Welcome back to Rhode Island Movie Corner’s annual End of the Year list in which I count down my picks for the Top 10 Worst Films of 2017. This is the second half of a two-part series and today I’ll be delving into my Top 5 worst from this past year in film. If you want to see picks #10-6, click here to be directed over to Part 1. But for now, it’s time to get back to the list…
As I said back in Part 1, I found a lot of the films that ended up on this year’s list to be more ‘disappointing’ than ‘anger-inducing’. This very much applies to my Number 5 pick given all of the big names that were involved with it.
5. THE CIRCLE
This was a film that had quite the cast and crew attached to it. With big names like Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, and Bill Paxton (in his final film appearance following his passing this past February) in the cast and indie sensation James Ponsoldt behind the camera, there was some genuine potential for The Circle to be a solid film inspired by the ongoing controversy of internet privacy. Sadly, the film just ends up being a lackluster thriller that feels like a severely truncated adaptation of its source material. Now, granted, like I said in my original review for this film, I haven’t read Dave Eggers’ original novel upon which this film is based; however, I have read through its plot synopsis. In the process, I noticed that the film leaves out some big moments from the novel. One of these involves the character Annie (Karen Gillan), the best friend of the main protagonist, Mae. While Annie is the one who helps Mae land a job at the big tech magnate ‘The Circle’, she begins to become jealous of Mae when she starts to become more popular within the company’s ranks. Thus, she decides to volunteer to test out one of the company’s new products known as PastPerfect, which tracks their users’ family history, as a way of improving her standing within the company. However, this ends up bringing some of her family’s disturbing history to light, which stresses her out so much that she ends up in a catatonic state. By contrast, her fate in the film is a lot less grim, as she just decides to leave the company when the stress of all of the traveling that she has to do for work becomes too much for her to bear. Still, the way in which this all plays out in the novel definitely would’ve helped in giving the film adaptation a bit more edge to it.
The other big change from the novel mainly stems from how it all ends. Mae ends up meeting one of the Circle’s original founders, Ty (John Boyega, who is SEVERELY underused in this film), who warns her about some of the company’s darker practices. In the film, this ultimately concludes with the two of them publicly exposing all of this and ruining the reputations of Circle CEO’s Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks who, to be perfectly frank, is quite miscast in the role of the supposed ‘villain’) and Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt, who’s also arguably quite miscast). In the novel, however, it’s a different story; Mae ends up siding with Eamon and Tom when Ty comes to her with this information. In other words, the main character of the story arguably ends up going down quite the sinister path by embracing the idea of a fully transparent world regardless of the consequences that would inevitably come from it. This doesn’t happen in the film, which ultimately leads to what is probably its biggest shortcoming; at the end of the day, the overall stakes in this film are quite unclear. Even when Mae and Ty one-up Eamon and Tom at the end of it all, you really don’t get the sense of what all of this was meant to accomplish because it seems like nothing really changes. In short, this film ultimately lacks a lot of its source material’s edge, as it seems as if these changes were made primarily to make it more appealing to audiences. And while I’m not necessarily ‘against’ this decision, it certainly hurt the film from a narrative perspective while also limiting its stacked ensemble cast due to the weakened material.
This next film was my #1 worst of the year for quite a few months. But while it did manage to avoid ‘that’ spot by year’s end, that doesn’t mean that I’ll be giving it a free pass.
4. BAYWATCH
Despite its high placement on this list, I will openly admit that I still think that it’s a bummer that this film turned out the way that it did. I still remember how, prior to its release, it was being built up as the big comedy of the summer thanks to one heck of a major marketing blitz. And with big names like Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron in the cast, what could possibly go wrong? Well, for one thing, this film had one of the worst ‘hit-miss’ ratios of any comedy that I’ve ever seen, with almost all of its jokes proving to be massive duds. Like CHiPS, this film attempts to take the premise of an old TV series and give it a hard-R raunchy vibe that’s very much in line with modern R-rated comedies. In the process, though, it just makes the whole film a bit too mean-spirited and also rather sexist. And for the record, when I say ‘sexist’, I don’t primarily mean in regards to how this film is based on a show that was heavily known for showing off sexy female lifeguards. Instead, the biggest reason why this film proves to quite sexist is that, aside from main leads Johnson and Efron, none of the film’s female leads get any sort of good material to work with. This includes Alexandria Daddario as Summer Quinn, Kelly Rohrbach as C.J. Parker (AKA Pamela Anderson’s character from the original series), and Priyanka Chopra as the main antagonist Victoria Leeds. Bottom line, it’s arguably quite unbelievable that this film managed to screw up this much, but alas, here we are. Like I said in my original review for the film, I have never watched the original Baywatch TV series before, and while this film won’t completely turn me off from ever checking it out in the future, it’s safe to say that it certainly isn’t a good representation of its source material.
