Welcome back to Rhode Island Movie Corner’s end-of-the-year
Top 10 list of the Worst films of 2014. This is Part 2 and today I’ll be
listing my Top 5 least favorite films of 2014. And I tell you, folks, we got
some really bad ones here today so let’s get started…
Number 5 takes the cake for what is easily my pick for the most
disappointing film of this year, which is really sad given all of the talent
that’s involved with it both in front of and behind the camera.
5. TRANSCENDENCE
It really sucks that ‘Transcendence’, well, sucked because
it had a lot of things going for it. It was the directorial debut of Wally
Pfister, who is mostly known for being director Christopher Nolan’s go-to
cinematographer having worked on all of his films save for his directorial
debut ‘Following’ and this year’s ‘Interstellar’, in the case of the latter
because he was working on this (and quite frankly he should’ve just worked on
that film, though his absence isn’t really a total loss). One could hope that
Pfister could become the next Nolan due to how much time he had spent working
with him and while I do think that Pfister does have potential as a director,
he really needed a much better first project. The biggest problem of this film
is quite simple… it’s boring. And I mean boring in the sense that nothing at
all happens in this film despite the fact that things are technically going on
as far as the plot goes (it’s rather hard to explain). And while I’ll admit
that I don’t know a lot about the kind of science that is in this movie, I’m
guessing that the science in this movie is, to be frank, fairly BS. And
finally, the characters in this movie are very flat. You don’t care that much
about the main characters and many of the other characters don’t get that much
to do, specifically the two FBI agents played by Nolan regulars Cillian Murphy
and Morgan Freeman.
To be fair, there are some good things about this movie. For
one thing, the cinematography is really nice. Pfister may not have been the
cinematographer for the film but his shooting style is very much on display
here. Also, despite what I had said earlier about the characters being flat,
the cast actually does a decent job with what they had to work with and there
are two in particular that really stand out. The first is, believe it or not,
Johnny Depp in the lead role of scientist Will Caster. Depp has mainly been known
for playing a lot of eccentric roles such as Jack Sparrow, Tonto, and the Mad
Hatter, but here he gives a very subdued performance which is actually a pretty
nice change of pace from what we usually see from his other film roles. The
other major standout of the cast is Paul Bettany, who plays Max, Will’s best
friend. He serves as the narrator in the opening of the film so really, the
film probably should’ve been about him instead of Will and his wife Evelyn as
he’s really the only character in the entire film who gets any major character
development. In short, it’s sad that ‘Transcendence’ ended up the way it did,
though I don’t blame Pfister for this. I’ve heard that the original screenplay
for the film was much stronger but then it got neutered, presumably by the
studio. I’m not 100% sure if that’s true but I have the feeling that this is
why the film turned out the way it did. I do think Pfister’s direction was
solid, but unfortunately this was not a good directorial debut for him at all.
The lead actor of my Number 4 pick tries his best to save
this film but ultimately that isn’t enough…
4. I, FRANKENSTEIN
To his credit, Aaron Eckhart is at least trying in the lead
role of Frankenstein’s monster in this reimagining of the classic
‘Frankenstein’ story (though this is actually based on a graphic novel of the
same name by Kevin Grevoiux). However, the film itself is just a mediocre clone
of the ‘Underworld’ movies (which I haven’t seen), which is really no surprise
seeing how it was made by the same people and like that franchise it too was
released in the dead movie month of January. It’s a lot of monster action (and
to the film’s credit, a lot of the action sequences are actually decently shot)
but it’s mostly just style over substance as many of the characters are fairly
flat. As I just noted, Eckhart is the only one in the cast who’s really trying
here while everyone else just seems bored. And really, that’s the best way to
describe this whole movie; rather boring. Thankfully, it’s mercifully short as
it is only 92 minutes long. Still, I’d stay away from this one if I were you
because while Aaron Eckhart tries his best here, it isn’t enough to save this
movie.
There were two films that came out this year that were directed
by ‘Training Day’ writer David Ayer. One was really good while the other, to
put it bluntly… sucked.
