This was a lot of fun to write last year, so I think it's going to be a regular feature. All the usual caveats apply. I'm not a professional critic and do my best to avoid seeing the movies that usually end up on "Worst of" lists, so I have not seen the real bottom-of-the-barrel dreck. The list is in no way comprehensive, and mainly just a way for me to let off some steam as I'm working through the last few titles from last year. It's a few months until I can finalize my "Best of" list for movies, but I'm pretty much done seeing all the mainstream releases I care about. Minor spoilers ahead.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim - This movie was doomed the second the trailer was released. I don't think that a new animated "Lord of the Rings" movie is a bad idea - the Bakshi version is a cult classic - but the anime style was the wrong way to go here. I've read up on what was going on with the production, and all the great talent and all the technical wizardry involved, but the end result just looks disappointingly bland and generic. It may not have been a film that was created just to keep the rights to the franchise with New Line, but it sure feels like one.
Mother, Couch - Sometimes you see a terrible film from a first time director, that somehow has an A-list cast and resources that other directors would kill for, and you have to applaud everybody for taking a big risk that in no way paid off. "Mother, Couch," was directed by a Swedish guy named Niclas Larsson, who made some award-winning short films and commercials. From interviews, he seems to think he's made a horror film. I think he's actually aiming for an absurdist existential comedy, but wandered off course. There are some signs of talent, but Larsson's not ready for long form yet.
The Crow - Easily my biggest disappointment of the year, because I really loved the original "Crow" movie starring Brandon Lee, and I often like Bill Sarsgaard as a leading man. This remake, directed by Rupert Sanders, occasionally has some good-looking visuals, but it's clear that Sanders still doesn't know how to do action, the writer doesn't understand the material, and the performers are all left adrift. After decades of different versions in development limbo with so many actors and directors attached at various points in time, I can't believe this is what actually got made.
Cold Copy - A thriller about a young journalist who uncovers her mentor's unethical tactics isn't a bad premise. It's just that everything about the portrayal of journalism in this film is decades out of date, and the unethical tactics are tame compared to what we know actually goes on in the industry. Bel Powley and Tracee Ellis Ross are doing the best that they can, but they don't have much to work with. "Cold Copy" is the brainchild of another European first-time director, Roxine Helberg, who made a lot of commercials. I think it's better than "Mother, Couch," but not by very much.
Bagman - Colm McCarthy is a very solid British director, whose last horror film was the excellent "The Girl With All the Gifts." So what happened here? The script is nonsense. There's no atmosphere to speak of. The bagman monster is kind of interesting at first, until you realize that it isn't actually going to do anything scary. Like the recent "Wolf Man," the parental anxiety themes are laid out well enough, but all the subsequent chills and thrills fall totally flat. Also, was there a coherent ending to this film that was left on the cutting room floor somewhere?
Reunion - I suspect the plan was to stick a bunch of talented actors and comedians in a by-the-numbers murder mystery together, and hope something watchable would result. Well, it didn't. Lil Rel Howery, Billy Magnussen, Jillian Bell, and Jamie Chung all spend 94 minutes bumming around somebody's house, going through the motions as the plot slowly works itself out around them with zero thrills, laughs, or surprises. The writers are the guys behind the "Edge of Sleep" series with Markiplier, so you can draw your own conclusions.
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