by Patrick Gibbs
2015 was a big year in cinema. It was the year when super
heroes started to fade at the box office, as audiences clamored for
something they had never seen before, like Jurassic World, Mission: Impossible 5, and the seventh Star Wars and Rocky movies. It was the year
that Pixar proved it was not slipping into mediocrity by giving us one
of their best films ever, only to immediately follow it with one that
put the "ocre" into media in a way Disney usually reserves for daytime
cable. It was the year The Hunger Games finally reached its epic
conclusion, which was so epic in scale that it could only be described
using one word: epic. It was the year that Leonardo DiCaprio finally, at
long last, either did or didn't win an Oscar, and it was the year when Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson's daughter (I was frankly quite disappointed that she did not have bright orange clown hair and 5'0 clock shadow) became a star in 50 Shades of Grey But Only One Facial Expression.
But it was also, as is often the case, a year when many
truly terrible movies disgraced the silver screen. Here are my choices
for the Ten Worst Films of 2015.
1. MORTDECAI
Johnny Depp, who has been striving so hard to become the most reliable
name in crap, screwed up big time by giving a terrific and exhilarating
performance in
Black Mass this fall, but fortunately, he can rest easy
knowing that people have already forgotten his exceptional work there.
But have they forgotten
Mortdecai?
Mortdecai
is a juvenile and surprisingly dull affair that is trying hard to be
Ian Fleming meets P.G. Wodehouse, with a dash of the biting irreverence
of
Blackadder. It succeeds in channeling all but three of those sources,
and at best we are given flat one liners such as Depp examining a photo
of an old lady with an arrow sticking out of her back and quipping
"This woman is badly in need of a chiropractor," or a never ending
series of jokes about how everyone hates the title character's mustache,
which he happens to love (this bit is stolen directly from Jeeves and
Wooster, and it goes without saying it was much more amusing in the
original.); At worst, we get assaulted by a windup 6th Grade joke
machine that appears to have been set for a repeating pattern of "fart,
vomit, balls." The presence of an appealing cast and the promise of a
throwback to better days of cinematic slapstick make it very hard not to
want to give this thing a chance, but the movie manages to fail on every possible level.
2. OUTCAST
Hayden Christensen and
Nicolas Cage star. . . wait, there's actually more . . . as disgraced British Knights of the Crusade, who have ended up in 12th Century China. Both actors seem to be trying to evoke Tom Cruise in
The Last Samurai, but Christensen plays more like Kevin Costner in
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, minus the charisma, and Cage decides to throw in
traces of Jack Sparrow, Travis Bickle and every last character from
Robert Altman's musical version of
Popeye for good measure.
In fairness to the actors, it must be stated that one of the bigger
strengths of the film is Christensen's ability to handle a sword (and
the fact that he usually does not talk when he is doing so), and the top
knot in Cage's hair after he tries to assimilate into life in China is
probably as good an explanation as we're ever going to get as to why his
face is pulled so uncomfortably tight nowadays. The former Academy
Award winner doesn't so much chew the scenery as swallow it whole,
laughing like a sweaty toothed madman as he growls out such memorable
lines as "the Black Guahds ah heh as thick as flies on a fahting goats
oss thanks to you!"
The basic set up is simple: the corrupt son of the King is enraged to
learn that his little brother has been chosen to succeed their father
instead of him, so, having seen
Gladiator, he kills the king, framing
his brother, who must flee for his life along with his older sister.
Along the way they meet the once great warrior What's His Name
(Christensen) passed out in an opium den, and they are impressed when he
beats up a group of beer swilling truckers who break the jukebox and
insult his favorite hockey team or something like that (almost none of
that last statement is accurate, but in fairness to me, it's hard to
care what's going on when you aren't paying attention.). The point is, he
can fight, so they latch on to him, and the discarded and cynical
former Knight soon realizes that even though he thought he didn't
believe in anything anymore, it turns out that Asian girls are still
hot.
