How come this one doesn't get more hate? Aside from an entertaining way the film gets a strip club scene into a PG-13 film, this clunker of an action feature that wastes some talented actors on an idiotic script and pathetic characters.
A talented group of actors, Chris Pine, Kiera Knightly, Kevin Costner (again!), can't save this turkey, whose biggest crime is being so painfully dull. Even if the villain is sporadically entertaining in a so-bad-it's-good way (he quotes Imagine Dragons without even knowing it!!), the film winds up as a colossal misfire.
Some movies feel like they were guided more by poorly done cliches than actual storytelling, and as you can likely guess, Maleficent is one such film. Every trope you can think is utilized in a lackluster fashion here, tossed into a badly padded out script that manages to make the seemingly can't miss casting of Angelina Jolie as Maleficent a failure.
The sheer absurdity of this one's misses (namely in a bizarre incest subplot) almost makes me want to call this one entertaining enough to not put on this list...but then I remember the shoddy writing and poor pacing that consume The Judge. Plus, wasting the likes of Robert Duvall alone is more than enough to get a place on here.
Every moment of Wish I Was Here is filled with some sort of purported introspectiveness, but in the end, the entire endeavors only success at getting me to come to some sort of epiphany was in realizing how poor Zach Braff is as a director.
Miles Teller and Zach Braff managed to give performances in 2014 that proved they're actors capable of greatness....but they sure as hell didn't give those performances here. Sexism get prominent placement here, as does subpar filmmaking that's more awkward than anything in the film.
Some of Melissa McCarthys past efforts as leading lady left me a bit cold (especially Identity Thief), but Tammy really just left me befuddled. This tonally confused feature tosses every character and plotline it can conceive without doing anything remotely engaging with those elements.
"No good film is too long and no bad film is too short", to paraphrase the great Roger Ebert, and boy howdy is that true. Proof comes in the form of Son of God, a terrible film that feels like it last at least an eternity. The story of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection is a compelling one full of power, but the movie doesn't do justice to it or coherent cinema.
2. Transformers: Age Of Extinction
Some will say it's cliche to put a Michael Bay movie this high one a Worst Of The Year list, but honestly, screw them. I sat through all 160+ minutes of this crap, I can put it anywhere I want. And where I really want to put it is in the pits of hell, where this horrendous feature really belongs. I could talk about the terrible characters, the waste of the Dinobots, but I'll just leave you with this moment from the film that summarizes all that is wrong with this endeavor.
This isn't just a bad movie. Or even a terrible one. It's an affront to humanity that a film so filled with hatred and cruelty is given such praise within a religion I myself belong to and adore. But even removing any religious connections, the film itself is so atrocious from even the most fundamental parts of filmmaking it boggles my mind someone thought it was fit to be seen by living beings. Shots are poorly framed, pacing of certain sequences is all off, and for reason, moments of blatant racism are done here in an all-too-serious manner. And by the time the psychopathic conclusion, involving an atheist professor getting hit by a car, arrives, I found myself quivering with rage. How dare thee people behind this film take two things I love, Christianity and cinema, and use them to spread narrow-minded vile hatred. God's Not Dead isn't just the worst movie of 2014, it may be one of the worst things the human race has ever created.
I shall close this article with this excellent dialogue exchange (which is played entirely straight-faced) from God's Not Dead:
"I have cancer!"
"Couldn't this wait until after dessert??"
No comments:
Post a Comment