Month: January 2016

Now that I have a new baby, my wife and I are trying to figure out what her future will be. You know, will she be good at sports or school? Will she be a gymnast or a singer? Will she like bugs or kitties? You know, the normal things. Because if a parent can do anything, it is force their own ideas and beliefs onto their baby and shape them how they want, right? I think that is right.

So I definitely wanted to see the documentary Trophy Kids. I figured it would teach me how to make my child into a future super star. That way she can earn millions of dollars doing sports stuff (Even though no women outside of like 5 make millions I think) and I can retire early because of it. That sure would be swell.

But of course that is not what this documentary is about. Hell, it isn’t about athletes who were Trophy Kids or Trophy Kids currently in training. Nope, it is about the parents. It is about the lengths they will go to for their child to succeed. And by lengths, I mean how dickish, angry, and abusive will these adults be to their kids in order for them to be scared into doing things correctly.

After all, yelling at your kid five feet away from them, in the stands, and on the side line will totally improve their performance. It is easy to listen to your parents shrieking voices with all the other sports distractions around you.

In Trophy Kids, we examine several different sports and aged kids, and how all their parents are more or less the same.

There is no crying in baseball, but there is crying in golf.

The one parent who is slightly different from the rest was a very religious mom with twin boys, who was training them to be future Doubles Tennis champions. She talked a lot about Jesus and their path, and they were all freakishly nice. That one wasn’t too bad I guess.

Everyone else? A guy who divorced his wife and forced their kid to move with him in high school to focus on his football training. After all, his wife is making him too feminine. Pictured above is a dad with a golf prodigy daughter who could put and hit at 3 years old. She doesn’t like him as her caddy.

And the other main story is dealing with two dads who have sons in high school basketball. Since their youth, they have had personal trainers, height training, and of course actual basketball training. Basically a full time job. And their dads get to go and yell a lot during high school match ups and get coaches fired. Thanks dads!

The documentary starts off a bit slow but ramps up after a halfway mark. Hell, if they could have just spread out a lot more of the intensity, this might have ended up as a 4 for me. There is one extremely powerful scene with the football dad in a car ride. It starts off simple and then suddenly everything is switched to 11, and suddenly, child abuse. It was surprisingly how long that scene in particular was and how messed up in the head the dad actually ended up being.

But really, shit, I just feel bad for the kids. They all want to do good and live up to their parents expectations, but of course the expectations always get raised and they are never satisfied. It is sad for them and when we get to see where a few of them place after the fact, it is just sad. Damn documentaries, making me feel emotions.

Norm of the North? What in the flip is Norm of the North?

What? You didn’t hear about the Lionsgate animated film coming out mid January? What? Did you also not hear about Strange Magic last year around the same time, which ended up as my #2 Worst Movie of 2015?

Norm of the North has also not received many trailers or TV spots. It is the type of film they are releasing and not expecting much. And let’s not forget that the critic screening of the film is Thursday night, at a time when normal people can already pay money to see it. That is where you put movies you don’t really want the critics to ruin.

But maybe they do expect something out of it. After all, two sequels have already been announced. The sequels are only planning to be 45 minutes long and straight to DVD, but they are still planned!

Here is the real question I wonder though: The Nut Job 2 was also scheduled to be released on the same day, but it has apparently moved its date. However no one out there knows where it was eventually pushed. It has disappeared off the map. Did Norm of the North somehow eat it?

He is looking kind of chunky.

So, we have a polar bear named Norm (Rob Schneider. And now you know what you are working with here). Lives in the arctic. And he can speak Human. We learn this when he tells a seal his life story about why he cannot eat the seal because he is a terrible hunter and doesn’t do polar bear things anymore. Just humans. He in particular likes to dance, of course. He calls it the Arctic Shake. Remember that. That will be important later.

The only other animal who could speak Human was his grandfather (Colm Meaney), the king of the Arctic, but he has disappeared. Speaking of shenanigans, there is a house suddenly on the ice! Fully furnished and ready to be lived in. Apparently it is a model home and some group is shooting a commercial, hoping to sell homes to get people to move to the Arctic. It is an untapped reservoir luxury gold mine. Or something.

Norm tries to get them to flee but only helps them make a good commercial. The owner, Mr. Greene (Ken Jeong) just wants to rip people off. He also has the idea to use an actor to dress up like a polar bear to sell their idea to the world. Of course Norm sneaks to NYC to become that actor and put a stop to everything. But he also feels bad for the PR lady, Vera (Heather Graham) who just wants to get her daughter (Maya Kay) into a good school.

Time to Arctic Shake his way into America’s hearts and stop the Ice take over from happening.

Also featuring the voice work of Bill Nighy, Loretta Devine, Gabriel Iglesias, and Michael McElhatton.

And these little fucks.

Oh where do we begin. Sure, the lemmings. That is what those tiny things are, and three of them join Norm on the adventure. They are apparently indestructible and can do anything, making them a perfect plot device to solve any and all problems. Except for tense moments near the end when characters decide to not use them to untie them for some reason. Oh and they are vulgar too. They pee a lot on things and fart and burp and teehee. They are going for the fucking Minion market and it is despicable.

The plot is paper thin. Points move too fast without a lot of explanation. For some reason none of the animals will believe Norm about the house, despite it being a physical thing anyone can go to, and a lot of witnesses (The Lemmings) and a respected community member. They just laugh at him…for some reason. And in the conclusion, despite none of these same animals going on the journey, they totally believe everything because The Lemmings say so, which is totally contradictory to how they behaved earlier. There is no sense to any of it.

