THE 10 WORST FILMS OF 2012

By Patrick Gibbs

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. While 2012 gave us Oscar season films like Lincoln, Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, and wildly entertaining blockbusters like The Avengers,all was not well in the world of cinema. Here, at long last, are my choices for the ten worst films of 2012m presented in alphabetical order.

ACT OF VALOR

In 2007, Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh of Bandito Brothers Productions made a video for the Special Warfare Combatant -Craft Crewman, in which the U.S. Navy to allow them to use actual active duty SEALs. After spending so much time working closely with the SEALs, McCoy and Waugh conceived the idea for a modern day action movie about this covert and elite fighting force. As Act of Valor developed with the SEALs on board as advisers, the filmmakers decided that no actors could realistically portray or physically fill the roles they had written and the actual SEALs were drafted to star in the film. It is my strong contention that if you ran a group of actors through SEAL training, they would fair far better in combat than these guys do in front of the camera. This isn't so much a movie as it is recruiting drive. It's not only a shoddy and inept piece of film making, it's at best morally dubious. There are those who will violently disagree with me on this point, but when so many people can get upset about the “insidious propaganda” of The Lorax, I stand behind being offended by this movie.

ANNA KARENINA

Keira Knightley, best known for playing the title role in Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, stars as Leo Tolstoy’s adulterous heroine, in director Joe Wright ridiculous take on the classic tale that plays like Darren Aronofsky ATE a Baz Luhrman film and then threw it up. This movie, which jumps back and forth from an opera house setting to what is arguably meant to be the real world, is an unmitigated disaster from beginning to end.

ALEX CROSS

Academy Award Winner Morgan Freeman is a tough act to follow, even for a talented actor, but attempting to reboot the Kiss The Girls franchise with Tyler Perry, star of the Madea films, is a little like going into war with Daffy Duck in place of George S. Patton, and in the hands of legendary bad director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, xXx, Stealth, Dragonheart), it's a complete train wreck that can't decide if it wants to be Silence of The Lambs, Lethal Weapon or an overly educated Shaft. In sharp contrast to the dull and lifeless performances from the rest of the cast, Matthew Fox throws himself into his role as a serial killer/sniper with such an over the top ferocity, apparently under the illusion that this is Oscar bait,  that I almost felt sorry for him, but ultimately, not as sorry as I felt for myself for having to sit through this catastrophe.

A THOUSAND WORDS

The only thing that stops this from being the worst film of Jim Carrey's career is that, technically, he's not in it. Instead, Eddie Murphy stars in the most labored take on the Liar, Liar formula yet as a man who's fate is tied to that of a tree – with every word he speaks, a leaf falls from the tree, and when the last leaf falls, he will die. Essentially, this amounts to just under two hours of Murphy playing charades in a feeble attempt to communicate (amazingly, the idea of grabbing a note pad and writing something down never occurs to him.). This is a crass, juvenile and painfully unfunny mess, and it's only saving grace is a surprisingly touching scene between Murphy and the great Cicely Tyson as his mother, who is suffering from Alzhiemer's. The scene deserves to be in a better film, as does Tyson, and at one time, Murphy himself. How the once undisputed biggest star in Hollywood fell this far is a testament to ego and self indulgence, and should serve as a cautionary tale to any aspiring actor.

BATTLESHIP

Everything you would expect from the words “In Association with Hasbro,” and then some. The people that brought us three Transformers films and proved that Channing Tatum was less expressive than an action figure in G.I. JOE sink to a new low in this jaw droppingly stupid tie in to the famous board game. Despite the presence of stellar, multi-faceted actors such as Brooklyn Decker and Rihanna, we never become engaged in any of the characters, and Liam Neeson owes his fans an apology for stooping so low. 

The only good thing about Battelship is that is was so obviously bad  that it might force Hollywood to start to try a little harder. But I doubt it - after all, Transformers 4 is already in the works.

