Jupiter Ascending (2015)

I have a love/hate thing with the Wachowski siblings Andy and Lana (ne Larry). “Matrix”? One of the best action films ever. Sequels? Crap. “Cloud Atlas”? An epic too messy to land, but I loved the struggle. Now comes “Jupiter Ascending,” a sci-fi jumble of storyboards turned into overdone CGI fireworks that never spark. The Wachowskis think they have something as profound as “Dune” on their hands. Reality: This is nothing more than a “Flash Gordon” retread, complete with the space-man hero (Channing Tatum) crashing through a cathedral ceiling to save the damsel (Mina Kunis) from marrying some wicked creep. And it’s not even funny. Tatum’s hero is a half-man/half-dog soldier, while Kunis plays a janitor who is the reincarnated clone of a dead space queen. When Tatum’s hero tells Jones she *owns* Earth, literally, our gal gawks and wonders if he *loves* her. Is she 14? Mentally afflicted? Sean Bean sulks about, bored. Eddie Redmayne -– hot off “Theory of Everything” –- fly spits everywhere, over-acting. Nonsensical, edited to ribbons -– continuity errors abound -– and insanely overly complicated, I should have taken the blue pill. D

Tusk (2014)

“Tusk” cannot be unseen or flushed away. It deserves both. Pitched I suppose as a spoof on the “Human Centipede” flicks, once-talent Kevin Smith directs with the urgency of a fatty waving off farts as he sits alone on his watching bad TV. Justin Long plays a shock jock who gets kidnapped by a Canadian madman (Michael Parks) with a fetish for walruses. Yes, walruses. So, poor Long becomes a walrus. Yeah, Tusks in his mouth. Flippers. Funny mustache. Bodily morphed like the teens in “Centipede.” But it’s the audience eating shit here. Smith spoons it. Satirizing an OTT satire is a bad idea. Smith is all bad ideas. Halfway in, he drops in Johnny Depp as a redneck Canadian Inspector Clouseau hunting Parks’ psycho in a side plot that stops the film dead. Jokes about Canadian accents (!!) abound. (Are those still funny?) The tonal shift is so bewildering and Depp’s “performance” so wink-wink self-aware, it’s as if Smith is testing his most loyal fans’ patience: “Can you believe this shit!?!” Long gives his all. As a BFF, watch the lights go out in Haley Joel Osment’s eyes. Career panic. I can’t say Depp even cares. D-

Winter’s Tale (2014)

“Winter’s Tale” is brain-killing romantic tripe with late-30s Colin Farrell as a 20-year-old (!!) street crook who falls for a young rich girl played by “Downton Abbey”’s Jessica Brown Findlay, the latter who dies of consumption in 1915. Add in time travel, a flying white horse, Russell Crowe -- awful, just awful -- as a demon with a gang of union thugs, Will Smith -- career worst awful -- as the most awkward hip-hop Satan ever, stars (as in suns, not actors) that are really souls of people, a magical princess bed that cures –- I shit you not -– little girl cancer, and none of that fuck-all mind-blow high-on-crack shit is as unbelievable as a 115-year-old NYC metro paper publisher paling around with a world famous food critic, both employed at newspapers in 2014. Shit. Really. Akavia Goldsman writes and directs, with all the talent of his “Batman and Robin” and “Avengers,” the 1998 Brit version. The ever-growing, Oscar-winning mediocre “Beautiful Mind,” making mental illness into spy game fun, seems his high point. D-

Getaway (2013)