Former stuntman Nick Powell directs the first 40 minutes as if he wants
to be Edward Zwick, and then out of nowhere it appears as if he
suddenly has to go to the bathroom and hands control over to a
ridiculously enthusiastic, if not very skillful, Paul Greengrass fan, who
has never learned the term "director's line." The shift in style could
not be more abrupt, but after about 10 to 15 minures Powell takes the
reigns again and we go back to the original style just in time for Cage
and Christensen to settle their differences and fight for the glory of
whatever it is they believe in, and one of them dies doing whatever it
is he loved. I forget which one.
3. THE BOY NEXT DOOR
Jennifer Lopez stars in this laughable "thriller" from bad movie icon
Rob Cohen. Lopez is Claire Peterson, a High School English teacher
whose husband (John Corbett) cheated on her, and they are currently
separated while she decides whether to forgive him, and their shy,
awkward teenage son Kevin just wants things to go back to the way they
were. Enter Noah (Ryan Guzman), the nice young man who has moved in with
his grandmother next door after his parents died. Noah befriends young
Kevin and ends up hanging around the house a lot. The misplaced Kevin
is thrilled to have a cool new friend in his life, and Claire finds
herself charmed by the boy's polite manner, the way he looks out for her boy, his surprising interest in English lit and the way he likes to
strip naked while standing next to the window. So naturally, when Dad
and Kevin go on a camping trip, Noah just happens to show up, and Claire
invites the boy in for dinner and perhaps a cup of adultery.
Claire regrets her impulsive indiscretion, especially when Noah
turns out to be a new student in her class. Claire is, of course,
horrified to discover that she gave a student several F's
in one night, if you get my drift, but Noah is after more than just his
teacher's celebrated A. He tells her he is in love with her, and that he
is going to make her happy the way she deserves to be. But when he sees her out on a date with her husband, Noah registers his disapproval by tampering with the old man's brakes, nearly getting both father and son killed. As Noah becomes progressively more unstable, the film becomes more and more ludicrous until we learn that Noah killed his own father, and everything leads to an action packed showdown as Noah tries to burn the family alive and Claire stabs him in the eye with her son's epipen (another in your face adrenaline rush from the director of the original
Fast and the Furious.).
This is about as forgettable a variation on
Fatal Attraction as Hollywood has ever spewed out, and it is strictly for non discriminating J-Lo fans (as if
there were any other kind.).
4. KNOCK KNOCK
And speaking of taking an interest in the younger generation, let's
take a look at the latest from director Eli Roth. Keanu Reeves plays
Evan Webber, a family man and architect who is in love with his wife,
his kids and his life. But his wife is a workaholic artist, and as a
result, Evan hasn't had his brush cleaned in a little while, if you get
my drift. So when she and the kids go on a beach trip and Evan stays
home due to a minor shoulder injury that comes and goes depending on
whether it suits the purposes of a story that seems to be made up as we
go along, he gets visited by some univited guests.
Genesis (Lorenza Izzo) and Bel (Ana de Armas), two free spirited and
gorgeous young girls, show up on his doorstep during a tumultuous
rainstorm, on their way to a party and hopelessly lost. The gentlemanly
Evan invites them in out of the warmness of his heart, but the longer
they stay, the more the pulsing warmth in his heart tends to take the
express elevator down a few floors, if you get my drift. By the time
their clothes are in the dryer and they sit around in robes talking
about sex, Evan is getting really anxious for the Uber driver he called
to pick up the girls to get there. But by the time he does, the two
girls have surprised our well meaning protagonist in his shower, and
well, you can fill in the blanks from there (Evan certainly does, if you
get my drift.).
He wakes up the next morning, horrified at what he has done, and tries
to hurry them out the door so he can put this mistake behind him. He
ends up driving them some distance away, believing he is rid of his
little problem. But surprise surprise, they show up again, hitting him
over the head and tying him up, torturing him, frolicking and breaking
things, trying on every single outfit in the house (psychopath Barbie
just loves to accessorize!) and generally doing their best to let you
know that Roth must be a great director because it looks like he has
probably seen
A Clockwork Orange like, a bunch of times. The crazed and
clearly dangerous girls reveal themselves to be under age, and they are
out to punish and destroy our "hero," whom they have been spying on for
some time. As we lead up to his planned execution at dawn, the 108
pound gal pals effortlessly dig a six foot grave for Evan in the back
yard (Genisis smokes a gigarette and wears a backwards baseball cap to
make this grueling bit of manual labor play believably.).
