutes of its franchise introductory installment.  

MORTAL ENGINES was one of the great masterful technical triumphs of 2018.  

Seriously.

The near 90-year-old Clint Eastwood has made some of my favorite films of all time, not to mention that he has miraculously maintained an impressive consistency as a prolific filmmaker at a time in his life when most his age should be residing in retirement homes.  In short, the legendary director/actor has very little to prove. 

I knew that HOLMES & WATSON was the worst SHERLOCK HOLMES film of all time when it featured a scene very early on of the young sleuth-in-the-making being tricked on a school yard by bullies...to kiss a donkey's anus.   

Later on, another character is covered in horse excrement... 

Then there's a scene of the adult Holmes projectile vomiting... 

I fondly recall years ago what it was like to actual witness living and breathing dinosaurs come lovingly to life on screen in Steven Spielberg's original JURASSIC PARK.  I think I speak on behalf of most filmgoers in saying that when that 1993 film premiered and ushered in a VFX revolution in Hollywood I was struck with legitimate awe and wonder in its sights.     

I FEEL PRETTY: Another fundamentally broken romcom from last year, and one of noble intentions made all the more lousy by its questionable execution.

MILE 22:  Director Peter Berg usually makes well oiled thrillers (see PATRIOT'S DAY, DEEPWATER HORIZON, and THE KINGDOM), but here he over-directed the crap out of this Mark Wahlberg starring vehicle. 

MUTE: A colossal Netflix Original sci-fi misfire from the usually talented Duncan Jones. 

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING:  A sequel so depressingly bland and uninspired that I had to pinch and remind myself while watching it that I should care.

THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX: This latest CLOVERFIELD inspired tie-in Netflix film worked better as a marketing stunt than it did as a movie.

RAMPAGE: This Dwayne Johnson led video game movie adaptation lacked a sense of legitimate intrigue its set pieces.

SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY:  The lowest grossing film of the Disney helmed STAR WARS franchise proved that audiences had very little interest in the continued saturation of this once classic brand.

WINCHESTER:  Despite a commendably assembled cast, this fact based horror thriller was mechanically rendered and on pure genre autopilot. 

SKYSCRAPER:  Another entry from The Rock, this time a fairly unimaginative hodgepodge of elements from a dozen other DIE HARD clones. 

LIFE OF THE PARTY: Instead of serving up something fresh, star Melissa McCarthy and husband/director Ben Falcone just offered up stale leftovers with this unfunny college comedy.

CrAiGeR's MISSED OPPORTUNITIES of 2018