SAVAGE SCORECARD 2014-PART THREE: THE BAD, THE WORSE, THE ABSOLUTELY AWFUL

Truth be told, I didn't really see very many bad movies in 2014 at all.

Yes, there were many films that I avoided and just knew without any doubts that I would not spend one moment of my precious time and hard earned money on as they would be the very types of films films that would undoubtedly be time wasters at best and unwatchable at the very worst. In 2014, those films for me were very easy to spot and typically, they were the sorts of films that I would not have seen in the first place. In fact, as I was compiling my lists for the year, I realized that a few of the films that I didn't like this year were not even necessarily bad films at all. They were just ones that I felt fell a little short or didn't quite reach me on either an artistic or emotional level, and that is a big difference when thinking about movies that are indeed bad.

For instance, Director Arie Posin's "The Face Of Love" (Originally reviewed March 2014) is a well intentioned and very well acted romantic drama starring Annette Bening as a woman who endures the death of her husband (played by Ed Harris) only to find love again with a man who, by coincidence, happens to look exactly like her deceased husband (also played by Ed Harris). Yet, despite its quiet and thankfully adult sense of love and loss, it was a film I felt didn't probe as deeply as it needed to and was definitely more melodramatic than it should have been. But a bad movie? Certainly not.

Writer/Director Paul Thomas Anderson's "Inherent Vice," (Originally reviewed January 2015) his adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon novel, was indeed an ambitious and drug induced play on the detective noir and was also as richly acted and visualized as any other film within his oeuvre. Yet, it was also a film that seemed to almost unravel before my eyes, leaving me completely unsure as to what precisely I had just seen. Again, not a bad film whatsoever. Just one that eluded me as well as one that demands to be seen again in the future.

Writer/Director Luc Besson's "Lucy," (Originally reviewed August 2014) his psychedelic/existential thriller was easily one of the most visually kinetic films of 2014 and even while it held me in rapt attention for its entirety, by film's end, it all felt to be really silly and even forgettable. Honestly, dear readers, I had to truly remember that I had seen the film in order to include it within this series for you. But again, I didn't think of it as a bad film at all.  

All of that being said, I did indeed see some bad films this year. Some more of the middling quality to those that were unquestionably BAD, that were so terrible, so absolutely awful that they more than made up for the lack of quantity.

And now, here we are as I take my gloves off for the last time...

SAVAGE SCORECARD 2014-PART THREE: 

THE BAD, THE WORSE, THE ABSOLUTELY AWFUL

9. "THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY-PART 1" Directed by Francis Lawrence

The third installment in "The Hunger Games" was a steep decline in quality from the excellent first two installments, primarily because this this film, even with a two and a half hour running time, is truthfully only half of a movie. "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay-Part 1" is a prime example of what has gone very wrong with these excessive, bloated multi-part franchise films because now, everyone believes that they have enough actual story to sustain more than one film or at least, the grand finale must be split into sections. Unfortunately, for this film, having enough story was just not the case and it made for a motion picture experience that slowed to a complete stop at the exact point when it should have been increasing in intensity and overall purpose. Yes, the film gets better as it goes along and Jennifer Lawrence remains terrific as our leading heroine but that first 60-90 minutes are an unnecessary slog.
(Originally reviewed November 2014)

8. "GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY" Directed by James Gunn

Yes, I realize that I am truly in the minority on this one but I stand by my original assessment of this film. While I didn't hate the movie, "Guardians Of the Galaxy," the latest installment within the Marvel Comics film universe, was wildly over-rated as well as a sizable disappointment for me. For a film that promoted itself as being the irreverent and almost anti-Marvel film, I was surprised at just how creatively restricted and derivative of a film it actually was as it tightly adhered itself to every piece of the Summer Movie formula that we have all seen year after year after year. Essentially, Director James Gunn helmed a pseudo-"Star Wars" movie where nearly every single character was a variation of Han Solo...perhaps this was a tactic for Disney (which owns Lucasfilm as well as Marvel) to get their feet wet in that galaxy far, far away before actually having to produce the real thing in 2015. Furthermore, even within the Marvel Comics universe, the film was completely interchangeable with Director Joss Whedon's superior "The Avengers" (2012) in terms of plot, characters, motivations and action sequences. Everything about this movie was so painfully hemmed in, so predictable, so uninteresting (really...could this film's villain have been any blander?) and so oddly pedestrian...even all the way down to the pop song choices that peppered the film. "Guardians Of The Galaxy" had the potential to be the strangest, most outrageous film playing in the cineplexes but it was ultimately not nearly as boundary pushing nor as clever as it needed to be or even thought it was.
(Originally reviewed August 2014)

