DAJKS's (And Everyone Else's) Worst of 2014 (baumer starts pg 6)

[baumer]

2) I, Frankenstein:  Ok, I'm sorry to do this again, but my thoughts on I, Frank were much more lucid after I first saw it.  I can't remember a damn thing about it now.  So here is what I had to say last January.

 

Someone forgot to tell Aaron Eckhart that he's making a shitty movie called I, Frankenstein.  I read an interview with him recently and you'd think that he was on the verge of curing cancer or that he was about to send a man to Pluto based on his findings.  He's way too serious and way too introspective about acting.  Sometimes actors need to be reminded that they memorize words and regurgitate them for a fucking living.  That attitude, that anger and that self importance comes off in this film as he plays Frankenstein with anger, bitterness, anger, bitterness, anger and bitterness.  I don't care if this is how it's written, it comes off all wrong.  He has one speed in this film, one face, one emotion, one reaction.  He's basically scowls and spits vitriol in every scene.  It's so baffling, so wrong and so moronic that it's like someone was afraid to tell Eckhart that he's not in a Christopher Nolan film.  He's in a Stuart Beattie film about Frankenstein.  As Warren Oates said in Stripes, "Lighten up, Aaron."

 

The plot in this film is basically about angels who were created by the Archangel Michael so that they could fight demons on Earth.  This kind of sounds like the plot to Legion and even The Prophecy.  Miranda Otto plays the head of the angels,who are now in the form of Gargoyles.  She decides who lives, who dies and why.  Somehow these Gargoyles live in a giant palace in the middle of some city, I'm not sure what that city is but it looks like it could be in New York, London or maybe even somewhere in Australia seeing as this is an Australian production.  Now here's the funny part.  Although this takes place in modern times, it looks like it takes place in the 1800's.  All the city is CGI and it looks like something you see in a movie like From Hell.  I was literally waiting for Jack the Ripper to show up somewhere or to have horse and buggies appear or to have the streets lit by candle.  The production design for this was in a different century.  The only reason I knew we were in the 2000's is because it says that Adam (Frankenstein) has been alive for 200 years and because there's an I-phone and a computer in the film.  The rest of the film looks like it's in the 1800's.  It's the most bazaar decision I think I've seen in any film.

 

Then you have the battles.  Jai Courtney plays the hot, buff angel who can fight but he dies in the middle of the film.  Somehow if you carve some angelic symbol into any kind of weapon, you can kill these demon fuckers.  But of course there are soooo many demons that the gargoyles can't handle them all, BUT!! Shitto is supposed to be the leader of the Gargoyles yet she is captured and held prisoner by some low life demon.  It would be like Bruce Lee being overtaken by a fat mall cop.  That's how much sense it makes.  She's the leader of the damn gargoyles and she was created by Michael, God's leader of the angels, and yet she gets taken over like she's a bitch.  It would have at least been better if she took off a helmet after being told that no man can escape from their clutches, and she says, "I'm no man!"  But nope, a simple knife is held to her throat and she cannot escape this.  It might have even been a knife you would use to spread butter on your sandwich.

 

Also, apparently in this movie, no one lives in these giant cities because when bright balls of fire erupts in the middle of the night and beams of blinding light are taking the gargoyles to heaven when they die, no one in the city sees a thing or reacts to it.  Building blow up, balls of fire that look like they came out of the book of revelations engulf the city, gargoyles fly everywhere and yet there is not one person in the film who bats an eyelash or even mutters, "That's peculiar."  Nope, in this film, everything that happens just happens.  

 

Another problem I had with the film is that I'm supposed to root for Frankenstein, but I'm not quite sure why.  He's a fucking asshole in this film.  He's ungrateful, moody, angry, mean, selfish, makes decisions that ends up screwing over the gargoyles and he ends up being stupid in the one part of the film that called for him to be, just so the damsel in distress plot could be furthered.  

 

I, Frank is not the worst film I've ever seen, RIPD and the Artist and Citizen Kane are just some that are worse, but it's not far off.

 

2/10

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fun Fact:  Every time I saw Miranda Otto in the film, I thought of Fishnets.

 

[baumer]

Every movie that has been on this list so far has been a movie.  Bad, bad movies, but movies nonetheless.  The number one movie is not a movie and I will never acknowledge it as one.

[baumer]

1) Tammy:  This is the only moving picture I gave a zero to this year.  Tammy is a mess.  Melissa McCarthy is now a caricature of herself.  She plays Megan, her character from Bridesmaids, in every film.  She has a following but by now people must be getting tired of her schtick.  She's a slob that we are supposed to like.  She ultimately will have some kind of speech or moment in every film that is supposed to make us like her now because she has been through some kind of traumatic experience.  This is supposed to make us overlook every transgression, every mean thing she has done to people, every selfish thing she has done and every truly horrible and despicable thing she has done or performed, because her mom ignored her or her dad worked too much or her cat showed his ass to her.....take your pick.  Tammy is one bad scene after another.  There is no flow, there is no humour and how they managed to get Oscar winners or nominees like Susan Sarandon, Kathy Bates and Dan Aykroyd to appear in this is beyond my level of comprehension.  This isn't a movie.  I don't know what it is but it is not a movie.  You'd have a better time in the dentist['s chair.  Like Kevin Hart, if MM keeps going like this, her 15 minutes will run out at about 9 and 1/2 minutes.  