3. SABOTAGE
The David Ayer film this year that I did like was ‘Fury’, a
war film that was fairly hard-hitting and grim in terms of its violence and
overall tone, which is actually the main reason why it didn’t hit as well with
some people, but was also very captivating mainly thanks to the strong
camaraderie between the main characters, along with the great performance by
the five leads, and the excellent action sequences. Ayer’s other film this
year, ‘Sabotage’, doesn’t have those same advantages. Believe it or not this is
actually a case where both of these films are actually fairly similar in a lot
of ways but while the brutal violence and grim atmosphere of ‘Fury’ actually
did work due to the fact that it was a war film, ‘Sabotage’ is just violent for
the sake of violence. Because of this, there are a lot of really brutal and
harsh scenes of unnecessary violence in the film, like when the main character
Breacher watches the snuff film of his wife and son being murdered by the
cartel (and we do see the wife’s murder occur on-screen, for the record) or the
final chase scene at the end of the movie where two random civilians get
brutally and quite pointlessly murdered by the bad guys, one of which gets
‘accidentally’ shot by one of them and the other gets run over by them. Sure, a
lot of the action in ‘Fury’ was rather hard to watch at times but the same can
be said for a lot of war films, including the most famous war movie in recent
years, ‘Saving Private Ryan’. ‘Sabotage’ is not a war movie.
Another thing that both films have in common is that they
both have main characters that, for the most part, can be rather unlikable at
times. In ‘Fury’, that is shown in scenes where the four pre-existing
crewmembers of ‘Fury’ mock the newbie Ellison for his inexperience in tank
combat. At the same time, though, there were also scenes that showed that there
was still some, even if only a little, humanity left in them and you could see
where they were coming from given that they were in the middle of war, where it
is clearly shown that sympathy wasn’t going to get you anywhere far. The main
characters in ‘Sabotage’ don’t have that same humanity. They’re all pretty
unlikable so you don’t care about any of them when they all get killed. This
film’s story is a ‘modern update’ on the classic story ‘And Then There Were
None’ by Agatha Christie about a group of characters who all get axed off one
by one after they commit a crime. I actually do like the idea of them updating
that story for modern times, with this film focusing on a team of DEA agents instead
of a group of random strangers, but when you have a script co-written by the
writer of ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ and ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’, that gives
you an idea of what kind of movie you’re in for. The only real positive thing
about this movie is that, believe it or not, this is actually one of Arnold
Schwarzenegger’s best performances to date in the lead role of Breacher. It’s
too bad though that the rest of the movie is pretty terrible.
Originally taking the top spot on this list, my Number 2
choice ended up getting knocked down a slot after I saw what quickly became my
pick for the worst film of the year… but that doesn’t mean this film will be
getting a free pass… oh no…
2. THE LEGEND OF HERCULES
There were two films this year about the famous mythical
Greek hero Hercules, the other being director Brett Ratner’s ‘Hercules’
starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in the lead role of Hercules. And the fact that,
after watching ‘The Legend of Hercules’, I was actually looking forward to a
Brett Ratner film (which for the record I still haven’t seen though I hear it
isn’t that bad if you go into it with the right expectations) shows how truly
bad the first ‘Hercules’ film of this year was. This is what I like to call a
‘D-grade’ action film, a film that is so cheap in regards to pretty much every
major element of the film. It tries very hard to be like Zack Snyder’s ‘300’,
even copying the visual style of that film for the most part. But in the end
it’s not as awesome as ‘300’ mainly due to the fact that it’s PG-13, resulting
in a lot of bloodless action. There’s only like one decent action sequence,
which occurs at the end of the film, but for the most part the action in this
is pretty poor as it over-utilizes the slow-motion that ‘300’ also used. The
visuals in this film are god-awful and feel more like visuals from a
PlayStation 1 game. Sure, there may be some actual sets and locations used in
the film from time to time but a lot of the exterior landscapes were all CG and
they just look terrible.
The acting is also pretty poor from all who were involved.
