Top 10 worst movies 2017

Notes: To be honest, I don't really get how the IMDb users could find any redeeming value in this flick. Indeed, with this movie, I would have to agree with the critics as the damned thing turned out to be a massive disaster. Sure, there was nothing wrong with the fact that Colin Trevorrow wanted to direct again a small indie feature between his 2 massive Jurassic Park blockbusters. However, since 'Safety Not Guaranteed' was pretty good, nobody would have expected his return to his indie roots to turn into such a misfire and maybe the guy should stick with CGI dinosaurs instead. In fact, even if the 1st half was slightly annoying, pretentious and, above all, not really entertaining, at least, it was rather harmless. However, at some point, Henry did get terminally ill (which is, by the way, one of the cheapest gimmicks to add some dramatic weight to your story), and, afterwards, the whole thing became completely bonkers and not in a good way, I'm afraid. Who thought it would be a great idea to mix up a rather half-baked quirky comedy with a murder plot involving a child molester? Seriously, the end-result was not only bewildering but also completely tone-deaf. The fact that I never cared about the characters obviously didn't help but the story never worked whatsoever. In fact, it was worse than that, it was really cringe-inducing and even borderline unwatchable.

Notes: Unfortunately, as expected, it turned out to be another dreadful direct-to-VOD action flick. Indeed, it had all the typical trademarks of the genre such as some ugly yellow filters through the whole duration. It was also directed by Steven C. Miller, possibly one of the worst directors ever and you had Lydia Hull playing (very badly) a minor role (Seriously, I can’t believe that I have seen already a dozen movies starring this girl, always in this dreadful genre). Above all, I thought this movie was just a huge mess, even more than usual. I mean, at some point, you see the two main characters when they were kids going home and there is an unidentified woman and man sitting there in the living room. Later on, the man did shoot himself but what happened to the woman? Then, you get to see these kids going to the arcade without ever acknowledging what happened before and, there, somehow, completely randomly, the older boy meets some kingpin played by Nicolas Cage. And it went on and on like this with an endless succession of some very clunky scenes poorly together one after the other. Another funny thing was to compare John Cusack who barely acted at all and Nicolas Cage who was acting too much but, even if it didn’t really work, Cage at least did try to do something with his character. The weird thing is that the concept actually had some potential. Indeed, I can imagine a gritty drama focusing on these two boys growing up in some very toxic environment.

Notes: The damned thing was so weak, the only redeeming feature was that it was rather short. Where should I start? Everything from the title to the poster, to the font used for the credits, the action scenes, the performances of the actors involved, seriously, everything felt so cheap. It also took forever to really take off and, even when it finally did take off, the concept barely worked. I mean, how was the main character supposed to investigate the murders of his wife and kid if he took a vow of silence? Seriously, it didn’t seem really practical. Eventually, the answer provided by the movie was that he only had to look someone deep in the eyes to get the answers to his question, without asking an actual question. Sure, it does sound ridiculous and it was probably even worse on the silver screen. At least, it was one of the very few vigilante features which didn't end up with the main character killing his target and I have to admit that it was rather refreshing. However, the fact that the alternative was to bring the perpetuator to justice didn’t seem to work either since Frank Valera himself used to be part of a seemingly rotten justice system which didn’t seem really efficient to provide the right punishment for people who really deserved it.

Notes: I never really cared for the ‘The Fast and The Furious’ but do you know what is actually worse than the long-running action franchise? A cheap European knock-off like this one. Seriously, they even took the least interesting actor ever involved in Vin Diesel’s franchise and turned him into the lead. Concerning Ana de Armas, as usual, she was very lovely but, to be honest, she also gave here such a weak performance. Seriously, it’s difficult to believe that, the very same year, she would give her breakthrough performance in ‘Blade Runner 2049’. It’s not that the rest of the cast was better, it’s just that I didn't expect her to sink so low. Or maybe I did overestimate her. By the way, what I don’t get is that, even though it was a French production, there was no consistency regarding how the French characters were talking to each other. Indeed, sometimes, they would speak French for a while, then suddenly they would speak English with each other. Sure, it might be a minor detail but I always find this rather annoying. Of course, when you’re watching an action flick and you’re starting to pay attention to what language the characters are talking to each other, the makers probably did mess something up. Finally, I understand that they wanted to deviate somehow from ‘The Fast and The Furious’ by focusing on some vintage cars but developing a high-octane action flick around some 50 year old cars might not be the greatest idea in the world after all.

