Coal in our stocking. 'Worst' of the Year
Thursday, December 20, 2018 at 10:03AM Each day a different year in review list. Here's Nathaniel R...
2018 was unpleasant in so many real life ways that grousing about unpleasant things within our favorite escape hatch from reality seems ungrateful. By and large, we love the movies here at TFE and I think I speak for most of the team in saying that we can all pretty much find something to love even in the worst ones. Nevertheless, allow me a quick exorcism of the things I disliked the most this year to get them out of my system. A very important caveat though: As my own boss I can skip whichever films I have no interest in or which receive intense critical drubbings. Therefore my "worsts" are rarely the worsts and sometimes not even terrible just unsatisfying, if you catch the drift. But these films and performances just didn't work for me or actively discouraged benefit of the doubt.
Much kvetching after the jump...
WORST WIDE RELEASE SCREENED
Beautiful Boy - The central duet was lopsided, erring on slight underacting to one side and slight overacting to the other. The framing device -- some sort of mysterious interview format with a nothing payoff later in the film-- made this offputting from the start. It did not improve.
The Darkest Minds -What you get when a book genre (YA Dystopia) and movie genre (people with superpowers) both become so popular that everyone involved in their latest iterations thinks "people will love it because they love this kind of thing". That's the only explanation that makes sense for why this project was so poorly conceived, ultimately generic, too-earnestly acted, tonally tentative, and utterly dull. You still have to tell us a good story, even if we go into it with fondness for the genre. The Darkest Minds ends in that aggravatingly familiar "We're going to be making lots of sequels,' way that our franchise culture encourages even though it becomes an immediate lie if a film flops.
Deadpool 2 - Added nothing to what the first film already accomplished in terms of tonal irreverence, meta commentary and "humor". Worst than redundancy though is the deeply hypocritical messaging. This franchise, yes the very same that is so gleefully enamored by violence and making each murder and gruesome death gut-bustingly hilarious, asks us to unironically invest in the central plot message directed at an angry teenager 'don't become a murderer!'
Ready Player One - 'Not the right audience, for this!' he fully confesses up front. See, I dont play video games much beyond random apps on my phone and vastly prefer human actors to animated avatars of "humans". That said what hurts most is that the film is dated and ugly and undisciplined in its visual clutter. It's like Steven Spielberg set out to make his very own late stage George Lucas picture! It's also soulless in its fealty to pop culture, with a touch of Ralph Breaks the Internet's branding mania without the excusing wit. Remember when movies using familiar brands and characters didn't feel cynical but touching and inventive? It was way back in the Roger Rabbit / Toy Story days.
WORST LIMITED RELEASE OR FESTIVAL FILM SCREENED
Alternate subtitle: How did a talented director make a film this irredeemably bad?
The Death and Life of John F Donovan
Xavier Dolan is well known for having a terrible temperament about people not fawning over his movies. So please imagine this paragraph as a secret concerned whisper amongst friends: I'm worried about Dolan. Everything goes wrong here from the sexist politics (there's actually a scene where a man tells Thandie Newton she should smile and we're meant to take his side and be happy along with her when she finally succumbs to his "charms" instead of being a sullen career-minded bitch) through the full embrace of unexamined self pity of the young, beautiful, and famous set (it's so hard, guys!), and on to the perplexing, nay even unto agonizing, camera and music choices (slo-mo family reunions in the rain, scored with full pop songs! Why not?). This latter complaint is something of a shock given how visually and sonically hypnotic Dolan's best films have been. Let's all hope that Dolan gets back on the road after this detour away from, you know, quality.
Discreet
That I made it all the way through this vapid coy "art" film about closeted gay hookups / self-help tapes /possible serial killing / possible incest or unexamined childhood trauma / and some other suggested-but-never-engaged-with plot points and themes is a miracle because it was painfully withholding and self serious from its first scene. Writer/director Travis Mathews made two joyfully explicit queer things early in his career: the gay profile docuseries In Their Room and the sex positive narrative feature I Want Your Love about a group of diverse and sexy gay friends and acquaintances in San Francisco. Did Mathews time with James Franco after those triumphs, when he codirected that bad and erotically compromised art film riff on 1980's Cruising (Interior. Leather Bar) ruin him? Time will tell. But perhaps he has another I Want Your Love in him?
Kings
This tonally scattershot, questionably acted movie about a romance between a single mother (Halle Berry) and her curmudgeon neighbor (Daniel Craig) during the LA race riots was dropped unceremoniously into theaters and with good reason. We nominated the French-Turkish director Denis Gamze Eguven right here at TFE for her Oscar-loved debut Mustang. But I'm shocked to report that this is the single biggest drop in quality I can personally remember seeing from a first to a second film in ages and ages. Hoping it was a fluke since we all have off days off months.
Mapplethorpe
Identity politics are often a terrible way to judge art (lots of bad faith takes out there on so many movies these days) but this movie made me forgive every such impulse to harshly judge a film for those reasons. Because why on earth did a straight director feel she was the right person to tell this radical queer story? Mapplethorpe is essentially a spiritual "sequel" to the also lame Tom of Finland last year (also, tellingly, from a straight director with zero affinity for homoerotic image making) as its yet another textbook example of how radically queer artists eventually get coopted by the hetero mainstream once they're part of history rather than in the present shaking it up. I really hated this film specifically for its offensive blandness. That's no way to treat an artist who was once widely shocking, even to his own community, and frequently dubbed "obscene". How is it even possible, we want to know, to not make a daring NC-17 movie from this material? If I recall correctly there's just one tame shot of a real penis in this whole entire movie about an artist who was veritably obsessed with shoving big phalluses in your face in provocative ways. (Just about the only daring thing this movie does is posit, briefly and halfheartedly, that Mapplethorpe's fetishizing of black bodies was perhaps a bit racist.)
Somehow this won an award at Tribeca and it comes out in March 2019 but do not be fooled by the kind reviews for Matt Smith's performance as the artist. Smith aside -- he does what he can -- this is a needlessly tame artistically conservative biopic. Wouldn't Mapplethorpe have hated it?
MOST UNSATISFYING PERFORMANCE BY A LEAD ACTRESS
Alicia Vikander, Tomb Raider
I count myself as a fan given her engaging and nuanced early screen performances but on the evidence of this unexciting reboot it was a fool's gamble to take her particularly intimate acting skills into the more stylized realm of the action epic. It was deadly also for the young Oscar winner to invite direct comparisons to the inimitable super-sized screen charisma of Angelina Jolie. What's more, the movie's bizarre urge to offer us a more realistic and gritty take on a wildly unrealistic adventure franchise, did her no favors. And what was with the squealing and general wimpiness of this previously tough character? Her Lara Croft is still determined and resilient but never ever kick-ass cool.
MOST UNSATISFYING PERFORMANCE BY A LEAD ACTOR
Steve Carell, Beautiful Boy
He's given this performance so many times now that it's depreciating in value. Where once his soft spoken minimalist nuance felt like a revelatory even daring dramatic choice (especially given the more outrageous comedy persona that initially defined him), now it's repetitive and limiting. Shake it up, Carell. Surprise us again.
MOST UNSATISFYING PERFORMANCE BY A SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Emilia Clarke, Solo: A Star Wars Story
I've tried with her. I really have, because we're stuck with her after the phenomenal success of Game of Thrones. Sadly to date I've yet to see anything particularly engaging about any of her screen performances. In the latest Star Wars film she's been handed a variation of noir's archetypal bad girl love interest, 'the shady dame working both sides' part. However stock that part might be it's nevertheless given cinema dozens upon dozens of rich performances by inspired actresses. But Clarke comes off more muddled than convincingly duplicitious, her character's hearts being not so shady. Let's just repurpose an exasperated line from Cabaret
You're about as fatale as an after-dinner mint!"
When actors with far less screen time (Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson, Donald Glover) or even no screen time at all (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) are more watchable, there's a problem somewhere in the character conception, performance, or the writing. Or all three.