No offense to Kellan Lutz, but he is not yet ‘leading man’ material as shown in
this movie. His Hercules comes off as being fairly bland and dull and the same
can be said for a lot of the other members of the cast in this movie, including
Gaia Weiss as Hercules’ love interest Hebe and Roxanne McKee as Hercules’
mother, Queen Alcmene. The only thing that could possibly be considered as a
‘redeeming factor’ in this film is Scott Adkins as the main villain, King
Amphitryon, though this is only because Adkins overacts his ass off in this
(which mainly consists of him SHOUTING ALL OF HIS LINES) so it’s more a case of
unintentional hilarity than being anything that’s really worthwhile. In short,
‘The Legend of Hercules’ is just a mediocre take on the legendary character of
Hercules. And while, as I noted earlier, the other major ‘Hercules’ film this
year apparently wasn’t that good either, it seems as if it at least wasn’t as
bad as this film. This is easily one of the cheapest-looking and poorest made
action films that I have ever seen that I swear feels like something from the
Asylum, which isn’t too far off considering that this year also saw the release
of ‘Sharknado 2’.
So finally we come to my pick for the worst film of 2014 and
boy let me tell you, we’ve got one hell of a stinker here. It’s a sequel to a
film that also made my ‘Worst of’ list last year and would you believe… that
this one is even worse than that one?
1. A HAUNTED HOUSE 2
UGH… I don’t even know why I even watched this film. If you
recall, last year I listed the first ‘A Haunted House’ film as one of my picks
for the worst films of 2013. It was only Number 5 on that list so it wasn’t the
absolute worst movie that I saw from that year and it didn’t really anger me
too much compared to some of the other crappy films from last year. Still, it
was an unfunny and in a lot of cases really annoying ‘comedy’ (I use that term
very, very, VERY loosely) and the sequel’s basically the same thing. But oh
god, would you believe that this one is actually much worse than the first
film. Now, for the record, I’m not one of those people who likes to use terms
like ‘this movie hurt me’ or ‘this movie gave me (insert disease here)’ when it
comes to describing bad movies because I think that those are just childish
remarks as I have never seen any real proof that a film can actually cause
physical harm. But in all seriousness, ‘A Haunted House 2’ actually near make
me vomit at certain times. This film goes WAY too overboard in regards to its
gross-out humor. There’s an entire sequence where the main character Malcolm
has sex with the doll from ‘The Conjuring’ (and that spin-off ‘Annabelle’,
which I’ve heard only bad things about so I didn’t even bother seeing that one)
and then later the doll starts tormenting him and even sends him racy photos…
EWW!! Then there’s another scene where Malcolm’s new stepdaughter is about to
vomit as the camera zooms in on her mouth and we see a penis pop up inside her
mouth. You see what I mean when I say that this film is just gross?
I don’t even recall there being a lot of gross-out humor
like this in the first ‘A Haunted House’. It was just a bunch of unfunny jokes
and a lot of racist dialogue, with arguably more uses of the ‘n-word’ than even
frigging ‘Django Unchained’. That and something I didn’t mention last time was
that I also found the characters to be very annoying. The same things apply to
the sequel as well but then you add all of the sick gross-out humor that I will
never be able to unsee and you really have one hell of a stinker. Folks, I’ve
seen some really bad movies in my time, from ‘Sucker Punch’ to ‘InAPPropriate
Comedy’. Last year, I said that ‘InAPPropriate Comedy’ was the worst film that
I’ve ever seen but you know what? I think ‘A Haunted House 2’ now takes that spot
as the absolute worst film that I’ve ever seen in my life. ‘InAPPropriate
Comedy’ may have made me very angry due to it being both unfunny and offensive,
but ‘A Haunted House 2’ made me want to frigging hurl. Like I said before, I
don’t really use those terms when reviewing movies but in this case it’s
actually fairly true. That’s how bad this film was. It’s so bad that the first
film is almost a masterpiece by comparison and considering how bad that first
film also is, that’s saying a hell of a lot.
And those are my Top 10 worst films of 2014… GOOD
RIDDANCE!!! On the bright side, now we can move on to the good stuff. Check
back in the next few days for my end of the year best-of list.
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