TOP TEN WORST FILMS OF 2019
10. THE SOUVENIR
Right off the bat, I understand that this is a
controversial choice for a bottom ten list, if just for the huge
number of best of lists that I have seen “The Souvenir” included
on. I understand that the film has its fans, and those that love it,
really love it, but this was one of the most frustrating things I saw
in a cinema all year. There were a number of things that I did not
like about the film, but the thing above everything else was the
character of Tom, played in the film by Tom Burke. He was absolutely
infuriating and the most self obsessed character I had seen on film
for ages, and I hated every second he was on screen, which was a lot
as he is the main character's boyfriend. Time after time, I could
not see what this woman saw in him, nor why she stayed with him. He
is a manipulative, self centred, heroin junkie who used anyone he
could, all in the name of his next hit, and the fact that Julie
appears blind to his very obvious flaws drove me batty. Another
thing that I disliked about “The Souvenir” was the way director
Joanna Hogg dealt with time in the film, which made it very confusing
at times when things were happening or how long after something else
had happened. I am not a viewer who needs to be spoon-fed
everything, but I felt the way Hogg seemed to hold back details from
the audience an unnecessary detriment, as there were moments (far too
regularly) where you never knew if a character knew a certain thing,
or if they did, when they found out about it. I just found the whole
thing very oddly handled. That said though, I will give Honor
Swinton Byrne her due for her fantastic lead performance as Julie;
she is outstanding in the film and the only thing that made it
bearable for me to sit through.
9. RATTLESNAKE
Australian director Zak Hilditch's previous two films
both made my “best-of” list of their respective years, however
his latest film has found its way onto the opposite list due to the
fact that it was a total missed opportunity. The story of
“Rattlesnake” has to do with how far a mother is willing to go to
save the life of her own daughter, even if it means the death of
someone else. It is a great moral dilemma that is ripe for cinematic
observation, but sadly Hilditch does nothing with this fantastic set
up. If you could sit down and think of what would be the most
obvious resolution of this story, I can guarantee you, that this is
exactly where “Rattlesnake” ends up going. I was severely
disappointed in this film, especially after “1922” and “These
Final Hours”, which both had depth and real human emotions,
something that “Rattlesnake” was sorely missing.
8. HELLBOY
It may be no surprise to see this film on this list, as
“Hellboy” was one of the worst reviewed films of 2019 (that is,
until “Cats” was released). The biggest tragedy in regards to
the existence of this film, is that it put the final nail into the
coffin of the slim hopes that we may have got the final instalment of
Guillermo Del Toro's planned “Hellboy” trilogy. You see, I am
actually a huge fan of Big Red and love Del Toro's take on the horned
character. Whilst I understand that they were not big money makers
for the studios that made those films, it still baffles me that they
chose to not make a third film with Del Toro and gave us what we
ended up getting with this new rendition of “Hellboy”. Even
though I was disappointed in the decision to reboot this franchise, I
at least thought they made some good decisions with choosing Neil
Marshall as director and recasting Hellboy with David Harbour.
However, the film that ended up being was as close to as a disaster
as could be. Harbour didn't understand the character, and Marshall
seemed too focused on the extreme amount of blood on screen to care
that the film just didn't work at all. It was rude, crude, loud, and
frankly embarrassing. Gone was the humour, pathos and heart found in
the Del Toro films, instead replaced with poor cgi gore and swear
words. The only thing saving this film from being lower down this
list, is one great scene involving the Baba Yaga character.
Everything else in this version of “Hellboy” was mind-numbingly
bad.
7. LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
This is another film that I have seen on a few “best
of” lists, and I must admit that from a purely visual perspective,
“Long Day's Journey Into Night” is stunningly beautiful to look
at......well at least half of it is. And that is my main problem
with the film. As gorgeous as the obviously Wong Kar Wai inspired
images of the first half are, the second half of the film is so self
indulgent that it takes away everything great that came before it.
Not to spoil anybody's viewing of this film, but the final fifty nine
minutes of “Long Day's Journey Into Night” are a dream sequence
that is told in a single, unbroken shot, that is also presented in
3-D. The complexity of such a shot is immense and the balls director
Bi Gan has to have even attempted such a thing must be huge, and
while he succeeds in pulling off this enormous challenge, for me, it
is this shot that stops the film dead, in a narrative sense. As soon
as this dream sequence begins, the film stops working for me. It
suddenly becomes only about the shot; you only focus on the feat of
this one extended shot, and all the drama of the film is immediately
lost. Until this point, I was so into the film, and loved being
involved in its central mystery. I couldn't take my eyes off of Tang
Wei and wanted to immerse myself in this story. Then this dream
sequence comes out of nowhere and destroys all that magic. I also
felt the dream sequence itself fails to lead anywhere interesting.
