I have to admit dear readers, that this year's list where I take one final swing at the films that disappointed and/or pained me to view during the 2012 movie year will be surprisingly brief. Remember, I don't see every film that is released in a calendar year of course so there were many I avoided. That said, the overall quality of 2012 was so unusually high that my good to bad movie ratio is disproportionately weighed towards better films, a great "problem" to have, don't you think?
Even so, for the films I will take my time to recount in Part Three of my Savage Scorecard series are ones that represent lingering negative issues to be found in the current crop of motion pictures being released as well as new, artistically dangerous ones. So, let's get at it as I really hate spending more time than I need to on bad movies.
THE BAD: CRASH, BOOM, BANG...YAWN
If there was a way to actually count the amount of car crashes, shootouts and explosions I have seen in the movies throughout my life, I would gather than even the numerical value of infinity would not be high enough. As I have gotten older and continue to see movies, I have to say that the sight of car crashes, shootouts and explosions are ones that really don't even begin to thrill me as much as they did when they were much fresher sights. This makes the process of cinematic storytelling, inventive direction combined with strong performances so crucial because if you want me to buy the fantasy and still rise to my feet with all manner of action sequences, then you, as a filmmaker, have to discover new ways to excite me, to make me care about what is happening to anybody on screen and to just give a damn. That's why films like Director Daniel Espinosa's "Safe House" (Originally reviewed June 2012) starring a seriously coasting on his legend Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds and Director Asger Leth's "Man On A Ledge" (Originally reviewed June 2012) starring the bland and wooden Sam Worthington were such tremendous disappointments.
While I was not exactly seeking or even expecting any level cinematic greatness with either one of those films, I will always leave myself open to being surprised, for you just never know what filmmakers might come up with. Unfortunately, in both cases, the filmmakers came up with absolutely nothing but a morass of recycled ideas, stock characters, cliched dialogue, nonsensical action sequences that were so overblown that they were obviously designed to keep audiences distracted from the dreck that surrounded those very sequences. Yes, as movies go, both "Safe House" and the truly stupid "Man On A Ledge" were essentially B-level thrillers presented with A-level production values and yes, I have seen much, much worse than either of them (we'll get to those shortly). But those films were symptomatic of a sad and creatively dangerous trend were movies are shuffled out into theaters week after week to get your hard earned dollar and they are completely anonymous, heartless, soulless and especially in the case of "Man On A Ledge," flat out brainless. To take one last swipe, I have to take aim at a certain Mr. Washington.
Certainly within both films, actors like Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendon Gleeson, Ed Harris and a hysterically awful Kyra Sedgewick (as a LATINA television news reporter no less) were all wasted in completely underwritten and under thought roles. But, Denzel Washington, who is indeed incapable of delivering a bad performance, truly should have known better. As brilliant as he is, and continues to be, it was crass and almost insulting to see him smile that "Cheshire Cat" grin of his throughout the entirety of "Safe House" in a fashion that practically announced to the audience, "I got myself a niiiiiiicccceee fat paycheck for this one!"
Now, the worst example of these soulless, anonymous action movies that I saw this year had to be Director Tony Gilroy's money-grabber "The Bourne Legacy" (Originally reviewed December 2012), a movie, while being a most handsome looking production, is also a feature that has absolutely no reason to exist whatsoever other than to just cash in. And cash in it did, despite the non-appearance of Jason Bourne himself and starring Jeremy Renner as yet another genetically altered super soldier on the run from creepy government officials that want to rub him out to save tier own political hides, made an absolute fortune, even financially outpacing the debut film in the series. But the GIANT plot holes are terribly distracting, the laughable addition of a third team of elite, genetically altered super soldiers derailed this film severely and by the conclusion, it represented Hollywood filmmaking at its most cynical.
THE WORSE: FILTH AND FOUL
I truly believe that there is a fine art to the R rated comedy. I believe that there is a finesse a style, an inexplicable gift to the utilization of a barrage of cuss words presented alongside copious amounts of nudity and even some toilet humor that can be as gut bustingly sensational as another film that may hold a certain loftiness. But for me, and as I have always said, the best comedy comes from the actual storytelling where once the characters and the story have been established and grounded, the fullness of the humor, dirty jokes and all, is allowed to be released. Otherwise, all you're left with is a string of gags. But even then, great comedy can come from a string of gags (1980's "Airplane!" anyone?)...but they had better be some damn funny gags.
