DOC’S END OF YEAR BEST AND WORST PART 2: The Worst

One of the benefits of not actually being a paid critic is that if I don’t fancy seeing a movie, than I just don’t go, meaning that many of the agreed ‘dogs’ of the year may not be on this list.    Nonetheless, I did see some rubbish this year, and if you missed my top twenty, click here,    https://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/2011/12/docs-end-of-year-best-and-worst-part-1-the-best/   , and see if you agree, or [most likely] disagree!

10/ THE TWLIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN-PART ONE

I personally think the Twilight films are pretty lousy; abominably written, terribly acted, and thoroughly boring.  This fourth instalment did manage to be a little better than its three predecessors, with Robert Pattinson given the chance to do more than look constipated, Kristen Stewart allowed to do more than look miserable, and even a bit of suspense in the second half.  This still doesn’t mean that the movie’s much good though.  Like the others, it’s tediously padded out and mostly populated by people who just can’t act, though I wonder now if that’s a result of the material.  Anyway, I’ll be glad when this tedious franchise is finally over.

9/  THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADELE BLANC-SEC

I would never have thought that I would be including a movie from Luc Besson in a worst film list, but sadly this is what I’m doing.  The Extraordinary Adventures Of Adele Blanc-Sec seemed to promise a nicely quirky, French variant on Indiana Jones, but instead ended up just being a bore.  It’s one of those films that thinks it’s funnier than it actually is, and becomes very frustrating because it does nothing with its wonderful heroine nor its premise, with story elements that just go nowhere, and just when you think it’s going to get good, it doesn’t.  The odd inspired moment and the film’s pretty look fail to atone for the overall tiresomeness.

8/ THE ROOMMATE

The Roommate is one of those films that is neither that bad nor that good; it’s just stays there in the middle, remaining bland and uninspired.  Therefore I am including it in this list, because I would rather watch a bad movie that is fun than an average movie that is bland, and those five letters b.l.a.n.d describe The Roommate perfectly.  A supposed Single White Female for the teen set, it neither bothers to be exciting nor interesting; it just trudges along, totally botching the psychological aspect as it does, and fails to deliver much in the way of thrills and spills. Like The Extraordinary Adventures Of Adele Blanc-Sec, it sometimes gives the impression it’s going to get good, but just refuses, despite reasonable performances.

7/  STRAW DOGS

Here’s a question which obviously never entered the heads of the idiots who green lit and made this movie. What is the point of remaking one of the most controversial, disturbing and intelligent films of the 70s when you remove most of the controversial element, most of the disturbing element and pretty much all of the intelligence?  This is what the makers of this hair brained remake did, resulting in a pale shadow of the original movie that is just about watchable; after all, it often duplicates it scene by scene, but is just so incredibly pointless that in the cinema I just wanted to scream.  You would think the fact that this, along with some of the other remakes this year, flopped, would tell the studios to stop remaking everything in sight.  Sadly, it hasn’t.

6/  IMMORTALS

A more perfect example of the constant ‘dumbing down’ of everything would be hard to find.  Immortals takes the wonderful subject of Greek mythology, which is full of untapped riches for potential filmmakers, and turns it into a tedious exercise in idiocy which, though very camp, isn’t even much fun, making its atrocious dialogue and lack of characterisation [even the humans don’t seem very human] extremely irritating.  Tarsem Singh’s  talent for great visuals still finds its way into Immortals, but at times the movie resembles a weird kind of gay porno movie than a fantasy actioner, and it actually disappoints in most of its action scenes, with the whole thing building up to a big climax….which then turns out to be some brief brawling in a tomb.

5/  THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU

This staggeringly stupid combination of several oft-used science fiction premises [it’s so stupid that at one point Terence Stamp tells a potted history of the human race that ignores everything outside America and Western Europe] has scripting that is shocking in its awfulness, and manages to create no tension whatsoever,  resulting in a very annoying movie that is very boring except for the unintentionally hilarious climax and the film’s love story, which, despite being as abominably written as everything else, sometimes displays a nice naturalistic quality.  Star Matt Damon obviously wishes he was somewhere else; so did I when watching this rubbish, which ends with the biggest and smelliest portion of cheese since Scott Pilgrim Vs The World.

4/  PAUL

The idea of two science fiction nuts who encounter a real alien certainly has potential, but was totally squandered in this so-called ‘comedy’, which begins reasonably but becomes an ordeal.  Its humour consists of either endless film references or jokes which are repeated over…..and over….. and over….. again, meaning that it just gets boring very quickly.    Simon Pegg and Nick Frost display none of their past chemistry and although Paul is quite a convincing alien, he’s voiced by the obnoxious Seth Rogen.  While just hearing Rogen is better than seeing and hearing him, it’s not enough to make Paul into a likeable character. I should mention that the Rogen-starring The Green Hornet would have been in this list too, were it not for its stylish direction.

3/  THE THREE MUSKETEERS

You wouldn’t think you could go wrong with Alexandre Dumas’ book, which has been filmed successfully several times.  Well, think again.  This mess of an adaptation [and by Andrew Davies, no less] is just an idiotic, irritating piece of rubbish where everything is played for laughs, but unfortunately is hardly ever actually funny.  The Musketeers actually play second fiddle to Milla Jovovich’s Milady, who thinks she’s playing a certain zombie-killing Alice again, the action is actually quite minimal, the dreadful 3D makes people and buildings look like cardboard cut outs, and the stupidity just increases and increases until we get ships with air balloons on them flying around.  The sword fights are good though, and belong in a much better movie, though there’s too little of them.

2/  CONAN THE BARBARIAN

Sense a theme here?  I love historical and sword and sandal movies, so I go to see them, but it seems that, with the exception of The Eagle, everyone has forgotten how to make them.  This remake of the 1982 movie is total crap, an utter waste of time that only barbarians would probably enjoy, and not even fun in a way bad sword and sorcery films can be; it just tries to bludgeon you into submission with endless sword swinging and rubbish CG blood.  It’s little more than a series of ineptly filmed brawls in various locations, all of which seem to be around the corner from each other.  Marcus Nispel, who should be called Marcus Dismal, once again inspires surprise that he gets directing jobs; he just doesn’t seem to have a clue.  One good scene, a battle with sand demons, raises this above the number one on my list.

1/ BEASTLY

I really don’t know why I went to see Beastly, I still haven’t quite recovered from seeing it, and I never want to see it again for as long as I live.  Basically Beauty And The Beast for the Twilight set,  but far worse than any of those movies, it is just unbearable from beginning to end, at least for this critic; the mainly teenage girl audience I saw the film with seemed to actually enjoy it, and I can only surmise that this is because they are constantly given garbage like this, with Twilight elements making their insidious, evil way into too many films at the moment,  and just used to it.  Terribly acted, abysmally scripted, and just so boooooooooing, not to mention pretty offensive if you think about it [it’s all about real beauty being on the inside, yet doesn’t really make the Beast ugly], I just wanted to hang myself after watching it.