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Samaritan

This is a list of least favourite films rather than worst ones because I didn’t dislike them all. If a movie is here, all it means is that there were seventeen four others I enjoyed more. That said none of them are very good. First of the list is Sylvester Stallone’s superfluous superhero story. I can only assume that this was trying to do something different in a crowded genre but somehow it achieved the exact opposite, creating a movie that is predictable and cliched to the point of being a parody. It even has a twist that manages to be the least surprising plot development since Snow White didn’t die.

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The Bubble

Judd Apatow’s comedy about a group of hapless egos making a film during covid did manage to raise some laughs but only because you were prepared to indulge its likeable cast like a group of four year olds putting on their first school nativity.

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Avatar: The Way of Water

So here it is, comfortably in the bottom ten. It’s like it is 2009 all over again; I am trying not to let it get to me this time but it stresses me out that so many people think the new Avatar film is good and is in some way a masterwork of the medium I love. HOW CAN PEOPLE BE SO UNDEMANDING?! Yes, yes the special effects are wonderful but the rest is just so infuriatingly poor. I got stuck reading comment after comment on a Vue Cinemas thread on Facebook this morning, with audience members saying it was exhilarating and transportational, moving and beautiful so I added something to say that I must have watched a different film and clearly Everyman were showing an alternate version.

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Save the Cinema

This film is quite charming but also very cheap. That in itself is not a problem but unfortunately the budget still exceeded the ambition.

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Deep Water

Again, diverting enough but it is an erotic thriller without any eroticism and more importantly no revelations in the denouement. It does go a bit bonkers in the end but not in a way that is either earned or surprising. I’m not sad that we have left films like Basic Instinct, Color of Night and Sliver in the 90s but why try to make such a another movie like this when the cultural climate has moved on and intimacy coordinators have finally been brought in. I’m glad they have taken the sex out, I just wished they’d put something else in.

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Pinocchio

What I said at the start about not disliking the films on this list, it doesn’t apply from here on.

Robert Zemeckis’ live action remake of the famous Disney animation is totally pointless. Sadly it isn’t a case of there being no strings on this adaptation; it is frustratingly tied down by its adherence to what came before as well as a company wanting to sell merchandise and more subscriptions to its streaming channel.

What we needed was a different version of Pinocchio, free of the shackles of convention. This was obvious watching this film and was then utterly compounded when Guillermo del Toro ended the year by giving us just that.

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Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

Warner Brothers used to be the kings of the film franchise with Batman, The Conjuring, The Hangover and Harry Potter. It is incredible how they have since fluffed any ongoing series of movies they have tried to make to the point that if it weren’t for Marvel, Fast & Furious and the occasional Bond movie then the concept could have died completely.

Their management of the DC superhero films has been a total mess but more surprising is how they managed to drive their new J. K Rowling Potter series into the ground after only three films out of a planned five. Part of this was down to the off screen behaviours of some of those involved but it is mostly because of poor storytelling, total misjudgment of audiences interest and no doubt due to a certain amount of hubris.

This last film was tedious where it should have been magical and after watching it I was not sure they’d be able to carry on. The new team at Warners seem to have come to the same conclusion as reportedly the fantastic beasts are now extinct.

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Licorice Pizza

Lots and lots of people raved about this movie. Being released in the US at the end of 2021 it even featured as many critics number one movie of the year, which was a frustrating thing for UK film journalists to do but there it is.

I found it incredibly annoying though. It is essentially all a teenage boy’s fantasy and despite it apparently being based on real events I did not believe that a single thing in it would really happen.

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Senior Year

Angourie Rice is a very good actor. Still only 21 she has shone in lots of films and series including The Nice Guys, The Beguiled, Every Day, Black Mirror and Mare of Easttown. Unfortunately she falls into a coma early in this movie and wakes up twenty years later as Rebel Wilson.

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Ambulance

My feelings about James Cameron and Avatar are nothing compared those I have with regard to the films of Michael Bay. Like Cameron he made some good stuff back in the day; The Rock is a great movie, but like Cameron he found great success and seems to have both drunk the self branded kool aid while simultaneously becoming creatively baron. Maybe this is why the Russo Brothers returned to smaller movies after Avengers: Endgame. They saw that absolutely box office power corrupts and absolutely box office power corrupts absolutely.

Ultimately though I blame the people that go to see these terrible movies and I am ashamed that in this case I am one of them.

(I don’t feel bad about watching Avatar 2, I clearly had to see that.)

I don’t have the energy to talk about Ambulance anymore but like all of these films they are here to be searched on the website.

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