MOST UNSATISFYING PERFORMANCE BY A SUPPORTING ACTOR
Mike Myers, Bohemian Rhapsody
SAG had to be trolling us with that Ensemble nomination, right? That's how I've been getting through the days since. Very Lars von Trier of them... not that they would get that reference since they only watch big hit American movies. Even without Myers "performance" Bohemian Rhapsody has trouble with characterizations that are either too broad or too flat and, in either of those cases, visibly influenced by the personal feelings (or vendettas) long-harbored by the surviving members of Queen.
But maybe this is actually performance art and it's Mike Myers who is trolling us? Perhaps the former superstar understands that he's in a hopeless self-aggrandizing movie. Perhaps he realized he was just there to be a punching bag for every chip on every musician's shoulder as the stand-in for all vile and clueless recording industry executives? And maybe he got so into the silliness of the score-settling within his scenes that he was egging the Hair and Makeup team on "NO! NO! DON'T HOLD BACK. MORE WHISKERS. BIG! BIGGER !!. MAKE ME VERITABLY SUB-HUMAN" And then he just couldn't stop once the cameras were rolling.
Let's end on a positive note!
BEST WORK DESPITE THE MOVIE/ROLE
The following artists made terrific contributions to films that arguably didn't deserve them. It's probably not easy to do stellar work with middling material so a big round of applause for these people, elevating their surrounding...
Candice Bergen in Book Club
Listen I enjoy Book Club for what it is, an elaborate and fairly pleasant excuse to spend time with four actresses we don't see enough. None of them had material worthy of their award-winning gifts but nobody had it worse on the page than Bergen who was given a hoary cliche of a character to play and potentially humiliating scenes involving being an unloved old cat lady and an easy lay. Instead she's an absolute hoot, especially on a randy successful date once she puts herself back out there again. Well done.
Claire Foy in Unsane
The kind of movie that gets more distasteful the more time you spend with it but Foy is working her ass off to carry the initially unsettling 'is she or isn't she crazy?' vibe.
Gwendolyn Christie in The Darkest Minds
Is she the only one in this movie that knows how bad it is? Bless her for running so forcefully into her cartoonish interpretation. She's a momentary delight in this dull silly dystopia as a throwaway sidebar villain.
Ol Parker directing Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
Still in shock that he took this previously inept franchise and made something that's never unintentionally ridiculous out of it with the simple act of being, oh, good at his job.
Maya Rudolph in Life of the Party AND The Happytime Murders
How has this national treasure not had entire films or shows regularly built around her? She's always elevating everything whether its cameos in TV sitcoms or limited parts in otherwise less funny movies. And she's been giving this thankless greatness for years now. Wake up storytellers! She keeps giving it better than she gets or we deserve. The only project she's had recently that's on her level is Big Mouth and we can't even see her in that since it's voice work (albeit Emmy statue-worthy vice work). REWARD HER WITH GREAT MATERIAL.
Julian Day costuming Bohemian Rhapsody
One might argue that this was an easy job given the wealth of already vivid source material for flashy fun and memorable rock star looks. But the costumes Day is serving us to conjure the ghost of Freddie, are surely the best part of this movie outside of the actual soundtrack provided by this deservedly legendary rock band.
MISERY LOVES COMPANY SO GET IT OUT OF YOUR SYSTEM. WHICH FILMS AND PERFORMANCES ANNOYED YOU THE MOST THIS YEAR? After we purge we can feel nothing but joy for the next couple of weeks as we celebrate all that was delicious about the cinema of 2018.
Reader Comments (59)
I just saw Ready Player One. At the end, I couldn't tell you a single character traits of the protagonist. He's a total nothing character. Somehow all the characters -- and the whole movie, really -- feel super under-developed even though the movie is 2.5 hours long.
Bohemian Rhapsody. For offending the legacy of Freddie Mercury with something that goes way beyond just a ‘heteronormative gaze’, and veers in to outright homophobia.
I do really like your "Best Work Despite the Movie/Role" category. I'd have to give that crown to Michelle Williams for 2018, what with Venom and I Feel Pretty.
