It is my theory that every movie has some sort of redeeming value. However, while I like and appreciate most films, I can’t claim to like EVERY film. This list contains the movies I disliked this year, or, to be polite, liked the least.
My next entry, and hopefully the general theme of this site, will be about celebrating films . . . namely the best ones of 2017. But there can’t be good without recognizing the bad.
- Dunkirk – It’s a great sounding, beautifully shot extremely boring movie.
- Flatliners – This movie wasn’t all bad. But it was definitely more bad than good. Its frenetic pace ultimately started to get annoying and in the end I just wanted it all to relax a little bit.
- War for the Planet of the Apes – There isn’t much redeeming about this one. These movies were always a bit hard to take serious but there was just so many layers of sap added to this thing, along with completely unsubtle story telling. Yeah I get it, Cesar is Jesus. Relax.
- Atomic Blonde – There was a lot of good about this film. It seemed to have a good script. The action sequences were creative. The acting was good. Which is why it’s so disappointing and ultimately was in the running for the worst film of the year. Any time the director had a choice to make, he made the wrong one. Whether it was doing something in C.G.I. that was completely unnecessary, or messy time line errors, or just pointless cuts, or not enough cuts, or whatever. Awful directing ruined what should have been a good film. I was adamant about this being my worst film of the year, right up until the very end of the year.
- Downsizing – Downsizing came on strong at the end of the year though to usurp the worst film of the year from Atomic Blonde. Atomic Blonde is a good movie ruined. There’s nothing good about Downsizing. The idea the film is built on is preposterous, its underlying message is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, and its platitudes are about as complex and meaningful as a bad children’s books’. Everything that happens is completely predictable and ultimately pointless. Nothing that happens matters. Also, frankly for a film that was about creating a utopia, it sure did walk the borderline of being racist or misogynistic. Above all, I can’t believe someone made a movie where everyone with straight faces said “get small” about a hundred times. How did this happen? There’s no reason to watch this film.