by Jaime Grijalba.
I said in an earlier post last year that I didn’t actually like to do reviews on bad movies, mainly because it was so easy to go all funny and mocking towards it, and that’s not a positive attitude, but sometimes we feel in the mood to just condemn and find a way to just vent out our views on the negative side of life, and as always, the movies aren’t always the holy place where all’s good and nice. So, I decided to do this brief list for you to comment on and list your own choices for the worst movies of what you saw in 2012, and don’t worry, no matter what you think, ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ is not even near this list. I shall list 5 movies, because that’s all the respect that I can have for these movies and all the space I want to give them. I’d like to thank Bob Clark once again for the great header image, as always welcome for this top 10′s-20′s-5′s. Oh, and before you go into my list to find the greatest sins to the cinematic form of this year, I’d like to ask you for suggestions on what to write next in these weekly columns, I’ve been finding myself struggling a bit to find something to write about, a short series of essays, reviews, views, recollections, writings, fictions, whatever you’d want me to tackle, whatever the subject, I’m open for it, and I’ll do it, I promise. Anyway, onto the badness.
5. The Lucky One (Scott Hicks)
Movies based on Nicholas Sparks novels are now a genre and we all know it, and of those that he has made possible through his inventive writing are ‘Dear John’ (2010) and this one from 2012. The 2010 film was about an Iraq veteran that came back after many battles and tried to find the woman whom he loved before he went away and thinks that he can rekindle that love, it was also one of the worst movies I saw in 2010. This one is about an Iraq veteran (no, no, it’s not lazyness, it’s called autorship) who finds a picture in the middle of the war and has to go back to USA to find the woman who was in the picture, because he thinks it was the reason he made it alive. Then comes the most boring and obvious romance film in ages, with the classic golden chest shot of the Sparks movies, or the other classic ‘kiss under running water’ theme, and the weird thing is that all these Sparks films are directed by different and sometimes experienced directors… what happens when they come up with material like this? I’m guessing they just want to play safe, and that’s an offense and the worst thing that you could do to your career and your filmography (let’s thank Tarantino that he has the mentality to think of his movies as his filmography, and he respects that).
4. Sadako 3D (Tsumotu Hanabusa)
Up there you can read what I thought of this reboot-remake of the famous Ringu japanese franchise, and also read my perceptions regarding reviewing bad movies, something I mentioned at the start of this post. To put it simple: I loathed this movie because it took everything that made the Ringu films interesting and decided that it wasn’t interesting anymore, for turning Sadako in some sort of Pokémon monster with attacks and jaws to eat people up, as if it were any other kind of swarming plague, while in the earlier films it was a complex character with a deep personality and reason of being, and Sadako was what made the films appealing in the beginning, its tortured soul status… why in the name of fuck change that? Money? No, they wanted to ridicule it and make people forget that Sadako ever existed, and that is a shame, with so many things that could be interesting to do with her. Ah, forget it.
3. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Pârt 2 (Bill Condon)
It’s finally over! And what a way to go, oh boy. It’s one of the most ridiculous films I’ve ever seen and I’m sorry, but I don’t think you really care but, anyway, spoiler alert. The movie is a mess in the most fun and boring way possible at the same time, first because it’s a long movie and it lags a lot in the middle, and in the start, but then it pays up with the most ridiculous ending in the whole series. It’s about how the newborn vampire Bella (Lugosi shall not be named… DAMMIT) has to protect her newborn daughter (who grows at such a speed that they needed to CGI the face of the baby… and her whole body as well!) from the evil vampires (the Vulturi or something like that) because they think that the mixture of vampire and human can destroy the world entirely. So, here comes the final battle that we all saw in trailers and commercials, necks snap and heads fly everywhere, it’s a battle to remember, but then when the bad guy dies, we see that it was all just an illusion to make the bad guy change his ways and go ‘bye bye’, and that’s what happens. No one days, everyone lives happy ever after, and the wolf kid wants to bang the little baby vampire. Nice, isn’t it?