 

Fun Fact:  The plot was based on a dream Ben Falcone had, dreaming about his wife Melissa McCarthy as a fast food worker whose life is falling apart. The two later wrote plot points on napkins before developing the screenplay.  (This explains why the film is so shitty).

 

[baumer]

If there was a number 16 on the list, it would be Mockingjay 1.,

[DAJK]

I agree with most of your list, although I haven't seen all the movies yet. I'm glad someone else has Gozilla so low for the year, and I think we can all agree that I Frankenstein is awful

[Empire]

Your write up for Tammy was hilarious.

[Plain Old Tele]

9) Lego Movie:  Another film that is just too clever for its own good.  Fast, silly, boring and relentless is what comes to mind when describing this film.  You get to laugh when you see the cameos.  But that's all it has going for it.  I'll leave this one alone as I know most of the dear readers love this film.  But it was a terrible experience for me,

 

Fun Fact:  Han and C3PO make an appearance

 

Oh the irony of Blankments liking this.

[Alpha]

I disagree with a lot of the choices on Baumer's lists, but Tammy and I, Frankenstein are also really bad films.

[miketheavenger]

I heavily disagree on LEGO and Godzilla, but otherwise pretty good list.

[Blankments]

Oh the irony of Blankments liking this.

It is my gift, it is my curse. Who am I? I'm Blankments

 

[baumer]

I didn't get any likes from Tele for my list.  I'm assuming that all of my choices will be in the top 25 on his list.  Especially Tammy and Godzilla.

[Empire]

I didn't get any likes from Tele for my list.  I'm assuming that all of my choices will be in the top 25 on his list.  Especially Tammy and Godzilla.

So will I, Frank.

[baumer]

Oh yes, Tele definitely liked I Frank.

[Plain Old Tele]

I didn't get any likes from Tele for my list. I'm assuming that all of my choices will be in the top 25 on his list. Especially Tammy and Godzilla.

I'm sure TAMMY would be my number 1 (if I had seen it).

[The Panda]

LEGO, Noah, and Godzilla are all great to good films. Haven't seen the Babadook, but I've heard a lot of good about it, but need to see it before I judge.

It's weird hearing complaints about cleverness or intellectual depth in films being negatives.

I liked the Giver but it wasn't a good adaption of the novel/play.

Other than those I like your list.

[James]

I liked I, Frank simply because it had a great idea. The exexcution... eh. Tammy tho... I gave it a 4/10. It's the second worst movie of the year after Hercules (that played like a comedy more than Tammy ).

[Ethan Hunt]

LEGO, Noah, and Godzilla are all great to good films. Haven't seen the Babadook, but I've heard a lot of good about it, but need to see it before I judge.

It's weird hearing complaints about cleverness or intellectual depth in films being negatives.

I liked the Giver but it wasn't a good adaption of the novel/play.

Other than those I like your list.

The Giver was a play?? Anyways I despise the book.

[DAJK]

I really did love LEGO and Noah, but those are only 2 films out of 15.

[The Panda]

The Giver was a play?? Anyways I despise the book.

 

Yeah, I actually saw the play a couple of times before I eventually read the book.  It's a good story, the film did a decent enough job, but I do think they tried to hard to make it view more as the next YA thing than actually doing an adaption of the story.

[Ozymandias]

4) Godzilla:  I wanted to put this as number one....I really wanted to.  But the number one film is so much worse than this, it's like it's got its own category of bad films.  But onto Godzilla.  

 

I'm just going to repost what I said about it in the summer, there's nothing more to add.

 

The reason why Jaws works so well is because even though you don't see the monster, you know he's there and then when you finally do, in that iconic "bigger boat" moment, from that moment on, you are in a little bit of shock at the shear size of the shark.  But to make a monster movie work, you need strong actors, a strong story and people you care about.  Godzilla had none of that.  I can't believe they killed off Binoche and Cranston so early.  Cranston was at least interesting with his conspiracy theories and his wining and wailing.  When he died the film went downhill.  It became boring.  

 

Aaron Taylor Johnson was horrible.  He was really good in the Kick Ass films so I blame this on the director and the script writer.  They just gave him nothing to work with.  And Ken Watannabe just stared off into space the whole time, he looked confused or constipated the whole time.  Every shot his mouth is wide open, like he's discovering a new breed of dinosaur.  

 

The destruction is nothing new.  We've seen it all before in films like Transformers and Avengers.  You can do anything now on computer so it wasn't impressive.  And the base jumping scene needed some Michael Bay stuff.  There was just so much the film could have done better.

 

The plot of the film is pretty flimsy and all that's left is three monsters.  The battles between them were really tame.  There were some good things that happened, like when Godzilla breathes fire or whatever into one of it's mouths.  That was cool.  But when you have a film called Godzilla, I expect it to have a lot more of Godzilla in it.  This film was about characters I didn't care about, it had military psycho-babble, a father/son relationship that went nowhere and to make matters worse they killed off their best character 30 minutes into the film.

 

 

 

Fun fact:  Godzilla is so bad that it is rated a 6.6 on imdb.  It's obvious Satan has something to do with the making of the film.

 

 

 

lol imdb is worthless but I agree, this is the most disappointing movie I've seen in years.