Friday, April 26, 2024

Stars & Popcorn

Because not all great movies are good!

Stars & Popcorn
When you’re a film critic bad movies come with the territory, but some flicks are so bad that they take a little piece of your soul with them. Since it’s the end of the year, I decided to look back through my reviews to put together a list of the worst movies of 2018. Like my list of the best movies of 2018, I decided to list these films in the order they were released and not bad to worst. The end result is a collection of movies that tested my very resolve as a critic and made me want to hang up my trusty notebook more than once. I managed to persevere through though and now I get a chance to tear these movies apart one last time. This list includes some of the most hated Hollywood cliches from bad horror movies to romanticized toxic relationships to dreaded remakes. There’s a little something in here to get everyone’s blood boiling. So, take a few deep breathes, because the worst movies of 2018 are coming right at you! Proud Mary January is a notorious time of year at the movies since Hollywood releases all the garbage they know can’t compete with Awards season or summer blockbusters. Proud Mary was one of the first truly painful films of 2018 because, in all honesty, it actually looked like a semi-decent movie. While I was hoping for the black, female version of John Wick what I got was a neo-blaxploitation film (just take a look at the poster) right down to the shallow story and cliched dialogue. The end result is exactly what you might expect from a bunch of white guys trying to write a movie about a strong, black woman. Thankfully, the film didn’t include the word “jive” being through around, but it might as well have. Proud Mary could have been so good, but instead its one of the worst movies of 2018. Fifty Shades Freed The only good thing about Fifty Shades Freed is that we might be in the clear of terrible romance franchises for a while. The best selling erotic novels, inspired by Twilight fan fiction took board housewives by storm and made a mockery of the BDSM community with its infantile understanding of the roles that doms and subs play in eachother’s lives. The end result is a trilogy featuring one of the most loathsome relationships in film history. While Dakota Johnson managed to make it up to audiences with her performance in Bad Times at the El Royale, Jamie Dornan went on to co-star in the box office flop Robin Hood. I’ll always remember the Fifty Shades series as a contributor to the rise in the romanticized ideal of what are essentially toxic relationships that will leave many a poor guy and gal scared for years to come. Thank God it’s dead now. Death Wish I’ve been known to defend remakes from time to time. However, Death Wish is not only one of the worst movies of 2018 but is also one of the worst remakes of all time. I’ll admit that I’ve never really been a big fan of Eli Roth’s gore-centric approach to filmmaking (though I was pleasantly surprised by The House with a Clock in Its Walls), but I respect him for trying to break away from the horror genre. However, Death Wish is an atrocious film that preaches the idea that any old white guy with a gun should take justice into their own hands. Bear in mind that most gun owners who think they can dispense swift justice during a crisis struggle to get a phone out of their pocket before it finishes ringing. Death Wish was easily one of the most tone-deaf films of the year and one that left me filled with anger at its very existence. The Hurricane Heist What blows my mind is that someone pitched this idea for a movie and Hollywood threw money at it. Producers took a look at a script that featured a storm chaser stopping highly trained mercenaries in the middle of a robbery during a hurricane and said: “Audiences will love this!” Well, it turns out that audiences did not love The Hurricane Heist. In fact, the film managed to make just over $6 million at the box office, which was less than 1/7th the budget. Now, I’m not above admitting that most of the great natural disaster movies out there aren’t what one might call traditionally good movies, but The Hurricane Heist was in a whole other circle of hell from them. It’s as though someone thought “hey, what if we remade Hard Rain, only dumber?” Lone and behold that’s exactly what we got from this stinker of a movie. Blumhouse's Truth or Dare 2018 had a lot of ups and downs when it came to my feelings towards Blumhouse. On the one hand, they gave us great films like BlacKkKlansman and Upgrade. On the other, we got Truth or Dare. I was expecting a twisted take on the classic game where a spirit forced players to complete tasks more twisted and deranged than the last. What I got was a film with characters that looked like they were randomly possessed by a Snapchat filter. Worst of all, at no point, did any of the people playing the game try to think their way out of any problems. These dumb dumbs didn’t stop to think how they could twist the words of the spirit to get away with dares safely. Not that it really mattered because every character in the film was so dislikeable that by the end I was rooting for the evil spirit to kill them all. Traffik Human trafficking is a hot-button issue right now with a lot of movies trying to shed light on one of the darkest crimes on the planet. However, Traffik completely undermines that cause with its absurd premise and disgustingly dislikable lead played by Priscilla Quintana. I don’t like to victim blame, but everything terrible that happens in this film is the direct result of the stupid choices this “reporter” makes when confronted by human traffickers in this film. It gets so bad that it’s hard not to get angrier and angrier at her as the film goes one. Then again, director/ writer Deon Taylor takes the easy way out every chance he gets when it comes to this poorly written excuse for a thriller. It’s a film that ignores the true victims of human trafficking which makes it an easy addition to my list of the worst movies of 2018. The First Purge I’ll admit that The Purge movies are a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, so I was excited to see that a new one was hitting theaters in 2018. There was one important aspect to the trilogy missing this time around though. Unlike the three other Purge films, The First Purge is not directed by the series writer James DeMonaco and it’s easy to tell. The other films focused on the horror elements while still maintaining plenty of subtle, but firm, political elements. However, The First Purge abandons all that in favor of a more action-oriented premise with clumsy handled political themes that border on obnoxious. The film totally misses the point of the franchise, which is and giving audiences a metaphor for the boot the wealthy places firmly on the have-nots throats and proves to be just another bad horror flick. The Darkest Minds Amandla Stenberg might have made quite an impression this year with The Hate U Give, but that doesn’t mean I’m letting her off the hook for this piece of young adult trash. The Darkest Minds is easily one of the worst movies of 2018, which is saying something considering most of the young adult movies that hit theaters were pretty bad. However, no matter how disappointing movies like Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and Mortal Engines were, I didn’t actively hate them like I did The Darkest Minds. The film is basically a rip off of the X-Men right down to the disease that gives children superpowers based on mental abilities. The thing is that I’d rather watch the Brett Ratner travesty X-Men:The Last Stand before I’d ever subject myself to this cinematic abomination ever again. Slender Man Slender Man is one of the biggest urban legends to ever hit the internet. It’s a cultural phenomenon and has all the makings of a truly terrifying story. So, how do you screw up a Slender Man movie so bad? Well, you probably give it a PG-13 rating and hand it off to a director with no experience when it comes to horror movies. Slender Man managed to do everything wrong with a character that could have easily been one of the most nightmarish in movie history. Now I tend to give horror movies a lot of wiggle room because of the inherent risks that come with the genre. But Slender Man didn’t even get a chance to be “so bad it’s good.” Instead, it managed to be not only one of the worst movies of 2018 but also one of the most disappointing as well. The Possession of Hannah Grace There have been quite a few horror films on this list of the worst movies of 2018, which is weird because there were so many good ones. Movies like A Quiet Place, Hereditary and Halloween managed to revitalize my love for the genre while others, like The Possession of Hannah Grace, made me groan. The film is basically a mash-up of The Autopsy of Jane Doe and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (the title is eerily similar too) but proves to be nowhere near as good as either. Now, I wasn’t expecting The Exorcist when I walked into this film, but I was at least hoping to get a few good jump scares out of it. Needless to say, it’s inclusion among the worst movies of 2018 disqualifies it from my top 10 Exorcism Movies list. The good news is that it was one of the last terrible films I had to sit through in 2018. As I said before, bad movies come with the territory when you’re a film critic. However, the ones I just listed were some of the worst I’ve ever seen. That being said, I’m eager to hear what you think some of the worst movies of 2018 were, so leave a comment below. Come 2019, I’ll be back and ready to take on a new year of bad movies in order to let you know which ones are so bad they’re good and which ones are abominations unto the gods of cinema.
Movie Reviews 

