So for most people, the year of 2016 in movies was horrible. It was only saved by movies like Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, and La La Land. That is an overstatement, but I think it fits the sentiment. Most of the summer blockbusters were a disaster, and to quote Ian, the Minister of Truth, they should be “flushed down the toilet”. I can’t argue with this. I skipped a ton of movies this year because they looked so bad that I couldn’t justify spending my time or dollars on them, but there were still some pretty bad movies anyway. Here are my top 5 least favorite, biggest disappointments of the year.
5. Swiss Army Man (Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert) – June 24, 2016
This premiered at Sundance in January and to good word of mouth. I got excited to see this, but once I did, I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was an entire movie about fart and masturbation jokes, that most of them fell flat with me. I might have really enjoyed this movie 10 years ago, but not now. Also, the ending was such a letdown, and frankly, a bit confusing as to what it was really trying to say. It doesn’t matter, because now I don’t care.
4. X-Men: Apocalypse (Bryan Singer) – May 27, 2016
I didn’t have high expectation going into this movie, but after the great Days of Future Past, I figured it would at least be fun. Well it wasn’t. It wasted its main villain in Apocalypse, and misused most of its other characters. I don’t have any real interest any more in continuing this storyline of X-Men movies. I can say though that I would like to see a spin-off of Quicksilver. He’s the redeeming thing in the movie and now the franchise.
3. The Infiltrator (Brad Furman) – July 13, 2016
I usually like these drug smuggling, gangster type movies, but this one was just crap. It was unintelligible most of the time, and that in turn made it boring. I feel bad that the great Bryan Cranston wasted his time with this one, and I feel like he has better things he could be doing. By the time we finally got to where we’d see Pablo Escobar, he was off screen again. He literally was in the movie for a half-second. Ugh!
2. Suicide Squad (David Ayer) – August 5, 2016
Oy vey! What hasn’t already been said about this stinker of a DC universe movie? It had an interesting premise, but didn’t make good use of its story. I wanted so much more of the Harley Quinn-Joker story, but we didn’t get that. In fact, to the contrary, I don’t really understand why the Joker is even in this movie. He’s free to run around and no one is trying to capture him. Not even the Batman? Batman is too busy trying to arrest Deadshot?! This movie makes me cross-eyed when I try to reason the writer’s decisions here. It’s just bad. I had at one point thought this would be one of my movies of the year. The trailer fooled me. The trailer was way better than the final product.
1. Live by Night (Ben Affleck) – December 25, 2016
I should have done my research with this one. If I had I suspect I might have been less interested in seeing it. But since I didn’t, I wasted my time watching this snooze-fest. It’s really long, and really boring. I can’t say it was a badly made movie, but the editing and characters are bad bad bad. I actually feel for Ben Affleck now. He was 3 for 3 before this. If you haven’t seen it, I say don’t bother. Again, I was fooled by the trailer. I should try and remember this for 2017. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. *Sad face*
I definitely think that both Suicide Squad and Batman vs Superman should make all disappointing lists – atrocious film making!
Oh no! I actually really enjoyed Swiss Army Man!!!