Top 10 worst movies 2021

Notes: It turned out to be one of these movies arguing that raising kids has become such an impossible task nowadays and, to be honest, I always have a hard time to relate with such movies. The fact that I got 3 very easy children to raise doesn’t help I guess. Anyway, in my opinion, raising children is not really about when you should say ‘No’ and when you should say ‘Yes’, it’s actually more about building trust between you and your child. So, you can see I didn’t care much for the whole set-up but, at least, it was nice that it was dealing with a bilingual family, even if they did actually very little with this aspect after all. Still, I have to admit that there was something pretty neat to see these kids calling all the shots for one single day. However, for some reasons, they completely derailed the whole thing during the 3rd act by sending the parents to jail for some rather dubious reasons. Finally, the tone was just so feather light. Indeed, the parents were nice, the kids were nice, there was barely a conflict even at the beginning of the movie and I get that it was probably done on purpose but it would have been more interesting if the characters would have been slightly more complex.

Notes: The damned thing was so weak and it’s too bad because the opening scene actually had some potential. Indeed, I really liked these 2 girls who bonded together and there was something really neat and genuine about their relationship. Unfortunately, it was pretty much the only thing that worked in this movie and, to make things worse, they broke this relationship almost right from the start which was, in my opinion, a huge mistake. It’s not that the concept was really bad (it was still hardly original though), it was more that the whole thing was just so flat and unfunny. Indeed, Melissa McCarthy basically played her typical foul-mouthed (slightly less) fat dim-witted woman, a role which did manage to launch her career at some point, but she has done this gimmick too many times by now and it did outstay its welcome a long time ago already. Concerning Octavia Spencer, she was basically given nothing to do except looking annoyed at McCarthy’s character’s antics so she was pretty much wasted here. Concerning the rest of the cast, Pom Klementieff did have some fun playing a bloodthirsty villain but her character was terribly one-note. Eventually, the only one who managed to do something slightly more interesting was Jason Bateman who played one of the weirdest super-heroes ever but, even in his case, this character was still barely developed whatsoever.

Notes: The interesting thing with Olga Kurylenko is that she always had a rather versatile career, in fact, she actually started her acting career with such French productions. As a result, it was pretty neat to see for her for the 1st time playing in a French movie, even though, it took me so much time to get used to hear her speaking in French (Seriously, I even thought for a while that she had been dubbed). Unfortunately, Kurylenko has also spent at least half of her career showing up in some really weak stuff and this movie was definitely one of those, I’m afraid. Seriously, pretty much nothing worked in this flick. First of all, its title and the presentation they gave at the beginning would make you think that it would be about ‘vigipirate’, the French anti-terrorism policy, but, except the fact it was the job of the main character, it had actually nothing to do with the plot after all. Instead, they gave us a really generic and predictable story about a traumatized soldier becoming a vigilante. Concerning the directing, it was just so flat and uninspired, it was not much better than a really cheap TV movie. And, yet, the main character had some potential and Kurylenko gave a solid performance, even if she looked way too thin for a seasoned and highly trained soldier. Eventually, it’s such a pity that she very often wastes her potential in such lame movies and, even if this movie might not be the worst she has made, it was still really weak.

Notes: I have to admit that I had never heard of Sion Sono before but, apparently, the guy had a rather prolific career going over almost 30 years. Well, after looking into it, his work seems to be quite intriguing and, indeed, this movie turned out to be weird, daft and even really unhinged. Seriously, it felt like they took some acid when they wrote this movie and it seemed they took some even more while they were shooting the damned thing. I read somewhere from some critic that it was actually his most mainstream(!) movie so far so I can’t imagine how weird his other movies must be. Sure, now, I made it sound as if it was a super cool movie but, unfortunately, even if it was definitely much bolder than the usual cheap action flicks that Cage has been doing during the last 10 years, I’m afraid it was never really interesting or entertaining at all. Basically, this movie was just an unwatchable f*cking mess. The most pathetic thing was probably the suit that Nicolas Cage had to wear and, in fact, if this weird material was the perfect material for Cage to go completely nuts, I thought his performance was rather tame after all. At least, he wasn't really wasted like Sofia Boutella who was given nothing to do at all. Eventually, I did give this movie a few extra points because it was so wild but, to be honest, I just didn’t care at all about the damned thing.

Notes: With its combination of ‘The Terminator’ with ‘Training Day’, the damned thing certainly felt rather derivative but, to be honest, I have to admit that the concept actually had some potential. On top of that, the two main characters were quite charismatic. Unfortunately, even if it wasn’t a total disaster, it still didn’t really work though. Indeed, even if the concept was not bad, the story was just really weak. Afterwards, I came to the conclusion that the whole story was pretty much built up around their wish to hide for as long as possible the fact that Leo was actually a rogue robot. As a result, this tale was just terribly and unnecessarily murky but, eventually, nothing said or happening actually really mattered and this approach completely weakened the story. To make things worse, when the main character finally found out what was actually going on, Leo pretty much disappeared until the final climax which was also rather disappointing. Basically, it was a rather dumb movie with actually a few really neat ideas and they should have dropped all these generic action scenes and, instead, have most of the movie being about the two characters arguing about the meaning of life. It’s such a pity that such movies dealing with superior AI always turn them into some wannabe mass murderers.

Notes: Even though the directing team Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini always had some potential (I especially loved their directorial debut 'American Splendor'), this movie was quite a misfire and I’m not surprised that it received such poor reviews. Basically, it started as a really generic ghost story involving a rather boring couple. Like most movies in this genre, it was some typical slow burn approach with nothing much happening for a while, except for Amanda Seyfried’s character who was anorexic. However, this aspect of her character had actually so very little impact on the rest of the plot that you might wonder why it was even brought up in the first place. And, then, at some point, they started to add pretty much anything they could find and throw it into the mix. Let’s see, we had some really half-baked spiritualism, some ghost, some Ouija session without a Ouija board, a couple of murders, some vague marital issues, anorexia, weed smoking, identity theft, adultery, a con artist becoming a very unlikely serial killer, Saul Goodman’s sidekick and Indiana Jones’s first love interest. Sure, not everything was bad, Amanda Seyfried and James Norton actually delivered some solid performances even if they were both stuck with some rather tedious and poorly written characters. Still, most of this movie was just either poorly developed or simply not interesting at all and the ending was also a pathetic cop-out.

Notes: To be honest, I was actually surprised by how disappointing the damned thing actually turned out to be. I have to admit that the way they tried to mix up two different timelines with some completely different tones was actually ambitious but, unfortunately, it just never really worked. I won’t blame Shailene Woodley and Felicity Jones as they were both not bad at all and they did what they could with this material but, I’m sorry, their characters were just boring. To make things worse, they were both involved in such poorly developed romantic relationships. As a result, all these romantic connections turned out to be rather tedious. Especially with Woodley, the only reason why her lover was so much better than her husband was, well, because they said so. Sure, he did write these romantic letters but, to be honest, these letters never really impressed me. With Jones, it was not much better in the sense that she basically fell in love with the only male character involved in her storyline. The fact that she spent at first a good chunk of the running time to actually emasculate the guy didn’t help either. However, what was really the last straw for me was the fact that Jennifer clearly chose for Anthony not once but twice and twice they were both pulled apart and the only reason why was to deliver some lame dramatic punches.

Notes: Basically, their approach was to focus mostly on the fact that this murder investigation was partly solved because the family made their own investigation through a vintage social media website called ‘myspace.com’ (in fact, even though I thought it did disappear following the rise of Facebook, it apparently still exists today). Well, it might have seemed clever but, while I have to admit that it was fairly spectacular, I’m not sure if it was really the most interesting thing about this true tale. I mean, at some point, they mentioned the fact the family was also involved in criminality but it was dropped fairly quickly. In a similar fashion, they gave us some interviews with various people involved in the 5150 gang or close to the people involved in this gang but they never went really deep into this matter either. Of course, the fact that some civilians would get some better results in a murder investigation than the cops was intriguing but going deeper in the people involved, especially developing their social background, might have been more interesting, at least, to me. For example, considering how rough this neighbourhood was, it was in fact hardly surprising that some completely random shooting would result in the death of some innocent girl and this case got more attention sadly only because of the social media angle.

Notes: I have to admit that I’m not familiar with ‘Archer’, Matt Thompson’s hit TV series, but I should check it out at some point. Eventually, the main reason I wanted to see the damned thing was because Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were involved. Indeed, nobody in the business can turn some seemingly lame projects into pure gold like these guys (‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’, ‘21 Jump Street’, ‘The Lego Movie’, ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’). However, while this new animated feature was not much more misguided than the other movies I just mentioned, I’m afraid it never really worked though. The idea was basically what would happen if your history teacher would take some LSD and I have to admit that this concept might sound awesome if you describe it like this. However, if this acid trip turned out to be really weird, messy and terribly random, it was above all not really entertaining. Sure, some of the jokes were not bad, I mean, if you keep throwing some really weird and random jokes at me every 10 seconds, there is a fair chance that something might actually land at some point. The whole thing was just relentless though and it didn’t help that so many of the characters involved were just terribly moronic (George Washington, Samuel Adams, Abraham Lincoln). Seriously, as displayed by Adam Sandler time and time again during his very prolific career, a really stupid main character is actually hardly entertaining (hell, I even had a hard time to care for ‘Forrest Gump’ which is a major classic).

Notes: Probably because I was expecting something so awful but, to be honest, I didn’t think it was so bad after all. Indeed, even if it was nothing really original, it was interesting to see a movie dealing with agoraphobia and Amy Adams gave another solid performance as she was completely convincing playing a middle-age woman cloistered at home and isolated from the rest of the world. Seriously, if they would have focused more on her deteriorating state of mind, the damned thing could have been actually really good. Unfortunately, well, pretty much nothing else really worked though. Indeed, the first mistake they made was to add way too many characters and sub-plots. I mean, for someone suffering from agoraphobia, she had actually a very busy house with random people showing up pretty much every day unannounced. It might be a small detail but, for example, why did her shrink would treat her at home and not remotely by video-call? Then, you had her tenant who had so much going on that they could have built up a whole movie around this character. Finally, wasn’t it rather ridiculous that her new neighbor (the kid, his mother and his father) would show up all randomly, one by one, separately? Anyway, what pretty much ruined the whole thing was the ending though.