The Disappointments and Worst Movies of 2017

Well, it's that time of year again - when we pass the Godlike judgment on the movies of last year, as if random bloggers' opinions somehow mean everything. But really, none of this truly means anything - it's just the opinions I had all year, and hopefully you'll glean some cathartic entertainment out of this list, if nothing else.

First up is disappointments. There were just a couple of movies this year that I wanted to be good but they didn't live up to what I'd hoped.

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Thor: Ragnarok

This wasn't bad, and when it focused on the lead characters bantering and riffing off one another, it was quite fun – director Taika Waititi is good at that sort of thing. But it also had a super generic villain and serious side of the plot. This shit was like someone thought we'd never heard of Hamlet or something. Sorry – I need more than that.

Blade Runner 2049

I really wanted to love this, as Denis Villenueve is my favorite modern director and I've only recently fully “gotten” the original Blade Runner. But this was a lot of gorgeous visuals in service to a boring story that didn't really expand upon anything the original did – 30 years and all we got was a slightly scrambled rehash of themes from that movie. A dull performance by Ryan Gosling doesn't help.

And now the worst of the year - holy shit, there are way more than usual. What a year. Let's not waste any time and just get into this right now!

MY WORST MOVIES OF 2017

9. A Cure for Wellness

A truly ridiculous movie that, in spite of its exciting scenes, is entertaining mostly for how dumb it is and how unbelievable every choice the characters make. It goes on too long and just gets worse as it does so. You'll be tearing out your hair at why the main characters don't just leave this insane asylum – because, of course, there wouldn't be a movie otherwise. The ending twist was probably the worst, but the whole thing is a ghoulish slice of over-done cheese.

8. Mother!

I felt odd about putting this very artsy film from director Darren Aronofsky on a list with some of the rest of this – unlike some of these, this had a clear ambition and was trying to accomplish things. But for me this just didn't work. It treated its characters as chess pieces in service to an allegory, and there just wasn't any real humanity in this, no true complexity. After its two hour runtime was done I felt like I had just been preached to rather than entertained.

7. The Bye Bye Man

A basically objectively awful horror film, hitting every box of cliché and bad writing you'd expect. Like a mutant spawn of every piece of trash I ever reviewed. So bad it's almost funny but is then just bad again.

6. Split

People praised this M. Night Shyamalan vehicle for not being as bad as some other Shyamalan travesties in recent years, but rest assured I am here to tell you he's still a complete fucking hack.

5. Free Fire

Like last year's Hardcore Henry, this was a completely vapid and soul-sucking movie that asked the question 'what if we removed all plot from an action movie and just gave you the shooting scenes?' The answer is that you get an unwatchable movie.

4. Downsizing

I reviewed this a few weeks ago, so go check that out – but this was an infuriatingly pretentious, directionless mess, and director Alexander Payne seems to have completely stepped out of his comfort zone... too far, even. To the point where he's risking being eaten by wolves out there. He should come back to his comfort zone.

3. Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Dead Men Tell No Tales

This was a completely soulless Product™ of a movie, and every choice just seemed to be made to pander to the dumbest levels of the audience. There was nothing about this that was funny or exciting in any way. Johnny Depp is superbly annoying.

2. Justice League

Another movie that exists purely as soulless corporate Product™. Basically Zack Snyder playing with action figures again. An enervated, generic plot and bad characters make this a true slog to get through, and even the action gets boring. Pretty much every single thing about this was mediocre and all of them combined make the movie horrible.

1. Alien Covenant

This just sucks hard. A superbly dumb plot that manages to both rip off the original and be stupid in its own way, which is pretty amazing... this is the worst movie of the year simply because it had nothing redeeming about it, and every single choice made contributed to its horrendous, hacky quality. This is just the pits and I hate it. So it is the worst of this year for me.

Well, that's the 'worst' out of the way - and now we can move on to the best movies of the year, as it's usually better to end on a good note, after all...

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The Most Disappointing and Worst Movies of 2016

Here we are yet again, on the internet talking about movies. 2016, I thought, was a great year for film – though, honestly, every year has some great stuff. But every year also has some seriously fucked up, weird, terrible stuff, and that's where this post comes in.

Here's the Most Disappointing and Worst of 2016 in movies, at least according to one guy on a blog. I know I said this was a great year for movies, and we'll get to that. First we have to slog through these, though!