The 2013 “Getaway” is terrible. Horribly “Can You Believe This Shit!?!” bad. Do not confuse it with the 1970s Steve McQueen flick or its Alec Baldwin remake. This stiff has Ethan Hawke as Brent Magna, an ex-NASCAR driver living in Bulgaria (!?!) who steals a Mustang and causes havoc on Sofia streets as ordered by an unseen criminal mastermind who has kidnapped Magna’s wife as collateral. Brent’s task: Blow up the city’s power station –- protected with a key pad lock (!) -– so the mastermind can pull off a daring robbery in darkness. The howler: Brent destroys the power grid … and not a street light blinks or a McDonald’s arch darkens. Nothing. Nadda. But. BUT. The actors pretend it is pitch dark. Seriously. The leap of logic gymnastics is breathtaking. Director Courtney Solomon -– he made the incompetent “Dungeons & Dragons” -– shoots and edits every car chase -– it’s nothing but –- as split-second visual seizures, and repeats the same footage. Hawke must have been desperate for money. The final nail: Selena Gomez (!?!) plays a pistol-packing carjacker. GTFO. F

Grudge Match (2013)

Who would win in a fight, Rocky or Raging Bull? Twenty-five years ago that would have been a semi-serious whisky-laced conversation among movie fans who like their heroes damaged but triumphant. Oh, times have changed. A joke gabfest has turned actual movie with “Grudge Match,” featuring Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro having signed on for what I can only guess are gold bricks. I knew “Match” could be bad, a desperate fan fiction nostalgia trip to make us Gen X’ers recall how great these actors were on screen, and how huge the dramas of Rocky Balboa (dark, with redemption) and Jake LaMotta (far darker, none) were, once. But I wasn’t prepared for how endlessly mediocre every single boring moment would be, right up to the final sentimental boxing match that lasts six years as two 70-year-old actors mock-beat each other, and I became physically angry watching it all turn shit brown. I hated every bullshit wink-nod-wink inside joke: Stallone’s working class stiff visiting a meat freezer, De Niro’s smirking playboy and his comedy bar entertainment. A bad film that dares shits on two classics. Fuck this. F

The Legend of Hercules (2014)

“The Legend of Hercules.” The title lies. Hack director Renny Harlin serves an unforgiving “Gladiator” knock-off dud that fumbles Greek mythology. Legendary? Herculean? A shit show not worth my time. D-

Pain & Gain (2013)

Even at $26 million and without a trucker robot or asteroid in sight, movie wrecker Michael Bay can take what ought to be a simple crime tale and turns into an ordeal that is so painfully loud and soaked in obnoxious nihilistic testosterone that no sign of life or wit remains by the time the credits finally (finally!) roll. That’s “Pain & Gain.” A character has his skull crushed by a 50-pound weight, I thought, “Lucky bastard.” Mark Wahlberg, Duane Johnson, and Anthony Mackie play three lug head Miami gym freaks who crack a plot to kidnap a local millionaire (Tony Shalhoub) to rob him of fortune, home, cars, and boat. The crime goes sickeningly wrong, and the trio cannot even properly kill the man. Bay is pretending to make a film that satirizes the sick lust of the teen boy American Dream: Hot strippers, constant sex, fast cars, big homes, drugs, and guns, and forgiveness for all, because, hey this is America. But the sick prank: Bay believes this shit is the American Dream, and the right of every red-blooded, gay-bashing man. Even worse, he makes the victims more worthy of death than the criminals. Cinematic diarrhea. F

2013: Best and Worst

Oscars are handed out and I realize I never did my Best/Worst of 2013. Oops. But who can blame me? I live in the sticks. If it’s “art house” good, I see it in March. Maybe. With my tardiness, I’m skipping a formal numbered Top 10, bottom 5. Brevity is key now.

The Best

No film floored me in 2013 quite like “12 Years a Slave,” a real American horror/history story. It is the truth to the lies of that other Oscar winner of American lies, “Gone with the Wind.” A must see.

Yet, I had no better time in a theater last year than “Gravity,” an amazing piece of film-making. And it has an equal companion, “All is Lost.” A woman adrift in space, a man lost at sea. Each facing hopelessness. These films are odd, perfect twins that hit me perfectly square in the chest and head, and why not as I turn 40. They are my No. 1 choices, tied.

Call “12 Years” a very close second. It certainly is the most vital film of 2013.

The rest from 4 down: Romantic drama “Her” -- again about a lonely man, notice a theme here? -- and family documentary “Stories We Tell.” Each told new stories with power. 