Part of the plot involves getting America to like him shown by some fancy real time approval ratings graph that everyone can just access about things. And after going on a talk show, says one thing, he dances, dances in the street, and everyone loves him. Yay resolution! Well done bear. It is ruining Shut Up And Dance for me now.

The animation was poor and blocky. A final storm scene was almost painful to look at. The Coca Cola polar bear commercials have better overall quality to them

I can’t find any real pictures from them in NYC, just promo art.
But at the same time, look at that background bear and see how terrible it all is.

The director had his button on a fade out button and used it constantly to go between scenes. I was going to vaguely describe an example of it being used improperly, but it hurt my head trying to describe the scene.

I kid you not, my four year old step daughter turned to me twice during the movie and told me this was a bad movie. She didn’t laugh at all. I laughed at a joke that could be misconstrued as a pedophile joke. It also had a decently offensive gay joke, to throw the whole thing more under the bus.

I don’t feel like I am done. There was a love interest. But I didn’t even link her above because she had all of three lines throughout the film and ended up being not important, despite literally marrying her at the end. The final plan of the bad Mr. Greene, which he kept secret, was simply recording Norm talk and changing his words around. And after that happened, Norm basically gave up. “Oh ho, they heard me say something else now. Nothing I can do about it!”

Just. Fuck. This was bad.

History is fucked up. There are so many fucky things that occured, learning about them all in school would probably inflect serious depression on the youth of the world and not lead to a happy future.

But that doesn’t mean we can ignore history. We have to take things that are relevant and have strict meaning to our world today. No one should care about a big village wiped out 2,000 years ago in Spain. That is not something relatable. But genocides over the last 50-100 years probably should qualify as important events to learn about. After all, if we ignore them, then the people who committed these genocides would live out their lives knowing they could do it again and never be punished. The Holocaust sucked, but the world is bigger than central Europe.

Military coups everywhere and lots of dictators and mass killings, especially during the cold war. You know, the one without the war? Tons of people died.

Like in Indonesia, in 1965-1966, where a failed military coup occurred, and then what was left over allowed fear to run the country. So street gangsters were able to form death squads that killed almost a million people. Which people? Communist people! And they also extorted Chinese people out of money to protect their shops. It was a bad year with a lot of blood shed and a lot of fucks not given.

In The Act of Killing, the director of this film goes to modern day Indonesia, to talk to these people who helped commit the atrocities.

Thankfully they loved to talk about it.

A documentary from these men’s point of view is already an almost insane idea. But the men involved are bragging about what they did, for the most part feeling no remorse and feeling like the heroes of their own life story.

But no, the director wanted them to not just tell their story, but to show their story. He provided material for them to make a movie about the killings, how it happened, how they interpreted it, so they can show modern people about their past.

So intertwined between their stories we have these people choosing actors, acting out scenes, describing torture, you name it. It was such a strange juxtaposition but it helped perfectly capture just how warped their own realities were, along with their own justifications for the murders.

The Act of Killing is powerful, and it is a surprise it did not win Best Documentary its year at the Oscars. I eventually did see the winner, Twenty Feet From Stardom, and it cannot compare to the same level of significance, both socially or historically.

I didn’t ever plan on watching this documentary because subtitles and I felt lazy. I eventually did so because a companion documentary came out last year, The Look Of Silence, and I before I get my reviewer claws on it I need to do my appropriate research. And hey, this documentary was phenomenal. It feels like a must watch and it is already three years old.

EuroTrash is a word I have never used on my website before, but I am starting to think it is time.

There is a genre of films that seem to want to give action/thriller/dramas, they set them in Europe, and take them all over to various major cities and countries. This lets them show off Europe and get very different visual patterns, regardless of whether or not they are useful to the plot. One could argue something like Spectre was a bit of WorldTrash.

But one man does EuroTrash better (worse?) than anyone else, and that man is Luc Besson. Besson is basically the Gorgon Reviews antithesis. Everything he has touched since The Fifth Element is shit or whatever one step above shit is.

I, like a lot of other people, watched the entire Transporter trilogy. I wondered how and why each sequel was made, as the quality decreased despite never starting out high. One or two cool action scenes does not an interesting film make. But at least we got some Jason Statham.

Now we have The Transporter Refueled. A reboot, with no Statham, but the same boring EuroTrashy Transporter vibe. Fuck this, Besson.

Oh he wears a suit, that is what makes this one stand out.

Frank (Ed Skrein), aka Transporter, is a dude who delivers packages discreetly for high profile contacts. He doesn’t ask questions, he doesn’t ask for names, and he doesn’t change things in the middle of a run. His dad (Ray Stevenson) used to do the same job, I think. Honestly I don’t remember too much about it, except that he is finally about to retire from whatever.

Frank gets a job offer from Anna (Loan Chabanol), who of course he doesn’t know anything about. But later that day he is to pick up her and two sort of large packages and then transport them. He didn’t expect that the packages would be two other women (Tatiana Pajkovic, Gabriella Wright) who are dressed up just like her.

Turns out he just became part of an elaborate plot by a few prostitutes to kill Arkady Karasov (Radivoje Bukvic), a human trafficker, who abused Anna. But they are going to extreme measures, and they even kidnapped Frank’s dad to force him to comply. What the hell ladies.