7. "NON-STOP" Directed by Juame Collet-Serra

Liam Neeson's annual action film made its way onto this list as it is yet another generic and under-thought so-called airline thriller populated with an arsenal of cardboard cut-out characters and completely implausible situations and set pieces. But what made this film really stand out as being absolutely awful was that its level of tastelessness was equal to its storytelling laziness. This is one of those B movies with A list actors (of which the great and painfully under-utilized Julianne Moore obviously cashed a paycheck) that is wholly brainless from beginning to its near conclusion when all of a sudden, it tries to actually proclaim some artistic/dramatic relevance that it has not earned in the slightest. And for a film entitled "Non-Stop," it is shockingly, agonizingly, torpidly pokey. I think that Neeson's own personal sub film genre has more than run its course and considering how miserable he looks on screen in this film, I think that even he would have to agree with me. This film isn't even bad enough to quality as an entertaining guilty pleasure!
(Originally reviewed June 2014)

6. "WISH I WAS HERE" Directed by Zach Braff

2014 proved itself to be a year when films about families either soared or floundered and here I arrive at the first of three family themed films to end up on this particular list. Look, no one can really question the earnestness of Writer/Director/Actor Zach Braff, which is unabashedly on display within this film, his quasi-sequel/spiritual brother to his debut feature "Garden State" (2004). "Wish I Was Here" follows a 35 year old's path from arrested development to adult maturity as well as facing new responsibilities in the face of his Father's illness and death but Braff sadly loads his film with all manner of prefabricated emotions, cliched characters and motivations plus that awful self-congratulatory sense of quirkiness that nearly sunk "Garden State." The film does indeed have its moments here and there but to find them, there is a large amount of annoying material you will be forced to sift through.
(Originally reviewed July 2014)

5. "THE JUDGE" Directed by David Dobkin

I have to announce to you that what you are about to read is a Savage Cinema first. as there is no full review of this film on this site. But this is indeed for a very good reason. You see, I actually just watched this film a few days ago and frankly, I just could not force myself to spend any more time with it than I absolutely had to and especially after sitting through the nearly 2 and a half hours of terrible dialogue, a mountain of tedious cliches, hambone performances and a vision of prefabricated small town life that was so shamelessly upon display.

"The Judge" stars Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark...ahem...I mean Hank Palmer, a hot shot, fast talking, cynical Chicago defense attorney who returns to his small Indiana town for his Mother's funeral yet stays on to defend his Father, the honorable Judge Joseph Palmer (played by Robert Duvall) and from who he has been long estranged, from a hit and run murder charge.

"The Judge" was a film that reminded me very much of the glut of those "cynic-gets-a-heart" films that plagued the late 1980's and early 1990's and completely not in a good way. Director David Dobkin truly piled on the melodramatic cliches as if there just was not enough to deal with concerning the legal case and the Father/son tensions between Downey Jr. and Duvall's characters. Nope. We had to be subjected to the banal re-kindled romance between Downey Jr. and his high school true love, played by Vera Farmiga, We had to endure Downey Jr's oh-so-precious relationship with his young daughter as he is about to go through a divorce himself. Even worse, was the pre-requisite past family tragedy that has caused a lifetime of resentment from his oldest brother played by Vincent D'Onofrio. No...actually even worse than that was the inclusion of a stereotypical special needs brother (played by Jeremy Strong) who is always attached to his super 8 movie camera. Even the small town itself felt to be Hollywood's impression of what a small town actually is as opposed to trying to present a small town with any sense of authenticity. And yes, how sad it was to view the iconic Robert Duvall himself, forced to suffer through moldy leftovers from "The Great Santini" (1979) as he and Robert Downey Jr. choked out painfully tepid dialogue within an overstuffed and hyperbolic drama that never, at any point, struck one honest note.

4. "THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU" Directed by Shawn Levy

As cliched and prefabricated as "Wish I Was Here" and "The Judge" were, Director Shawn Levy's tone deaf, idiotic and abominable "This Is Where I Leave You" brought a whole new level of stupid to the dysfunctional family film genre. Based upon the Jonathan Tropper novel, the story of yet another city dweller (this time played by Jason Bateman) forced to return to his long departed home town for the funeral of a parent would have been more than enough for one movie to handle, good or bad. But in the case of this film, we are subjected to a fleet of siblings (who all somehow appear to be the same age) forced to sit shiva for their deceased Patriarch, a caricature of a randy and exploitative Matriarch (Jane Fonda), a monsoon level overflow of entirely unconvincing and colliding subplots and one completely hyperbolic and force-fed contrivance after another. "This Is Where  Leave You" is one of those films about families that seems to have been made by people who know absolutely nothing about what families are, how they work, maintain, implode, self-destruct and reform. So, in light of this profound lack of knowledge, Levy just has his cast race around the screen,shouting their dialogue louder and louder and without any sense of honest comedic or dramatic tension. It is a film that for all of the free flowing tears that occur, not even one of them was remotely earned.
(Originally reviewed December 2014)