Trilogy closer “Before Midnight” seemed to spool out as a captured reality, while “American Hustle” and “Wolf of Wall Street” played two wild games of comedy from too-strange real events set in New York.

I also loved the Coen Brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis.” Issac Davis just another cool cat.

Closing out at No. 10, another tale at sea,“Captain Phillips,” with Tom Hanks, also staring down death while soaking wet, but desperate to be alone. 

Is this list complete? No. It will change many times. For now, it will do.

The Worst

No film pissed me off more in 2013 than “A Good Day to Die Hard,” an abomination on the 1988 classic action film. That film played for humanity among all the fireworks. “AGDTDH” is soul-dead garbage. 

Four more grating entries: “The Lone Ranger,” “The Host,” “Percy Jackson 2,” and “Fifth Estate.” 

Again, sure to change. But I doubt “AGDTDH” will be bottomed.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013)

The God Boy Wonder returns in “Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters,” a dead-in-the-water sequel to 2010’s “The Lightning Thief.” Directed by a fella named Thor Freudenthal -– how quaint -– “Percy” again strives to be “Harry Potter: The Second Coming.” It is not. That series popped with magic of the fantastic and discovery and love. Fake from the start, “Monsters” makes its cast of interchangeable hunks and babes shout crap like “This is so cool!” as if they were children in a flashy toy ad. Who are they trying to convince? Plot: Percy (Logan Lerman) and his two godly BFFs must find the Golden Fleece -- recalling “Jason and the Argonauts” -– to save their campground school, all against much nonsense about a mysterious Half Prince. (Can Harry Potter sue?) The crushing failure of “Sea”: The entire adult cast of the film one -– Pierce Brosnan and Sean Bean among them -– are gone. Did they smartly ditch? Were they dumped to save money? Poor Stanley Tucci appears, looking as if wondered in from “Hunger Games” by error. Look, if one wishes to rip-off a top-notch franchise, fine. But give it effort. Try. This is just laziness. D-

The Lone Ranger (2013)

Hi-yo Silver whatever … Johnny Depp headlines a new version of “The Lone Ranger” so long and eyesore messy, unnecessarily complex, and drunk on flimsy CGI, I don’t have the energy to relive it. Depp is one awkward Tonto, while Armie Hammer is the Ranger, a would-be hero overlooked in his own saga. Done. D

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

It’s been ages since I saw Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.” The 1987 classic is a blur to me, but Michael Douglas’ portrayal of Gordon Gekko – the hedonistic shark who swum in evil – remains in memory. Who knew a whole generation of real Wall Street tycoons would take Gekko as God, and bring about economic turmoil that nearly crippled our nation? With Stone’s return to Gekko’s world, I thought the man would burn furiously as he tackles the 2008 economic crash. No. Forget the trading floor, this is a dead slaughterhouse of missed opportunities, ham-fisted symbolism, and an outrageously happy climax that betrays every point that comes before it, and every principle held by those who distrust unguarded capitalism. We focus on hothead stockbroker Jake (Shia LaBeouf), whose girlfriend (Carey Mulligan) is the daughter of Gekko, himself eight years out of prison. Gekko sees our hero as an “in” to his daughter; Jake sees Gekko as an “in” to ambition. This triangle raises questions it can’t answer, including, “Why would a left-wing reporter who hates Wall Street live with a stock broker cub shark?” Pathetically, Stone no longer cares if “greed is good” or not as he races to a ludicrous ending. D

The Da Vinci Code (2006)

Here’s my deal with “The Da Vinci Code,” the box-office smash based on the Dan Brown best-seller. Legions of Christians gnawed their fists off because book and film dared shove an Easter Egg history shocker that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene inside a ridiculous 10-cent thriller about a professor of (snooze) symbology. But why? Both open thusly: At the Louvre, an albino monk  assassin (!) point-blank shoots an old man in the stomach, but grandpa rises and walks about, no blood, moving artwork and leaving arcane blue-light clues for the professor hero, and THEN strips naked, and sprawls out Da Vinci Vitruvian Man style, and dies without moving a twitch. If you can get past any of that to get pissy over Jesus’ sex life, than you need prayer. And brains. And I just touched on the plot holes. Some say “Code” attacks faith. Bull. It attacks thought. The Bible, with all its wonder, is more logical. Ron Howard directs on autopilot, Tom Hanks is adequate as the hero, and Audrey Tautou (“Amelie”) tries out English as the heroine. The sole highlight: Hans Zimmer’s fantastic score. It works miracles. D+

