Worst Films of 2021

            It was already bad enough. But there was some solace to being able to see several acclaimed new movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Apple+ etc. Although I have to admit I didn’t much care for Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, I was glad I had the opportunity to see nude flashes of Benedict’s “Cumberbatch” in the comfort of my home. But there were many other movies I succumbed to, checking them out just because I thought they might be “fun” only to be horrified or bored senseless. Seeing 2021 in the tail lights is a relief and hopefully my brain will delete the memory of having seen these ten turkeys.

            Space Jam: A New Legacy. The hilarious new South Park “Post-Pandemic Special” states that the only thing worse than Covid-19 is Space Jam 2, and they are 100% on the money. Basketball king LeBron James plays a version of himself who is trying to connect with his young son Dominic (Cedric Joe), who would rather invent video games than play sports. When they go to Warner Brothers for a pitch they are sucked into the computer “server-verse” by an artificial intelligence- Al G Rhythm (Don Cheadle), who forces LeBron to assemble a basketball team out of Warner Brothers cartoons to win back his son. If you truly hate your children force them to watch this humorless nightmare. That’s all folks. 

            Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Sometimes directors should leave well enough alone. Zack Snyder’s original Justice League (where Batman revives Superman to help foil an alien enemy) was a critical and box office disappointment. Synder had to step down from the making of the film because of personal tragedy but the real tragedy is that he was let re-edit the film to the original director’s cut. All 4 hours of head-banging comic book hokum. I want those four hours back. To take a walk in the park. Write a sonata. Read a novella. Cure cancer. Or watch porn.

            Don’t Look Up. Director Adam McKay’s curdled satire about a comet hurtling towards earth with scientists (Leonardo DiCaprio) and astronomers (Jennifer Lawrence) unable to convince the President (Meryl Streep), or media, to take them seriously. I started cringing about 15 minutes into the movie and it only got worse as it went on. Was this really supposed to be funny? Recently there have been online articles complaining that the movie isn’t as bad as people have complained it is. But, much like the incoming movie comet, this is an extinction level event.

            The Starling. Melissa McCarthy plays a woman, who, after suffering tragedy and a husband (Chris O’Dowd) in the nut house, regains her equilibrium and a reason to live because of a fucking bird. I actually found religion again watching this movie- praying for Sylvester the cat to appear in this maudlin birdbrain bomb.

            The Woman in the Window. What really pisses me off is that the book by A. J. Finn is really terrific. True, it’s a Rear Window retread about an agoraphobic woman (Amy Adams) living in a brownstone mixing her medication with plenty of wine, watching plenty of film noir when she isn’t voyeuristically watching her neighbors. Convinced she witnessed a murder across the street, the cops think she’s a nutcase and her downstairs tenant (Wyatt Russell) is annoyed with her as she spirals into madness. A great cast- Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and one of my new favorites- Fred Hechinger, why is this such a slog to sit through? It’s as if director Joe Wright didn’t realize he was making a thriller. Or if Alfred Hitchcock had filmed Rear Window like a dreary melodrama. The only suspense here was when it would end. 

            Cosmic Sin. Bruce Willis made practically 50 movies in 2021, and they all sucked. But maybe not as much as this low-rent sci-fi stinker where Willis plays a disgraced General called back into battle against an encroaching army of aliens. Mercifully Frank Grillo and Costas Mandylor show up for some on-screen relief, part of the ragtag group of soldiers who head out armed with a “Q-bomb” to wipe out these alien invaders. With crummy spacesuits and lame action scenes, this would barely pass muster on the Syfy channel. By now Bruce Willis is a major proponent of the valium school of acting. One could say he earned his $250 pay check. They should have aimed this movie at the alien race.

            Blithe Spirit. If you’ve ever seen David Lean’s superb 1945 version of the Noel Coward play, starring Rex Harrison and the hilarious Margaret Rutherford, about a man and his new bride haunted by the restless spirit of a dead wife, you experienced the wit, sophistication and dark humor of the text. Everything that’s missing from this lackluster reboot starring Dan Stevens and Judi Dench. Not even a real medium could conjure any form of spirit life from this moldering corpse. 

            Prisoners of the Ghostland. Japanese director Sion Sono (Love Exposure) has always pushed the envelope in his own crackpot way. And I had high hopes for this even though I was concerned when star Nicolas Cage reportedly said it “might be the wildest film I’ve ever made.” But the film has no momentum- it just spins its surreal wheels, eventually building to a big action sequence/sword fight with nothing to propel the story forward except Cage’s hammy growl and some startling visuals. I really wanted to love this movie because the director has astonished me in the past, but as Gertrude Stein once said about Oakland, “there is no there there” in Ghostland.

            Chaos Walking. Sweet-faced Tom Holland plays Todd, part of a settler community on a foreign planet in 2257 AD. There are no women left, supposedly killed by aliens (or bored to death by the dialogue). Everyone has telepathic powers where every thought in their mind is on display (like cartoon stink lines coming from their head). A young Earth woman (Daisy Ridley) is the only survivor of an exploratory spacecraft crash, and Todd helps her escape from the violent settlement and the bloodthirsty mayor (Mads Mikkelsen) and they go on a perilous journey to find other, more benevolant, colonies. Not enough chaos and too much walking. 

            Music. Characters on the “spectrum” should only be detectives on Danish or Swedish mystery series. Singer/songwriter Sia directed (and co-wrote the screenplay) for this cringe-inducing film about a non-verbal autistic girl named Music (Maddie Ziegler) who lives with a loving grandmother (Mary Kay Place) in a tenement and is watched out for by neighbors. When grandma unexpected croaks Music’s care is left to her train wreck of a half-sister named Zu (Kate Hudson), newly sober, selling drugs and barely able to care for herself let alone a special needs child. Leslie Odom Jr. plays a kindly ex-boxer who lives next door who tries to help out with the situation. There are jaw-dropping musical numbers taking place inside Music’s head- brightly-colored dance fantasias that will have you covering your eyes in horror. I can’t even begin to describe how ghastly this is, in an icky, bad taste way. It was music to my fears.