The Worst Films Of The Year 2016

In many ways 2016 will be remembered as a truly terrible year in terms of global events, politics, death, destruction and an encroaching sense of Armageddon, if that is you believe half of what you read posted on social media by terminally upset / outraged / offended / neurotic halfwits. Film-wise like any other year it had its fair share of truly abysmal movies, perhaps notable in this instance for having one of the least inspiring, utterly mediocre selection of summer 'blockbusters' in recent memory - more wretched retreads, shabby sequels, godawful games adaptations and less than super, superhero franchises, were cynically thrust upon the multiplex masses. Far from fantastic fantasy epics scored big on the crud-ometer this year, as did the usual sorry assortment of crappy comedies - even I couldn't bring myself to endure Dirty Grandpa, whilst Bad Neighbours 2 wasn't happening....one Seth Rogen film a year is more than enough self-inflicted misery for me, even if he didn't actually physically appear in the animated equivalent of butcher shop offal which was Sausage Party...

THE WORST FILMS OF 2016:  

1) GODS OF EGYPT

Ye Gods!

A deluge of dire digital FX, dismal dialogue and mind-boggling, utterly incoherent plotting. Woefully miscast - a mixture of never seen before non-entities and scenery-chewing stars such as Gerard Butler who appears to be an Egyptian deity with a broad Scottish accent. Tonally all over the shop - it shifts from Game Of Thrones style brutal violence (a graphic eye gouging for instance), to the sort of lame child-friendly computer game level monsters that would only appease a particularly tolerant five year old.
Not even in the so bad it's fun category of similarly inept historical fantasy epics like Vikingdom for example, this is just a shoddy, incomprehensible, muddled mess of a movie which makes Wrath Of The Titans look like essential viewing......Hell, this actually makes John Carter look half decent!

2) GRIMSBY

Ever since Borat, which I thought was pure comedic genius - edgy, bold and genuinely hilarious, Sacha Baron Cohen's output has become increasingly patchy, culminating with this travesty which I absolutely hated, and which didn't raise a single laugh throughout its dire duration.
Lacking the satirical bite of his earlier characters, Cohen's feckless northern slob Nobby is a lazy, lame and utterly charmless comic creation. Mark Strong on the other hand slumming it in some of the most over-elaborate and painfully unfunny gross-out sequences ever conceived, seems to be hellbent on career suicide here. Meanwhile other notable supporting cast members including genuinely talented comedy actors like Johnny Vegas and Ricky Tomlinson are given absolutely nothing to do other than portray dumb, dull stereotypes. In fact about the only thing in this desperate fiasco's favour are its impressive action sequences - courtesy of The Transporter director Louis Leterrier, who clearly has a sharp eye for thrilling spectacle, but an absolute cloth ear for comedy.
A rancid load of old elephant toss.

3) PLAN 9

Well I didn’t see this one coming! A sort of half a century after the event remake of one of the most celebrated B(ad) movies of all-time. Odd and unexpected enough, but what’s even more baffling is that this isn’t really a remake at all, in fact it can’t really decide if it’s a post-modern spoof or a straight-up sci-fi / horror indie, which takes the initial plot of Ed Wood’s finest hour and runs with it as if it were a genuine straight-faced event. I found the construct utterly confusing and more incoherent than a Tor Johnson monologue, with its conflicting mix of pastiche and traditional storyline utterly at odds. Even if at times this sort of stumbles towards an intentionally so bad it’s good dynamic (the sort of cynical tactic which makes the likes of the Sharknado films so utterly tedious) it goes without saying this lacks the naive charm and innocent ineptitude of the 1950’s original.
Any fool who tells you Plan 9 From Outer Space is the “worst film of all-time” clearly hasn’t watched enough seriously bad films. In fact they could start by watching this garbled, godawful mess as a jump-off point.

4) CRIMINAL

What's really criminal is how this ludicrous, overlong sci-fi tinged action nonsense wastes such a top drawer cast. Dumb and not much fun, the dubious highlight being Kevin Costner throwing his weight around in a London kebab shop, in one of the year's more unintentionally hilarious scenes.

5) THE GHOUL

A British independent psychological thriller which has gained some solid word of mouth on the festival circuit, but Tom Meeten's twitchy central performance aside, I found this to be a soporific descent into insanity and angst. Painfully slow and ponderous, with a looping, rambling repetitious narrative, I couldn't engage with this at all and genuinely struggled to stay awake during its screening at Nottingham's Mayhem film festival. Very much an ordinary tale of madness.