Also starring Wenxia Yu as an additional accomplice, and Lenn Kudrjawizki, Yuri Kolokolnikov, and Noémie Lenoir.

They are all dressed up as classy Leeloo.

Fucking EuroTrash. At least in this film he technically doesn’t go all over the place. But because he is a driver, we get some car chases through classic European cities, with their silly looking license plates.

The Transporter Refueled was a bore, which means it is basically like the other previous three Transporter films. There were two remotely interesting fight scenes. The plot was convoluted. The acting was piss. The characters were far too many and far too unimportant.

This film is 100% a waste of anyone’s time. Even the five of you who may have been hoping for a new Transporter film, Statham or not, will probably be disappointed. The action itself is mostly generic and this is the type of filth that should be going straight to DVD and not wasting a screen in those poor movie theaters.

Follow up, damn you Luc Besson. The next terrible thing he is bringing out is Lucy 2, so you know it will also be shit.

Animated can be a weird thing to define. Sure, hand drawn and colored films are animation. Classic example. Sure.

CGI films? They are new an exciting, but technically like, all films have CGI in them now. How much CGI needs to be in the film in order to count as animation? Apparently 75% according to the Academy*. Technically 300 might qualify.

So what about stop motion? Anomalisa is a film done with puppets, like Team America: World Police. Except instead of being puppets on strings walking around, it was stop motion, like The Boxtrolls. I still feel strange calling puppets stop motion animated, but for some other reason, claymation seems perfectly fine as animation.

This hurts my head. Let’s get this movie going!

The puppets tell me to burn things.

Michael Stone (David Thewlis) is a lonely man. He is an author, a self acclaimed expert on customer service. So yes, he writes books telling people how to be great with customers. So now he is on the road, doing a few conferences, giving speeches, selling books.

Now Michael is on the last leg of his tour. Cincinnati. According to the cab driver (Tom Noonan) there is a nice zoo sized zoo there. But he doesn’t care. He just wants to be lonely in his hotel room. He tries to contact an old flame for sex (Tom Noonan) but it doesn’t go so well. Crap, back to his shitty room.

That is until he hears a voice. Someone different. Someone that isn’t spouting the same bullshit. Her name is Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh). He could listen to her talk all day. Or all night, if he can manage it.

Sure he has a wife (Tom Noonan) and kid (Tom Noonan) at home, but they are naggy and annoying. Lisa could change his life if he could convince her to run away with him.

Because she is different. She doesn’t sound like everyone else. Get it? Get it?! Tom. Noonan.

The Knights Who Say Tom Noonan run the world now.

It has been seven years since Charlie Kaufman has released a film he has written, and this time he was also co-director! He has written some great films, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Being John Malkovich. You know, he really likes the human mind.

So it is unique for him to want to do a story with puppets to convey more human emotion on screen, but it really works out. I know I made it obvious, but having only three unique voices in the film really drove the point home. Some could call it heavy handed, I would just call it smart.

Basically life sucks and depression sucks. The end.

Yes, there is more to it than that. The conversations seem real and the situations are incredibly awkward. I think my only real complaint about the movie is how long it really took for me to get going. I also wasn’t a big fan of the dream sequence.

I am most interested in the fact that this was actually a play first that was performed with real people in London. It is basically the same as this movie, including only three people throughout it. It sounds like an exciting** version of this story.

Great movie, but I still like Inside Out more.

* – I heard this once before and I am not checking my sources. Suck it.

** – This isn’t sarcastic, despite the fact that exciting doesn’t explain the film at all.

Welcome back to another roaring year of shit film! I pride myself in looking for the worst of the worst, not just the best films. Someone has to watch the terrible movies, and it might as well be me.

This list is only the worst films I was able to see this year. There were a lot of straight to DVD junk out there that most people don’t get a chance to see, and unfortunately, I am like most people in that regard. Now. Only so much time in the day. But I feel confident this is a good spectrum of terrible films across genre and release strategies that most people could agree with.

Again, I couldn’t see all the bad stuff. I didn’t get to see Entertainment, Love the Coopers, Momentum, Child 44. I also didn’t see Terminator Genisys, which should come as a surprise. It was a big summer release. Yeah, well, after Terminator Salvation and seeing the trailer, I refuse to watch it. I won’t give it the satisfaction of wasting my time. If I had, it might have made the list, but I literally just will never see it. Unless I am forced to for reasons. Moving on!

(DIS)HONORABLE MENTIONS: Minions. Self/Less. Hot Tub Time Machine 2. Hot Pursuit. These films barely missed the cut. Now on to the real shit!

Choosing the last spot on this list was one of the hardest. There were so many films I rated 1 out of 4 that could have filled it, with literally every one of the Honorable Mentions being prime candidates.

But I picked Boulevard, the last film starring Robin Williams? Why? Was it truly that boring and slow as my review described? Eh, maybe. Maybe I had a bad day. I would say in reality could be closer to an average film.

I put it here for a personal reason. After my review, I had a comment from someone who claimed to be the writer. Then, later, I received an email from him again. The writer of Boulevard was angry at me for not loving his movie, even though it is just some guy who had like five writing credits since 1995, with most of them being just TV movies.

Yes, I am only 10 years old.