MOST DISAPPOINTING

These are the ones which I was looking forward to seeing, but they let me down when I actually watched them. They aren't horrible films, but I just didn't like them as much as I had hoped.

10 Cloverfield Lane

We didn't really need another Cloverfield movie so long after the first one – was there anyone really waiting anymore? I think even the biggest fans of the first one have long sinced moved on. This had some good thriller parts, but ultimately just felt tonally confused and silly, and never seemed to know where it was going, with a really bizarre about-face ending twist. Even performances by John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead couldn't save this one.

Don't Breathe

I was looking forward to this from the trailer, and it wasn't bad, with some cool twists and turns and some exciting chase scenes. But it was too long and bogged down with generic main characters, some filler in the first act and an overly dragged-out climax. This is pretty bog standard for the horror/thriller genre, but I think we've reached a point where we can expect more than just 'eh, it's okay.'

La La Land

This year's Oscar darling just didn't resonate much with me as it did with some audiences. It was pleasant eye and ear candy, and Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone deliver good performances. But I didn't gel with the musical aspects much, and the whole thing just came off as substanceless fluff. That's fine – it is what it is. But it didn't strike a chord with me much at all beyond 'that's nice.'

THE WORST MOVIES OF 2016

How much of an explanation could you possibly want for this?

5. Batman v Superman – Dawn Of Justice

What a mess this was. In DC's quest to outdo Marvel they've really just stumbled over both feet and tripped and fell. Ben Affleck and some of the others like Michael Ironside give good performances in this, and there are certain visual sights that are quite haunting and beautiful – both of which give this movie a leg up from most other Zack Snyder movies. But the story is incoherent and made it hard for anything to stick with the viewer after the credits rolled. The characters were indistinguished and for a movie about two iconic heroes fighting over different values, that's pretty lame. The action, which is the main draw, could be nice, but man am I tired of bad CGI being used to create these over the top supervillains for the climaxes – it just looks more silly than cool at this point.

4. Suicide Squad

Another DC movie, this one the victim of a severely schizophrenic editing job that basically renders it unwatchable. The fact that actors like Margot Robbie give good performances is a miracle considering how jumbled the story is and how ridiculous the plot – you'd be hard pressed to really make sense of what is going on at any point of this, or explain the logic behind these character's decisions to unleash this team of supervillains to solve their problems. It's cool to try for an offbeat, anti-hero team of characters, but why did this one have to come off like a bad high school fanfiction?

3. Hardcore Henry

There was no real story, plot or character to this – it was nothing but action, fighting and explosions the whole time. Which, I get it, sounds lame to complain about. Until you watch this movie and see how tired, boring and dead-horse-beating that can be if you stretch it out for an hour and a half with no nuance to it save for a POV camera gimmick that actually makes it even more one-dimensional. Just excruciating to sit through.

2. Passengers

A ridiculous film that I was astounded turned out as bad as it was. This had no tonal consistency at all, jumping around from a lost-in-space sci fi thriller to a romance and finally to an over the top explosion-fest action story and doing none of them very well. The central twist is that Bradley Cooper's lead character actually manipulated Jennifer Lawrence's character by waking her up from her cryo-sleep 50 years too early before they arrived on the far-away world they're traveling to, effectively ruining her life and imprisoning her on the ship with him, and lying to her about that. It should be played as a horror movie, but when she forgives him and they get back together, it would be offensively bad, were it not so plainly ludicrous and incompetent.

1. The Purge: Election Year

The thing with the Purge is that it is the most hackneyed, dull, lazy kind of social satire – it's an overblown dystopian world where in the future, we decided as a country to make all crime legal once a year due to manipulation from scheming politicians. But where it fails is that it doesn't have a realistic portrayal of human beings at its core, which I find unforgivable. This series basically says we're all just dumb sheep who have no desire or organization to fight back against corruption, which is fundamentally false in any era of real-world history. It's not a believable fiction, and at worst it's actively gross and offensive.

If this was just supposed to be a fun, campy action ride, I'd forgive that, but the condescending tone and 'look how smart we are for saying this' vibe just don't gel with me. Not to mention the action, characters, writing, directing and everything else are subpar, too. This movie sucks and it's the worst I saw all year.

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