6) TANK 432

Ninety minutes of utter tedium, much of which takes place within the confines of the titular military vehicle (this was formerly known as Belly Of The Beast),  punctuated by endless quarrelling, profane ranting, sporadic gore and confusing trippy interludes. The final revelation delivered more groans than surprises.

7) CELL

After an impressively apocalyptic airport based opening, this rapidly spirals out of control. Cell suffers from a seriously bad signal - it's a directionless, disjointed, largely incoherent mess. There are clear signs of the film's troubled production, rendering this more of a cinematic car crash, than a technophobic tale of terror. Also notable for an utterly bizarre use of Liverpool's terrace anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone." Just hang up on this wrong number.

8) WARCRAFT

I'm not a gamer, so have no idea how this has translated from console to cinema, and frankly, I've long since given up on seeing a great movie based on a video game. But with Duncan Jones at the helm, whose first two movies, Moon and Source Code, were both 'Top Ten' of their respective years entries for me, there was a flicker of hope to be had here. Regrettably that hope was misplaced. Warcraft is little more than an eye-straining cavalcade of clumsy CGI characters, largely incoherent or unintelligible plotting and an overall impression of just being a vacant retread of familiar fantasy material like Lord Of The Rings, Game Of Thrones and Avatar. Compared with other recent mega-budget sci-fi / fantasy duds, it may not be John Carter levels of incompetent tedium, but it's certainly not a good movie by any stretch.

9) BATMAN Vs SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

Director Zack Snyder's polarised attributes and deficiencies become glaringly obvious early on in the cumbersomely titled Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice. It opens with a brilliantly staged recreation of Man Of Steel's climactic carnage, but witnessed from the periphery of the action, away from the main protagonists, viewed from a ground (zero) perspective, giving this a rare, gritty authenticity, which not only invests the destruction with a profound post 9/11 resonance, but may just be some of the most impressive and realistic superhero footage seen outside of the final act of Chronicle. That's the good bit, unfortunately from herein Batman Vs Superman rapidly crashes down like those collapsing skyscrapers, as it attempts to crowbar in an insane surplus of material. Character arcs, back-stories, origin stories, DC Universe building, flash-forwards, stumble-backwards, WTF is happening now post-apocalyptic sequences and even an American Werewolf In London patented dream within a dream scene which is ludicrous in the extreme, but nowhere near as bizarre or baffling as the point where the film actually grinds to a halt for what seems like an advert for future spin-off franchises...a self-fulfilling destiny of in-house product placement.
Batman Vs Superman's build-up is fractured at best, utterly incoherent at worst. There are fleeting moments of greatness peppered throughout and some fascinating ideology and character riffs, but when the film raises big themes or ideas they're so often left unresolved or just touched upon on a simple superficial level. Even the religious allegory which is laid on with a trowel ends up under-explored and ultimately discarded.
As for the actual characters and plot, there's just such an incomprehensible jumble of entwined concurrent storylines taking place that there's no real focus or drama to any of it. Ben Affleck's world-weary Batman comes out of it best with at least some semblance of credibility, definitely the best chin for the role, and a degree of promise and potential for future standalone instalments. His motivation to actually battle The Man Of Steel may stretch credibility somewhat, but ultimately he's a bitter, twisted, vigilante who dresses up as a giant bat, so isn't exactly playing with a full deck to begin with, so I just went with the daft basic premise.
Poor old Henry Cavill as Superman however fares far worse, it's almost as if Snyder has realised he's a complete charisma void in the role and given him as little to do as possible, other than look morose and moody and lost in the background of his own movie. Then there's Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman, who adds precisely nothing to the narrative other than being an extra pugilist in the ridiculously over the top final smack down (which isn't between the characters I expected), where Snyder dials everything up to eleven and then blows the amps up. Seriously, with the migraine-inducing Hans Zimmer & Junkie XL techno soundtrack blasting away at ear-bleeding levels and a retina-popping visual effects overload, which could conceivably trigger epileptic fits in a blind person, it's like being trapped in an out of control fairground ride with Snyder wailing "scream if you want to go faster!" like a maniacal banshee! Arguably the only thing worse than this is Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor, who is simply unbearable - all daddy issues and murky megalomania motivation, a grating, gurning hyperactive xerox of his Social Network Mark Zuckerberg performance as if possessed by Heath Ledger's Joker.
Batman Vs Superman is frankly a mess - it's baggy, bloated, baffling and a bit like watching at least two movies at once. It's deeply flawed, joyless and absolutely all over the place in terms of construct, coherence and even its own geography - I had no idea where half of this film took place - are Gotham and Metropolis just across a river from each other?
I actually feel a bit sorry for Zack Snyder here, after all he's working from a script which is both overreaching and underwritten. He's been here before with Watchmen, which I liked despite its multitude of  faults, and I rate his Dawn Of The Dead as one of the finest ever horror movie remakes (although how much of that is down to James Gunn is debatable), but here he just comes across as a filmmaker who is totally out of his depth.....simply a case of the wrong director for the scale and complexity of the material.