Multiplexes showing 2.35 movies letter-boxed and refusing to see it as an issue. The commercial and award season failure of Widows hurts Viola Davis. Having to travel distances to see Isle of Dogs and Susprira. Both The Wife and Can You Ever Forgive Me yanked from venues I had near access to. The frustrating reality Nicole Kidman can't get arrested on Oscar morning if the movie she's contending for is R rated.
Wow! I have only seen Bohemian of your list.
Most unsatisfying supporting actress: Glenn Close's daughter, whose name I will memorize when she deserves it.
I thought this year had a lot of duds. Widows had a great cast and treated everyone's stories with a wonderful equal weight regardless of color but why did I care about the robbery or election. The election was either a red herring or significant but it made the alderman election a weird afterthought. Racer and the Jailbird was a much darker film than I bargained for. Wrinkle in Time utterly failed in getting me remotely interested in its narrative. Ready Player One was just empty nostalgia like Nathaniel says. Red Sparrow was slightly better than one of my least favorite films last year, Atomic Blonde, but still not worth watching.
For me one of the worst of the year has to be First Reformed. I know that critics love it, but I thought it was pretentious mess. I literally laughed at Hawke during one of the movie's most ridiculous scenes.
Aside from that, I enjoyed Mamma Mia sequel, but Dominic Cooper should never sing again - he ruined One of Us so badly.
Bradley Cooper is just another Ben Affleck for me.
Why do we need another one of those?
Operation Red Sea.
Bohemian Rhapsody was just garden-variety lousy. It's only the completely undeserved awards attention that makes it obnoxious. And that includes Rami Malek. To think he's a near certainty for an Oscar nomination while Ryan Gosling's and Lucas Hedges' chances fade daily is pretty depressing. I tried to avoid the films that didn't sound promising.The only films offensive enough to piss me off this year were Crazy Rich Asians and Love, Simon.
My biggest current annoyance is Can You Ever Forgive Me being so hard to find this season. Everything I'm hearing about it has me desperate to see it, but it's still barely released (166 screens).
From across the year, Tully and Annihilation were huge disappointments for me, but I entered them with extremely high expectations, given the talent behind them, so those were relative disappointments. For barely-released films I thought both On Chesil Beach and The Vanishing of Sidney Hall were just, well, bad. But my 2 biggest lumps of coal go to Paul Schrader for his script for First Reformed (the more I think about it, the more I loathe that script - clearly I'm in a small minority on that) and Sally Potter for her writing and direction of The Party. What a waste of having a great group of actors to work with.
I find the multiple mentions of Ready Player One a bit curious, although I think I understand it. But to me it was just so forgettable, aside from a couple of the set pieces, that I don't find it annoying.
I'm sure there are worse out there because I tend to avoid movies I know I'm not going to like, but from what I've seen I'd say First Reformed (despite Hawke's very good performance) and The Sisters Brothers were both big misses.
Miz Miz - I'll see you one and raise you Jeremy Irons's son.
EL ROYALE never consolidated into a very good film to me, but Cynthia Erivo is astounding in it. Tom Hardy and Riz Ahmed were also quite good in VENOM. It's not PADDINGTON 2, but I thought the voice actors plus the animation/CGI for CHRISTOPHER ROBIN really sold me in the end. And finally, Deric McCabe in A WRINKLE IN TIME is a damn star.
I can't even imagine hating "Ready Player One." Spielberg is having so much evident fun with that one and it's thrilling to watch him orchestrate action sequences so untrammeled by physics, totally free to move his camera wherever and however he wants in the film's essentially limitless virtual space. The car chase at the start and the final battle are marvels of kinetic, technologically rich filmmaking. Who cares about the characters?
If you’re looking for a good Maya Rudolph vehicle, catch Amazon’s Forever. Lead role and she’s actually on screen!
Things I didn't like in 2018
The male actors in Hereditary
Speaking of Carell giving us the same,how about ryan Gosling,how many times is he going to muffle his charisma,it gives his characters almost no inner life.