Jem and the Holograms was a film I made sure I could watch with its theatrical release, just in case it was bad enough for this list. I expected it to be one of the worst films of the year. The trailers were bad and seemed to shit all over the source material.

But it didn’t end up being that bad. This is the last film on the list that I gave a 1 out of 4 too, everything 13 and on is a pure zero film. Jem was terrible, it truly was, however one scene kept me from kicking it in the shins.

It fucking made me cry. Out of nowhere, because it switched genres every 15 minutes, there was a 5-7 minute scene that was so incredibly sad thanks to my new dad hormones, I just had tears rolling down my cheeks. Damn you surprise tear jerkers. You ruined the films potential of being truly worse than what it was.

Seventh Son is the type of movie you watch, notably get annoyed at its existence, and then forget about it. I could not remember that this came out this year or that I even watched it. Thankfully the tag feature on my site lets me see all my 0 out of 4s, and there it was, just lying there, looking like a scared little bird.

Then the pictures of my review made the painful memories return. Not important ones like the plot, or characters, or anything. Just the memories about dislike and hatred.

What is this movie about? I don’t know, shitty fantasy. And shitty fantasy needs to be acknowledged as it attempts to ruin the best genre out there.

Readers will see this entry and go one of two ways:

The dumbasses out there will think that the film is intentionally bad and shouldn’t be on the list for this reason. Fuck that. Bad things need to be acknowledged, and shit for shit’s sake is never a good time. If someone has to be drunk, with a group of friends, only half watching the film and half making jokes, then the film isn’t actually good. Drinking is good.

The other side will wonder how in the hell there are 11 worse films than a third Sharknado film. Yeah, I am surprised too.

Sharknado 3 was bad, in every way, from the acting to the CGI to the plot. Yet I only slightly hated it. All the other films from this point on are just literally movies I hated worse. Could be a variety of reasons to hate them, but number one is that they all would have cost me time or money to see them. Either from a movie ticket or rental or driving to a theater.

If someone could say anything good about Sharknado 3, it would be that at least it is on free and on TV. No other commitment needed outside of the time it takes to see it. After you are done, you can immediately go back to napping. That’s a good thing!

It is important to note out the individual achievements of certain films. And sure, achievements can be negative. In a year with many bad horrors that I liked more than other people, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension is the worst. The worst horror movie of the year! Congrats!

It is the worst film in the 6 movie franchise. It switches to 3D for absolutely no reason and decides to get rid of any of the subtle scares that made the franchise great.

It does something else even worse. It still doesn’t fully explain the mythos of the franchise, despite that it is the last paranormal activity film. Allegedly. And that is why this film is only at number 11. At least it signifies that no more of these foul film creations can be made.

Speaking of franchise ending films, fuck Taken 3 and everything it stands for.

I think I can speak for everyone when I say that Taken was great or enjoyable, and Taken 2 was shit. Liam Neeson said he wouldn’t do another film, but then something like $10 million dollars spoke, so of course he did a third one.

They changed the formula, and they made the main character a bigger asshole than ever before. Now he is harming American citizens and American police officers. Everything bad that happens in this film can just be ignored if he doesn’t run when he is set up for the crime. The plot is beyond convoluted with an ending that will leave you scratching your head. But again, this should mean the franchise is at least finally dead.

The Boy Next Door has almost everything working against it. Jennifer Lopez is the star and she has arguably never been in any good film ever. Remember Parker? Of course not. But you probably remember Gigli.

But it is also a trashy sex thriller. Something that might make you hot and bothered, but then someone ends up dead. A strange genre, for sure. I guess murderers are sexy. Those two genres mashed together give one of the worst hybrid genres. Not as bad as Western Sci-Fi, but close.

Either way, at 90 minutes it is still far too long. It is the type of film that should maybe just be the plot of a music video, which would be much more suited to Ms. Lopez’s acting style. So maybe she just got confused?

Some people rightfully assumed that Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 would be one of the worst movies of the year. After all, Paul Blart: Mall Cop wasn’t good and so a sequel shouldn’t be good either. But you know who didn’t think that would be the case? Red Robin (Yummmmmmmm!). I remember having the ability to buy a $25 gift card from them and getting a free ticket to see the movie! So I did.

The good news is I got to eat Red Robin. The bad news is I had to see this terrible sequel.

The problem with the movie isn’t that it is offensive, it is just safe and family friendly in the worst way. Simplistic jokes and slap stick. Boring plot lines and boring characters. Sure, they were all eccentric, but that doesn’t make them good.

And all of this is a shame. All of these terrible movies Kevin James is in. And now people won’t give him work because of it. Because he is a funny guy, a funny stand up, and was good on TV. He just can’t get a movie with a good script. Damn shame.

According to movies I have seen, and not any actual cultural research, Aloha means hello and goodbye, which shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. It is clear that the film version of Aloha just means goodbye and to never return, ever.

Ignoring all the casting decisions, Aloha is a romantic comedy drama with absolutely no soul. Zero soul, zero passion, zero effort. Bradley Cooper‘s character is like a zombie throughout the film.

It has only one good scene. Just one! And that involves two characters speaking to each other through a lack of words.

Everything else is cookie cutter simple bull shit. Avoid at all cost. (And yes, this is the year’s worst RomCom).

And then there is Mortdecai. Guess what? Another January film on this list. This is the third one from the month, but don’t worry, in the top 5 there is still one more hiding. If anything, January is at least consistent with its terrible films. By having them all so early, you can wait to see them all on DVD before Summer and they can still make your worst list!

