I've had an insane couple of months as I've switched positions within my school, so while I've been keeping up on the seeing movies end, I'm behind on the writing about movies front. The write-ups will probably be shorter, but I will do my best to crank through everything before Oscar night in 15 days.
Here are the 10 worst movies of 2012:
#62 Dark Shadows
There was a four or five day window in between when I got
back from a backpacking trip through Europe and when I moved to Minneapolis. It
was the end of August, and it was right around my mom’s birthday. She likes
going to the movies about as much as I do, so she chose something and we went.
It was Tim Burton’s reboot of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and it was
God-awful.
Burton has had his good films. Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd,
Big Fish, Beetlejuice, Batman. But he’s hit or miss, and Dark Shadows was a
miss of epic proportions. It was the Addams family with more convolution and
less charm. The story of Barnabas Collins (Depp) coming back from the dead to
retrieve his treasure from his Collins heirs (Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Lee
Miller, Chloe Grace Moretz, etc.) and avoid re-death at the hands of the evil
Angelique (Eva Green) stays together for about the first half-hour before it
goes completely off the rails. Avoid this dud.
#61 Savages
Oliver Stone is even streakier than Tim Burton, and hasn’t
made a consensus good flick since Any Given Sunday. We start with the voice of
Blake Lively’s character, O (short for Ophelia), narrating over shots of
Laguna: “Just because I’m telling you this story, doesn’t mean I’m alive at the
end of it.” She lives with two major players in the California weed game,
ex-marine Chon (Taylor Kitsch, keeping his streak of shitty movies alive) and
consummate hippie Ben (Aaron Johnson). And guess what? She’s screwing them
both. One day, a couple of major players in the Mexican weed game, cartel-runner
Elena (Salma Hayek) and her muscle (Benicio del Toro) roll into town and demand
the boys cut them into their weed business as partners. And to drive the point
home, they send them unnecessarily violent clips of people who have crossed
their paths and have been chainsawed as a result, shoot some district attorneys
in the kneecaps, and when the boys decline, kidnap O. They then have to work to
get her back and save their weed entrepreneurship. It’s colorful and at times
entertaining, but it’s an absolute mess.
#60 Mama
Originally when I offered to take my mentee to the movies
for a week of good behavior, she and her friend wanted to go to the Wayan’s
brothers new Paranormal Activity-spoof A Haunted House. I was game until I saw
the preview, which dropped something like 30 curse words in a two-minute spot.
I wanted to keep my job, so I opted to take them to the PG-13 horror film Mama
instead.
Mama wasn’t terrible, but it sure wasn’t great. Jessica
Chastain and Nicolai Coster-Waldau (Jamie Lannister from Game of Thrones) take
in his two nieces after they have been left in the woods after the death of
their parents. While they were out in the woods, they end up forming a relationship
with a ghost who had been dead for like, 200 years. So naturally, as they are
staying with their new relatives, mama gets jealous and wreaks havoc on their
suburban haunt (get it? “haunt”?) in order to try and get possession of the
girls. Every move from there on is hokey and predictable. It seems like our
protagonists would have fared better had they taken the advice of my mentees,
which was “Kick her in the face, bro!” and “I would have snapped her neck…with
her nasty self.”
#59 The Dictator
The latest Sacha Baron Cohen vehicle had some decent moments, but it was mostly offensive and unfunny. His relationship with Brooklyn vegan Ana Faris doesn’t really work for me, and neither does most of the movie. He’s become kind of a one-trick pony, pushing the envelope with foreign-born characters that arm themselves with stereotypes and chicanery.
The best element of his previous films, such as Borat, are the use of the documentary style and the reactions of the “normal” members of the community that are meant to reflect the ridiculousness of our society. It doesn’t work when it’s a narrative.
#58 Project X
The party at the Donovan-Jacobson house in the Spring of
1998 was one of the highlights of 10th grade. There was plenty of
underage drinking and smoking and all things else, but what made the party
memorable was the escape. When the cops showed up, many of us (including me)
hopped the fence in the backyard and split into random factions, while others
chose to hide out in the gazebo at Orton Park across the street and wait the
situation out. It was discussed for weeks after; there were always new stories emerging.
# 57 The Amazing Spider-Man
This one was disappointing. I guess my expectations were too
high. Andrew Garfield was pretty good as the vulnerable and lonely teen
webslinger, and there were a few action sequences that I liked. But otherwise,
it felt like a worse version of the Spidey origin story that Tobey Maguire
already did 10 years ago. Emma Stone is one-dimensional as Gwen Stacey, Rhys
Ifans is over-the top as the Lizard, and the ending kinda falls flat.
#56 Safe House
Denzel is legendary contract killer Tobin Frost, who is
looking to outrun the CIA and escape the “safe house” where he is being held
captive in Cape Town. Tasked with keeping him in the safe house is Ryan Reynolds,
a fresh-faced newbie. Now let me ask, do you think Ryan Reynolds, a passable
Green Lantern, is going to be able to head off Denzel in full-on Book of
Eli/Man on Fire mode?
Of course not. After Denzel is waterboarded (he actually did
the scenes without a stuntman) and tortured in various other ways, he uses
badassery to unleash hell on the compound. The action sequences are pretty good
and Cape Town is a scenic locale. Can, however, Ryan Reynolds carry an action
film? Sure can’t.
#55 Liberal Arts
Josh Radnor has made a career of being the sensitive, intelligent
nice guy schlub who finishes last. In How
I Met Your Mother, I find myself getting pissed off at the stupid choices
that his character Ted Mosby makes and the “life lessons” he learns along the
way.
Liberal Arts, Radnor’s
directorial debut, is the story of Jesse (Radnor) returning to his old college
for his professor’s (Richard Jenkins) retirement party and falling for a
college student named Zibbie (Elizabeth Olson). Their relationship is
complicated by the age difference and the long distance and they find it tough
to pull off. It was okay, but I felt like not much happened and though Olsen
was good as usual, Radnor was just Ted Mosby 2.0. I’m sure the kid has range,
but we just haven’t seen it yet.
#54 American Reunion
I would consider myself a proponent of the American Pie
franchise as a whole (probably more so than most). American Reunion finds Jim,
Oz, Finch, Kevin and of course Stifler attending their high school reunion in
East Great Falls. There, they commiserate on how things haven’t worked out
quite in the way they’d hoped. Jim and Michelle are married and have a kid. Oz
is a famous sports anchor who is married to a coldhearted model. Kevin is still
whiny, Finch is still new-age-y, and Stifler is still Stifler. The usual
dirty jokes and sight gags apply. This time, though, the characters feel like
caricatures and the awkward teen sex tableaus can’t work because, well, they’re
not teens anymore. American Reunion is wistfully formulaic, and let’s face it—no
one finds Tara Reid hot anymore.
#53 The Bourne Legacy
Not as good without Matt Damon. Renner still brings the pain,
and there’s a cool winter sequence where he and another operative are
outrunning homing missiles and cool shit like that. The big problem I had with
it was how confusing it was. There’s an expose’ being written on one of the
companies that trains that the operatives and another company is somehow
involved, and the operatives have to go into hiding as usual. I tried my
hardest to care, but I couldn’t.
Tune in for a bunch more tomorrow!
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