Notes: Well, after working with Roland Emmerich on many blockbusters, apparently, Dean Devlin thought he could also direct his own disaster flick. Eventually, it was at least quite an achievement that Devlin managed to deliver something worse than anything delivered by Emmerich so far. It’s too bad because the idea of making a disaster flick around climate change was intriguing and the damned thing actually had some potential. Unfortunately, I turned out to be one of these blockbusters which try to look very smart but end up being incredibly dumb. I mean, their first dumb move was to choose Gerard Butler to play some genius scientist. Seriously, there was not a single thing that he said that actually sounded convincing. On the other hand, Jim Sturgess was not much better and delivered another really weak performance (on top of that, the fact that this ’super’ scientist’s brother would work for the staff of the US president was just some really lazy writing). Concerning the rest of the cast (Abbie Cornish, Alexandra Maria Lara, Andy Garcia, Ed Harris, Robert Sheehan, Mare Winningham, Zazie Beetz), only Zazie Beetz managed to be interesting/entertaining in a just a few scenes, all the rest was just wasted playing some really poorly written characters. Coming back to the ’master’ plan of the bad guy, if you destroy the whole Earth, how was it going to bring back the USA back on top?!?

Notes: First of all, the damned thing was just so damned long, I think it was the longest movie ever made by Adam Sandler. Seriously, if there is no valid reason why some brainless action flicks like ‘Transformers’ or ‘Fast and Furious 23’ should last more than 2 hours, well, this rule should definitely apply also for all the moronic comedies starring Sandler. Still, I have to admit that it turned out to be slightly better than ‘The Do-Over’ but it wasn’t such a difficult goal to achieve. Indeed, the concept was not bad and it was not completely random. Still, even though they tried to sell the idea that the main character was a hilarious new creation, in fact, Sandler played his usual moronic cringe-inducing guy, basically, a talentless hack who was never funny whatsoever. However, only half of the movie was about his ‘exploits’ as a manager and the other half was about some really unlikely love story with one of his talents. Unfortunately, this romance was never convincing whatsoever and, eventually, the movie was never really about this manager believing in the talents of his protégé but, actually, it was the other way around which was just rather weird. Anyway, it was rather sad to see a lovely girl played by the gorgeous and talented Jennifer Hudson falling in love with this obnoxious man for really no reason whatsoever but, apparently, it is another rule that, in every Sandler movie, he has to get the nicest girls around even if his characters are borderline awful.

Notes: Obviously, they were inspired by ’21 Jump Street’ and they decided to deliver another irreverent R-rated comedy which wasn’t actually a bad idea. Indeed, the concept of the original ‘Baywatch’ TV-show was even more preposterous that the concept of ’21 Jump Street’ so this approach did make sense. Unfortunately, it never worked because the jokes turned out to be so lame. Seriously, there was a huge number of dick jokes and the fact that the cast was constantly swearing for no reason whatsoever made the whole thing even more cringe-inducing to behold. At least, as expected, the female cast (Alexandra Daddario, Kelly Rohrbach, Ilfenesh Hadera, Priyanka Chopra) was quite gorgeous to look at but their characters were not developed at all which felt like a missed opportunity. At least, Chopra was a decent bad guy and it would be interesting to see her in something slightly less underwhelming. Finally, not only the plot was terribly tedious and generic, there was not a single reason why it required such an excessive long running time (around 2 hrs).

Notes: When I saw the trailer for this movie, it seemed to be really weak but my daughter thought it looked pretty neat so we still ended up watching the damned thing in the movie theater together. Well, eventually, I wasn't positively surprised by this movie, I'm afraid. Seriously, is it me or the concepts delivered by Dreamworks Animation are becoming only more and more pathetic? I mean, there was something pretty neat about this idea of a young boy trying to deal with with the arrival of his new baby brother (After all, Pixar already displayed with 'Inside Out' that you can make a great movie about a kid going through some huge life changing event) but, eventually, everything else was just so lame. I mean, seriously, a baby wearing a suit and talking like Alec Baldwin, trying to stop some complot from a puppy company? That was their brilliant idea?

Notes: Unfortunately, this movie was pretty much destroyed by the critics when it was released so I lowered down my expectations but I was still eager to check it out. Well, even though it wasn't a complete disaster, it was still seriously weak though. Indeed, the whole thing was just really poorly put together and I'm actually lucky that I read the book a couple of years ago because, otherwise, I'm not sure if I would have been able to follow the damned thing. What I missed the most is that while the story was not necessarily amazing (I actually preferred 'Phantom' from the same author and also involving Harry Hole), at least, in the book, the characters were really interesting but, in this movie, they were just all very poorly developed. I felt sorry above all for Michael Fassbender, easily one of the best actors of his generation, who got stuck playing nothing more than another drunk detective when Harry Hole was supposed to be such an intriguing character. It's a real shame because, with such a solid director and fine cast involved, the movie seemed to be at first a sure winner.

Notes: When my daughter told me that she wanted to watch this movie, I have to admit that I didn't know at all what she was talking about which is usually not really a good omen. So, I looked it up and, honestly, I thought I looked really lame but we still ended up watching it in the movie theater together. Well, I have to admit it, it was not as awful as I expected it to be. I mean, it was still pretty weak but, at least, it was watchable. Furthermore, the animation, while not being anything groundbreaking, was decent enough and even the 3D effects were not bad at all which was a nice surprise coming from a Belgian-French production like this one. Unfortunately, I still had a hard time to care about the story. I mean, once again, it wasn't the worst story ever but it was still really generic and terribly boring.