Dishonorable Mentions aka the crap that was lucky enough to skip the list.
A Million Ways to Die In the West-Seth MacFarlane, the goddess Charlize Theron, Neil Patrick Harris, Amanda Seyfried, Giovanni Ribisi, and the bad-ass of them all, Liam Neeson, what could possibly go wrong? Well everything actually. Unfunny, tedious, juvenile, and just not very clever. Seth MacFarlane should probably just stay behind the camera, or voicing CGI teddy bears, he's much funnier that way.
The Other Women-Katie Upton running around in a bikni, so there's that at least.
Maleficent-An unfortunately soulless, bland, one-note and boring reimagination of the classic Sleeping Beauty tale. Why take one of the most classic villains ever in Disney, say you're making a film in the villains point of view, and make her into a typical herione protagonist? Yawn, but at least Jolie's great and movie looks pretty as does she.
The Expendables 3-What a disappointment. All of that talent from the first two movie, plus adding Welsey Snipes, Kelsey Grammer, Harrison Ford, Antonio Banderas, Ronda Rousey, Mel freaking Gibson and yet we get a pretty lame, tame, and quite frankly dull watered down PG-13 action movie. Mel Gibson is the definite highlight though, and that scene in the truck with him is actually pretty amazing, sadly nothing else here is.
Biggest Disappointment of the Year: The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Man I really wanted to love this movie. I didn't LOVE Marc Webb's first Amazing Spider-Man, but I thought it was pretty solid and had faith this would be that sequel that would improve on the first film. It's so frustrating because there's a lot of good things, Andrew Garfield is fantastic as both Peter Parker and Spider-Man, as is Emma Stone and together they share an undeniably strong chemistry that Tobey Maguire and Kristen Dunst never had together. Dane DeHaan is a really good Norman Osborn. Unfortunately the movie falters everywhere else. The tone is all over the place (at one point it's a superhero flick, but wait no it's actually a high school romantic drama, but wait no it's actually a drama about a teenage boy with daddy issues, or wait perhaps it's just a silly comic book movie with shades of a Joel Sschumacher Batman movie. This movie just can't decide), the plot is convoluted, the special effects look as they were stolen from a video game, the dialogue is laughable, and the film has three of the worst villains of the year in Electro, Green Goblin, and my god oh my god the pointless Rhino. In fact take Rhino, and Electro out, you probably have a good movie or at least decent.
I mean, giving that it's directed by the director of the wonderful Resident Evil movies, I can't say I had high hopes or expectations for this per say, but given that it's a tragic historical story, and has a rather impressive cast being lead by Jon Snow aka Kit Harrington from my favorite show, Game of Thrones, I was thinking maybe just maybe Paul W.S. Anderson will finally make a good movie for once. Oh but boy was I wrong ever thinking that. This movie rips off as many movies as it possibly can from Titanic, Gladiator, 300, Braveheart, and so on. On top of that, the dialogue is putrid, has a central romance you can't possibly actually care about as the leads share zero chemistry, at times it's laughably bad, and even the action sequences or effects can save it. The volcano sequence doesn't even deliver. I still think, Kit Harington has potential to have a fine career in movies, but even he really couldn't help this, and even Kiefer Sutherland, Jack Bauer himself was awful here. And I love the guy.
James Bond is back! Well, not really, but considering this was a return to the spy genre for Pierce Bronsan after the Bond flicks he did (and I thought he was a pretty good Bond, even if his flicks after his first one, Goldeneye kind of sucked), I had some level of hopes this would be fun. And kind of like the release date hinted, this was just a big misfire. It's very poorly directed, tediously genric, has some really laughable dialogue, and you can really see every single plot point coming from a mile away. And, for a movie that is actually really quite violent this movie somehow manage to be so boring and honestly lame. It's just lazy filmmaking in all honestly, and what makes it worse is that it tries so hard to be a thriller that tackles on current political conflicts, but does not succeed in that either. Pierce is good, but that's it.
Honestly, despite that this was being directed by McG, a director I am not a fan of, I was actually kind of looking forward to this. I mean it has Kevin Costner, purely one of the hottest woman in Hollywood Amber Heard, and one of the best young actresses out there in Hailee Steinfeld, what wasn't there to be excited for? Well, sadly the movie kind of sucks. It's further proof that McG is one of the weakest action directors working today, as it's filmed to death with distracting shaky cam, horrible dialogue, unintentional humor, and many tone issues like when it tries so desperately hard to be an intense spy thriller, sometimes even a comedy, and many times it wants to be a father-daughter bonding drama which that doesn't even really work. At least Amber Heard looks hot as always, there's that at least.
