Tag: Alice Through The Looking Glass

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.

As a note, I didn’t get to see everything last year. I never saw Bad Santa 2, Why Him?, Bridget Jones’s Baby, and Dead 7.

(DIS)HONORABLE MENTIONS
Not a great list. The Final Project was a small film no one saw (thankfully), The Boss was a film too many people saw, When The Bough Breaks wasn’t sexy enough for this list, and Sharknado 4 because I am fucking tired of writing about Sharknado movies.

15) The Sea of Trees

Hey I got a good idea. Let’s take a serious subject and make a serious movie about it. Let’s make it about suicide, depression, losing your loved ones, but maybe a little hope in there as well.

All of that does sound good. But The Sea of Trees turned its serious contender into a boring turd. It fits into the drama category but it suffocates the viewer with bad symbolism and a terrible plot. It is so bad that a horror film about the same place ended up better somehow.

14) The Brother’s Grimsby

Look, I’m a guy that can handle crude humor. But crude humor can still help the plot, have a point, or at least also be a bit funny. In The Brother’s Grimsby, we are given several repulsive scenes with zero payout. A film that must have been created solely for the scenes in question with the plot coming maybe in third place.

Cohen can be a great actor and he can also be infuriating. What is sad is that this isn’t the only film he stars in on this list, but the other film he is the only great part in it.

13) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Some book to film adaptations are so bad they make you want to stop the movie halfway through and read the book again in protest. Or at least to remind yourself that the book is decent.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is amazing in that it is not only trrrible, but just like the book, you will find yourself wanting to stop both of them early on and just go back the original source material. This movie is a tad bit better than the book in that it at least flows nicely together, where the book features the worst cut and paste jobs in modern fiction writing.

12) Nina

Nina Simone is an activist and musician who should be remembered. She did a lot for her community, her race, and for music. She was quite a character too. Unfortunately this movie will do nothing for people who know nothing about her. It will probably just turn them off to her legacy.

Thank you Netflix for releasing What Happened, Miss Simone? It is the only reason I know her. And it is the only thing you should watch about her as of right now.

11) Gods of Egypt

I cannot super hate Gods of Egypt. It is meant to be a campy movie and it definitely goes campy. But I can still be angry with how lame of a story it came up with. It is a film that looks horrible, has a dull plot, and wastes some occasionally good actors. We don’t have a lot of movies involving Egyptian mythology, which is rich and wonderfully diverse, so it is just a bit of a bigger pain when the only morsel we get in forever is just a big shiny piece of shit.

10) Meet The Blacks

Meet the Blacks is a movie no one saw and for good reason. It had little publicity, was barely in the theaters, and has one famous person attached.

But I had it go and see it because I was excited to see it. I generally like The Purge movies so a good parody with some different political angles can totally work. But this film doesn’t work. It isn’t funny. It is argument after argument. It is barely coherent. And I am the one person who saw it who probably felt disappointed as everyone else besides me knew it would suck.

9) God’s Not Dead 2

You know, if you had asked me in April where God’s Not Dead 2 would have landed I would have assumed in the top 3. I am as surprised as you that it is up here at 9! I even got to make a fake review of this film for an April Fool’s Day joke.

But in all honesty it is a bad movie that badly preaches to he choir. It makes bad guys out of nothing and exaggerates everything to 11. It is painful but at least it is easy to make fun of which is why I didn’t have it super low.

8) Ben-Hur

Speaking of religious films (This is technically the third on the list) Ben-Hur is probably the most sacrilegious. You know. Rebooting a masterpiece. Condensing an epic story down an hour an a half and trying to still make it coherent. Replacing well done scenes with CGI and extra action for the Millenials. And again, just shitting over one of the biggest films in cinema history for a quick buck.

I’m not against reboots. I’m against bad movies.

7) Hillary’s America: The Secret History Of The Democratic Party

Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party is the only documentary to make my list, a sequel to the only documentary to make any of my worst lists before this (America: Imagine The World Without Her)!

The director has taken political agenda to the extreme and decided to switch around a few arguments and lie to drive his point home. It is as much about him as it is about he a Democratic Party. The reason it isn’t lower is because it would have done nothing to change the outcome of the election. The only people who saw it who don’t criticize movies for a living are the ones who would have already whole heartedly agreed with it.

6) Knight of Cups

I don’t want to say I hate people but Terrence Malick comes close. I assume he starts shouting a movie with a specific plot in line, then he loses his notes and starts just shooting scenic shots. Later remembering the plot he adds some voice over that vaguely helps tell the story and boom. You too can make elitist filth.