I am annoyed at Mortdecai, because usually in January there is at least one film that I can enjoy a lot more than the others. It might still get bad reviews but I thought it was funny. I thought Mortdecai would be this movie for me, and it let me down just like Ride Along.

I hope this movie served as a wake up call for Johnny Depp. He is a good actor but hasn’t given a crap about most of his roles for years, and it shows. He is just earning that fat cash and taking his dogs all around the world.

Mortdecai, although somewhat unique in its premise, is not funny and not interesting. And I am a reviewer who appreciates facial hair in film. It is a new low point for Depp’s career, and not even Black Mass could save him from a disappointing 2015.

Now we are at the bottom five, the worst of the worst. The things you couldn’t pay me to watch. (Editor’s Note: I will watch all of these movies again for money.) And I can’t wait to badmouth The Transporter Refueled some more.

This is a sequel no one asked for. This is a reboot no one asked for. Hell, the last two Transporter movies were things no one asked for. But my Arch-Rival Luc Besson doesn’t give a fuck and he keeps putting out films.

Outside of one, maybe two scenes, there is nothing special about this film. Those one to two scenes show a clever action fight, and then they move on back to a slightly confusing, definitely convoluted plot. Twists and turns can be good, but if all of them feel pointless, the viewer will feel jerked along. Like they are in a car chase. Which I guess this film as in it as well.

The lead is no Jason Statham and he has zero charisma or screen presence. It’s like watching a role of salami wear a suit. Although I’d argue that movie might at least be entertaining due to some comedy.

The placing of Fantastic Four on this list felt hard, but for some reason, fourth worse just felt right.

There are a lot of worsts going for Fantastic Four. It is the worst action movie of the year and worst super hero movie since…I don’t even know. The Wolverine was bad, but not this bad.

It was boring enough to cause me to personally snooze in the film for up to five minutes. I am lucky that I am a loud snorer so I could be woken up before I missed the truly dreadful parts when they went into the different dimension. All I missed was a science montage, which I am sure would have only pissed me off further. It is strange that they can make a movie about the Fantastic Four and seem to actively ignore every part of the team outside of Mr. Fantastic.

The relationship between The Thing and Reed was the most forced bromance of 2015. The team does practically no fighting, turning it into almost a drama. Two fight scenes, where one of them is straight up Dr. Doom killing a ton of people like a horror film, and the other a CGI explosion of boring tropes that only can make people think of the first Fantastic Four film finale with Dr. Doom.

Apparently this movie had directoral issues and lots of reshoots, which is a shame, because his previous film Chronicle was amazing. This version of the super hero team will go down as the worse version, yes worse than the 1994 film, which is most surprising given the actual talent involved with the film.

The only reason I even heard about the movie United Passions is due to John Oliver and its hilariously bad opening weekend numbers. It opened in 10 theaters in 10 different cities across the US and it couldn’t even make $1,000 over the first three days. No one wanted to see a movie about the founding and history of FIFA.

Why? Well, one, nobody in America cares about FIFA for the most part. So that was already going against it. But two, FIFA was involved in huge scandals about corruption from all its top ranking members. So the timing of a film that asked the viewer to ignore the current reality and instead focus on the past, and show that the organization is one that stands for honor and sportsmanship is a really hard thing to sell.

I will be honest, within 10 minutes of watching the movie I knew it was a dud. It was like watching a movie about a man, directed and written by that same man. That man decided the set and other actors, but of course the writer/director would star as himself in the lead role. It smelled and oozed of self congratulatory work. It wanted us to know all the efforts it went to make this crazy organization. It mentioned some troubled times, but it showed how it rose above them! How did it rise above them?

With Sepp Blatter, played by Tim Roth, who got all the corruption out of FIFA! And is now, you know, most of the cause for their current corruption.

No one should want to watch this dramatically slow and uncomfortable circle jerk. But a documentary about FIFA, showing their corruption, and including this terrifying movie would probably be a great watch. And of course, this is the worst Drama/Historical/Biographical film of the year. Hooray!

“What the fuck is Strange Magic?” you might be asking yourself. You mean you didn’t know that an animated musical epic came out in January on the same day as Mortdecai? It opened in over 3,000 theaters and finished its opening weekend ranked #7. That is two spots over Mortdecai!

Well, Strange Magic is made by no other than George Lucas himself! Disney had to release this film, presumably as part of them buying LucasArts. If they didn’t, they might not have gotten Star Wars! Apparently this film was in production for about 15 years. Why? George wanted to do something for his daughters. He said, quite sexist-ly, that Star Wars was for 12 year old boys, so he needed a new Star Wars for 12 year old girls.

Gender stereotypes aplenty, because Lucas made an animated, jukebox musical, about fairies fighting in a forest over good an evil. And as for his song theme? There was no theme at all. It was literally just random music he liked, or something.

I am a big jukebox musical apologist, but these song choices are a downright travesty. The animation isn’t good looking, the plot is terrible, and of course the reasoning behind it is almost horrifying. Disney really just wanted to bury this film and it shows. Strange Magic is almost the worst film of the year, while also being the worst animated film, musical, and fantasy.

And there you have it. The worst film of 2015. Well, did you guess it correctly? Did you expect it? Did you even know it existed?