I thought Tully was way overrated and though Theron is good she's not on her Monster level.
None of the scary films Halloween,A Quiet Place ,The Nun etc scared me.
JLC'S lazy Halloween performance.she looked so bored.
Anything Emilia Clarke ever did on film
Woody Harrelson appearing in 2 many franchises
Tiffany Haddish comedies.
The Meg's lame script and bad CGI and no blood.
The way Sam Elliott was shoehorned into ASIB to give Cooper something to react to
Black Panther's being basically more of the same Superhero stuff.
The Predator is the single worst film released this year
The Oscar predicting Gulids etc.Have your own minds
Debra Messing in Searching,stick to the small screen
Rami Malek's teeth,they may get a supporting nomination.
Being underwhelmed by almost everything I saw this year bar First Reformed.
Candace Bergen was hysterical in BOOK CLUB.
I love her!
Claire Foy is great in Unsane, a film that went from an interesting premise (her character being forced to spend time in a psychiatric hospital after visiting a therapist) to a questionable one (the stalker story) to an utterly infuriating one thanks to plot twists. Someone please cast her in a film worthy of her talents.
@rmarkgordonuk: You didn't like Alex Wolff!?!? I thought he was brilliant.
The First Reformed tea in this thread is giving me life. It's not that I hated it. It just completely lost me in the 2nd half both times I watched it. With it showing up everywhere in Top 10 lists and critics awards, I am just as baffled.
Maybe I just wanted something like Calvary going in and even with giving it another try, I'm still not attuned to what even that second half is.
Ready Player One felt like lazy Spielberg - even his usual heart-tugging antics didn't pay off this time. A Star Is Born was just okay for me - did we really need a fifth version of this story after 1932, 1937, 1954 and 1976? I absolutely hated everything about Vice, primarily because I can no longer find Republican dirty tricks and ugly personae even remotely satirical (I hope this gets totally ignored by the Academy). If Beale Street Could Talk makes everything look pretty, but I couldn't care less about any of the characters. Bohemian Rhapsody is pure junk. The Rider and At Eternity's Gate were both total snooze fests. Loved Timothée Chalamet (and he is most likely getting a 2nd Oscar nomination) but disliked Steve Carell in Beautiful Boy. I'm referring to Green Book as Driving Mr. Daisy - HATED absolutely everything about that film. Black Panther is a comic book movie and I'm not giving it any more credit than that. Black Klansman is typical Spike Lee tonal mess. First Man is technically superb but emotionally inert. My favorites for the year are The Favourite, Disobedience, Boy Erased, Mary Poppins Returns, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Roma, First Reformed (except the lame ending), Incredibles 2, A Quiet Place.
The ballad of buster Scruggs. Not a single one of the vignettes did anything for me. So disappointing
Beast and Hearts Beat Loud were both atrocious. I wish I could have the time back that I wasted watching them.
I concur on the comments regarding First Reformed. The third act collapsed into operatic absurdity.
After consuming an edible, I went to READY PLAYER ONE (based solely upon the clever poster campaign) and LOVED it! I think it’s Spielberg’s most joyful movie since E.T. I particularly enjoyed how he tosses out one iconic 80’s pop song after another, and only Spielberg could have cleared licensing for all the corporate iconography.
Was very disappointed in First Man. Other than the sequence where (spoiler alert) he lands and walks on the moon which is fantastic, everything leading up to that left me underwhelmed.
I know I am in the minority but I would give some serious rotten tomatoes to At Eternity's Gate and Cold War. I knew going into Crazy Rich Asians that it was going to be silly, but fun. I knew going in to Deadpool 2 that it wasn't going to be that great. But goodness knows, I expected greatness from AEG and CW, and I got mediocre blech. Oh well. Adjust expectations, right?
Alicia! Come back to us.
For me it's A Star is Born. On paper, it's made for me - I love nothing in the world more than musicals and melodrama. I have never hated a musical before in my life, even when they're bad I still can't help but love them, and I hated ASIB. Lady Gaga was very good (although not "Oscar winning" good), but I could not buy the chemistry between her and Bradley Cooper, cannot understand the praise for his performance, or Sam Elliot's - I couldn't understand a single word he said in the movie. This is going to be a very painful awards season for me.