10) SAUSAGE PARTY

Presumably during some dope-fuelled epiphany, Seth Rogen and his witless cohorts stumbled upon the puerile revelation that sausages look like penises and bread rolls could be fobbed off as vaginas and like hey, wouldn't it be just like hilarious dude, to make like a feature length animated movie about foul-mouthed food fucking and getting stoned? The answer was of course no, it wouldn't be hilarious dude, it would be a mashed-up moron's one joke idea stretched thinner than a chipolata and about as tasteless and enjoyable as a vegetarian wiener! 

11) THE ASSASSIN
12) ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE
13) JOY

14) THE HUNTSMAN: WINTER'S WAR
15) THE 5TH WAVE
16) KILL COMMAND
17) THE FOREST

18) THE SURVIVALIST
19) THE HIVE
20) HITMAN: AGENT 47
21) INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE

22) LANDMINE GOES CLICK
23) FENDER BENDER
24) DOCTOR STRANGE
25) THE CONJURING 2    

WORST ACTION FILM: CRIMINAL

WORST HORROR FILM: TANK 432

WORST COMEDY: GRIMSBY

WORST SCIENCE-FICTION / FANTASY: GODS OF EGYPT

WORST SPECIAL FX: PLAN 9

WORST SCREENPLAY: BATMAN VS SUPERMAN - DAWN OF JUSTICE

WORST DIRECTOR: ZACK SNYDER  (BATMAN VS SUPERMAN - DAWN OF JUSTICE)

WORST ACTRESS: PRETTY MUCH ANY MEMBER OF THE CAST OF... (BUNNY THE KILLER THING)

WORST ACTOR: GERARD BUTLER (GODS OF EGYPT)

2016'S BIGGEST LETDOWN WHICH SHOULD’VE BEEN GREAT BUT REALLY WASN’T: DON'T BREATHE & JASON BOURNE.

The Worst Films Of The Year 2015

2015's annual countdown of cinematic crud is overwhelmingly dominated by a film which is ugly head and putrid shoulders above every other movie I saw this year as one of the most unendurable, insufferable pieces of garbage to have ever defiled my eyes. I was actually offended I couldn't award it zero stars on Letterboxd, and felt utterly aggrieved I had to file it away with a massively over-generous 1/2 star rating. Elsewhere, there seemed fewer world class stinkers this year, maybe I'm getting more selective, or probably my brain is so addled from the ordeal of being screamed at by Tom Six's fingers down the blackboard filmmaking, that I've just become far more tolerant of films which are either simply dull or merely too prosaic and uninspired to get worked up about. As such several films residing in most other 2015 'Hall Of Shame' rundowns such as Pixels, Terminator - Genisys, The Visit, Entourage, San Andreas and Poltergeist just sort of drifted from my memory, failing to inspire any sort of lasting rage or disdain, whilst a couple of other celebrated box office bombs from 2015, namely Seventh Son and Jupiter Ascending, I perversely enough rather liked, mainly because of their complete lunacy and deranged ambition. Both films being absolute nonsense of course, but entertaining nonsense, which frankly goes a long way to gaining my admiration......

THE WORST FILMS OF 2015:  

1) THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 3 - FINAL SEQUENCE

Like a wailing, attention-seeking child desperate to offend and antagonise, the third (....and please let it live up to its 'Final Sequence' tag), Human Centipede instalment is insufferable, puerile, button-pushing trash for morons.
I've absolutely no problem with graphic gross-out gore or politically incorrect sleaze, Hell I've feasted on a steady diet of exploitation, B movies and hardcore horror for decades, but this is such shoddy, amateurish, try-hard garbage, it's not offensive on any level (as much as it tries to be), other than to anybody expecting competent, coherent, watchable filmmaking.
I genuinely couldn't work out if this was supposed to be a self-referential spoof or just a slipshod steaming pile of dog shit full of grating, borderline unwatchable performances, from alleged actors who would fail the audition process for an Ed Wood film. The cast all given ample rope to hang themselves by a narcissistic hack director who's long since disappeared up his own arse, and on the evidence of this witless shambles makes Uwe Boll look like Alfred Hitchcock! In fact said director / writer / troll, Tom Six, turns up in person in this embarrassing mess at one point, and actually struggles to register a convincing portrayal of himself. Dieter Laser meanwhile rants and raves with such scenery-chewing excess he'd even give Michael Bay a migraine! It says something when the best performance comes from porn star Bree Olsen.....and she's absolutely terrible.
Easily the worst film I've endured since the rancid, festering wound which was Pain & Gain. And no, that's not a fucking recommendation! This is just hateful, putrid, lowest common denominator cinematic sewage, which thinks it's far cleverer than it actually is, as it wallows in its own filth like a lunatic smearing their feces over themselves. And yes, I totally understand Tom Six's intention was to get exactly this sort of reaction, still doesn't mean his film is anything other than absolute torture to sit through.

2) TED 2

I'm not sure which was the loudest - the deafening sound of silence as lame jokes rolled by like decaying tumbleweeds, or the grating noise of a barrel being well and truly scraped!
Cards on the table time, I like Family Guy, but away from the surreal insanity afforded by animation, the humour of Seth MacFarlane's big screen outings tend to head straight for the gutter, resorting to feeble gross out gags, boring profanity and an overriding smugness which makes you think he's well and truly lost in his own hype. The original Ted was a decent idea dragged out to the point of irritation, but this sequel is just a lacklustre retread full of puerile abuse (Amanda Seyfried apparently looks like Gollum?), knob gags, semen mishaps and a bizarrely mawkish undercurrent where the film tries to get across its ham-fisted equality message whilst blundering along with an incredibly hit and miss scattershot selection of toilet humour, bong-hit bromance and nerd bashing nastiness.
Charmless, witless, TED-ious. The only person who emerges from this with any credit is Mila Kunis who had the good sense to fall pregnant prior to filming, so couldn't reprise her role. Wise move.

3) THE INTERVIEW

Scatological, wildly misjudged, offensive lowbrow drivel desperately lacking in satirical bite. A witless tirade of toilet humour and banal bromance boredom, quite how such an obviously inflammatory and idiotic idea got past the greenlight stage is anybody's guess. The resultant outcry and controversial reactions were predictable, if wholly disproportionate. That such a lame series of knob jokes caused a major international incident is actually far more comedic and interesting than anything in a film which trades in schoolyard abuse and barrel-scraping racial stereotyping.
It's quite the achievement to make Seth Rogen and James Franco infinitely more detestable than a tyrannical oppressive dictator, but this film somehow manages it. Freedom of speech really does have a lot to answer for! 

4) AREA 51

I'm a sucker for UFO / conspiracy theory stuff of this ilk, which unfortunately means having to suffer a steady stream of second rate sci-fi stinkers like this - there are two more similarly rotten examples further down this list! However, compared to this latest attempt at an X-Files inspired horror hybrid, those dismal duds look like five star masterpieces.
Director / writer / producer Oren Peli is largely responsible for the current wave of found footage movies, being the man behind the Paranormal Activity franchise amongst others, yet here he tries his hardest to hammer a final nail into the genre's coffin with the movie equivalent of an alien anal probe - a horrible, confusing experience, and thoroughly painful to endure.

5) INHERENT VICE

Mis-sold as a Coen Brothers styled comedic crime caper by its slapstick trailer, Paul Thomas Anderson's latest is less The Big Lebowski or indeed The Big Sleep, but rather just a big snore.
Shaggy, baggy, deliberately obtuse and borderline incomprehensible, Inherent Vice is a rambling, impenetrable, paranoid stoner noir, with Joaquin Phoenix's mumbling private detective Larry 'Doc' Sportello staggering his way through a labyrinthine plot which repeatedly ties itself in knots, stumbles aimlessly down narrative dead ends and goes nowhere.Slowly.
About as troublesome to get to grips with as a greased weasel, half an hour into this it dawned on me I had no idea what was going on, and cared even less, as the latest big name star appeared for a pointless cameo before being rapidly forgotten about (Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson and Martin Short, doing an Austin Powers impression by the look of things, randomly add nothing to proceedings). Faced with a further two hours of this garbled, sprawling, frequently leery patience-tester, it's clear to see why this has been labelled a "great walk-out film", but I stuck with it, to discover that in fact it doesn't ever really go anywhere other than drag itself around in a directionless, dope-fuelled stupor, weighed down with a misguided melancholic nostalgia for a fading hippie era. Let's face it, this isn't the first time Anderson has been found wanting, lost in a desperate search for an ending to one of his films. I wasn't exactly over impressed by his previous effort The Master, but compared to this tedious snoozefest that's starting to look like the masterpiece everybody tried to convince me it was!