THE BOURNE LEGACY

Admittedly, the Matt Damon Bourne series had little to do with Robert Ludlum's novels to begin with, but they were an intelligent and involving series of action thrillers that won a lot of fans and redefined the action film. The Bourne Legacy, which borrows it's title from an Eric Von Lustbader sequel to the Ludlum novels, has nothing to do with the novels and only enough to do with the films to ride on their coat tails and oddly enough, try to destroy destroy them. A talented cast is wasted in an incoherent and insipid storyline saved only by a couple of well staged action sequences. Director Tony Gilroy (who co-wrote the previous Bourne films) fared much better with Michael Clayton and Duplicity, and is not a bad director, but here he seems to be intent on getting revenge on Damon for public statements that Gilroy had turned in a slipshod, unusable first draft of The Bourne Ultimatum by completely invalidating the ending of that film and rendering the accomplishments of Jason Bourne null and void. As a follow up to the previous films, it would be charitable to compare The Bourne Legacy to U.S. Marshals, the half baked spinoff to The Fugitive.

GHOST RIDER:  SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE

Nicolas Cage returns in this sequel/reboot of the Ghost Rider franchise, which awkwardly disavows the continuity of the first film while sticking with the same lead actor. But if the idea here was to improve on the infamous Comic Book adaptation, who's bright idea was it to hire Neveldine and Taylor, writers of Jonah Hex, to both write and direct? Spirit of Vengeance is essentially The Omen meets Terminator 2, and unless you've always dreamed of seeing Cage urinate fire, this is one you probably want to avoid. Cage himself gives one of his worst film performances, as the filmmakers decide to add an element of The Hulk to the character, and he is constantly fighting himself for control. With his bad hair plugs, bugged out eyes and his newly stretched, plastic surgery revised face, the star suggests a Muppet that is perhaps a little too complex for it's puppeteer to operate.

IRON SKY

The basic idea here is that, after being defeated in 1945, The Nazi's fled to the Moon where they built a space fleet to return in 2018 and conquer Earth. The film makes no attempt to be taken seriously, and with surpsingly slick visual effects given it's low budget, this campy comedy adventure just might work if it featured a single laugh, or even a mild smirk. The acting is painfully bad and the dialogue worse, especially when it comes to the thinly veiled Sarah Palin based President of The United States. Palin is ripe to be parodied, but if you are going to be this blatant about it, you'd better be really funny, and actress Stephanie Paul is no Tina Fey. There are some fun, if ridiculous, ideas in this movie, and there was plenty of potential for a fun guilty pleasure, but sadly, that potential quickly drowns in a sea of bad choices.

LOCKOUT

DIE HARD meets ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK at Gitmo in space. Guy Pearce spouts grade school caliber one liners as he infiltrates a space station full of dangerous criminals in order to rescue the President's daughter. This homage to '80's action films is too hokey to be suspenseful but too violent and nasty to be fun space opera. The visual effects are more suited to a video game, and producer Luc Besson made a rather confusing choice by casting his favorite star of the moment, Maggie Grace, as the President's late 20 something daughter and love interest for Pearce, only to try and pass her off a few months later as a sixteen year old again in Taken 2 (which is made alll the more confusing by the fact that she was 18 in the original Taken.).

ONE FOR THE MONEY

Stephanie Plum (played by everyone's favorite diva, Katherine Heigl) is out of work and out of cash, and in desperation she turns to her disreputable cousin Vinnie, of Vinnie's Bail Bonds. Despite having no equipment, training or particular skill she becomes a bail enforcement agent, chasing after Vinnie's highest stakes bail jumper: Joe Morelli, a former vice cop who is wanted for murder, who also happened to seduce and dump Stephanie back in high school after taking her virginity.

Based on the novel by Janet Evanovich, adapted for the screen by three female writers, directed by a woman, and executive produced by Heigl, this still manages to be the most shockingly chauvenistic and even misoginistic major film in a long time. The joke here seems to be “What? A woman as a bounty hunter? But every knows women are supposed to be either naked or in the kitchen!” Heigl's stilted and self conscious performance, complete with a thoroughly unconvincing accent, is almost completely devoid of charm, and the only saving grace here is that it's only 90 minutes long.

As the New Year begins, we hope for the best, but with a January that has already given us Gangster Squad, Texas Chainsaw 3D and a new Wayans Brothers comedy, we are not off to an auspicious start. Our hopes and prayers rest on the likes of Martin Scorsese, J.J. Abrams and Superman himself to get us back on track.