I am by no means a prude and I am not easy to offend but 2012 saw a few of these R rated comedies that took good and sometimes provocative premises, had the potential for greatness but failed due to a completely uninspired execution that completely fell back upon a barrage dirty words and nasty, sound effects driven flatulence that fourth grade boys could easily outpace. Truth be told, I really have no idea of what inspiration could have been obtained from yet one more buddy cop movie and a re-imagining of "21 Jump Street" (Originally reviewed July 2012), no less but for me, this movie was absolutely painful to sit through and its mass box office success has seriously confounded me. I think what really irritated me about this movie, aside from the over reliance upon just saying dirty words just for the sake of saying them and it very peculiar OBSESSION with the male member, was the fact that this was a film that just believed that it was more "edgy" and "clever" than it really was. By being so smugly self-referential to the television series and cop movie genre, it was as if the filmmakers thought those mere boneheads in the audience could not possibly get the real intention behind the parody. Through it's own insufferable ironic hipster quality, "21 Jump Street" was an agonizing exercise in misguided superiority but it was so creatively low that it had to reach upwards to scrape the bottom.
Even worse was Jay Roach's "The Campaign" (Originally reviewed November 2012) starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis as dueling North Carolina congressional candidates which was undeniably and inexcusably an astounding example of a wasted opportunity, and like so many who have committed cinematic crimes before them, they should have known better. But perhaps they did. Roach, Ferrell and Galifianakis are smart guys. Roach even helmed HBO's excellent "Game Change," a film about a certain half-term Alaskan governor's attempt to become Vice President during the 2008 election cycle, in the same year, so we know that this is a filmmaker who understands, and can viciously satirize, our current political landscape. So, what the hell happened with "The Campaign"? This was a political film that was begging for political flame throwing in an election year no less yet it was absolutely so terrified of politics and therefore, potentially offending audience members and furthermore potentially losing those precious box office dollars, that all it could do was fall back on exhaustingly tired vulgarities that should just remain in a fourth grade boys' bathroom. Did studio heads intervene, reigning in Roach and his cast and writers or not? We'll never really know but I know that this movie was so distressingly easy when it needed to be tougher, smarter, meaner and show some true comedic teeth instead of gumming the audience into indifference.
THE ABSOLUTELY AWFUL
Now we arrive at the bottom three-the worst films I saw in 2012. So, let's just get to it so I won't have to think about them ever again after I post this latest entry.
3. "SAVAGES" Directed by Oliver Stone
The steep artistic decline in the film career of Oliver Stone is akin to watching a once great athlete slowly losing his or her near magical powers over time. Stone will always and forever remain a cinematic hero to me as his fever dream, scorched earth oeuvre has captivated and gripped me most powerfully for nearly 30 years running. But, in recent years, tone's films have felt to be surprisingly subdued, lacking the bite and pain of his earlier works. With "Savages," I initially felt that perhaps without a political agenda in mind, maybe he could flex his muscles and find that rock and roll spirit again and create a loud, nasty thrill ride. While "Savages" is indeed loud and nasty, it is also unfortunately, a profoundly ugly, ultra-violent disaster that could very well be the worst film in his long career.
This film, which tells the story of two young California drug dealers (Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Johnson) exacting brutal revenge against a syndicate run by Salma Hayek and Benicio del Toro for taking hostage their blonde beach baby, the improbably named "O" (Blake Lively), was a rancorous joy ride filled with all manner of gratuitously explicit dialogue, nudity, drug usage and violence including rape and decapitations and yet throughout this vicious maelstrom of naughtiness, it felt as if absolutely NOTHING happens over the course of the film. That is entirely because Stone has not invested his film with any depth, soul, purpose or compelling characters whatsoever and therefore all of the actors, no matter how much blood and spit they are fueling their performances with, are all entirely wasted. Worst of all is the film's gory climax which kind of rewinds itself into a cinematic do-over which negates everything we have already seen. It's like Stone had several alternate endings and instead of just picking one, he used all of them. Just awful, awful, AWFUL!!!!!!
Originally reviewed July 2012
2. "ROCK OF AGES" Directed by Adam Shankman
Mr. Shankman, for the love of all that is holy and sacred in the universe, I BEG you to just stop directing movies and remain in your chosen career as choreographer and fantastically shrilly judge on "So You Think You Can Dance," because what you have seriously inflicted upon rock music and film musicals with this gargantuan abomination of a movie should have done everything short of kicking you completely out of Hollywood. From its fun house mirror version of a 1987 landscape that never existed to the ADD delivered medleys that just shoehorned songs into the film's barely existent storyline whether they carried any narrative significance or not, "Rock Of Ages" would have been bad enough at that point anyway. What qualifies it as being a god-awful mess is Shankman's unbelievably atrocious handling of the material that shoves every single, solitary moment into your face with such force that there's no room to breathe. And since he and his THREE SCREENWRITERS didn't even condescend to create any real characters or emotions for the audience to latch onto, all you have are the songs, which are then destroyed by the overly processed, canned and hermetically sealed singing that has robbed the human voice of any subtlety and heart. And then, Shankman couldn't even get his musical material straight as he actually includes a song from 1990 into a film set in 1987, therefore having characters sing a song that hadn't existed yet. "Rock Of Ages" is indeed the kind of musical that makes you wish to never hear a sung note ever again.