I like Kevin Hart, I like Ice Cube, I like a good buddy cop comedy, but man I did not like Ride Along. At all! Not only does this basically try to rip-off as much buddy cop comedies as it can and does nothing to try to bring something new or fresh to the genre, it failed to do just the one specific job a comedy needs to do for me to give it a pass: actually be funny. Seriously, I chuckled maybe 4 times throughout this movie, and that's a major kill for a comedy when I can count the number of times I laughed. This movie probably gets my award for the most lazy big release comedy of the year as there's just nothing to it, there didn't even feel like there was any real actual effort put into yet, and despite the very passable chemistry between Hart and Cube, it's quite a stale and boring comedy for the majority of its running time. But, hey perhaps they'll learn their lesson and fix their mistakes with the not wanted sequel they've already announced, right? Okay, that's probably me being naive.
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Man I was actually really looking forward to this movie (notice a trend with these movies?). Arnold Schwarzenegger in a semi serious action role, with David Ayer (director of the very underrated End of Watch from 2012) directing seemed like a really idea on paper, and I really dug the trailers for this movie. Unfortunately, Sabotage turned out to be one of the most unnecessarily violent and quite frankly dumbest action movies I've seen in years. Each plot point in this movie feels like we've seen it before in other much better action movies, and the plot twist and turns just get more predictable and silly as the film progresses. But, that's not even what annoyed me the most about Sabotage, what bothered me the most was just how despicable and over the top practically every character in this movie was. I mean don't get me wrong a movie can work even without likeable characters, but those characters need to at least still be compelling and given depth, none of which applies to Sabotage especially when they're given some horrendous dialogue. Film has an impressive cast, but most of them overact here and Arnold seems to be sleepwalking throughout a lot of this. Thanks to shaky cam, even the action scenes can't save this.
Oh, boy was this a travesty to watch. How can a movie with George Clooney directing & STARRING, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin, and Bob Balaban be so BORING, dull and devoid of any charm? I'm not sure, but somehow The Monuments Men did it. There's not even much to talk about here, but there's pretty much nothing to this movie. I mean not only is there so much talent in this movie, but you have a really interesting historical story that could've made for a really compelling and engrossing watch, but this movie really does nothing to pay respect to these men as there was literally no character development given. I saw this movie, and yet I felt like I didn't know anymore about these men or the real story behind them anymore than I did before seeing this movie which was zero. But, perhaps the most shocking thing about this movie was lack of chemistry between the cast. I don't want to sound like a broken record because so many people have already said this, but watching this movie was indeed like watching a boring history lesson where the story is actually pretty interesting, but the way it's being told makes you want to fall asleep. I love you George Clooney, but you really dropped the ball with this.
Yet another film on this list that was just a complete waste of potential. You've got a great cast with Johnny Depp and Rebecca Hall leading the way, an interesting idea, and I think us movie fans were all excited to see what Wally Pfister (who is a well known Academy Award winning cinematographer for many of Christopher Nolan directed films) would do in his directorial debut. Well, Pfister has a long way to go before he can have a successful career as a director, because while his impressive visuals definitely remain in tact, everything else in Transcendence is simply a mess. The characters are nothing than cardboard cutouts, it's poorly constructed and edited, and for a movie with so much visuals and some potentially interesting ideas it's surprisingly tension free, dull, and honestly the best way to point it boring. And, as for the plot while there is some originality to it, it just becomes sillier and more unbelievable as it goes along. The cast is mostly given nothing to do, and Johnny Depp as the internet is simply sleepwalking. This was suppose to be the return to form for an actor who really needs yet, but sadly this was him still pretty much playing the role he's been playing for years.
I, Frankenstein, I hated you. As silly and stupid this entire premise sounded, this really could've been one of those fun b-movies, as it had a rather impressive cast, but sadly this movie was bad in all of the wrong ways. For the most of its running time, it truly is one of those laughably bad movies as most of the dialogue is quite putrid, the writing is so bad it's hard to put into words, the set designs and special effects look like they came out of a video game, and really there's literally nothing here in terms of characters or any sort of plot. It's also one of those movies that manages to take some really good actors like Aaron Eckheart, Yvonne Strahovski, and Bill freaking Nightly, and make them look like actors that might want to take up some acting classes. That's certainly one of the biggest if not the biggest sin a movie can make. Also, this movie just takes itself way too seriously, which is perhaps its biggest problems as there's no sense of humor or self-awareness to it. If it did have that, this could've been a much more entertaining movie.