6) FOCUS

Monotonous, charmless, soporific heist caper full of grating, narcissistic, morally bankrupt characters we are actually supposed to give a damn about, despite them all being universally loathsome. One of its major setpieces which takes place inside a football stadium is frankly one of the most absurdly unbelievable and mind-bendingly stupid sequences ever conceived. Will Smith's downward spiral continues apace. Not signing up for the Independence Day sequel is looking like career suicide at this point.

7) CREEP

Lo-fi, low budget shoegaze psychological shocker which is all stalk & no slash. Found footage, lame jump scares, utter tedium. Amazed this has made it onto so many 'Best Horror Films of 2015' lists, I just found it to be improvised, directionless, uneventful, glacially paced and devoid of any sense of threat or menace.The far more mainstream The Gift told a similar story far more effectively, and even it was nowhere near as great as everybody seemed to think it was!

8) WEREWOLF RISING

It's almost like being back in the VHS era here - a case of a great sleeve / artwork disguising a deadly dull film. This is a turkey in wolf's clothing - low budget, low ambition, lycanthrope trash which could easily pass as one of those schlocky substandard Howling sequels we've all tried to forget ever existed.
This actually has a 2.5/10 rating on IMDB, which frankly is a bit on the generous side. 

9)  LOST RIVER

Somewhere over the rainbow to Lynch / Refn territory, Ryan Gosling's directorial debut is a visually arresting vanity project - ambitious, abstract, arty, but utterly devoid of personal identity. It's more like a montage of divergent styles and influences borrowed from filmmakers he's worked with or admired from afar. In fact it's a bit of a directorial dog's dinner, a confusing jumble of angular ideas and incoherent setpieces which comes across like a sort of overreaching student film from somebody with financial clout and an impressive contacts list. Sure, there's a strong use of colour and lighting in Lost River, and it benefits greatly from a terrific soundtrack, but otherwise it's just a bit of a shocking, shambolic mess I'm afraid, and like its director's frequent screen persona, it's pretty to look at, but utterly aloof and characterless.

10)  FANTASTIC FOUR

I was a big fan of Josh Trank’s debut feature, Chronicle. A fresh spin on the superhero genre, which really got to grips with the underlying notion of what it would be like to suddenly obtain staggering superpowers. What it would entail for a mortal to essentially gain God-like ability, and how such gifts may ultimately become a curse leading to madness, corruption of power, doom and destruction. It’s not much of a stretch then, despite its previous colourful but bland screen incarnations, to see how Trank’s vision could lend itself to Marvel’s Fantastic Four characters. Clearly Fox were sold on his darker, more downbeat concept, but somewhere along the line got cold feet and seemingly took creative control away from their director, as revealed by Trank’s now infamous deleted Tweet / career suicide note.
This version of Fantastic Four which limped into cinemas is for me the year's biggest disappointment, a film with such huge potential which in the end is all build-up and no pay-off. It’s a film which feels severely compromised and truncated - many scenes from the early trailers are missing, character development is incredibly fractured (Jamie Bell’s Ben Grimm is totally forgotten about for a huge chunk of the film and randomly re-appears just in time to get turned into The Thing!), chemistry between the actors is almost non-existent, and the effects-heavy climax (the only notable action sequence in the entire film) is rushed, lacking in spectacle and largely incoherent.
And yet the annoying thing is that there is solid, interesting material here, a hint of what might have been – the moodier, more menacing Chronicle vibes, the Cronenbergian body-horror, all too briefly showcased as our heroes realise the dreadful extent of their life-changing conditions, the emergence of Dr Doom rampaging through corridors like an inter-dimensional Terminator. But clearly such material which deviates away from the family-friendly box-office potential of a summer blockbuster release has been curtailed at best, or excised entirely. We'll probably never get to see Josh Trank's true vision of Fantastic Four, which could well have been a classic, but sadly what remains is all origin and very little originality, and frankly should just be retitled 'Four'. 