From here, things get progressively stupider, the token black friend
stops by long enough to die stupidly, and Evan has a stirring monolgue
defending his right to live and his actions. "It was free pizza!" He
screams. "Delivered to my house! What was I supposed to do?!" adding a
few well chosen profanties (mostly the same one over and over again) for
good measure. Despite this smooth, Clarence Darrow like defense, the
girls are not swayed. But wait
. . . as Genesis raises a rock to slam it
over Evan's head, slamm in it down, we are treated to a
lingering close up of her butt because her butt, taking up the entire
frame as she is bent over, preventing us from knowing Evan's fate (and
we can practically hear Michael Bay weeping at Roth's ingenious and
moving use of staging.)
As she stands, we see Evan's head, still alive, the rock lying next to
it, and the girls laugh as they reveal that this has all been "just a
game," they are in fact in their early 20's, and they travel around
doing this to married men until one of them finally has the self control
to say no. They leave Evan, buried up to his neck in his own grave, to
think about what what he did wrong.
The movie is loaded with so many plot holes that it's a wonder it doesn't cave in on itself. How did the girls spy on Evan so thoroughly that they
know about things he said to his wife in the privacy of his own
bedroom? Did they plant a bug? How? And how did they coordinate the
rainstorm that is crucial to their plan to just happen to hit on the
night that the wife and kids are gone? Are the neighbors all blind and
deaf, or do they just REALLY respect each other's privacy? None of this
makes the slightest bit of sense, and the tongue in cheek, almost cutesy
ending for a movie that has touched on subjects like statutory rape,
murder and torture is completely inappropriate. It also spends most of
its runtime trying to let Evan off the hook based on the idea that these
two girls are insane, only to turn the tables and make him the bad guy
and try to abruptly shift gears into a girl power story wherin these two
crusaders are just punishing men for their inherent weakness and no
actual harm has been done, apart from the destruction of an entire
house, the lives of an entire family ruined forever, and let's not
forget the dead token black friend (unless part of the routine is to
have the victim's token black friend show up at some point to pick up
the wife's modern art sculpture and fall and hit his head so they have
to wrap the body in plastic and throw him in the back of a van, just to
make their homicidal maniac charade more convincing. Yeah! That's it!
Now it all perfect makes sense.). This movie will only be remembered by
bad cinema buffs and those who firmly believe that anything dark and
pervy must be art.
5. LITTLE BOY
Our next entry is on the opposite end of the spectrum, and is brought
to you by
Touched By an Angel's Roma Downey, Jr. and her producing partner,
who previously brought you
That Jesus Movie You Never Bothered To See. If you've ever wondered why nobody ever made a
heartwarming, feel good, faith promoting family movie set against the
backdrop of the horror of the atomic bomb being unleashed on the world,
well then, Little Boy is here to answer that question.
The setting is small town
America, circa World War II, and a plucky young boy named Pepper Flint
Busbee escapes the daily nightmare of being saddled with such a stupid
name by having imaginary adventures with his father (Michael Rappaport,
whom you may remember as "that one guy in that one movie we saw"), and
the two form an inseparable bond. Inseparable, that is, until the
Japanese invade Pearl Harbor, and Daddy has to go to war because his
oldest son, London, suffers from flat feet and an even stupider name
than his little brother.
Meanwhile, Pepper can't seem to grow, and he even
asks the doctor "Am I a midget?" The Doctor, who, for reasons we cannot
begin to explain, is played by Kevin James, says dramatically "No.
You're just (Spielberg push in) A LITTLE BOY." And from there, that's
what everyone calls our hero.
Little Boy and his Dad are Big fans of a magician named Ben Vareen or
something, and when Ben visits Little' Boy's town, he brings the kid up
on stage to perform a magic act by making a soda bottle movie across a
table by reaching out his wih hands, closing his eyes and grunting. Of course this is a cheap trick (illusion! It's a cheap illusion!) but the
kid now thinks he has powers, and wants to use these powers to bring
Daddy back from the war.