2. Partir to Live (Domingo García Huidobro)
Remember when I had many chilean movies on my top 20 last week? Well, here you have it, chilean movies in my worst films list. So, this movie was seen at the Valdivia Film Festival, it was participating in the main slate in the competition for best chilean film of the festival, and if you’ve attended one and you’ve seen films in the run for a prize, you’ll know that they give you s0mething to vote for the movie and how much you liked it in the end, in this case it was a piece of paper with the numbers 1 to 7 (at school that’s how we grade stuff), and you had to take out one of the numbers, and that number that was missing was your vote. I sat there and I started watching at a packed screening at one of the biggest venues of the festival… halfway through the movie I took out my ballot, I took out the “1″ from it and then put it in my pocket again, I waited for the movie to be finished and I just threw the vote in with all my strength and rabid agony. How can you get a movie so wrong? The director was there, and he was smirking and smiling along as if he owned the place, as if the price was already in his pocket, thank GOD he didn’t win anything, that was easily one of the worst movies I had ever seen in my entire life, and the worst film of the festival for sure. It’s just a mixture of images that we’ve seen in other movies and done so much better, no word is spoken in the film besides a ‘Hello?’ and it tries so hard to be deep and meaningful, it just made me sick, I jumped from my seat whenever the screeching noise came up and we saw another video of UFOs flying the sky… and the meaning and connection to the real life… non-existant, this was a movie that was almost literally stuck up the director’s ass, and I hope that he stops being proud of making this piece of crap that I don’t want to see a frame of ever again.
1. Pinochet (Ignacio Zégers)
It is hard to say that the worst movie of the year is one of your own country that is trying to surge, but it’s the truth, and while the number 2 was one of the worst movies I had seen in my life, it doesn’t come out as morally offensive as this ‘documentary’ is. Oh, yes, a documentary called Pinochet, nothing good can come out of it, as many of you know, it’s the surname of the dictator that made Chile a bloody dictatorship for over 15 years. Killings, torture, theft, information, secret police, everything was there and you can have a nice picnic hearing the chill-inducing stories from the people who were affected by the acts that directly violated human rights and that were done without any control nor supression under the regime of Augusto Pinochet. Hell, I could not be here telling you this if my mother and father were less lucky, they both were inches away from being killed by the military and officials from this regime during the years they did not meet. Luckily I was a kid in democracy, I was born in 1990 when the transition was starting and Aylwyn was taking the charge of president of the republic. Now, after all the investigations, all the public hatred, here comes a group of people, still loyal to the works and words of the sanguinary dictator Pinochet, and make a movie trying to defend him, his work and ouvre. Isn’t that disgusting? Isn’t that just revolting? The fact that it doesn’t even touch the issue of human rights, tries to defend the coup d’etat by the usual claims of civil war and that cubans were going to take over the country… bullshit I say, same is the silence towards the USA collaboration with Pinochet into making Chile a libertarian economy that would then propagate all over South America and that’s still the principal surge for social disgust and troubles till this day. Just a disgusting film that I had to watch by myself just to see that it was real, and that it existed, and that there’s still people out there filled with hate and pain.
Another sinful movies in alphabetical order: Alex Cross, La casa (The House), The Duck’s Migration, Four Assassins, Gao hai ba zhi lian li (Romancing in Thin Air), Ghost on Air, Juan in a Million, Lay the Favorite, Paranormal Activity 4, Perfect Two, Requiem for the Damned, El tramo (The trail), Treasure Island, Wrath of the Titans.
So, what are your picks? And remember, suggestions for my next articles!
So, I decided to do this brief list for you to comment on and list your own choices for the worst movies of what you saw in 2012, and don’t worry, no matter what you think, ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ is not even near this list.
hahahaha Jaimie! Well, I certainly did not expect it would be, much as I was figuring you wouldn’t have LES MIZ in such infamy as well. The only one of the group I have seen is BREAKING DAWN, and I certainly agree it would belong on such a list. That’s too bad about the Chilean PINOCHET landing in the top spot, as the subject is a fascinating one, though as you tellingly note it’s a painful one for most Chileans. Don’t think IO can contest any films on this shortlist, that’s for sure. Nice round-up.
I’d love to have a documentary about Pinochet, a good documentary, this is just an apology and a brain wash, as if nothing bad happened under his regime, that is just morally wrong.