3. "GODZILLA" Directed by Garth Edwards

Granted, I still concede that I just may perhaps not be the best person to review this film. But even so, this latest remake of "Godzilla" was a lifeless, graceless, cumbersome, lumbering, bombastic mess of a film that contained not one solitary stitch of awe, horror or anything resembling just plain ol' fun! All of the actors, from Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, David Strathairn, Juliette Binoche (!) to Elizabeth Olsen, were all unforgivably wasted in this film but yes I know, one doesn't go to a "Godzilla" movie for the character development. I get that. But what of the star of the film himself? It is unfathomable for me to understand just why did Director Garth Edwards decide to showcase Godzilla himself almost exclusively during night scenes, therefore making him very difficult to fully see?! Rendering this legendary movie star to the shadows (and with weak, yawn inducing special effects to boot) instead of displaying him loudly and proudly just made for a tremendously wasted amount of time and effort.
(Originally reviewed September 2014) 

2. "THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES" Directed by Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson's gratuitous money grab came to a crashing thud with, what I am hoping, is his final trip to Middle Earth. Whatever artistic passions fueled Jackson's creative juices when he made his monumentally outstanding "The Lord Of The Rings" trilogy (2001/2002/2003) was nowhere to be found with his prequel trilogy. Yes, the films looked as splendorous as you would expect but they became a soulless enterprise that sacrificed cinematic art completely for box office commerce. This third installment was the worst of the bunch as it was under three hours worth of endless action sequences that contained absolutely no emotional involvement or resonance as well as never moving the narrative forwards even one inch. Most unforgivably is the fact that the titular character (played by Martin Freeman) was entirely inconsequential to the film (and series) as a whole, which ultimately made the complete escape severely pointless. A thunderous disappointment.
(Originally reviewed December 2014)

1. "AMERICAN SNIPER" Directed by Clint Eastwood

This repugnant movie is, without question is the worst film of 2014 and it truly entered a new league of cinematic awfulness.

What Clint Eastwood has knowingly created with this film is an ugly form of propaganda designed to create revisionist American history regarding the post 9/11 war in Iraq and dangerously incite continued anti-Muslim sentiment. all the while filtering his biographical drama of the deceased Navy SEAL Chris Kyle through an overly (and I believe purposefully) simplified lens which offered not an iota of subtlety, ambiguity, nuance or even morality. This approach was brutally disrespectful to the sheer inherent complexity of the the titular subject, let alone the sacrifice of soldiers (especially those forced to fight and die in fraudulent wars), our veterans, PTSD, the war in Iraq itself, those we fight against and to even all of us in the audience who deserve to be presented with an adult drama told in an adult fashion.

"American Sniper" is a political film with no sense of politics. It is a war film and character study reduced to the shallowness of a first person shooting video game solely to provide the ravenous red meat of a right wing fantasy to armchair warriors around the country. Eastwood paints his wide canvas with only the broadest colors of black and white to represent an "U.S. VS. THEM" narrative, where the story of Kyle himself is essentially fashioned as a Marvel Comics origin story and full superhero arc where he becomes "The Legend" who is on the hunt for the Iraqi sniper known only as "The Butcher," while protecting his brothers in arms and the United States as a whole single-handedly.

Approaching the subject matter in this fashion, Eastwood has completely flown in the face of his richly nuanced filmography of the past 25 years or so and basically returned to the cinematic worlds of the very Westerns on which he first cut his teeth. By disturbingly reducing this particular story to good (i.e. White people with guns) against bad (i.e. Brown people with guns), "American Sniper" became a film that truly angered me the longer the film went onwards. In fact, it eerily felt like when Eastwood, at the 2012 Republican National Convention, pretended to speak to President Obama, who was represented by an empty chair. It was a bizarre move, which somehow pointedly illustrated the very real politics of the situation: that Republicans were rallying against a President Obama who simply does not exist.

"American Sniper" is cut from that very same reactionary and fear based cloth as Eastwood has created a mythical superhero fighting in a tragically real (and again...fraudulent) war, where EVERY Muslim (including women and children) are viable threats to our freedom and overall survival itself. Eastwood's version of Kyle suffers no real consequences on the battlefield and emerges virtually unscathed as his PTSD is cured in mere moments. Yet, he dies heroically off screen while countless Muslims are slaughtered on-screen.

This is an appalling, inexcusable, unconscionable film that is unrepentantly and frighteningly irresponsible. Yes it is superbly filmed and executed. Yes, it is indeed an effective film. But aren't those some of the hallmark of the best propaganda?

Now that I have all of that out of my system, I will soon turn to the best. The final installment in this series, my personal TOP TEN FILMS OF 2014, is forthcoming!!!!