Proud Mary (Review)

Patrick Sessoms , , , ,

Unfortunately, Proud Mary Never Starts Burning, Much Less Keeps On Burning.

Well, it’s about that time in 2018 when I start to complain about truly awful films and first up is Proud Mary. It’s a shame because I really wanted Proud Mary to be an amazing, fun movie that was John Wick with a woman of color kicking ass. Instead, I started in horror as Proud Mary turned out a bumbling homage to blacksploitation movies of the 1970’s. I will say this though, the one thing they did manage to nail is how awful the movies were when it came to plot, dialogue, and, well, everything.

Proud Mary stars Taraji P. Henson as an organized crime enforcer who ends up developing a soft spot for a kid and turns on ‘the family’ to help him. Sounds like the making of a great action movie overall, but it fails at nearly every turn. There’s absolutely no character development for Mary herself, meaning what you see at the beginning is what you get at the end. We never see her struggle with choices or change from a stone-cold killer to a protective mother figure. There’s no hero’s journey for her. Now, this would be forgivable if the kid she was protecting was at least endearing, but Jahi Di’Allo Winston is an insufferable brat throughout the movie. To make matter worse, the chemistry between the two is nearly nonexistent.

If you want to see a movie with a hitman and a kid, just watch The Professional.

The issues though aren’t just from the performances though, especially since the script is so incredibly weak with what it gives the actors to work with. Pretty much every technical issue you can name comes up in this film. The pacing is incredibly awkward throughout it, only giving scenes enough time to let characters spit their lines out. It never gives the audience a chance to take in what’s happening, and luckily most will be smart enough to connect the dots because director Babak Najafi certainly doesn’t seem to want them too. In fact, it almost feels like he sees this movie as a chore and is trying to get it over with as quickly as he can. Unfortunately, this movie just can’t manage to be over with quickly enough.

As far as the action sequences go, Proud Mary left me with a furrowed brow as it failed to pay off in even that regard. The scenes might be fast paced, but they lack the creativity and hard-hitting brutality that recent action films have brought to the genre. Knowing that it would have to compete with these films Proud Mary makes little effort to even be a contender. Even without taking the current landscape of the action genre, Proud Mary never manages to wow just because everyone Mary goes against has the tactical prowess of a 5-year-old on a playground. She doesn’t look like a badass because she is. She looks like a badass because everyone around her is kind of pathetic in a fight. Even the main villains of the film never managed to truly intimidate. The best they can offer is making you feel mildly uncomfortable.

She has a thing for leather.

Like I’ve said before, January is a pretty sad month for new movies and Proud Mary is perfect evidence of that. The most entertainment it offers is giving you a movie that’s easy to make fun of. Otherwise, it’s an insufferable mess that is lacking in almost every possible way. It’s such an incredible disappointment that after so many recent tough women in great action roles, this movie stumbles and falls flat on its face. Proud Mary gets some points for diversity, but otherwise, it’s one I can’t recommend in good conscience.