Well, I guess you can say that it’s only fitting that we’d eventually get to a horror film; they do often appear on this list, after all. And in this instance, we have the latest entry in a franchise that had seemed dead for more than a decade.
3. RINGS
Now this is a film that has been in development for quite a long time as the latest installment of a horror franchise from the early 2000’s. It all began in 2002 when director Gore Verbinski, one year prior to starting the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, helmed an Americanized remake of the 1998 Japanese horror film Ring. This tale of a cursed videotape that kills those who watch it after seven days was one of the most critically acclaimed horror films of its time, and for the most part, the American remake fared just as well with critics and audiences. While I personally didn’t find it to be that ‘scary’, it did benefit from having an effectively creepy atmosphere along with a strong lead performance from Naomi Watts as reporter Rachel Keller, the main protagonist. Three years later, the remake got a sequel, The Ring Two. However, even though it was helmed by Hideo Nakata, director of the original Ring, it was a fairly mediocre sequel that suffered heavily from its bland script. This brings us back to this year’s Rings which, as noted earlier, had basically been in development hell for several years. For such a long time, it was unclear if it was ever going to get made or if Naomi Watts would return to reprise her role as Rachel; heck, at one point, there was apparently plans to have it be filmed in 3-D. Ultimately, though, Watts did not return for this film, which takes place more than a decade after the events of the previous films. And yet, even after all that time… this film is heavily dated.
For one thing, even though the film is set in modern times, it still relies heavily on the franchise’s original concept of a cursed videotape… even though VHS has been an obsolete format for quite a few years at this point. Oh sure, they do implement a few modern twists into this idea by the end, namely when the infamous ‘Ring’ video gets uploaded online and goes viral, but for the most part, the plot feels just as obsolete as that original cursed videotape. As for the rest of the film, it’s just your basic horror film with wooden characters, bland direction, and so on and so forth. Heck, it even goes as far as to blatantly copy a story concept from the 2016 horror-thriller Don’t Breathe. For those who don’t remember, that film revolved around a trio of thieves who attempted to rob a blind man’s house only to discover that the blind man was more than capable of dealing with them. And what do we have in this film? Why we have a blind man who knows how to defend himself against intruders. Yes, part of the plot involves the main characters visiting a blind priest played by Vincent D’Onofrio. This priest is eventually revealed to be the man who had raped the mother of the series’ main antagonist, Samara, thereby resulting in her birth. There’s even a sequence set in the priest’s house that’s in the dark; you seriously can’t get any more obvious than that. And that really sums up Rings in a nutshell; for a film that took such a long time to get made, it clearly shows in the final product that it’s incredibly behind in the times when it comes to its franchise’s place in the horror genre.
Oh boy… we’re back to this franchise…
2. FIFTY SHADES DARKER
Yes, 2017 saw the latest installment of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise AKA the series that initially began as Twilight fan-fiction. While author E.L. James’ highly controversial erotic romance series has not been well-received by most critics, it has done quite well commercially. Case in point, while the series’ first film adaptation was touted by many as one of the worst films of 2015, it grossed over half a billion dollars worldwide. As many of you will no doubt recall, that film ultimately landed at the #6 spot in my ‘Worst of 2015’ list. But as for its sequel, it ends up at a much higher spot because even with a change in director, with James Foley (director of the 1992 cult classic Glengarry Glen Ross) now at the helm, it does not improve upon its equally terrible predecessor. It’s the same stuff that we saw before; awful dialogue, stilted acting, and watered-down sex scenes that don’t reach the ridiculous lengths of what was described in the books (Disclaimer: Still haven’t read them and still don’t ever plan to). But this film, especially, highlights what is easily one of the worst aspects of this entire series; the general indecisiveness of its main characters, namely female lead Anastasia Steele. At the end of the first film, Ana decided to break things off with her ‘boyfriend’ Christian Grey when she found that she was unable to deal with being his BDSM submissive. However, in this film, she ends up getting back together with him despite the fact that Christian is still a douchebag stalker who is clearly wrong for her. And yet, the film ends with him proposing to her, setting up the stage for this series’ finale (thankfully…), Fifty Shades Freed. It’ll be hitting theaters next month and, suffice it to say, will probably end up appearing on my ‘Worst of 2018’ list.
