The Worst Films of 2019 – Variety

Keep in mind that we havent seen Cats. Or a single one of the half-dozen Nicolas Cage movies released on demand (to zero demand?) this past year. Still, in the ongoing quest to find the next masterpiece, film critics inevitably have to sit through a lot more turkeys than your typical moviegoer. Rather than let all that cinemasochism go to waste, we might as well amuse you with the fruits of our suffering. Below, Variety taste-makers Peter Debruge and Owen Gleiberman name and shame the most ill-conceived, ineptly executed, and all-around disappointing films of 2019.

Peter Debruges Five Worst Movies:

1. DumboIn a decade or two, well look back at this period as the moment that Disney went through its archive, identified its most beloved classics, and rebooted them all as bombastic CG eyesores. Whereas the re-imagineering process has yielded mostly charming results on stage and ice (e.g. Julie Taymors The Lion King), the live-action overhauls largely fail to match the signature look and feel that made the originals so endearing (e.g. Jon Favreaus The Lion King). By letting Tim Burton have his way with its beloved airborne elephant, the studio must have known they would get a dark, sinister, and nightmarish version in its place, but the garish Gothic stylist goes overboard here, delivering a freakish carnival in which cruel characters jeer and abuse virtual animals. For this tricky tale to work, audiences must believe the poor pachyderm can fly, but this ugly CG upgrade never gets off the ground.

2. GlassAs someone who considers 2000s Unbreakable to be the best movie of M. Night Shyamalans wildly uneven career, I was psyched by the final scene of his comeback hit Split, which suggested that wed just witnessed the creation of a new super-villain, and that Bruce Willis Unbreakable character, the Overseer, would be back to deal with him. Willis is having one lousy year, and this might not even be his worst movie (thatd probably be Chinese megaflop Air Strike, reportedly the countrys most expensive film ever and therefore, its biggest bomberino). Hes barely in Glass, which focuses on Samuel L. Jacksons evil genius, whose intellect is limited by Shyamalans own imagination. After nearly two hours of tedious build-up, the much-touted showdown between the two ends in a shallow puddle. The twist? Glass implies that were all superheroes. If that were true, my power would be sniffing out stinkers like this.

3. LoqueeshaAfter being rejected from a Detroit talk-radio job for which minorities and women were encouraged to apply (leading him to conclude that he was discriminated against), a white man channels his inner black woman to get the gig. He calls what hes doing empathy, but impersonation is more like it an offensive, unfiltered, and thoroughly unconvincing racial stereotype of the sassy African-American women he sees fighting on a Jerry Springer-style TV show. Surrounding himself with supporting actors paid to compliment how funny and insightful he is (when in fact, he isnt), comedian Jeremy Saville comes across downright Albert Brooks-ian, right down to his willingness to go blitzing past the boundaries of political correctness. Saville intends to use comedy to make a well-meaning point about being true to oneself, but to anyone with a bit more perspective, this out-of-touch farce the blackvoice equivalent of Soul Man comes across as so much unsolicited mansplaining.

4. SerenityYouve probably heard that Matthew McConaughey goes skinny-dipping in Serenity. Its true, but scoping bongo boys coconuts aint nearly enough to redeem this steamy tropical noir which suffers from the opposite problem of McConaugheys derriere-baring turn in (the also bad, but in all different ways) The Beach Bum. Whereas Harmony Korines gonzo experiment thrives on its free-wheeling lack of a script, Serenity is broken by high-concept ideas that just dont pan out. On certain occasions, screenwriter Steven Knight has proven himself to be both brilliant and audacious (see Locke). Here, hes merely clumsy, reverse-engineering a confusing, barely coherent thriller from a twist that wasnt especially clever to begin with. If McConaugheys oddly-motivated character seems too shallow, too ill-defined to come across as a real person well, theres a reason for that. I could explain, but then Id have to kill you. Or make you watch Serenity, which just might be worse.

5. YesterdayTheres no romantic chemistry and the main character is an immature jerk, but that hardly matters, considering I couldnt get past the concept of this insipid fantasy. Screenwriter Richard Curtis seems to be proposing the opposite of the butterfly effect, where one could scrub the existence of anything from civilization in this case, the Beatles, but why not Freud, Tarantino, or Jesus? and nothing much would change, allowing a mediocre musician to exploit the fact he miraculously remembers the lyrics and instrumentation to the Beatles catalog well enough that he can recreate 40 or 50 of their songs by heart. Its an insult to the very concept of pop culture and of artistic influence the notion that great ideas change the world and it barely engages with the fact the Beatles music was a product of its time, unlikely to inspire the same fervor coming from a self-centered, sad-sack plagiarist.

Owens Gleibermans Five Worst Movies:

1. Men in Black: InternationalThere are many words available to describe a failed reboot: boring, soulless, greedy, imaginatively bankrupt. But as dismal big-screen franchise revivals from Hellboy to Childs Play demonstrated this year, the defining quality of a truly awful reboot is its existential emptiness, the thing that makes you go, Why does this movie exist? And why am I watching it? The Men in Black series was always an expensively tossed-together spare-parts experience (aliens! jokes! sunglasses!), and once you take Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith out of the equation, replacing them with the next generation of hipster Ciphers In Suits We Couldnt Care Less About (in this case, Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, vamping on nothing), youre left with a knockoff of a shadow of a dupe of a concept that was barely there to begin with.

2. Last ChristmasIts supposed to be a Yuletide romantic comedy dunked in the spirit of George Michael, but taking the lyrics of the 1984 Wham! song (Last Christmas, I gave you my heart) with a literalness that would scare a cardiothoracic surgeon, it turns into a movie cloying enough to make Michael cover his ears in his grave. Emilia Clarke plays a London singleton whos like Bridget Jones without charm, and Henry Golding is the weirdly perfect dude whos so embarrassingly old-fashioned he dances when he walks. The script, co-written by Emma Thompson, is nearly as cringe-worthy as her look-at-me! turn in the role of Clarkes morosely thick-accented Yugoslavian mother.

3. The last half hour of Once Upon a Time in HollywoodYes, Quentin Tarantinos 1969 movieland epic is on my 10 Best list, and I meant it, since I cherish the film. At least, I do until it falls off a cliff and crashes in a way Ive never seen a movie I love quite do. The notion of completely rewriting the history of Charles Mansons crimes, and what they did to our collective consciousness, is jaw-droppingly jejune, but my ultimate objection is that what had been a deliciously authentic look at Hollywood in 1969 turns, on a dime, into an insanely over-the-top pulp slasher fantasyand somehow, this is supposed to make us feel good. I just felt betrayed.

4. RocketmanI was surprised to be such a negative outlier on this movie, because Ive worshipped Elton John since 1970, and I was sure that more people would have objected to the fact that the droolingly awaited biopic about him turned out to be a kind of bo-fake-ian rhapsody. As if making a sloppy chronological hash of Johns career werent bad enough (yes, liberties are allowed, but in this case its as if the Beatles were playing Abbey Road at Shea Stadium), the film reduces his descent into addiction to overwrought clichs and serves up musical numbers that are less Moulin Rouge! than MTV backlot. Are we supposed to forgive all that simply because Eltons songs are timeless? Sorry, but when it comes to characterizing Rocketman, debacle seemed to be the hardest word.

5. Annabelle Comes HomeIn the old days, it would have been a cheesy-creepy thriller about a pig-tailed she-devil doll who comes to life and scares people. But because Annabelle Comes Home is an offshoot of the Conjuring universe, and must adhere to the arcane rules and regulations of the franchises afterlife-meets-Exorcist cosmology, this notably lame horror movie, in a year when lame horror movies became more interchangeable than ever, is about a doll who doesnt actually come to life shes just channeling the spirits, so that Christian ghostbusters Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) can once again face down the devil, in a demon film that turns exorcism into a tic.

The Best Films of 2019:

Original post:
The Worst Films of 2019 - Variety

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero