It’s bad enough being trapped in your apartment for a year, but self-imprisoned watching a bad movie really reminds you how horrible life can be. Now, to be honest, I saw a lot of terrific things through my television this year, but then there were some real stinkers which made me want to drink Drano. It brought to mind a quote by Roger Ebert: “No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.” Here are my ten worst:
Capone (Josh Trank). Tom Hardy sounds like Bluto from the Popeye cartoons, playing the legendary gangster Al Capone in his final year. If I wanted to watch the last days of a crazed, syphilitic criminal- I’d rather watch CNN.
Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard). Li’l Abner on opioids. I know it’s based on a true story, but I have to make a vow to never watch another movie with a character called “Mamaw.”
Rebecca (Ben Wheatley). Alright, let’s promise to never, ever, ever, remake another film by Alfred Hitchcock. It’s never going to be better.
Dolittle (Stephen Gaghan). A joyless film with an insufferable Robert Downey Jr. as the man who “talks to animals.” I will never make fun of the 1969 Rex Harrison musical again after seeing this abomination. It made me want to travel to Canada and club baby seals to death with a baseball bat.
The Witches (Robert Zemeckis). This new adaptation of the Roald Dahl book is so un-magical it takes your breath away. Anne Hathaway as the grand witch isn’t scary, fun and camp as Anjelica Huston was in the excellent 1990 Nicolas Roeg adaptation. She conjures up the witches from Shakespeare’s Macbeth saying about her performance, “By the pricking of my thumbs, something stupid this way comes.”
Brahms: The Boy II (William Brent Bell). Bad doll! Bad, bad, bad, doll!
The Night Clerk (Michael Cristofer). Gazing lovingly at Tye Sheridan’s lips is not enough to erase the stink of this non-thriller about a hotel clerk with Asperger’s who plants hidden cameras in all the rooms to voyeuristically watch later at home. It probably should have been called Peeping Tye.
Ava (Tate Taylor) Jessica Chastain plays Ava, a glamorous, globe-trotting hit woman with a drinking problem. Yawn. There’s not enough gin or vodka in all of Boston to make this familiar yarn bearable. Geena Davis as her mother was incredibly disconcerting.
The Life Ahead (Edoardo Ponti) It was great to see Sophia Loren again (even if it was alarming) as an aged streetwalker who takes in children from other hookers. But the film tried so hard to make her uneasy friendship with a 12-year old Senegalese orphan “heart-tugging” I really began to throw up in my mouth.
Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh). Let’s not.
Hilarious!
Thank you Dennis for bringing joy to the Holiday Season.