I try really hard with every new film of his to have an open mind. But they are getting more and more out there he just leaves me scratching my head in wonder and resentment. Knight Of Cups is a giant shrug and a instantly forgettable.

5) Nine Lives

Finally the bottom of the bottom, with Nine Lives topping (bottoming?) most worst of the year lists.

This is a few famous people doing very little to get a paycheck. No one has their heart in it. Spacey for the most part just had to record some voice work. It is a 90s film that they tried to make 15 years too late and add nothing new to that terrible abandoned genre. Basically it is the worst film of 2016 about a cat.

4) I’m Not Ashamed

Okay here is the thing. I’m Not Ashamed film you probably hadn’t heard about. But it is really fucked up. It is about Columbine. About a girl shot during the attack and her last year or so alive. It is a religious film and a teenage drama, but the acting is bad, they make a lot of assumptions about the shooters and other students at the school, most of it is most certainly a lie, and it is basically a disgrace to exploit a real national tragedy to make a film this bad. God’s Not Dead 2 had overacting and we could laugh at it. This film will just make you angry at how terrible and unethical the whole thing is.

It is the worst religious film of 2016 and it would have also been the worst Fantast film based on how much it warps the reality of the situation, but the next film on the list took that crown.

3) Alice Through The Looking Glass

There isn’t enough space for me to truly rant about everything wrong with this film. I already did so quite well in my inial review of Alice Through The Looking Glass. By all means read it and let it fill you with hate.

The reason it wasn’t further down is because Cohen was actually great in this film and the only bright spot. But it is in fact the worst fantasy film of the year and should be bought up in droves just to bury in some New Mexico pit somewhere.

2) Norm of the North

Every year there is one animated film that slams itself to the terrible ground and refuses to get a leg up. Before it was Strange Magic. This year Norm of the North. And yes, both did come out in January.

Norm of the North barely has a plot. There is a rough story, but it seems to mostly get in the way of the piss and fart jokes. The animation is poor, the jokes are of the lowest quality, and nothing feels funny. I can’t actually remember a lot of the film anymore thankfully, I just do remember that my four year old turning to me to tell me it was a bad film in the theater.

1) Allegiant

I did not know this would be my number one film, despite watching it in March. If you read my review, I hated it, I hated it a lot, but really, I just assumed it would be somewhere in the middle.

So what changed? What made this film rise to become the cream of the shit? Well, the fallout is one reason. Yes, we are tired of books being split up, but there has never been a break up this terrible. Allegiant has literally KILLED the Divergent movie franchise. They aren’t able to finish the story and have to switch it to a TV movie/show situation, because Allegiant was so bad.

At least the first two films had a plot that was easy enough to follow. They had a lot of holes and confusing aspects, but I got it. Part three? It lets us out in to the world and spends most of the time wasting it and not answering questions. It has situations that don’t make sense, characters not acting like real entities, a waste of talent, a waste of time. And holy fuck, it killed a franchise.

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.

Let’s take a time machine back six years ago. The world was different, because not everything was in 3D. Only a few films tried out 3D, thanks to Avatar being the cash cow and visually stunning film that it was. This is when people still thought 3D was actually kind of cool if done right.

Then Alice in Wonderland came out, and it made a shit ton of money. Why did everyone rush to see it? Well, I guess Johnny Depp was a bigger deal six years ago, sure. But because it was released in 3D, so everyone went to see it thinking it would be as pretty as Avatar. It wasn’t.

And say what you will about the plot of Avatar, its story was miles better than the pile of refuse that they gave us with Alice in Wonderland. You would think making it into a bad story would be impossible, given the book. But no, instead they made a sequel to the original Alice in Wonderland, setting this one many years later, with Alice returning to Wonderland with a whole mess of new and awkwardly similar problems. It gave me problems, most of all calling the movie Alice in Wonderland, when it was a sequel to Alice in Wonderland. That is confusing.

But hey, Disney is on a live action kick. So they figured, let’s do a sequel. Alice Through The Looking Glass. This one will probably no be based on the book either, since it is a sequel to the surprise sequel. So who knows what they will fill it with hoping to be edgy. Let’s just say I am going in assuming the worst here, and that is based on a lot of precedent.

Clay? Rust? Red lava? Earthy minerals? Who cares, I am barely a geologist anyways.