A lot of people didn’t watch Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser, and that is to be expected. After all, it never went to theaters but it also wasn’t straight to DVD. It started out streaming online. No, not on Amazon Prime, not Netflix, not even Yahoo. It was streaming originally on Crackle and only on Crackle.

Crackle is a Sony streaming service, and most people are pretty confused why The Interview wasn’t put there after all the hassle. You can go to their website without logging in and watch some movies! You just have to watch them with ads.

And with that, I had to watch the worst movie of the year. With fucking ad breaks in it, giving the movie some sort of monetary value, making me feel bad. Journalistic integrity made me watch the whole movie, so I couldn’t just wait for a DVD release, people needed to know. And I am part of the reason David Spade got paid for this.

Everything about this movie is an attack against good quality movies. It recycles internet jokes on the screen. And references to internet jokes are ALWAYS late and dated, but it feels even more so with this film. It went out of its way to make a Forrest Gump parody, 20 years after the fact. Almost every scene goes on too long, that way all potentially good jokes can be driven into the ground leaving you in this awkward valley that will never end.

In the end, I bet this movie made a profit too. Because life isn’t fair some times. And if that happened to be true, there could be a third Joe Dirt, potentially killing cinema as we know it. The worst film of the year, the worst comedy of the year.

Thanks for reading! If you disagree with part of this list, let me know. If there is something I missed, let me know (but I probably saw it and reviewed it on this very site! Check out my thoughts).

And as always, I accept hate mail via the post office, email, or tweets.

The Aokigahara is a real place in Japan at one of the bases of Mt. Fuji. It is a dense “sea of trees” and is very beautiful. And very deadly.

People go to the Aokigahara to kill themselves. It is also nicknamed the Suicide Forest. It is so dense, you can only really hear the forest inside. It is easy to get lost if you go off the main path and there are associations of it with demons and ghosts in Japanese mythology. These demos convince people with sadness to end it all.

Not only that, but since it became known as a place that people go to kill themselves, obviously more people go there to do it. Some do it as a fad, some do it from regular Japanese stress levels. There could be any number of reasons, but now that it is known as a place to do it, well, can’t really stop it.

It is a cool place with a lot of history and a bit spooky. So of course, here is The Forest about white people going to Japan and getting all fucked up from the Aokigahara.

“Spook ghosts? Hello? Spook ghosts? Are you here? I’m losted. Halp pls.”

Jess Price (Natalie Dormer) is missing. She was teaching English in Tokyo, but apparently she went into the Aokigahara forest and hasn’t come out in 2 days. They assume it is suicide. But one person knows that it isn’t true. That is of course Sara Price (Natalie Dormer), her twin sister. The police won’t look for her, so it is up to her to drop everything and go to Tokyo to find her sister.

And well, it is tricky. Jess had suicide attempts in the past as she has always been the darker child. That comes from their youth, when their parents were hit by a drunk driver and Jess saw the bodies while Sara did not. So it wouldn’t be completely out of the question to assume that she did it. But the connection Sara still felt was there, so she assumed her sister was lost and needed help.

She is lucky though. She befriends an Australian journalist who works in Japan, Aiden (Taylor Kinney), and he has done a few stories on the forest. He knows it pretty well, but his friend, Michi (Yukiyoshi Ozawa) knows it even better. Once or twice a week he hikes around the forest, doing a sort of Suicide Watch to help convince people that life is worth it, and they will take her out into the forest to help find Jess. And as a minor role, we have Eoin Macken as Sara’s husband, and Rina Takasaki as creepy girl in the forest.

But in the forest there are Yurei, vengeful spirits, and they will trick people into doing bad things. They will show them things that are not real. They will make them see lies and have them end their lives without them even realizing it. But as long as they stick together they should be good.

Oh fuck.

I am not one who believes in cultural appropriation or anything like that, but I do question the story they chose to tell for this tale. Bringing in a white outsider to tell the story, instead of just, you know, Japanese people feels like a lame attempt to allow dialogue to explain the forest. Having the main person who helps her also be a white guy? Well, that is just down right movie magic convenient. But whatever. That was only a minor annoyance.

The bigger annoyances come from our main character. I am not saying a character has to be likable for us to enjoy a movie, but there has to be a reason for us to care about her story. And she isn’t likable. She is the normal one, but she is brash, arrogant and stubborn. She makes a series of terrible decisions and literally ignores every knowledgeable characters advice about what to do or not to do in the forest. It makes the viewer just want her to die. But the viewer doesn’t want to watch her to die, they just want her to hurry up and die, to end the movie so everyone can go home and do something else with our time.

Related, Kinney plays an Australian living in Tokyo? I am sure his Japanese was fine, but they didn’t even bother giving him any accent. Calling him Australian is extremely pointless in this regard, as he played an American and no one seemed to care.

The Aokigahara is a great place for horror films to take place but this horror movie doesn’t do it justice. It is cheap, the plot is predictable, and the ending ends like all bad horror movies. Erm. Badly.

Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t have an Oscar. Everyone knows that. The internet won’t let you or anyone forget. He tried so hard with The Wolf of Wall Street. There was the incredibly long and well acted scene where he was on Ludes that was hysterical and just so damn good that it elevated his chances to win.