Originally reviewed November 2012
...and now, the film I hated the very most in 2012...
1. "BRAVE" from Pixar Animation Studios
I am certain that this choice has surprised many of you. And believe me, I never imagined that I would ever anoint a film from this brilliant studio, which has set the gold standard for American animation time and again with increasingly challenging and gorgeously artful material that may not be necessarily made for children but children can indeed experience and grow with over time. But over the last few years, Pixar's quality control has suffered a steep decline with its over reliance upon sequels, and therefore merchandising. I've said it before and I still mean it. I can understand if the wizards of Pixar just wanted to make something lighter, especially after the triumvirate of bar-raising films like "Ratatouille" (2007), "Wall-E' (2008) and "Up" (2009). But in being lighter, I just do not believe that art has to suffer. With "Brave," Pixar has created its first full blown failure, a feature where they were obviously chasing the dollar instead of chasing the muse. What makes me angry with "Brave" in addition to the complete selling out of its heroine, the luxuriously raven haired Merida, is that Pixar is in a position where they will never have to chase a dollar ever again, therefore making the time for creative risks more prevalent. Such a shame they decided to not to just that with this film.
What made "Brave" such a crushing disappointment is that despite its title, it is a film that is dangerously pedestrian and bland. Now, truth be told, I was LOVING the film for the first thirty minutes or so as I fell in love with the lush landscapes of Scotland as much as I fell in love with Merida, her conflict with her Mother, Queen Elinor and her desires to live her life not within an arranged marriage but completely upon her own terms. The brass ring was so in sight that I was thinking that I just may have been viewing one of the best films of the year. But, after Merida takes a visit to a witch's house, "Brave" becomes a completely different experience, taking this heroine and reducing her to being a cipher within her own story, making Pixar's crowing about having its first female leading heroine nothing but lip service. Where Merida was once driving the plot, for the bulk of "Brave" she is batted around by the plot. Merida is smart when the plot needs her to be, crushingly dim when the plot needs her to be and she arrives at a conclusion that you can see coming a mile away and then you have to wait and wait and wait for it to painfully arrive just as you expected.
Where was the risk taking? Where was the sheer refusal to be predictable? Where was the commitment to Merida herself and her conflict as expressed beautifully within the first thirty minutes or so of the film? As Merida makes a wrong choice at the witch's house, the film sacrifices any sense of bravery by making Merida undo a mess, as if in a dumbed down sitcom and essentially jettisoning her initial plight in the first place in favor of the style of hijinks with bears, curses and battles that felt to be market researched within an inch of its life. It felt as if the wizards of Pixar were afraid of having a female lead so they jazzed up the film with unnecessary and inconsequential material to ensure that boys will come too. Surely, that is not the sign of bravery.
Look, this film went through a painful gestation, as I am certain most films do. The film's creator and original director Brenda Chapman was fired from the project and two other directors and four screenwriters came in later. This is a situation of having too many cooks in the kitchen but it was so obviously not with the intent of making the film better artistically. It was in the service of making the film fly financially, therefore reducing the audience to being mere consumers, something I truly believe that Pixar has never done in the past.
That is why "Brave" is the worst film that I saw this year. It was a film that had the potential for greatness but threw it all away, story, characters and purpose, in favor of lining their bank accounts. I have not given up on Pixar but I have to say that the arrival of yet another re-tread (this summer's prequel "Monsters University") is not encouraging to me. For a studio that had made countless films that I would happily re-watch again and again, "Brave" is the one film from Pixar that I will never see again. I want Pixar to return to the days where absolutely anything seemed possible and we could all be whisked away through visual sights and splendor combined with pure storytelling heft and commitment to surprise, enrapture and give everybody the stuff dreams are made of.
With "Brave," what we received this time was an heartless ode to the consumerism of selling Merida dolls, costumes and lunchboxes at the expense of art. And for me, that's a nightmare.
Originally reviewed June 2012
I am so glad THAT is now out of my system!!!! Coming soon, part four...MY TOP TEN FILMS OF 2012!!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment