by
Julien Faddoul
Forgive the
lateness, but the 2nd Annual Cinema Touch Awards will be completed
and announced at the end of February, once everything is in order. Until then,
as we enter 2014, these were the top ten worst films I saw in 2013.
Please enjoy (although
you shouldn’t see any of these movies).
10.
Safe Haven
A young woman
with a mysterious past lands in Southport, North Carolina where her bond with a
widower forces her to confront the dark secret that haunts her.
Of all the movies on this list, this one
is the funnest to deride. It seems every year these Nicholas Spark's
adaptations keep getting worse. For some reason, when actors read these scripts
they begin to lose all understanding of natural human behaviour and we are
always left with something that is sour and sugary at the same time. Plus, the
ending of this movie is such a brick wall of stupid that it will give you a
nose-bleed.
9.
Salinger
A feature
documentary on formative personal and professional experiences in the life of
writer J.D. Salinger.
By far the year's worst documentary. No
movie this year was less respectful and most misunderstood its subject. Using
badly filmed recreations and talking-head interviews that offer no new
information, the film, in an attempt to lionize the life and brilliant work of
J.D. Salinger, ends up preaching the exact opposite of what he was
about. He abhorred what was phony; this movie is phony.
8.
1000 years in
the future, an international combat force known as the Rangers systematizes the
mass migration of a contaminated, uninhabitable Earth.
After Earth is like chewing gum. It is vapour. It
enters the mind as air and just as dispiritingly leaves as air. It is a
107-minute vanity project from both its senior and junior star and yet it isn't
even interesting enough to ridicule.
7.
In the year
2154, where the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of
the population resides on a ruined Earth, a man takes on a mission that could
bring equality to the polarized worlds.
Politically facile, visually cheap, repugnantly acted
and incomprehensibly directed. A film that completely lacks any sense of
itself, in both tenor and plot. 2013 gave us a laundry list of glib
blockbusters, but in year that included Oblivion, Man of Steel and Jack the
Giant Slayer, Elysium was most certainly the dumbest.
6.
As the Nazis begin their
dominance, a young German girl finds solace by stealing books and sharing them
with others. As the Nazis begin their dominance, a young German girl finds
solace by stealing books and sharing them with others.
A shockingly stupid piece of period
cinema: A movie narrated by Death that compares the horrors of the Holocaust
with illiteracy. It’s as if World War II is seen from Mars, with various
depictions and situations lacking any historical sense. It consistently insults
the audience’s intelligence while it suffocates in it own manufactory. It makes
The Reader (2008) look like Shoah (1985).
5.
Another summer
of antics
One – and many have – could make the claim
that Adam Sandler has made a film that is pro-hate, anti-woman and anti-gay. I
think that better describes That's My Boy than Grown-Ups 2. What Grown-Ups 2
gives us is a film starring some of the funniest human beings alive who can't
deliver a single joke. Not once. To me, a comedy that isn't funny is worse than any of the above.
4.
Kick-Ass 2
After Kick-Ass’
insane bravery inspires a new wave of self-made masked crusaders, he joins a
patrol led by the Colonel Stars and Stripes.
A terribly confused movie: A film more
interested in aping the violence of other movies (a dog that chomps penises and
so forth) than in any form of superhero irony that it remains stranded between
the worlds of fantasy and reality, with the worst ensemble cast of the year.
3.
Identity Thief
When a
mild-mannered businessman learns his identity has been stolen, he hits the road
in an attempt to foil the thief.
A vile, cruel wallow in pandering to the
lowest common denominator. The only calculation one could make of it being a
comedy is that the main character is fat. Also, no one looked like they were
having a more forlorn time filming than McCarthy and Bateman.
2.
The Internship
Two recently
laid-off men in their 40s try to make it as interns at a Google where their
managers are in their 20s.
An evil piece of filmmaking: A
multi-billion dollar corporation using the beauty of the cinema to concoct a
2-hour advertisement for itself. If we can all agree that that's what this movie
is, then we must all agree that subjecting people to pay money to see it is
against the law. The Internship belongs in movie jail for crimes against
humanity.
1.
An entry-level
employee at a powerful corporation finds himself occupying a corner office in
exchange for spying on his boss's old mentor to secure for him a multi-billion
dollar advantage.
Rarely in my movie-going excursions do I
encounter a movie that is so incompetent, so absurd, so artless in every
department that it doesn't even understand its one-word title. First of all, no one in Paranoia is paranoid…that's basically it. How do you make that mistake? Liam Hemsworth gives the single
worst performance of the year as a guy who clacks on computer keyboards and
takes his shirt off, Amber Heard smiles and nods, and Gary Oldman and Harrison
Ford chew the scenery to shreds. Paranoia is a movie with an abundance of plot
devices but no plot, so nothing makes any logical sense. Going into it too much
would not at all be fun (for me at least). Suffice it to say that Paranoia is
agonizingly stupid in every division and others that have not yet been
discovered.
(Dis)Honourable
Mentions:
Admission
Adore
Blackfish
Closed Circuit
Dead Man Down
Delivery Man
A Good Day to Die Hard
The Host
Jack the Giant Slayer
Jobs
Man of Steel
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
One Direction: This is Us
Oz the Great and Powerful
Parkland
RIPD
We’re the Millers
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