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Space Cadet

This post is dedicated to Netflix because while they have three movies in my top ten this year, they also produced or released seven out of the depressing decemvirate listed here. It’s fair to say they’ve had some hits and some misses but that is kind of their MO. 

First off is the Emma Robert starrer Space Cadet. I didn’t hate this film but it places here simply because there were around ninety others I liked more. 

Space Cadet is well meaning enough and Roberts carries it a fair way but as a comedy it is all pretty laboured and it contains no surprises whatsoever.

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Subservience 

Netflix didn’t make this film about a domestic robot gone rogue but they are streaming it. It is great when filmmakers can take something in an overly crowded sub genre and still do something fresh and original. It’s less good when they don’t even bother. 

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A Family Affair 

Netflix again with this comedy about Zac Efron bonking Joey King’s mum. As with Emma Roberts in Space Cadet, the talented cast make something of the poor script and story (Nicole Kidman is the mum) but it is still a poor script and story.

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Jackpot!

This one comes from Amazon Studios and it is annoyingly nonsensical and painfully unfunny. Even Awkwafina and John Cena couldn’t save it.

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Unfrosted

This one should have been a real coup for Netflix as it is Jerry Seinfeld’s directorial debut. Unfortunately it seems that as a director Jerry Seinfeld is lazy and self indulgent. He clearly has a lot of famous people on speed dial but again, they couldn’t do enough to mask the dull gags and uninspired plotting.

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Argylle

There is a definite theme here because Argylle is another failed comedy. I guess I don’t have a high tolerance for this sort of thing. Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman films were risky projects, with their exaggerated comic book style and OTT action stylings and his follow up Argylle shows exactly where they could have gone wrong. 

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Uglies

Netflix pick up on the dystopian teen thriller eight years after the genre ran into the ground and totally fail to bring any new life to it. The film posits a future where everyone is considered unattractive until they get plastic surgery and a lobotomy and then fills the cast with people who rebel against this with beautiful and vacuous actors. It’s Joey King again, maybe she should have signed a contract with a different studio.

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Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver

Please Hollywood (and more specifically in this case Netflix) stop giving Zac Snyder money to make movies. 

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Mother of the Bride

Of all of Netflix’s crimes against movie making this year, this is the worst. Yes, it is theoretically another comedy and this time the cast suit the weak material. I actually struggled to make it to the end of this one.

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Borderlands

Borderlands got terrible reviews but I couldn’t believe it was as bad as they were saying it was. Sadly it was. The entire premise appears to be to get some big Hollywood names and put them in cheap cosplay. Cate Blanchett starred in the excellent Apple TV show Disclosure this year, where some terrible truth from her past was revealed. In the final episode we found out what the dark secret was and I was surprised it wasn’t that she’d been in this movie.