After Little Boy and London are caught helping Buffalo
Bill attack the home of the neighborhood
"Jap," the local Priest (Tom Wilkinson) tells the diminutive dufus that
if he wants to bring Daddy home, he needs to complete the following
list.
1. FEED THE HUNGRY
2. SHELTER THE HOMELESS
3.VISIT THOSE IN PRISON
4. BURY THE DEAD
5. MAKE UP IT TO GAY KENNY FOR THE TIME YOU STOLE HIS CAR AND DROVE IT TO VEGAS AND LEFT IT THERE.
6. OBEY THE SCOUT LAW
7. NEVER FEED THEM AFTER
MIDNIGHT
So Little Boy starts doing this. As he slowly
forms a friendship with
Mr. Hashimoto, the aforementioned Japanese immigrant, the movie starts
to develop its lone interesting element as it gets into the issue of
blind bigotry and the dehumunization of an enemy during war time. This
relationship could have easily been the central plot of the film, and
under more capable hands it could have really worked. Unfortunately, the
filmmakers are trying to tackle way too much, and for being so intent
on making it a faith affirming film, they seem to have no clear idea how
to do so. We have the doubters: London, who tells his little
brother that he can't bring his Dad back with a magic list; the
neighborhood bully who steals the list until Little Boy viciously
attacks him to get it back (not that the bully doesn't provoke it, but
still, what exactly are we trying to say here? Ultimately there are no
consequences simply because it's Kevin James' boy, and the big guy is
desperate to boink Little Boy's Mom and comes on to her at every
opportunity.). The closest we get to really examining the issue of faith
is Hashimoto chiding the Priest for toying with the boy as the two men
play chess, which basically consists of "Why are you giving this boy
false hope? "Shut up. That's why!" And then of course there are the
major miracles: over and over again throughout the film, Little Boy extends
his arms and grunts and growls as if he is experiencing severe
intestinal discomfort, because this is supposed to bring Daddy back
(young Jakob Salvati may be the most irritating child actor to grace the
screen in decades, and as such, I quite frankly found it impossible to
give a farting goat's ass whether he ever got his wish or not.).
Eventually, our hero is challenged to move a mountain to prove his
powers. It happens that at this exact moment, an earthquake hits the
area, so technically the mountain does move. For his next trick, Little
Boy faces toward Japan and does his thing, and there is a flash of light
in the sky. News quickly spreads of the atomic bomb blast, and how the
bomb was nicknamed "Little Boy," and our hero becomes beloved in the
town, is rechristened "Atrocity Kid," and a very young Charles Xavier
come to town to ask him to go to a special school.
But then we get word that Daddy was shot dead in a concentration camp,
which can only mean one thing: Kevin James has an opening to hit on Mom
again. Also, Little Boy starts to question his faith, and the sheepish
Priest wanders around mumbling excuses about "God's will" and reminding
people that this was only Michael Rappaport, after all. But all turns well
when we discover that Daddy was reported dead falsely: it seems that
when Daddy was wounded, a buddy decided to take his boots, but makes it
exactly three steps before being shot dead in the most unfortunate, unintentionally hilarious bit of staging in a long time. The medic uses the shoes to identify the body (because checking the dog tags would make
no sense), so Daddy is still alive, and as we do a dramatic push in on a
shepherd's staff leaning against the door of Little Boy's house, we are
left to wonder if John Payne was really that good a lawyer or if Edmund
Gwen really was God.
If it was possible to eat Hook, Oliver Twist, Time Bandits, Annie, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and Moulin Rouge!, I have no doubt that Joe Wright's spectacular failure Pan is a very
close approximation of what one would throw up.