Jaime, have you seen the picture in which Nicole Kidman, to her eternal disgrace, pisses on Zac Efron — “The Paperboy’ if I’m not mistaken? Golden chest shots, golden showers — apparently 2012 hasn’t been a good year in the cinema for pretty boy Zac.
I think he can do right sometimes, but not this year, and about The Paperboy, I’ve heard so many things about it that I’m almost frightened to even see it.
The Paperboy is even worse than you’ve heard. Efron can’t act his way out of a paper bag.
I often find lists like this pretty funny.
Instead of writing up OBVIOUS choices for the worst of the year (and stuff like the Efron movie and another in a string of torturous TWILIGHT movies are condemned even before they are released), wouldn’t it be better and far more intellectually sound to write about films that had interest written all over them and then sucked when finally presented anyway?????
We all know what junk is in store for us with the shit you listed, perhaps it would have been more beneficial, and far more successful, to list films that were highly anticipated, even fawned over in some cases.
I can tell you right now that any list without the monumental dud CLOUD ATLAS, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (yes, you heard me, I thought it sucked), HYDE PARK ON HUDSON, ANNA KARENINA and HITCHCOCK would really be missing out on commentary for films that had major potential but faltered in the final heat.
What you list here is so obvious as to be elementary…
Nice try…
Question is– were these messages written by the Actual Dennis, or Imposter Dennis? Is it live, or is it Memorex?
I wouldn’t call “Pinochet”, “Partir” or “Sadako” obvious choices, because most of us wouldn’t even know they existed. Better to show us new crap than remind us of the old stuff. And in the case of “Pinochet”, it’s essential to tell us about a film that’s reprehensible even in its very premise, especially when some poor deluded fools on our shores my look at it without the proper historical context that you get from actually growing up where this shit went down. That’s better than giving us a trashy dish on what mainstream releases didn’t live up to our expectations.
No, this IS Dennis and NOT Jason Giampietro….
GODDAMNIT SAM, I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD HAPPEN… Now I have to go about getting a new fucking screen-name…
Fucking scumbag Jason…
Agreed BOB, on the PINOCHET thing. However, even you would have to admit that rehash of the Efron film or the latest in the TWILIGHT saga is just beating a dead horse that came to the finish line dead already. The point is to highlight films that were duds regardless of the pedigree or anticipated word of mouth.
Case in point, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES was already declared somthing special before it was released and, guess what, it didn’t even come close to the THE DARK KNIGHT remotely. CLOUD ATLAS (sorry for stepping on your toes here, I know you liked it) was a three + hour waste of time that made little sense and was far more concerned with its special effects than telling the story at hand. Some called it a flawed masterpiece. I just saw it a a piece of trash of the worst kind (and I love fantasy/sci-fi)…
To state the obvious is tantamount to boredom. If Jaime had highlighted something like ZERO DARK THIRTY as one of his WORST of the year then I’m sure we’d have something exciting to debate here….
I’m of two minds here. On the one hand, I like seeing points debated when I write pieces on mainstream releases that I like, even though it usually just devolves into trolling. On the other hand, I’ve written the occasional piece on something I think is crap, but I really try not to, because what’s the point of investing all that time into something you don’t really like? I did it this year for “The Avengers” because of the comics connection, and I don’t feel too bad because of how insanely popular it was. I was tempted to do it for “John Carter”, but it was such a monumental bomb it would just be kicking a dog when it’s down.
But that IS the point, BOB.
It’s one thing to write up a review for a recently seen film and kill it becasue it sucked. I’ve written them, Allan has, even Sam…
But to take a good portion of your day out (when I could be doing things far more interesting: having coffee with an old friend, my laundry, reading a good book, exercising or masturbating to porn) to list all the worst of the year and then labor over why this one or that one sucked seems like an excercise in negativity. Why bother??????
Listen, I’m smart enough to know that TWILIGHT is trash. I have brain enough in my head to keep from going to see the latest in, i dunno, the SCREAM franchise, to know I need to stay away from it like it was typhoid fever. I don’t need a full post of the WORST films of the year to confirm what I already know. If you wanna do this kind of thing then just review the films individually, as they are released, and be done with it….