But he didn’t, and rightfully so. Chiwetel was the bomb. So what does a Leo have to do? Well, he found out that people love really physical performances. Just ask Eddie Redmayne, who won last year. So he will go and give a really physical performance. Easy, no problem, he is a professional actor, he can pretend to do anything. However, he needs help.

So he turns to the man with a plan, Alejandro González Iñárritu. He is fresh off his own Best Picture win with Birdman, and he wants to repeat. So two powerhouses coming together. What could go horribly amazing? Hopefully everything.

Acting.

Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a real person! In the early 1800s, he was a fur trapper and explorer. Here is his wiki. This movie is based on a very important part of his life. It is also super very different, because in movies, we need cool shit to happen.

Either way, he is the lead scout for a group who are about to head back home after a long few months. And of course they get attacked by some local Native Americans. Who knows the reason? Could be because they are hunting on the land, could be because they desecrated something, could be out of boredom. But there are more of them with really well aimed arrows, so a handful of them are able to escape by boat down the river. They saved some of the furs, but not all of them, meaning they won’t get paid as well as they thought when they return home. Worse news is that according to Glass, that same tribe owns the river, so they will probably lay an ambush for them soon. They have to get off the boat down river, hide the furs, and hike back to civilization on foot. Maybe with a large army they can return and hopefully get the fur back.

The captain, Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) agrees with the plan, but it angers a few of the crew, namely John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) who wants to get paid for all his hard work.

Fast forward a bit, and holy shit, Glass gets fucked up by a Mama Bear (Editor’s Note: He doesn’t get fucked though. Just fucked up) and has injuries all over. The crew would carry him back, but they are on mountains and it just can’t be done when they are on the run. So a few men volunteer to stay back until he either dies or gets better. Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), his son, Jim Bridger (Will Poulter), a young dumb trapper, and of course, Fitzgerald. He did it for the bonus money.

But when Glass is eventually left for dead anyways, he is encouraged to get over his almost carcass of a body. He is determined to ignore the biting cold and hunger. He needs to travel on his own a really long ass way, surviving the weather, river, animals and people trying to kill him along the way. Just so he can get revenge. Just so he can get closure.

Also starring Melaw Nakehk’o and another guy, who isn’t on IMDB, but totally important as he is the leader of the Native American tribe.

You can’t tell by this picture, but you will also see lush bears and hear even lusher accents.

This film is so beautiful. In every single way. Words can’t describe it well. Ohhh nooo. But I will still try today.

In case you are curious, no The Revenant is not one long continuous shot. Are you kidding me, it is 2.5 hours. This isn’t Victoria. However there are quite a lot of longer scenes in this film, definitely longer than normal. It works wonderful, especially during the skirmishes, which allow us to see all aspects happening as they occur, while also gracing us with the beautiful scenery that makes up this winter mountain side. Did I mention beautiful? I think I did.

Now onto the acting. HOLY SHIT LEO. WHAT ARE YOU DOING. He gave it all, more than his 100%. At least 105%, which is technically impossible. Impossible is probably what he thought his chances are at winning an Oscar, which is why he put so much dang effort into it. This thing was relentless. The bear attack was a CGI bear, but she was amazing and it didn’t look fake at all. The bear should get nominated for Best Supporting Actress (it is a weak year). Back to Leo, his groans and moans and crawling were everything I could hope for and more.

Technically he didn’t have many words to say. He was often alone, or just physically couldn’t due to injuries. Half of the speech he did have were in a native language. I kind of hope he doesn’t win Best Actor, not because I think someone has acted better (at least, not in films I have seen), but I want to see him top this. If he doesn’t win from this, he will have to try harder right? What kind of future movies could we have where DiCaprio constantly elevates his game, always looking for that highest honor?

No, that sounds mean.

I like to imagine this as all one glorious beard.

Speaking of Acting, Tom Hardy has had a fantastic year. He was great in Mad Max: Fury Road and the only good part(s) of Legend, and here again he is amazing. None of his roles were similar, they all had different voices and mannerisms. His bumpkin drawl was captivating, despite a bit of a struggle just to understand what he was saying sometimes. This is another role I expect to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but I still think Benicio Del Toro gets it for Sicario.

Either way, if you don’t see The Revenant on the big screen, you are missing out. It needs to be big to appreciate it that much more. Doesn’t mean I won’t buy it, but fuck, it’s so pretty. Maybe my film of the year.

It is a law older than time itself. If you find it, you can keep it. If you lose it, you can weep it. Possession is 9/10 of the law. Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?

These rules get even more set in stone once an item is purchased. Obviously if you find it and buy it before someone else, it is definitely yours.

So Finders Keepers is a documentary that takes that concept to its most extreme. If you are American, you are familiar with Storage Wars and other shit reality TV. People who don’t pay their rent on their storage units can have it taken away from them and the contents sold to the highest bidder. Sometimes it is individual items, sometimes it is the whole unit, and you usually don’t have time to inspect.

If someone spent $50 and inside one of the boxes was $1,000 it would be a sweet buy. If it had a unique rare item they could sell, it would be a sweet buy. IF it had naked pictures of their own mother, it would be the worst money ever spent.

Well, Shannon Whisnant bought a grill. He loves buying things cheaply and reselling them for a profit. So he figured he could clean it up and make some nice bank. Instead, Whisnant finds a severed human foot.

Yeah! A real human foot! Clearly he would go back and return it and find the owner and talk about how awkward it was. But Whisnant wants to make money. So he calls the police, sure, but he wants the news to know too. And he can charge people money to see the foot, earn that sweet cash. But the cops confiscate it, not sure what to do. Fucking pigs man.