For me it was Crazy Rich Asians & A Star is Born. The love on this site for both just baffles me. The former is an annoying & cliched rom-com (If I never encounter the Climactic Marriage Proposal in Public that Draws Spontaneous Applause from Onlookers in a movie ever again I will be so grateful) and as for ASIB, the music is mediocre (I was surprised that so many were surprised that only one song is eligible for Best Song). And Lady Gaga is fine and Bradley C is totally fine, but neither is particularly memorable. I don't think either movie will age all that well.
And genuine hatred for Bohemian Rhapsody - at least up until the final Live Aid sequence, when Freddie Mercury FINALLY got the props he deserved.
I can't speak for Michelle Williams' role in Venom, but she was Best Supporting Actress-level—*not* "Best Work Despite the Movie/Role"—in I Feel Pretty, which is underrated to begin with. Same goes for Red Sparrow, which wasn't *that* bad, but can't hold a candle to Atomic Blonde. Speaking of which, Charlize Theron had another winner with Tully and has further cemented her standing as of my favorite actresses, post-Young Adult. So much candy to offset the coal in 2018.
I know iIt doesn't belong in a worst list, but for me Colette was a big disappointment. I love Keira, Dominic, the character, the period, and yet I was bored.
Colette and Mapplethorphe both suffer from the similar problem of taking a bland, boilerplate biopic approach to subjects whose lives demand so much more originality. And even worse, neither film is sexy. I agree that Matt Smith is game in Mapplethorpe, but he's not supported by any kind of filmmaking vision.
I was also bored by A Star is Born, and particularly found the second half to be a kind of generic, soupy mush. Baffled by the awards attention.
I'm surprised to see Tully popping up in some of the comments on this thread, though. For me, it was one of the more delightful surprises of the year, and Theron is just note-perfect in it.
Can anyone else chime in with thoughts on At Eternity's Gate? I absolutely loved The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and am interested in how Schnabel might capture another painter's vision, but something about the reviews and the marketing materials has me very nervous.
I actually love Ready Player One, but to each our own.
The worst movie I saw the year was Peter Rabbit! It was actually bad guy vs. bad guy. Far from a cute bunny just trying to feed himself and his family, that rabbit was a little shit bent on destruction and gluttony. If he was turned into a stew, I would have applauded.
I have moved on from my immediate reactions to your opinions of BEAUTIFUL BOY, READY PLAYER ONE, DEADPOOL 2 and UNSANE (all movies that I thought were good, and so I will process and take on your opinions once the initial kneejerk reactions are gone), and am ready to give out my brickbats:
With all the great horror released this year, it was disappointing to have to sit through the boring and rely-too-much-on-jump-scares WINCHESTER.
Hollywood, please do more original material, and less laziness like MAMMA MIA! HERE WE GO AGAIN and SUPERFLY
We need better comedy these days than THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME, THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS and SWIMMING WITH MEN (the last one there still thinks "heterosexual men awkwardly being mistaken for being gay" is funny).
VENOM - worst Marvel movie (and yes that includes FANTASTIC FOUR)
A WRINKLE IN TIME - I am firmly in the "disappointed" camp
KODACHROME - please, no more "Gen X man bonds with estranged father and deals with issues" movies for a while.
Absolute worst of 2018 - THE 15:17 TO PARIS. Confession: I could only make it through 25 minutes, but it was the worst 25 minutes in any film I saw this year. Clint Eastwood, retirement time....
That was Mike Myers!?!? I had no idea.
Worst Movies: Operation Red Sea, Vox Lux, Sorry to Bother You, Euthanizer, and Cocote, all of which were 1-800-TOO-MUCH in one form or another.