11) THE GUNMAN

12) CYMBELINE (aka ANARCHY - RIDE OR DIE)

13) DISMEMBERING CHRISTMAS

14) PROJECT ALMANAC

15) WE STILL KILL THE OLD WAY

16) KNOCK KNOCK

17) GET HARD

18) HANGAR 10

19) THE PHOENIX INCIDENT

20) THE DROWNSMAN
21) WAX
22) AGE OF KILL
23) BARELY LETHAL
24) MOMENTUM
25) AMERICAN ULTRA. 

WORST ACTION FILM: THE GUNMAN

WORST HORROR FILM: THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 3 - FINAL SEQUENCE

WORST COMEDY: TED 2

WORST SCIENCE-FICTION / FANTASY: AREA 51

WORST SPECIAL FX: DISMEMBERING CHRISTMAS

WORST SCREENPLAY: THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 3 - FINAL SEQUENCE

WORST DIRECTOR: TOM SIX  (THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 3 - FINAL SEQUENCE)

WORST ACTRESS: YOLANDI VISSER (CHAPPIE)

WORST ACTOR: DIETER LASER (THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 3 - FINAL SEQUENCE)

2015'S BIGGEST LETDOWN WHICH SHOULD’VE BEEN GREAT BUT REALLY WASN’T: IT FOLLOWS & FANTASTIC FOUR.
 

 

The Worst Films Of The Year 2014

I think that generally speaking I'm getting far more selective in what films I actually watch these days. Gone are the mad completism urges where I had to watch everything no matter how putrid and foul the word of mouth on it was. Hence, this year I managed to avoid a lot of the more celebrated cinematic stinkers - films which have been turning up on other end of year movie halls of shame like rancid stinking vagrants, shunned by society, such as I, FRANKENSTEIN / GRACE OF MONACO / RIDE ALONG / DEVIL'S DUE / SEX TAPE / HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 / A NEW YORK WINTER'S TALE / BLENDED / THE OTHER WOMAN / TAMMY or what I'm certain would be the unspeakable traumatic horror of PUDSEY THE DOG THE MOVIE or MRS feckin BROWNS BOYS. Elsewhere, there were a few universally slated films which though far from classics I didn't actively despise (NEED FOR SPEED / A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST etc). What follows are the worst of what did slip my guard (NOTE: There are a couple of films included below which are yet to open in the UK, but you can treat their inclusion as an advance warning of sorts!), and this pitiful selection are the very worst offenders, and not a single one of the films listed here was awarded more than a decidedly limp and lacklustre two stars from me on Letterboxd this year:

THE WORST FILMS OF 2014:

1) SABOTAGE

Arnold Schwarzenegger's post-politics return to the big screen has hardly recaptured his former glories and blockbuster appeal. The Expendables films are mere campy nostalgia, whilst the thoroughly enjoyable The Last Stand and Escape Plan didn't exactly break box-office records. So, this latest attempt at career redemption, saw him teaming up with David Ayer, known for his gritty, urban, hard-edged gangland thrillers, and joining a solid ensemble cast including Sam Worthington and Terrence Howard, which seemed a promising move in the right (re)direction. Unfortunately, what their collective creative endeavours churned up was an ugly, idiotic, throwback thriller devoid of tension or surprises, other than just how jaw-droppingly stupid and knuckle-dragging it all was.
The plot was ludicrous, the twists were telegraphed, the dialogue was an embarrassing mix of puerile profanity and inane banter - it's empty, overt machismo, first-person gun fetishism and extreme violence in the guise of some sort of pseudo murder mystery, masquerading behind endless shots of blockheads kicking in doors. By all accounts this was initially pitched as a sort of whodunit mystery, but was turned into a brain dead action film against Ayer's wishes, which kind of makes sense as this is devoid of any coherence or rhythm, a seriously dull, and decidedly dumb mess of a movie.

2) CRAWL OR DIE

Crawl Or Die is a micro-budget creature feature throwback, with an utterly derivative single idea plot, which basically amounts to ninety minutes of monotonous crawling about in dark confined spaces. No, seriously, once the cast go subterranean on an alien planet, that really is the entire film......endlessly tedious tunnel-vision. A ceaseless series of sequences of squeezing through increasingly tight spaces with intermittent attacks from a rubbery monster which is such a shockingly blatant rip-off of his work, I'm pretty sure H.R.Giger is rightfully spinning in his grave with justifiable indignation. There's possibly a half decent short film in here somewhere, and you have to give writer/director/producer/one man social media blitz Oklahoma Ward credit for pretty much handling every aspect of the film's production, on what are clearly very meagre resources. But I'm afraid to say the resulting feature is less of the clammy, claustrophobic nightmare promised, and more of a repetitive patience-testing exercise in utter banality and tedium. After yet another ten minute episode of incrementally edging along tunnels at snail's pace, I was starting to lose the will to live and if given the choice between Crawl Or Die, I would seriously contemplate the latter option.