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

“A Good Day to Die Hard” is not a “Die Hard” movie. It’s an ugly, tired, dull action flick that regurgitates everything grand from the 1988 classic. It has no soul or point. It's an abomination. A cash grab by tired people who do not care anymore. Five minutes in I hated it. A tired Bruce Willis is “John McClane” -– quotes needed -– who bolts to Moscow to save his grown CIA agent son (Jai Courtney) stuck with a murder rap. The short of it: John and John go Roy Rogers on a pack of terrorists, one of whom eats carrots. Really. It all ends in Chernobyl in a swimming pool. Not joking. Actually, nothing here is funny. What’s worse: The Tea Party way director John Moore treats all foreigners as stupid trolls, or the way he turns McClane -– long ago scared, bleeding, but desperate to do right -– into some Stallone blockhead that the first film so beautifully refused? There is not even a delicious villain to root for. Twinkies were the food choice in 1988. This is a shit served cold. Yippee-ki-yay mother F.

2012: Best and Worst

This is my Best (and Worst) of 2012 List so far. Most of the award-worthy bait still has not yet found its way to where I live even at this late posting. Or I just have missed many contenders. Such is life. This list will be updated when I see films wonderful (or terrible). Yes, I am bending the rules of a year-end list. But it’s my list. Such is life.

Updated: 24 February 2013
Updated: 14 May 2013

The best

1. Holy Motors. A film that defies explanation as a man dons several personas, jumping acting roles as we jump life roles. The mystery is what I love about film: Getting amazingly, irretrievably lost.
2. Lincoln. Steven Spielberg foregoes biopic clichés and shows us the 16th president in his final months, forcing a re-birth of our nation’s soul even as it dooms his own life.

3. The Master. Paul Thomas Anderson’s delivers another watch-on-repeat drama. Here, he takes on the obsession of human control.

4. (Tie) Amour and Beasts of the Southern Wild. One beautiful life ends, another begins. Heartbreaking and unshakable female leads.

5. Argo. Timely, urgent, funny, and mostly-true, Ben Affleck’s masterpiece can stand tall with the greatest 1970s thrillers.
6. Zero Dark Thirty. Kathryn Bigelow’s film is a dead-serious take of our grim reality: How far do we go to fight the good fight?

7. Margaret: Director’s Cut. This new version of a little-seen 2011 film played one cinema in 2012. A shame for a new classic.

8. The Sessions. This somber story about a disabled writer seeking sexual fulfillment never plays the “weeper” card. But you will weep.

9. Frankenweenie. Tim Burton returns to his strange roots of dark satire in this stop-motion gem about a boy and his dead dog.

10. Flight. Denzel Washington is amazing as a pilot whose midair miracle uncovers a life full of deceit and addiction.

The worst

5. Moonrise Kingdom. I know it’s loved, and Oscar-nominated. Me, I’m done with Wes Anderson’s repetitive hipster cool bullshit.

4. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Nicolas Cage pisses CGI fire in his second trip as the flame-skulled biker. This is his career.

3. Freelancers. 50 Cent plays the Worst Cop Ever, working for Worstest Cop Ever Robert De Niro, in another career low.

2. Rock of Ages. Actors as diverse as Tom Cruise and Paul Gaimatti sing remixed rock hits as if cast in “Glee”’s worst episode.

1. Total Recall. In a year stuffed with so-called reboots, this was the most useless, a trip back to Philip K. Dick’s short story too insipid to use the brilliant text, instead aping the 1990 satirical action classic.