I had completely forgotten about that "mystery interview format" framing device in Beautiful Boy, at first I thought your description was for another movie and there was an editing error. That movie sure was a dud and Steve Carrell, while I want to like him, has become almost unbearable for me to watch. I don't know what it is, I just see variations of Michael Scott, and normally I don't have trouble shaking off the image of a tv star's most famous role when they move to film.
Let's not forget that Mike Myers resuscitated "Bohemian Rhapsody" back on the charts after the first "Wayne's World" in 1992 -- and soundtracked one of the funniest scenes in the movie to it. I assume that's why he was cast here?
Most Unsatisfying supporting actress: Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz because they are leading.
I didn't know You Were Never Really Here was a 2018 release in America. Add that one too.
Tom G : precisely
Absolute worst of 2018 - THE 15:17 TO PARIS. Confession: I could only make it through 25 minutes, but it was the worst 25 minutes in any film I saw this year. Clint Eastwood, retirement time....
See The Mule. A superior swan song to Gran Torino.
Initially, not 1 song in ASIB really were ear candy to me. Leaving the theater, I tried to hum 1 song, but had to YouTube song a couple of times before I really appreciated them.
Have to say that I was Really underwhelmed by Black Panther. Stating that I was bowled over by it is like a media reaction to saying something negative about Barack Obama.
I really wish Disney would stop with the live-action remakes. Beauty & The Beast, Mary Poppins, The Lion King, The Jungle Book, Aladdin.
Can moviegoers decide for themselves if they wish to ‘A Rainy Day In New York?’
First Reformed. Sorry not sorry. I'm shocked by the love.
I am CONFUSED in all caps that some of you dont like A Star is Born or its music (it's so great. i've seen it 3 times and eager for a 4th and the soundtrack is on constant loop) but I guess that's the nature of all art (theater/movie/tv) since some of you love things I listed under my most disliked right here in this article. One man's yuck is another man's yum and so on.
I liked ASIB fine but HATED Sam Elliott in it. I don’t think he’s entirely to blame but geez those scenes between him & Cooper were cringe worthy.
Apologies to our host but I also hated A Simple Favour. Anna Kendrick & Blake Lively can suck it.
Worst Film Of The Year: Sierra Burgess Is A Loser (Holy shit, this movie was baaaaad. One of the most unlikable lead characters I've ever seen, super bland love interest, just.....awful.)
Most Overrated Film: Ant-Man And The Wasp (This was marginally better then its predecessor, but still wasn't as good as people say it was. Paul Rudd is still a Godawful casting choice, and isn't very good, but he has Evangeline Lilly being fabulous....also Phiffer!)
Most Underrated Film: Venom (I don't think this was as bad as people say! Tom Hardy is having a helluva good time, and looks hot.)
Best Performance In A Bad Movie, Male: Jesse Plemon in Game Night (This movie wasn't very funny, which is bad because it was a comedy. He's giving the best performance, bar none, but that's not hard when everyone else is doing the most in your movie.)
Best Performance In A Bad Movie, Female: Zoe Saldana in Avengers: Infinity War (She, to me, has steadily been improving this character across all three movies she's been in. Easily giving the 3rd or 4th best performance in the movie.)
Disappointing Movie: a tie between Beautiful Boy and Ben Is Back (I was so looking forward to both of these. With the exception of Chamelat in the former and Former America's Sweetheart in the latter, these were both just annoyingly disappointing.)
Worst Performance In A Good Movie, Male: Willam in A Star Is Born (I've been over Willam for the last year or so, and this role really reminded me of that. Shame, because Shangela is EVERYTHING.)
Worst Performance In A Good Movie, Female: Gina Rodriguez in Annihilation (Now, she wasn't bad per say, just not memberable.)
With regard to an argument mentioned re: the music of A Star Is Born and which I keep hearing about the music from Mary Poppins Returns: being able to hum a song immediately upon hearing it does not make it great. Usually, it just means that it's simple.
I won't be mean but Disobedience is not a good movie. On Chesil Beach made me angry. Sisters Brothers was plodding, shot poorly and not very good, tho shoutout to Gyllenhaal. A few others.
Love After Love is one of the worst films ever made.