Fucking America though, right?

The foot belongs to John Wood, who lost it in an airplane crash. His dad was taking his family for a spin when they had to crash land, killing his dad and obviously losing his foot. Well, Wood wanted to be buried a full skeleton, so he was able to smuggle his leg out of the hospital.

Don’t worry, it isn’t completely gross. It was preserved in some way. But Wood was a druggie and after a big series of changes, he found himself not paying for the storage unit and he lost the leg.

This was apparently a big media frenzy, with both sides arguing for the leg. Whisnant clearly had solid ground to stand on, while the specifics of body parts in this way has never been put down in law before, so one can easily see why Wood should get it back.

And in the end, what I really learned from this documentary, that tells of their story throughout the whole time line, the resolution, and aftermath, is that Judge Mathis is fucking awesome. Yes, some reality show arbitration is used, but the Judge goes above and beyond in his ruling and makes me think he is awesome.

I am left thinking that Wood and Whisnant might be jerks, while also happy/sad what happened to them, but that Mathis is a bro in the best way.

The documentary itself is funny and sad. I am a bit confused as to why I had never heard of any of this happening, especially when I used to live in North Carolina where the foot was found. Maybe it was only a big deal in the western part of the state and not actually national news. But the story is a good one without a simple conclusion.

One of the more unique documentaries in a year full of bio-docs, and with a very reasonable running time of under 90 minutes.

Chess movies? CHESS MOVIES?! Who the heck makes chess movies?

Sure, there was a documentary about middle schoolers playing chess, Brooklyn Castles. But that’s different.

And Pawn had nothing to do with chess! Clearly because its title wasn’t sinister enough. Pawn Sacrifice? Totally a chess movie. You can tell, because it involves death in the title. And you know that the title has a double meaning, it just has to. Why? Because movies about Chess should be smart! Hell, I bet the title has four meanings, but we won’t even figure out the final meaning for another 30 years because it would be a reference to an event that hasn’t occurred yet. That is what I currently expect for movies that deal with chess. I set the bar high.

Why so high? Because. Chess.

Look look! They are playing chess! CHESS IN A MOVIE! Is this The Seventh Seal?!

You can’t just make a vague movie about chess, this chess movie needs a purpose and a real story to tell. So why not the story of Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire)? Arguably the greatest ever American Chess player (and some would argue, Earthian Chess Player) ever, and we do love out greats here in America. Especially if they aren’t boring.

And guess what! Bobby. Wasn’t. Boring. Actually, it is a bit sad, because he was very paranoid among his other potential mental disorders. He grew up with only his mom (Lily Rabe), who thought he had problems because all he cared about was chess. But hey, he became the youngest Grandmaster at the time, and went on to do great chess things.

But Fischer had issues. One, with the Jews, because they were clearly controlling the world. Two, with the Russians, who were basically big cheats. They worked together as a collective unit to insure that Fischer couldn’t go for the title against Boris Spassky (Liev Schreiber). Force him to draw and he couldn’t get to the end to beat Spassky. It sucked. He threw hissy fits. He retired from chess and went back to his insane life.

Unfortunately, this was America in the 1960’s. And they couldn’t just let a potential USA vs USSR match up go unnoticed. Especially if they could win said match up! Cold War was really just a lot of small skirmishes, where they competed at events to gain every inch of PR ground. Eventually Fischer was able to do a real challenge against Spassky, in Reykjavík, Iceland. It wouldn’t just be a game, it would be up to 25 games, one a day. They’d gain a point if they won, and 1/2 a point if they drew, and the first to 12.5 would win it all and be World Champion. This was in 1972 and sure enough, televised and watched by all of America, who suddenly became experts at chess.

Also featuring Robin Weigert, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Peter Sarsgaard.

“I will not lower my voice and I am not yelling!”

Some people complain that Steve Jobs has had so many movies since his death. Well, Fischer died in 2008 and has had now 2 movies and 1 documentary about his life after that. Sure, it has now been 7 years versus the 3 or 4 of Steve, but it is still interesting nonetheless.

Fischer was apparently a very interesting individual, and Maguire did a fine as job as any playing him. He had energy and spunk that we haven’t seen since he danced his way into our hearts in Spider-Man 3.

And you know what else? There were some mighty tense moments in the first six or so games between Fischer and Spassky. That was the highlight of the film. Two great actors staring at chess pieces and freaking out about noise and other small details.

However, I think the scope of the film is too specific. After the film, I went to read about Fischer to get some clarification as to why he wasn’t allowed back in the USA for reasons, and you know what? There is a lot of interesting stuff there. Tons of great details, but they instead focus only on the bouts leading up to and against Spassky. Showing his mental deterioation and fleeing around the world? That would make a good movie. Showing his earlier rise to his level through many tournaments? That would be a great add-on to the movie.

Now yes, a lot of biographies are now avoiding the broad scope and going for specific big events, but the issue with this one is that it was a tad bit boring watching him flip out over minor things before the big Icelandic duel. Should it be enough as per the recent trends? Sure, that is a big one. But it didn’t keep my interest throughout the film in leading up to it. Pawn Sacrifice ends up being just an average movie with above average acting about well above average people.

Buy It! – This movie is available now on {Blu-Ray} and {DVD}.