Well, we started off this list on a controversial note with Justice League, so it’s only fitting that we end it with an equally controversial #1 pick. Now I know what some of you may be thinking… why would my pick for the worst film of 2017 possibly be controversial? Usually, most people would agree with me in saying that the film in question was one of the worst of the year, right? Well… not in this instance; this film actually did do fairly well with critics. But as for me… well, I’m on the side that gave this film the rare ‘F’ rating on CinemaScore.
1. MOTHER!
Yes, Darren Aronofsky’s latest polarizing directorial effort is my pick for the worst film of 2017. In fact… this was one of the worst films that I’ve ever seen, period. As I said a few months back, this was one of the most excruciating experiences that I’ve ever had as a film critic in terms of both having to sit through this god-awful mess of a film and then having to write about it. Now, before any of those out there who did like this film tries to get on my case about this, let me make one thing perfectly clear. This is not a situation where ‘I didn’t understand what was going on’ because I did. I knew that this film was intended to be a biblical allegory utilizing some of the most famous figures from the Bible and implementing them into a modern context. Jennifer Lawrence’s character is Mother Nature, Javier Bardem’s character is God, Michelle Pfeiffer and Ed Harris represent Adam and Eve, and their two sons played by real-life brothers Domhnall and Brian Gleeson are Cain and Abel. However, the only reason why I knew that is because I accidentally stumbled across information that explains who Bardem was meant to be portraying just prior to seeing the film. With that in mind, if you’re going into this film completely blind (which is something that I know quite a few film fans are trying to do nowadays in these spoiler-heavy times), it’s quite possible that you won’t even know what the heck is happening in it. And even if you do know what’s supposed to be going on in this film, there are still quite a lot of things in it that make no frigging sense. Like at one point, Bardem’s character’s publisher (Kristen Wiig) starts executing a bunch of random strangers during a get-together. Why? It’s never explained. And trust me when I say that this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a film that is, to reference a common military slang term, truly FUBAR.
I will say this, though; to the film’s credit, everyone in the cast does a solid job in their respective roles. If anything, they do succeed in conveying the traits of the biblical figures that they’re meant to represent. However, this is ultimately all for naught in this pretentious mess of a film that features some truly obnoxious cinematography and editing. In short, it’s because of films like this that I usually don’t watch a lot of art-house films. Granted, that’s not to say that I would dismiss the genre completely because of this film (just look at my ‘Best of 2016’ list when I ranked Swiss Army Man at #8). And again, I do recognize why others would like a film like this. But if you ask me, this film is a terrible representative for its genre, as it is way too extreme in its overall execution to the point where it also comes off as being quite sexist. Jennifer Lawrence did state, after all, that the film’s plot was basically about the ‘raping of Mother Nature’; suffice it to say, she was right about that. Now for the record, I’m saying all of this while being fully aware of the fact that this has very much become one of those films where those who liked it are being quite critical towards those who didn’t like it. This is, after all, an original film that took some risks and yet was generally ignored by theatergoers. Well, to that I’ll say the same thing that I said about The Emoji Movie back in Part 1… this is not the film to get that worked up over. If anything, it proves that just because a film is ‘original’ or ‘independently made’, that doesn’t automatically make it good.
And those are my Top 10 Worst Films of 2017. Like I always say, it’s great to get this list out of the way first so that you don’t have to think about the year’s biggest stinkers any further. Thanks for following along and feel free to sound off in the comments below with your own picks for the Worst Films of 2017. Also, be sure to stay tuned for my next big end-of-the-year list in which I’ll be counting down my favorite films from this past year. You can all expect that series of posts sometime in the next few weeks.
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