It would be remiss of me not to note that I did not see this sequence
in 3-D either, and as such, my viewing of the scene may be tainted
and it may be more impressive seen in this light. Of all the films
on this list, “Long Day's Journey Into Night” is the only one
that I want to see again, thanks largely to the beauty of its first
half. There is no doubt that director Bi Gan has enormous talent,
but I hope that he loses some of his self indulgence for his future
features.
6. LUZ
I wanted to love this film so, so much, but by the end
of it, I have to admit that I hated it. “Luz” is a low budget
German horror film about a young female taxi driver who attempts to
turn herself in at a police station as she fears she is possessed by
an evil force. It is shot on glorious 16mm film, so the images look
stunning, filled with thick grain and smokey ambience. However, it
is lacking in a narrative of any worth. The story appears to go
nowhere. Actually, that may be a little harsh, as there is
definitely a story there, but I just needed so much more, as what is
there is minimal at best. “Luz” isn't a long film at only
seventy minutes, however the more it goes along, the less well it
works, losing its atmosphere and it starts to resemble a mediocre
school play by the end. Again, this is another film on this list
that does have its fans, and those that like it often say that it is
a film that mesmerises. Personally, I cannot say it had that effect
on me. Instead, I found it very boring and sleep inducing, which is
a little sad after its impressive set up.
5. THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE
This is actually the first of two Jesse Eisenberg /
Imogen Poots films to make it onto this list this year, although this
one may be due to the fact that I just wasn't on the same wavelength
as it, as the rest of the audience (I saw the film at MIFF) seemed to
find it hilarious and loved it. Before going into it, I had heard
that it was like “Fight Club” for the new millennia, which is
immediately unfair on “The Art of Self-Defense” as the comparison
is an absurd one, with the two films really sharing nothing in common
other than fighting. This film is a black comedy, and one that
obviously I did not find funny at all. Instead of coming across as
clever, the comedy hit me as obvious and lacked subtlety, while the
story lacked any real life grounding for the comedy to work. There
was a brief moment at the end when I chuckled, but overall I sat
watching this thing stone faced. The film is about toxic masculinity
and what “makes a man a man” but none of it worked for me at all,
and I must admit I was surprised by the positive reaction towards it
in the cinema. If there was one positive, I thought that Imogen
Poots gave a decent performance as the lone female in a male
dominated world, obviously better than the men, but constantly looked
down upon due to her sex.
4. STOLEN IDENTITY
This is a film that I actually saw on a fourteen hour
flight to Edinburgh which, believe me, I do understand is not the
best way to see a film, but this was so mind-numbingly bad that I am
sure I would have had the same reaction if sitting in a pristine
theatre and well rested. “Stolen Identity” is a Japanese film
directed by the once great Hideo Nakata, the man behind the original
“Ring” film. It is about a young girl named Asami who, after her
boyfriend loses his cell phone, starts to be cyber-stalked by an
unknown assailant before having her identity stolen out from under
her. I must admit that even though I haven't enjoyed a film by Hideo
Nakata for a while, I was excited to see it available on the plane.
Each new film of his, I hope that I will see something of his old
genius, but sadly by the end of this film, all I could think of was
just how far the once great had fallen. This film was not scary,
lacked any atmosphere (something Nakata used to excel at) and the
performance of the actor playing the villain was so over the top that
I could not believe that any director worth their weight wouldn't
reign in such a performance. It was seriously so bad, it was
laughable. I actually felt embarrassed watching this movie. The
thing is, it is not until the villain is revealed (even though it is
very obvious who is behind it all) that this actor (whom I can't name
due to spoilers) goes bananas. Before the reveal, he/she comes
across very normal but once their true identity is exposed, it just
becomes bizarre. Something else that is bizarre, is Nakata's attempt
to create a “red herring” with one of the police characters. I
hated this film with a passion, but guess what? There is a sequel
coming out this year!! Yay! Strange considering it felt like a self
contained story that was finished. Oh well. And yes, Hideo Nakata
returned to direct this follow up. Sigh. How far the once great
have fallen.
3. EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL AND VILE
When you write these “worst of” lists, you
inevitably come up against films that you remember little about
because you purge them from your mind, due to the fact you disliked
them so much. Joe Berlinger's “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil
and Vile” is one of those films. I remember very little about it,
except for the fact that I thoroughly disliked it and was a bit
baffled by how much of a missed opportunity the film was. For those
that do not know, this film is about Ted Bundy and was directed by
Joe Berlinger who just prior to making this film, had directed an
excellent four part documentary series about the mass murderer
entitled “Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes”. The
documentary is full of depth and information regarding Bundy's
crimes, so Berlinger would seem the perfect person to direct a
feature film about Bundy as you would imagine he would know the story
back to front. So it came across as odd that the resulting film was
as boring, and lacked teeth, as much as it did. In fact, I believe
that Berlinger mishandled the film so much, that if I hadn't seen his
documentary previous, I would have been lost in regards to its many
details. Whilst Zac Efron looks the part, his performance is more of
a caricature or an impersonation than him inhabiting the role fully,
and Lily Collin's is wasted as Bundy's long term girlfriend Liz, even
though all marketing around the film states that this story was going
to be from her point of view. This was a massive disappointment.
2. VIVARIUM
This is the other Jesse Eisenberg / Imogen Poots film
and boy, its a stinker! Again, I remember very little about the
film, except that it started so well and went downhill very quickly.
This was the first film I saw at MIFF this year, and it really didn't
start the festival off on a nice note. It is about a young couple
looking for a house to purchase who think they have found the perfect
place. The (very weird) sales agent takes them to the house, which
is just one in a massive estate filled with identical looking houses.
After dropping the couple at the house, the agent disappears and the
couple are stuck, unable to find a way out of this maze like estate.
Road after road seems to lead them straight back to their apartment,
and soon they start receiving strange packages of food on their
doorsteps. While the set-up sounds intriguing, and it feels like a
cinematic rendition of an M.C Escher drawing, writer/director Lorcan
Finnegan does nothing with the premise, as for the next ninety or so
minutes, we feel just as trapped as the poor couple. I'll be honest
and say that I don't remember much about what happens next except
that Eisenberg's character digs a very big hole where he finds a
body, and at one stage towards the end, he essentially lifts the
fabric of the world underneath and sees exactly what is happening.
Something like that, but all I remember was just how angry I was by
the time the film ended and how much time I felt I wasted watching
the film. Since the screening, I have heard very little about the
film, which doesn't surprise me. If it does get released, I'm sure
it will be put out very quietly and soon forgotten.
1. 47 METRES DOWN: UNCAGED
So my least favourite film I saw in 2019, was one of the
last films I saw in the year, and I must admit that I hate that I
have to add it to this list. The reason why is because I watched the
film with my ten year old daughter, Peyton, and while I loved
spending the quality time with her and she enjoyed it and found it
scary, I have to be true to myself and say that I absolutely hated
this film with a passion. It is so bad that I am stunned that it
made it to cinema screens across the world. This is direct to video
dreck if I ever saw it. The story as to how I ended up watching the
film is unique so I will share it. As I mentioned, I watched it with
my daughter Peyton, who has just started to find a love of horror
films. She particularly likes shark horror films, but she really
wanted to watch “The Ring” with me. While I initially told her
no because she was too young, I eventually relented, so we made a
time to watch it together and we were both excited. However only
eighteen minutes into the film, she decided it was too scary for her,
so we turned it off. She was disappointed and wanted to still watch
a film with me, and I remembered I had this film and hadn't yet
watched it, and knew Peytie had recently seen and liked the original
“47 Metres Down”. So we put the disc in and started watching.
Personally, I thought the original film was just ok, but I had loved
director Johannes Roberts' previous film “The Strangers: Prey At
Night”. It was a nasty slasher sequel with style to boot, so I was
not expecting the train wreck that “47 Metres Down: Uncaged”
turned out to be. There is nothing to recommend about the film at
all. It is terribly acted, has paper thin characters, it is very
poorly shot so you can never see what is going on, and it is not
scary at all. Worse than that, it relies on the same scare over and
over again, which didn't work the first time. Even worse than that
are the shocking cgi shark creations which look like D-grade
“Sharknado” knock offs. I cannot stress how bad this film is;
its deplorable! Again, let me stress, that I loved watching the film
and spending time with my daughter Peyton, but the actual film itself
was the worst thing I saw in 2019.
No comments:
Post a Comment