3) HER

A dreary, over hyped angst-fest, Her is Electric Dreams for the iPhone age. A glacially-paced slice of shoe-gaze sci-fi with irksome indie romance trappings and wishy-washy whimsy. The basic premise of a person becoming romantically entwined with artificial intelligence technology is an age-old science-fiction conceit, already familiar from literature, film & TV, where the concept has been far better mined by the likes of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and Black Mirror. Hell....even The Big Bang Theory used this exact same storyline to better effect!
So not only is the core idea old hat, but the central relationship between socially awkward, emotionally brittle, wet blanket Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) and his personalised computer operating system, Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), is a clumsy mix of toe-curling, greeting card sentiment and unintentionally hilarious cyber-sex silliness. It's supposedly a comment on society's ever growing dependence on cyberspace and social media, and our withdrawal and disconnection from reality and fading day to day interaction with fellow human beings, but is in fact just a film about a bloke having a wank to his phone. Indeed at one point the screen thoughtfully goes blank for what seems like an eternity to hide this embarrassing fact.
I've enjoyed all of Spike Jonze's previous films, but this bored me rigid, whilst it looks fabulous - the subtle futuristic design and cinematography is stunning, and there are moments of typically idiosyncratic Jonze quirkiness, it just didn't connect with me at all on any kind of emotional or spiritual level. I found it a rather distant, vacuous experience, it's basically navel-gazing nerd porn, a film which mopes around with all the overwrought emo anxiety, artificial melancholy and agonised self-pity of a Twilight saga marathon. Phoenix's character in particular is frankly wetter than last winter's Somerset Levels, and far more deserving of a slap, than any audience sympathy.

4) 3 DAYS TO KILL

From the unlikely combination of McG and Luc Besson comes 3 Days To Kill, which on the surface appears to be a Taken type action adventure film with Kevin Costner off the subs’ bench for Liam Neeson. In actual fact this is a rather awkward mix of violent espionage thriller and maudlin family drama more concerned with Costner’s terminally ill CIA operative reuniting with his estranged daughter (Hailee Steinfeld). It’s tonally vague, listless and utterly misjudged, completely all over the place structurally and in terms of storytelling. At times it almost feels like a block-headed attempt at the sort of adult/child relationship amidst assassins’ bullets of Besson’s own Leon, but with added sentimentality and misplaced black humour. Costner has always been a watchable screen presence, but he’s fighting a losing battle here with the shoddy, substandard material he’s saddled with. 

5) BAD NEIGHBOURS

I laughed twice. Both these were scenes already spoiled by the trailer. I pretty much loathed every single person in this film and found spending any time with them absolute Hell. I think it's really about time I put Seth Rogen on my 'block' list and stopped watching his films, I just find him excruciatingly unfunny and annoying. 

6) MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT

Gareth Edwards' debut feature Monsters was a beautifully rendered science-fiction indie. More of a gently unfolding, utterly believable and engaging relationship drama playing out against the epic backdrop of a recent alien invasion, with moments of true wonder and genuine otherworldly magic. It was subtle, sincere and self-contained. So news of a follow-up was met with equal degrees of intrigue and concern......why make a sequel to a film which clearly didn't need one?
Those concerns alas have proved to have solid foundations, for this second entry in the Monsters universe is so far removed from the style and tone of Edwards' majestic movie, it may just as well be released under a completely different and unrelated title. In fact with its Gulf War type action movie stylings, this actually does feel like it started off as an entirely different film - a bombastic Band Of Brothers conflict drama - which somebody decided to tag lumbering alien creatures onto its utterly cliched testosterone-fuelled narrative. Not that you'd notice really, as the monsters are peripheral at best (which I suppose was true of the first film), largely forgotten about even during the ridiculously bloated two hour duration, or just glimpsed in the background during fleeting sequences of reflection or rest. When they do become briefly prominent to proceedings, their inclusion is frequently baffling - I had no idea what was supposed to be going on with their evolution, as various creatures of differing sizes and species are introduced then largely forgotten about without explanation or insight as the main thrust of the narrative returns to noisy, boring gun battles. As for a scene here clearly intended to mirror the emotional ethereal sequence at the climax of Monsters, again I was left utterly bemused by what exactly was happening, as it appeared to be two protagonists caught up in an erm, alien money shot?
Loud, long, ill-conceived, with a cast of unsympathetic characters with barely enough personality between them to stretch to the level of stereotypes, about all this has going for it is some impressive desert location work and fine cinematography worthy of a far greater project. If this has any worth at all it may well be to give you the urge to rewatch the original film instead, which trust me, should become your default setting when contemplating viewing this disappointing dud.

