The end of the year is a tough time for me when it comes to
movies. People begin to show off their
top ten lists, and I always feel bad about mine. It’s not the movies that are in there. I’m happy to like the movies that I
like. I’m not ashamed of them or
anything. I just get to the end of the
year and realize how many more movies the other people have seen than I did of
that year’s releases. This year is the
same.
I am starting this post on the 22nd of December
and it will be put online on the 28th of December. But let’s just use that first date as the
important one when it comes to what gets included in this post. For this month’s bonus post on the Sunday
“Bad” Movies blog, I have decided to highlight some of the worst movies that
I’ve seen this year. These are the worst
movies I have seen as of the 22nd of December.
As you read through this post, I will be writing about ten
bad movies released in 2014 that I have seen.
To keep it fair, the movies that I watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies will
be bunched together at the end of the post and not included in the ten movies
that I highlight. That’s because, for
the most part, they have had their fair share of coverage on this blog
already. But I will write a little bit
about ten other bad movies I saw this year that I feel deserve some sort of
discussion. So I guess it’s not
necessarily my bottom ten of the year.
It’s just ten of the worst movies that I saw that were released in 2014
that I also want to write a bit about.
There will also be one little tidbit about halfway through
the post from someone that isn’t me. I
asked some of the readers and Twitter followers to send me their thoughts on a
bad 2014 release. Only one person
submitted something. I will put that in
here. To the rest of you, maybe next
time.
Field Freak
This is the worst movie I have seen in all of 2014 that was
released in 2014. It is definitely in
the top three worst movies I’ve seen all year that were released ever. And it’s a movie that has me really torn
about how I feel. I wrote about this one
for another website and while I was writing the review, came to realize that
how bad the movie is may have actually been intentional. The jokes are inappropriate to anything that
is going on, the acting falls flat throughout the movie, and the lead actor is
the most unconvincing hero I’ve seen in a movie in a long time. And in some cases, I would love for a movie
to take all of these bad elements to a new level of terrible. But in the case of Field Freak, the elements
weren’t entertainingly bad. They were
noticeably bad. They were also
noticeably lacking any form of joy. If I
watch a bad movie, I am always hoping for entertainment or some sort of hint at
something good. Field Freak had neither,
and suffered from it. I suffered too.
Pompeii
I’m always up for a new Paul WS Anderson movie. He’s one of the most insane directors out
there. He’ll take what seems like a
relatively simple concept and add so much stupid, action-based stuff to it that
it makes the story either incomprehensible or just ridiculous. It’s what I expected from Pompeii. I expected something equally as crazy as The
Three Musketeers, a movie in which Anderson managed to add dirigible
warships. His new movie wasn’t
that. Instead, it played like a bad
Roland Emmerich movie with a bad love story.
It was Gladiator, mixed with 2012, and it failed to capture my heart
like Jon Snow captured Babydoll’s heart in the movie. It may have been my biggest disappointment of
the year that wasn’t The Expendables 3.
Android Cop
If you know me at all, you know that I’m a sucker for the
movies that The Asylum has put out over the past eight years or so. I think they are enjoyable, dumb fun. I’m always looking forward to what movies
they are going to rip-off or cash in on next.
As bad as many people find the movies to be, I find them to be perfectly
good entertainment. This year’s Android
Cop was no different. Well, maybe it was
a little different. It was better than
most of the movies that The Asylum has released. It’s definitely the best of their movies that
I’ve seen. The movie was made to make money
on the existence of the Robocop remake.
Yet it stands on its own as a low budget action movie. Michael Jai White doing his Michael Jai White
thing. Other people getting their butts
kicked. The movie is more hit than miss,
and actually seems like it was decently directed. If The Asylum keeps making movies this good
or better, we’re going to be seeing some great movies coming from the b-movie
studio.
Best Night Ever
Friedberg and Seltzer.
They are two of the six writers of Scary Movie, and they’ve been using
that as the basis for their entire career.
Ever since that movie came out, they’ve written and directed many other
spoof movies, all of which were bad.
Well, I kind of have a soft spot for Vampires Suck, but they’ve made
some of my least favourite movies ever.
Yet I still watch them all hoping that something good comes out of
them. Best Night Ever might be the
closest that the two come to actually making a good movie. It’s not a spoof. It’s sort of similar to The Hangover, without
the retracing the steps of the forgotten night of debauchery stuff. It’s just the night of debauchery playing out
in linear fashion. Also, it’s women
instead of men. I wouldn’t call this a
good movie by any stretch of the imagination.
The acting is bad, the story is a mess, and it goes more for shock than
actual laughs. But it’s the first time
that the writers/directors have tried something that isn’t just putting pop
culture references into the framework of another movie. Even if you don’t like the movie, it’s worth
watching to see the guys do something different.
Leprechaun:
Origins
Who thought that this was a good idea? Everything about this movie was a bad
idea. First and foremost, they took a
franchise that was only as successful as it was because of the villain, and
rebooted it with the villain being completely different. The quips and personality of the leprechaun
in the first six films is what made the films enjoyable. Warwick Davis brought enough personality to
the role to make it stand out among the many other horror villains that were
around at the time. In the case of
Leprechaun: Origins, the villain was just a monster that wanted gold. There was nothing to really separate the
monster from any other generic creature in a monster movie. And they tried to market it as having a
wrestler from the WWE as the monster.