Freelancers (2012)

Former-drug-dealer-turned-rapper-turned-film-actor 50 Cent aka Curtis Jackson III puts the last of those multi-hyphenates to regrettable use in the awful “Freelancers,” a cops-gone-bad drama that thudded into cinemas and rolled over for dead on DVD within one month. Upfront mystery: How did Robert De Niro and Forrest Whitaker get wrangled into playing depraved NYPD detectives who trade in drugs, murders, and whores on an hourly basis? Jackson plays Malo, ex-crook turned policeman thrown into a corruption ring by his mentor/father figure (De Niro), the former partner of Malo’s real pop, another officer killed years ago. Not a single plot thread or revelation makes remote sense as Malo plays a ridiculous game between police and mafia while balancing several women on the side. Entire sections of this story seem cleaved out to fit a 90-minute running time as we dead end at a finale that has Malo crowing on top of a shit pile not only wholly implausible, but an insulting F.U. lobbed at all law enforcement. I can’t speak of his music, but as an actor here, Jackson has a blank stare reserved for album covers, punctuated by line readings so dull, he seems barely coherent. D-

Signs (2002)

I loved M. Night Shyamalan’s box-office-smash ghost story “Sixth Sense,” and dug the under-appreciated bleak superhero thinker “Unbreakable.” For me, sky was the limit for Shyamalan when his alien-invasion flick “Signs” hit cinemas. I was stoked. Then I saw it. Sky fell. Hard and fast, and has never risen again. This is a painful, awkward, insulting film to sit through, the absolute symbol of bad cinema to me. Not just when Shyamalan unleashes his trademark “gotchya!” shocker when a legion of world-invading aliens turn out to be allergic to water (!) on a planet full of water, but the whole damn dull story of a faithless priest (Mel Gibson) living with his young children and faithless baseball player brother (Joaquin Phoenix, young enough to be Gibson’s son). Hours drag by as the titular crop circles appear, the plot is set for the green visitors to arrive, and then the climax comes and a glass of H2O and a Louisville slugger are the weapons of choice. Ridiculous. This is the moment where a star filmmaker turned incredulous hack, when Shyamalan screamed aloud, “They’ll love it,” and no one said, “No.” He’s never recovered. F

This Means War (2012)

“This Means War” exists for one reason: Make college girls debate who’s hotter, the guy who was Kirk in the new “Star Trek,” or the Brit guy from “Inception.” My wife and I heard the chatter as the credits rolled. So, in a sense, “War” succeeds. Not for me. This ugly flick requires smart, self-assured actress Reese Witherspoon to play the fool, and she is no fool. The plot: Chris Pine (Kirk) and Tom Hardy (Brit guy) play “GQ” blowhard CIA agents both wooing a lonely commercial market researcher (Witherspoon) for sport. Lauren is so shocked that two men (!) would pay her amorous attention that she falls oblivious to each man’s outlandish lies and eerily perfect dates, so we in the audience snicker at what a slack-jawed, wide-eyed rube she is. Of course, Lauren learns the truth and forgives instantly. Toss in much nonsensical guns and chases, boom, movie! Try and get past the following: Pine’s lothario meets Lauren at a DVD rental store; the men stalk and spy on Lauren, and it’s meant to be funny; and Pine and Hardy spark hotter chemistry with each other than with Wiherspoon. Hmm. McG directs, without mercy. C-

Jack and Jill (2011)

“This must never be seen.” Al Pacino says this at the end of “Jack and Jill,” a degrading Adam Sandler flick that has the “SNL” vet playing twins, one Jack, one Jill, with Pacino (!) lusting for the latter. Sandler does drag as Jill and also as Jack in drag as Jill. That’s the plot. So, yes, Pacino continues his late-career burnout by playing himself in a way that can only be called turkey bacon. It’s beyond ham. He raps an onscreen Dunkin’ Dounts commercial, and it’s awful sad. At least Katie Holmes looks embarrassed as Jack’s autotron wife. Not Al. Sandler has been making brain-fuck films for years, to bore us and get rich quickly, and his self-satisfied smirk shows how much he cares. He spends 80 minutes mocking Jill as an overweight, sweaty, techno-clueless, socially inept wreck of shrill Jewish stereotypes, before going life-lesson soft, asking us to fall in love with her (him) as a person. I don’t know which is worse, that Sandler thinks he’s creating message movies, his constant product hawking, or that he thinks diarrhea is still funny. D