The sequel takes place years after the original, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is now a free girl, roaming the seas the captain of her own sailing vessel like her dad. She is exploring the new world and making trade agreements! It is actually quite fun. Unfortunately, when she gets back she is in a pickle. Hamish (Leo Bill), the man she turned down now runs the company. Her mom (Lindsay Duncan) has traded away the bill of her house for money, and the only way to get it back is for Alice to give up her boat and take a respectable job for a woman.

So, in the chaos, she runs through a mirror, following Absolem the butterfly (Alan Rickman) and returns to Wonderland! But things have changed. The entire gang is still friends, but the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) is now the Sad Hatter. He believes his family, killed by the Jabberwocky a long time ago. It is obvious what Alice must do. If you thought look for his family, you were wrong. No, she clearly should go back in time, save them from the Jabberwocky, and bring them to the present to make him feel better. Yeah. That.

But time is a person (Sacha Baron Cohen). And grabbing the Chronosphere can cause a lot of issues. But she does it anyways, because friendship and sets off on a journey to the past to fuck shit up.

The Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and White Queen (Anne Hathaway) return, Leilah de Meza with and Amelia Crouch playing their past selves. Rhys Ifans plays the Mad Hatter’s dad and Ed Speleers are regular unimportant dude.

Also returning, the voices of Tweedledee / Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), Bayard (Timothy Spall), Thackery (Paul Whitehouse), Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), Mallymkun (Barbara Windsor), McTwisp (Michael Sheen), and introducing Wilkins (Matt Vogel), a robot.

Time is a lot of things, and you will hear every last time pun I do decree!

First of all, Eye in the Sky is Alan Rickman’s real last film. This one is just voice work, and I swear, he maybe had three lines and no close ups. This does not get to count as his final film, I won’t allow it.

As for the actual movie, if you missed it this one deals with TIME TRAVEL. Time Travel is a scary subject matter. It is powerful and can make or break a movie depending on how it is adapted. I am not going to argue one theory of time travel is better than any other, because that doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that a film is consistent with their version of time travel. Alice Through The Looking Glass cares not at all, changing the rules on a whim, and makes an incredible hard to follow film without a satisfying reason for making it overly complicated.

This line might be a slight spoiler, because I just want to explain their time travel. Alice finds out that no matter what she does, she can not change the past, the events still occur. That is the time travel they have set up. Until later on in the film, a character is totally able to change the past. Fuck.

Alice goes back in time to three different locations. Why? Because the oceans of time are chaotic and once she learns information, she tries to go to a different time line to change different things. The plot is moved forward by consistently bad decisions from Alice, whom is supposed to be a strong smart female lead. Not only that, because Alice seems to make the same bad decisions, her actions feel repetitive and the films seems to drag when there are easy solutions everywhere.

The ending is an incredible mess. Wonderland is falling apart because of two separate events that somehow produce the same results. But it doesn’t make sense for them to do the same thing. I will try and explain it out without spoilers.

I hope you passed algebra.

For most of the film, Problem A is happening thanks to Alice and the world is slowly falling apart. Much later in the film, Problem B, a completely different problem occurs and actually sets about the end of the world. Problem A is seemingly forgotten about. However, once Problem A is “solved”, thanks to our protagonist remembering it, it somehow undoes all of the damage of Problem B. The issue with that is there is no justification whatsoever that it should work like that. There are no mentions earlier on that if Problem B happens, it can be fixed by X. On top of that, there was no reason for Problem A to even continue late in the film, except for the fact that Alice becomes incompetent.

Finally, Alice is seen as a strong, independent woman, which is mostly true in the real world scenes where she is chased by pirates, but they reduce her to a bumbling fool in Wonderland. All of her positive traits seemingly vanish just to move the plot forward. On its own, I guess it is okay for a character to be stupid, sure.

The real issue here is that her character does stupid things, but she is still being lauded as a smart and capable heroine the entire film. To me, that seems almost more dangerous than just having a weak lead. What we need in films are actual strong female characters, not weak ones that they tell us are strong with us supposed to them at their word.

This is a bad movie and one I cannot believe was green-light by Disney. The 3D is pointless, the visuals are only great in a few places, the acting is so-so. The plot is a mess, breaks its rules (which breaks story telling rules and shouldn’t be seen as a compliment to the Madness of Wonderland), and most of the events happen thanks to stupidity and not for good plot reasons. The only thing I enjoyed was the excessive time puns and Cohen as Time.

0 out of 4.