The latest acid trip from the director of
Anna Karenina does manage to
provide a few moments of bizarre fun when the film is focusing on
action, and the cinematography is breathtaking and the musical score rousing, but the story couldn't possiblly be more muddled and wildly
varying in tone. Writer Jason Fuchs takes the story in some truly
bewildering directions, and director Wright is more than up to the
challenge of making those baffling choices even worse. Blackbeard (Hugh
Jackman)? Gothic Steam Punk Drag Queen. Captain Hook? American Cowboy
with a heart of gold (played by Garrett Hedlund as if William Shatner
were doing a bad impression of John Wayne.). Peter Pan? The love child
of a Fairy Prince and Mary Ormond (Amanda Seyfried), Blackbeard's last
wife. As is often the case in fiction, somebody decides that any child
destined for greatness should grow up in abusive surroundings, so young
Peter is spirited away to London by his mother, Cosette, in order to
keep him safe from her evil husband Jean Valjean (yes, I went there) so
that he could be raised by corrupt nuns during WWII. In this story,
Peter is a boy forced to grow up far too fast, and just maybe that's why
he becomes so obsessed with clinging to childhood. A vaguely
interesting premise, but not every story needs to have a dark, brooding
version, especially when it is so far removed from reality.
Peter returns to Neverland, of course, where he just might be the
Messiah spoken of in prophecy. But even with all of these missteps,
Wright really outdoes himself by getting in the final and most asinine
word in the question of whether the "Indians" from J.M. Barrie's
original storybshould be treated with modern, culturally sensitive
sensibilities. Wright chooses not to use the "I" word at all, calling
them "Natives" instead. The indigenous tribe is made up of a diverse
group ranging from Chinese warriors, African Zulus and Australian
Aborigines, and they are lead by a pasty white woman (Rooney Mara.).
Now, if you're asking yourself "isn't that actually LESS politically
correct than just making them American Indians? And while a diverse,
interacial group can be called many things, how exactly the hell can
they all be "Natives" of one place?," if you are doing so out loud, you
might be schizophrenic, which is the best word I can think of to
describe this movie.
7. CHAPPIE
Remember
Short Circuit? Well, what if it was violent and R-Rated? What
if Steve Guttenberg and his wacky Indian sidekick had a son who went on
to follow in their footsteps? And what if the robot he created was
stolen by gang bangers whom he grew to think of as parents, though his
relationship with his abusive new "Daddy" was a bit strained? What if
Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin was a bullying religious fanatic? And
what if I stayed home from more press screenings and just went to bed
early?
8. FANTASTIC FOUR
There's not a lot left to say about this disasterous attempted reboot, or the damage it has done to the rising career of its director, Josh Trank, who really put the "twit" in "twitter" the night before the film opened in the U.S. The nicest thing that can be said is that this movie is as a big a waste of a truly talented and appealing young ensemble cast as has hit the big screen in years.
9. SERENA
It says everything about what a dull, plodding journey this movie is that even with the re-teaming of Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence it couldn't manage a wide theatrical release. Part of the problem is that it was made in the wrong decade: this kind of tepid, period melodrama might have at least been a high profile Oscar disappointment in the '90's.
Cooper plays George Pemberton, a wealthy timber company tycoon in 1930's North Carolina who likes to hunt panthers and mumble in an accent that sounds sonething like what John F. Kennedy might have sounded if he'd played Doc Holliday in
Tombstone. When Pemberton meets a beautiful young blonde named Serena, he is so taken with her that he dumps his pregnant mistress and marries his new love post haste. But Serena harbors a secret . . . I just can't remember for the life of me what it is, but I'm sure it's really surprising and interesting and makes the 110 minute run time just whizz by like it was only three hours. Picturesque cinematography and talented stars (who can and have done much better) aside, the time wasted watching this movie will leave you with a haunting sense of regret for the rest of your natural life, or at least until the following day when you completely forget you even watched it.
10. HOT PURSUIT
Are you ready for some comedy? This premise of this gem is one in a million. I'm breaking up just thinking about it. Reese Witherspoon is a police offer, and Sofia Vergara is a mobster's wife, and (chortle chortle guffaw) one of them is white and short with small breasts while the other is (wipe away tears of laughter) a leggy Latina with big breasts! You see what they did there? It's pure genius!
As we enter a new year that includes what is likely to be an immensely entertaining Presidential Election to read about years later in the history books but will leave most of us wetting the bed in abject terror for the next ten months, the distraction of a darkened theater will be a welcome presence. Here's hoping for some good films in the months to come.
Out of Four