The Punisher (2004)

“The Punisher” is a punishment to watch. Tone deaf, overlong, filmed in a seemingly deserted Tampa Bay (subbing for New York!) and overacted to the point of hilarity, we suffer more than anyone on screen. The plot to this Marvel comic book vigilante flick: Ex-FBI agent Frank Castle (Thomas Jane) watches his entire family be killed before he himself is left for dead by gangsters (led by John Travolta, all “Weeee! I’m a bad guy!”). Naturally, Castle returns to slay all who wronged him. The comics I recall, Castle was a bad-ass loner feared by villains and super heroes. Here, he babbles nonstop, befriends a trio of special-needs cases imported from an insipid comedy, and, at one point, tortures a half-naked guy by sliding a frozen Popsicle along the man’s back. Um, erotic? No. Punishment. Jane mumbles his lines like an ESL Eastwood and insists his actions are not revenge. Huh? Odd fact: Marvel had made this film three times. Masochistic? D-

2011: Best and Worst

This is my Best (and Worst) of 2011 List so far. Most of the Oscar bait have not come my way yet, and for those that have, I have not had the time to watch. Such is life. This list will be updated, changed and purged multiple times when I see films worthy (or, for the bottom, not).

First update: 26 February 2012
Second update: 14 March 2012
Third update: 19 March 2012
Fourth update: 29 April 2012
Fifth update: 9 May 2012
Sixth update: 25 August 2012

The Best
1. Tree of Life. The year’s head-scratching-ist film is king: A drama about the creation of the universe, God, and one family’s birth and shattering. A near religious experience from Terrence Malick.
2. Melancholia. A twisted sister to No. 1, this equally head-scratching film is about the death of all life, by Lars von Trier. Darkly beautiful.
3. A Separation. Writer/director Asghar Farhadi’s tale of two families at odds in modern Iran is universal, painful, and a slam of theocracies.
4. (Tie) The Artist and Hugo. Directors Michel Hazanavicius and Martin Scorsese create two wildly different films celebrating cinema and life.
5. Tinker Tailor Solider Spy. Gary Oldman gives the performance of his career as an aging spy in a game that takes your life, now or later.
6. Take Shelter. Michael Shannon plays a man stricken by either schizophrenia or divine knowledge. The question: Are they the same?
7. Shame Michael Fassbender stars in a cold, brilliant tale of man tortured by sex, the liquid inside him. More NC-17s, please, Hollywood.
8. Midnight in Paris. Woody Allen uses literary and artistic greats and a time travel trick to remind us that, no, life was not better back then.
9. 13 Assassins. Takashi Miike’s kick-ass, bloody violent samurai film is a throwback to Kurosawa's greatest sword romps. Nasty fun.
10. (Tie) Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Pina. Directors Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders takes us on two inspiring journeys, inside a cave and inside a dancer’s mind, to see art at its grandest and purest.

The Worst
5. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. A feel-good 9/11 movie about a mentally ill boy reconnecting quirky-like with his dead dad. Fuck no.
4. J. Edgar. Because of the scene where FBI director/dictator Hoover – played by Leonardo DiCaprio -- wears his mother’s dress and pearls.
3. (Tie) Just Go With it, Jack and Jill, and Zookeeper. Adam Sandler spreads his toxic film-making sensibilities to Nicole Kidman, Al Pacino, and Nick Nolte, the latter getting it easy as the voice of a gorilla.
2. Green Hornet. Star Seth Rogen and director Michel Gondry toss a snickering “F.U.” to comic-book movie fans. Right back at you guys.
1. Sucker Punch. Zack Snyder calls this a feminist shot against misogyny. Right, and “Birth of a Nation” is a call for Civil Rights.