7) A MOST WANTED MAN

Less 'War on Terror', more snore on terror, this joined Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit as one of 2014's most soporific spy movies. Talky and tedious, it's a thriller utterly devoid of thrills, but rife with wayward accents and endless episodes of nothing much happening. It moves at the pace of an aged slug on mobility allowance, and has the most half-arsed, anti-climactic non-conclusion, where the film just sort of trundles to a close as if everybody involved had lost all interest. A depressingly dull swansong for the great Philip Seymour Hoffman, who unsurprisingly is the film's only saving grace.

8) NOAH

Noah is what you get when you give a filmmaker with art-house sensibilities hundreds of millions of dollars and free reign over a studio's special effects facilities. Frankly, this is one of the most bonkers mainstream movies of recent times, a sort of transgressive, liberty-taking Biblical epic populated by an international cast with wildly wondering accents, all of whom are teetering on the brink of going full retard at any given moment.
Russell Crowe's titular ark builder is a mental mix of brawling action hero, crazed philosopher and ranting sociopath, and he doesn't even come close to being the oddest element of a film which features Tree Of Life style existential evolution episodes, gory horror-inflected nightmare sequences, epic CGI-laden Lord Of The Rings like battles, Anthony Hopkins mumbling gibberish whilst crawling around rummaging for berries, and giant lumbering rock monsters which look and interact like Transformers made out of boulders and seem to have been digitally inserted from an entirely different film (possibly Galaxy Quest?).
You really get the feeling that what Darren Aronofsky wanted to make here was another cerebral, surreal, fantasy epic like his earlier metaphysical mind-fuck The Fountain, but got bogged down with all that pesky Old Testament stuff which had to be shoe-horned in instead. An expensive, ambitious but utterly idiotic folly.

9) WILLOW CREEK

After its festival circuit buzz I was hoping Willow Creek would do something fresh and original with the stale found footage horror format. With cult comedian/filmmaker Bobcat Goldthwait on writing/directing duties, expectations were high for the sort of strange, subversive approach of his previous work like God Bless America or Sleeping Dogs Lie, to really enliven what on paper appears to be a very ordinary Bigfoot movie. The strangest revelation then, is that this was in fact just a very ordinary Bigfoot movie…….utterly devoid of any originality or individuality.
This follows the Blair Witch Project template to the letter, surprisingly conventional, uneventful and irony free, this also features a single static shot inside a tent whilst spooky noises penetrate from outside, which seems to go on for about half the movie, before the inevitable shaky-cam running and screaming in the dark payoff and uninspired abrupt ending.
I really don’t get the praise for this film at all, it’s completely derivative and formulaic, utterly indistinguishable from any number of similarly themed movies – The Lost Coast Tapes and Exists for instance, and seems to have been elevated to higher status solely on the strength of goodwill towards its charismatic cult director. 

10) THE DOUBLE

One of the dullest films I saw all year, it also merits inclusion for the fact it's also one of the ugliest, drabbest looking films I've ever seen. Less a representation of a bleak dystopian future, more a budgetry-deficient, visually barren rehash of Brazil with not one morose mumbling Jesse Eisenberg, but two of the fuckers!

11) DRACULA UNTOLD

12) TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION

13) JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT

14) STRETCH

15)TRANSCENDENCE

16) ANNABELLE

17) ANIMAL

18) NYMPH

19) AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR

20) PROXY.

WORST ACTION FILM: SABOTAGE

WORST HORROR FILM: CRAWL OR DIE

WORST COMEDY: BAD NEIGHBOURS

WORST SCIENCE-FICTION / FANTASY: MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT

WORST SPECIAL FX: CRAWL OR DIE & ZOMBEAVERS

WORST SCREENPLAY: TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION

WORST DIRECTOR: McG  (3 DAYS TO KILL)

WORST ACTRESS: PAZ DE LA HUERTA (NURSE 3D)

WORST ACTOR: CHRIS PINE (STRETCH)

2014'S BIGGEST LETDOWN WHICH SHOULD’VE BEEN GREAT BUT REALLY WASN’T: GODZILLA & INTERSTELLAR.