Remember this movie? Yeah probably not, since the studios released the movie pretty much the first week of 2014 in hopes that everyone who saw it would forget about it come by the end of 2014, but thankfully I did not forget what an embarrassing piece of garbage this was. I don't even know where to begin in describing how awful this movie is. The acting, the set designs, the costume designs, the horrible horrible special effects, the high school level production, the writing, the zero characters, the laughably cringe worthy dialogue, just everything about this movie was simply a joke, and looked as if there was zero literally zero effort put into making this movie. I'm not kidding when I say this is probably one of the most poorly acted movies I've ever seen, as the line delivery by pretty much every actor in this movie made it seem as if the filmmakers of this movie had just picked a few random people on the streets, and asked them "Hey, would you like to be in our big studio movie about Hercules, even though you clearly have no prior acting experience?". Everything in this movie was just so cartoonish and over the top. This is the definition of a movie, you can definitely watch with a couple of friends and just simply make fun of it the entire time. Kellan Lutz, maybe you'll prove yourself as an actor in the future, but you haven't yet.
Okay, okay, if you've been following me on Letterboxd, or you just know me personally, I'm pretty sure my #1 pick comes as no surprise, but Transformers 4 indeed gets my pick for the worst movie I saw this year. And that maybe isn't per say because it's THE worst movie of the year, but it's most simply because no other movie this year made me as verbally outraged, simply pissed, and simply disgusted as this movie made me feel while sitting in that theater watching this. Look, I disliked Transformers 2 and 3 just about as much as anyone else did, but even with that being in mind, there was a part of me that thought maybe just maybe this new Transformers movie would be the return to form for this series, maybe this will be when Michael Bay gets it right again. Because I still to this day actually enjoy watching the first Transformers movie, I think it's an entertaining popcorn flick. With this movie, I liked that they were taking it into a new direction, and instead of having Shia Labeouf in the lead role, we were getting Marky Mark aka Mark Wahlberg as the lead this time around, an actor I've always like, so this has perhaps some potential in actually being a fun blockbuster and the trailers didn't look THAT bad. But, man did Michael Bay fool me again, he did it again like he always does. Everything that went wrong with the previous Transformers movies, we wrong with this if not even more so. The dialogue is so awful behind words with lines of dialogue like "My face is my warrant", the writing if you can even call it that felt as if it were written for a high school drama play (and that's probably even offensive to people that write scripts for high school plays), any sort of plot is convoluted and virtually non existent, the characters are horrible I did not care about a single living person in this movie not even the robots, the humor is simply cringe inducing, the acting despite having GOOD actors in this movie is terrible (heck this movie even had Stanley Tucci and Kelsey Grammar in it. I'm guessing they didn't read the script before signing on), and even the special effects while yes sometimes pretty could not even remotely save this movie or the action sequences which weren't even that impressive in the first place. Transformers: Age of Extinction is just one of those movies that is so bad, that once it was all over I felt like I needed to do something to wash off the crap I just witness. And look I know there's a lot of people that actually like these movies, and find enjoyment in them. All I'll say to that is that I'm happy for you, I'm glad you were able to find enjoyment in a movie like this that I clearly could not. And please don't take my hatred for this movie as me saying I can't enjoy a movie where you simply should just turn your brain off and not take it seriously because that is absolutely not true. I understand that, and I can list off loads of movies I love that fall into that. Perfect examples for movies from this year like that would be John Wick, or The Equalizer, or the last few Fast & Furious movies, just to name a few. The problem I have with a movie like Age of Extinction, is that everything surrounding any possible cool action sequences is total crap, and just really feels lazy on any kind of filmmaking level, so by the time an action scene comes on I don't really have any reason to be invested in what's going on which just takes me out of the movie. Okay, I think I've rumbled on enough as to why this is simply my least favorite movie of the year.
Well there it goes, the movies I saw in 2014 that put me through the most torture and were the toughest experiences for me to sit through. Thankfully, in a few days I'll be talking about the movies that brought me the most joy with my Best of the year list so please look out for that as it will be up soon.
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