I try not to look back in anger when it comes to films. Fortunately, movies I dislike seem to magically delete in my memory as the year goes on. But there are still some stinkers whose odor lingers on. Here is my list of 10 Worst:
Cats (Tom Hooper). “Now And Not Forever” should be the ad campaign for this purr-fectly awful film version of the long-running musical. I thought it might be ghastly camp but the minute it begins with those dreadful sets and the CGI-enhanced human cats, badly choreographed, twirling and leaping about like mad- your heart just sinks. Is it really going to be like this for the whole movie? There’s not enough catnip to keep you entertained. It’s all incomprehensible, humorless and completely joyless. It’s also cringe-inducing to see Idris Elba. Jennifer Hudson isn’t even allowed to soar with the song “Memory.” Judi Dench looks like the Cowardly Lion, but without all the infectious fun. There really is a special place in hell for this movie.
A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood (Marielle Heller). No, it’s not. I truly hated this movie. Tom Hanks is great- he has the right beatific weirdness and decency playing Mr. Rogers. But the movie is all about a journalist and his thorny relationship with his father. Who fucking cares?
Serenity (Steven Knight) Thank God Matthew McConaughey is nude a lot in this waterlogged noir. He plays a Florida ship captain who is asked by his ex-wife (Anne Hathaway– dressed in 40s femme fatale drag) to take her brutal husband (Jason Clarke) out fishing and kill him for money. But then the movie jumps the trolley and becomes a metaphysical howler. Diane Lane is criminally wasted.
The Fanatic (Fred Durst) John Travolta, in a hideous mullet and Hawaiian shirt, plays “Moose,” riding around on a moped in Hollywood and miraculously making a living impersonating a vintage British Bobby on the strip at night. He’s clearly mentally-challenged but in a bad-movie I Am Sam way. He’s also a major fanboy of movie star Hunter Dunbar (Devon Sawa), and he stalks the star to his home and eventually commits a home invasion that turns wildly violent. It’s so jaw-dropping and terrible it’s almost amazing. Travolta is hard to watch, but he does get an unforgettable first line of dialogue- when he enters a memorabilia store and announces, “I can’t talk too long- I gotta poo..”
Ma (Tate Taylor). Oh brother…I was happy to see Octavia Spencer in the lead as a woman who bizarrely throws beer bashes for high school students in her basement. But when the true vengeful purpose reveals itself, I lost all interest. What might have been a genuine unnerving horror movie about race and privilege turned into a groaning, familiar slog.
The Laundromat (Steven Soderbergh) I was all set to enjoy this sardonic take on the “Panama Papers” as seen through the eyes of two villainous lawyers (Gary Oldman & Antonio Banderas) and an angry widow (Meryl Streep) investigating the shell companies and other shady scams when her husband dies and she cannot collect on the insurance. I just didn’t get the point of the satire- and the plot digressions into other characters involved in the fraud were confounding and went nowhere.
Uncut Gems (Benny & Josh Safdie). I was flabbergasted by the rave reviews for this aggravating film starring a high-octane Adam Sandler as a diamond dealer and compulsive gambler. Sandler plays an unfaithful husband and big-time creep, juggling a million schemes and dodging sketchy gangsters in this film by the Safdie Brothers. The movie begins with the energy level ramped to 10 and doesn’t let up. It’s exhausting to watch and tiresomely unpleasant.
The Haunting Of Sharon Tate (Daniel Farrands) It’s fascinating that directors like Quentin Tarantino and Mary Harron also, this year, focused on Charles Manson & family and that fateful night in 1969 which resulted in the brutal murder of actress Sharon Tate. But they did it with artistry and imagination and humanity. This mess of a film has Sharon Tate (Hilary Duff) relentlessly discussing fate and inevitability with her friends on Cielo Drive, all the while having creepy premonitions and nightmares about what is to come. The reconstruction of the crime (and alternate reality version) leaves you with a really bad taste in your mouth.
6 Underground (Michael Bay) What would a 10 worst list be without Michael Bay? Now he infects Netflix. In the first 11 minutes of his new action crap-tacular- a plane crashes, there’s a wild car chase through Rome, while inside the vehicle Ryan Reynolds cracks wise as a bullet is bloodily extracted from a woman in the back seat. A co-conspirator slides down and leaps across rooftops causing mayhem. Guns blaze. Nuns fall off bikes. An eyeball lands in Ryan’s lap. The entire sequence seemingly edited by Jack the Ripper. Do we know who any of these people are? Do we even know what the fuck’s going on? Oh, who cares? It’s typical Michael Bay full-tilt action cluster-fuck. I guess if you punch people in the face long enough they grow to like it.
Then there are film experiences that you cannot pigeonhole:
Under The Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell) This was like a loose tooth. And I really wanted to love it. It’s a strange tale about a jobless Hollywood boy (Andrew Garfield) who goes down the conspiracy rabbit hole in search of a girl he hooked up with that disappeared. it’s outrageously bizarre. But it kept frustrating me at every eccentric turn. It’s also wildly original in many ways, and a lot of it has stayed in my head more than moments from some better films I saw this year. I really don’t know what category to put it in. Maybe that’s a good thing. There should be more uncategorized films out there to scramble the brain and inflame the senses.
Oh wow you saw Cats! I laugh out loud at every trailer because it looks like such a disaster. But the more I hear the less I want to see it even for ironic reasons.