No, my point is why bother attacking mainstream stuff that a majority of people like? I suppose my “John Carter” comparison doesn’t really work there. Sure, we all write them, but they’re pretty ugly pieces when you get down to it. I don’t even like reading Denby or Lane in the New Yorker half the time, because it seems like they’re just coming up with catchy dismissive reviews instead of saving their ink for the stuff they like. Of course in that case there’s money invovled, so whatever. In our case, why go out of your way to make a case for a big release being trash? After all, any one of us is probably going to write a praise piece eventually, and you can save your criticisms for there. But if somebody like Jaime wants to have fun with a “worst of”, article, there’s no reason to get hot and bothered that the picks aren’t more of a surprise.
I’m with you Dennis on TDKR. It was crap. A HUGE step down from the last one. A big meandering dud of a film. I usually reserve my scorn for movies that TRY to do something interesting and fail miserably, TDKR. I like what you’re saying here. It is nearly the worst film of the year for me that I’ve seen.
That’s my WHOLE point though, JON.
To list crapola like the TWILIGHT film is stating the obvious.
But, then again, I think the whole idea of a WOST OF list and, even worse, a full blown review is unnecessary. We are here to celebrate and debate the factors of good art. Dwelling on the shit, which will be brought up in any discussion of the best films of a particular year, seems like we’re more interested in hating than we are in celebrating. Any review of a film will bring in nay-sayers, a full post on the worst of a film year seems like over-kill to me.
I don’t need to be reminded of that which I have, purposely, put to the side…
If you do feel the need to write up a post like this, and this goes out to Jaime or anyone else, then, at the very least, go with films that will strike controversy in the discussion. Nobody would EVER defend a film like TWILIGHT (well, maybe a 16 year old teenage girl with Robert Pattison’s likeness tattoo’d to her butt), or sing the praises of drivel that stars the likes of Zac Efron… So this post seems a little lop-sided and totally unnecessary to me.
Nothing against Jaime. God knows the kid tries his best. He just needs a small amount of guidance and a proofreader before he commits to something permanent like this…
Yeah doesn’t it make a good deal of sense to rank the “biggest disappointments” or “most overrated”? Now THAT could be an interesting discussion…..
On my list or somewhat highly rated or highly anticipated films that didn’t resonate with me would be
TDKR
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Django
Flight
Oslo, August 31st
Killing Them Softly
Argo
Prometheus
Goodbye First Love
Elena
I could add Skyfall too, which was serviceable, but not sure I like the recent trend of taking the “fun” out of Bond movies.
The point I’m trying to make with my above comment is that we ALL knew that shit like the stuff you listed was gonna suck even before they were released in theatres. Nothing exciting in that.
What would have been interesting and far better received, in the form of a review, would be you taking on films that were highly anticipated as supposedly great films that floundered when finally seen.
I find it more intellectually sound and thrillingly shocking when a reviewer puts the screws to something nobody would ever expect to make a TOP WORST list…
For instance: I found the highly praised THE IMPOSSIBLE only so-so, was not impressed in the least with the lauded MOONRISE KINGDOM and totally bored with the well received FRANKENWEENIE…. All of these films entered the circle with great praise and good word of mouth. Stuff like the TWILIGHT film was known to be bullshit before it even hit theatres…
What’s shocking about this list is that an intelligent kid like you even wasted your time with crapola like the stuff in the first place…
C’mon, you’re so much better than that.
I have removed the comments that Jason placed impersonating Dennis at Dennis’ request which required deletion of all replies and comments made in that chain. Apologies, but Dennis is understandably sick of this impersonmation crap and I have the same problem with the Godawful Jack Marsh pieces.
I understand. I am on the phone at this very moment with Dennis. The comments he made on THIS thread are legitimate, and have been reinstated.
Regarding the whole hoopla about bad movies against movie dissapointments, may I point out that many critics, famous and prestigious, out there gave positive reviews to many of the films in the Twilight franchise? I don’t know why or how they can think that those movies are any good, but it’s out there. And regarding the dissapointments, well, that’s something completely different, and the movies that many of the people here were dissapointed with are not my own, since I liked Cloud Atlas and TDKR a lot, just to name a couple.
The only films that I was dissapointed when I saw them were: Joven y Alocada (Young & Wild), The Man with the Iron Fists and Les Misérables.