But you couldn’t tell it was him as the monster. It was a monster. You barely saw it, and when you did, it
didn’t resemble a human in any way whatsoever.
There was no way that you would have been able to tell who was playing
the monster. Having someone semi-famous
was a waste. The whole movie was a
waste.
“This ridiculous
coming-of-age post-apocalyptic tale is adapted from a young adult novel. It is told in such broad, silly strokes that
it makes you appreciate how good The Hunger Games really is.” -- @LastFilmSeen
in reference to Divergent (2014).
Transformers: Age
of Extinction
I don’t think this is a bad movie. Everyone else seems to think so, though, so
I’m going to put it in here. I think
it’s actually a pretty solid action movie.
Sure, it’s a little long. But it
doesn’t suffer from some of the problems that the first two sequels in the
franchise had. For the most part, in
this outing, the humour lands successfully.
The cast is better suited to Michael Bay’s sensibilities this time
around. This is especially true of Mark
Wahlberg and TJ Miller, who fit into a Bay movie without any issues. The action, though not entirely memorable, is
still fun while in the moment. And the
father-daughter-boyfriend story is better than the majority of the story beats
in Revenge of the Fallen or Dark of the Moon.
This is a vast improvement in the series and the best outing since the
first. In fact, it might be the best in
the series so far.
Jersey Shore
Massacre
The name of this one sounds so bad, but the movie was such a
joyous experience for me. It’s produced
by JWoww. Between her and the title, I
knew I was going to have to endure a lot of the stereotypes that come with the
people associated with the Jersey Shore.
I was going to spend an hour and a half watching the gym, tan, laundry worshippers
going through a horrific experience. It
sounded like something painful to me. I
didn’t think about how much I would enjoy watching these people die in gruesome
ways. Watching the kind of people I hate
die in violent fashion might sound morbid and evil. Oh well.
I enjoyed it.
Sharknado 2: The
Second One
Did you really think that I would forget to mention this
one? This is a movie that took the world
by storm. Pardon the pun in there. The first one became a sensation, and by the
time this sequel was released (a year after the first), people were anticipating
it. I wasn’t a huge fan of the
first. As dumb as it was, I think it
took itself a little too seriously and didn’t have quite enough fun with the
stupid premise. The second movie added
in a little comedy that helped to elevate the material to a new level. I think the second installment in the
Sharknado franchise managed to far surpass the first movie in every way. The acting was better and looser. The action was more over-the-top. The movie wasn’t only about travelling from
location to location, though that was still a big part of it. Everyone seemed to be having a better time
with the movie. And I did too. I’m excited for the third in the series.
Day of the Mummy
It’s easy to hate on movies that are filmed through a first
person point of view. Found footage, or
handheld movies. Either or. People hate on them all the time because of
the shaky nature of the camera movements, or the overall annoyance of the
person behind the camera. Day of the
Mummy is another in the long line of first person POV movies to have been
released since The Blair Witch Project rose to popularity. Yet this one stands out for me. Not because of quality. I think it’s a fine enough movie, but could
completely understand why people wouldn’t like it. The reason that the movie stands out is
because the look of the POV is slightly different. It looks more like a video game from the 90s
than your average POV movie. The screen
is set up with a frame similar to a Command and Conquer style game, and Danny
Glover periodically appears in the bottom corner to add his two cents to the
proceedings. It’s very much of that
video game style, and an interesting enough alteration to the movie format that
I thought it was notable.
Hamlet and Hutch
They tried. I have to
give them credit for that. The movie is
about Hutch, played by Burt Reynolds.
He’s an old man with a degenerative mind who is sent to live with his granddaughter
and great granddaughter. He’s a former
Broadway star who can’t really deal with his newfound country life. The movie tried to be something important,
shining a light on Alzheimer’s and what it can do to a person and their
family. It almost worked. Burt Reynolds put in a solid
performance. The problem with the movie
was twofold. There was a lack of
entertainment throughout, and some of the serious moments were so overwrought
that it made the movie semi-laughable.
It missed the mark on being important.
So those are the ten movies that I wanted to highlight this
year as some of the bad movies that I’ve seen.
Movies that I left off the list because they were included in the Sunday
“Bad” Movies were The Legend of Hercules, The Coed and the Zombie Stoner,
Winter’s Tale, and Bermuda Tentacles. I
didn’t feel the need to write about them again.
I would rather let you know about a bunch of other bad movies to either
check out or stay away from.
A good amount of my movie watching time is spent watching
bad movies. I seek many of them
out. Others are just put on my lap. No matter what, I go into them hoping for the
best. Sometimes, a movie like Android
Cop comes around and gives me exactly that.
A good, fun movie. Other times I
end up with an irritating piece of drivel like Field Freak. They all get a fair shake though, since I’m a
fair movie watcher.
2015 will hopefully shape up to be the same exact way. I’ll see some good, I’ll see some bad. I’ll see some bad good, and I’ll see some
good bad. I’ll see a bunch of movies and
I’ll hope to find some entertaining watches.
I’ll share what I find with you guys because that’s what I’m here
for. And you guys read it. The few of you who do.
