Best of 2016 – Worst Films
Written by Admin on 19 December 2016
You can’t have all the good without some bad. Here are James’s top five stinkers for 2016. Listen back to the podcast here. Warning: spoilers for some bad films you shouldn’t see.
5. WARCRAFT
Some might argue that movies based on video games don’t have to suck. However, this stinker does not support that hypothesis.
4. ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS: THE MOVIE
Probably predictable, but this reboot / rehash was just the same old jokes, except lamer, with a roll-call of celebrities to try and make you forget the pain. It didn’t work.
3. PERSONAL SHOPPER
Partly because I thought it was legitimately bad, but also because I had such high expectations. Stewart and Assayas worked brilliantly together on CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA, but couldn’t make it work a second time. The scene where she texts her ghost for 15 minutes just underlined how dire this script was.
2. BATMAN VS SUPERMAN / SUICIDE SQUAD
Bracketing these both together, though BATMAN was definitely the worse of the two. DC are trying to play catch-up with Marvel, and in doing so, are ruining a whole series of characters. BATMAN VS SUPERMAN was an hour and a half too long, a waste of some decent acting talent, with a small ray of light in the form of Wonder Woman. SUICIDE SQUAD was almost as pointless, but having the genuine star power of Will Smith and Margot Robbie salvaged something from the fire. I still don’t understand who was on who’s team, and what their motivation was.
1. STAR TREK: BEYOND
I’m not a Trekkie, so maybe I’m totally missing the point. I dunno. Are they all this bad? The crew crash land on an unexplored planet after their ship is destroyed by a swarm of alien bees. They then happen to stumble upon an old starship, which *just happens* to have a vintage motorcycle, for Chris Pine to ride around the alien encampment as a distraction. Then, it turns out the way to defeat these alien bee things is to fly directly into their swarm and blast the Beastie Boy’s “Sabotage” at crazy volumes, despite there being no evidence of the starship having any sort of car stereo. Everything about this was awful.
