5. “X-Men: Apocalypse” [Original Review]
There’s something frustratingly inconsistent about the ‘X-Men‘ movies. There have been good ones, particularly Bryan Singer’s “X2,” and to a lesser extent the more recent “Days Of Future Past,” but while Marvel has successfully replicated its own formula with a certain amount of regularity, you never know when the next shitty X-Film will arrive, and arrive it certainly did with “X-Men: Apocalypse.” Set in the 1980s (though the disregard for any form of continuity that this franchise holds means it might as well be set anytime), it sees Professor X (James McAvoy) and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) recruiting new allies to tackle the god-like mutant Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac, who it turns out is capable of giving a bad performance) who’s recruited Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to his cause. With Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne and Tye Sheridan joining McAvoy, Lawrence, Isaac and Fassbender, this hot mess comes across principally as one of the biggest wastes of talent since Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper got on a plane. There’s no meat here, no theme or story or character or consequences (Fassbender walks away scot-free at the end having committed genocide), only a parade of joyless, expensive bullshit that made us tired of superhero movies almost as soon as ‘Civil War’ had re-energized us about them again.
4. “The Do-Over” [Original Review]
To some, Adam Sandler would seem to have the perfect career: despite his box office draw being palpably on the wane in the last few years thanks to flops like “Blended” and “Pixels,” the comedy star got a huge sum for a four-movie deal with Netflix that gave him complete creative freedom. And yet to watch “The Do-Over,” the second film as such and Sandler’s first R-rated action-comedy since 1996’s “Bulletproof,” is to look into the eyes of a man who has everything and yet still seems deeply, clinically depressed and is taking no joy in the lack of constraints. Steven Brill’s film stars David Spade (Sandler is nothing if not loyal to his old pals) playing a middle-aged accountant in a rut who goes to his high-school reunion and meets his one-time bestie (Sandler), who ends up faking both their deaths and embroiling them in a criminal conspiracy. It’s to some degree from the same wish-fulfillment milieu as the “Grown Ups” films, with Sandler and Spade getting to spend time in sunny Puerto Rico, where every attractive woman they pass immediately tries to blow them, or kill them, or both (it’s one of the most staggeringly anti-woman films in recent memory). But it also tries and fails to be a thriller, full of sloppy plotting, crappy action sequences and, perhaps inevitably, Nick Swardson. It’s almost reason to delete your Netflix account.
3. “Alice Through The Looking Glass” [Original Review]
Tim Burton’s 2010 “Alice In Wonderland” was a real shitshow: the worst film by the director, perhaps the worst film to make a billion dollars, the nadir of the current fairy tale revival, and one of the ugliest films in living memory, its gaudy green-screen aesthetic coming across like someone puked all over a Nintendo 64 platform game. But in light of the able “Flight Of The Conchords” and “The Muppets” helmer James Bobin taking over from Burton, we hoped that if a sequel had to happen (and as the disastrous box office receipts have proven, it really didn’t) that it might be an improvement. But the follow-up, which departs entirely from Lewis Carroll for a plot that sees Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returning to her fantasy friends and traveling through time to save the Mad Hatter from deep depression, is anything but. Returning, presumably just because they were under contractual obligation, to Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter and Anne Hathaway’s characters (plus various interchangeable CGI beasties) and introducing a never-more-bored Sacha Baron Cohen as Time, the film lumbers from set piece to set piece with none of the wit and spark of its source material, forcing, like its predecessor, a deeply weird bit of material into an utterly conventional shape.
2. “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” [Original Review]
There is a certain degree of relativism that goes on in the selection of a list like this, in which you have to judge the extent of a film’s badness against the scope of its ambition: a tacky cheapo spoof might be a worse time at the movies than a lackluster tentpole, but the expense and bombast of the would-be blockbuster amounts to a yawning chasm-style disparity between expectation and delivery. But then comes Zack Snyder‘s “Batman v Superman” and you don’t have to worry about issues like that at all: it is massively ambitious, intensely self-serious and also extremely shitty, all on its own terms. The disjointed storytelling, incoherent characterization, stupid plot twists and awful performances (Gal Gadot is ok, Ben Affleck almost passes muster, but everyone else needs to have a long hard think about what they’ve done) amount to a thundering disdain for the intelligence of the audience that would be unforgivable in a film that cost a tenth of its budget. But botching a can’t-miss premise despite your seemingly limitless resources, and then slathering it all in fun-suck pomposity and self-importance is not just a missed opportunity, but it’s actively galling, moving the dial from “disappointing” or “underwhelming” to “Oh God oh God, will it never end?”
1. “Mother’s Day” [Original Review]
There is both humor and charm in Garry Marshall’s latest greeting-card-inspired ensemble comedy, and both happen over the end credits. The humor appears in a blooper outtake when Julia Roberts breaks character as the frighteningly coiffed TV jewelry shill Miranda to deliver a perfectly timed ad-lib. And the single dose of charm comes a couple of bloopers later, when Jennifer Aniston (who obviously murdered Gandhi or something in a previous life to be saddled with this humiliating a role) accidentally calls Roberts’ character “Julia” and everyone laughs. In fact, possibly because no one’s cracked a smile in weeks of shooting, they all laugh way too long and heartily at what is a fairly unremarkable slip of the tongue, but this one moment still has more truth and warmth in it than the entire rest of this benighted farrago. Featuring Kate Hudson, Jennifer Garner, Britt Robertson, Margo Martindale, Timothy Olyphant, Sarah Chalke and Aasif Mandvi, all of whom should know better, this turd also boasts Jason Sudeikis and Brit comedian Jack Whitehall, who maybe shouldn’t, but you wish they did anyway. That a film from an 80 year-old white guy could be so casually, institutionally racist and so proudly unhip that “tweet at me” is a thing that is both said seriously and then held up as an example of “this wacky modern world, eh?” is depressing, yet perhaps not shocking. That a movie called “Mother’s Day,” featuring a veritable who’s-who of one-time A-list females all just one heartbeat away from their renaissance roles, should be so blitheringly, mindlessly, inanely sexist is actually over-the-line offensive. Suggesting that no one involved is, intends to be or indeed has ever met a mother, it’s dangerous to be hyperbolic at the halfway point of the year, but “Mother’s Day” may not be just the worst film of 2016 so far. Around the time that insufferable widower Sudeikis, clad in pink pants and loud shirt, starts to karaoke-rap in memory of his dead soldier wife, you could be forgiven for wondering if it’s worst wide-release movie ever made.
We wish we could say that this list encompasses every bad film released this year, but that’s unfortunately not the case. Also in consideration were Michael Bay’s jingoistic “13 Hours,” William Monahan’s nonsensical “Mojave,” rightly-long-delayed Natalie Portman western “Jane Got A Gun,” the cynical “Pride & Prejudice & Zombies,” Emma Watson low-point “Regression,” the deeply disappointing “Triple 9,” YA sci-fi “The 5th Wave,” and racist actioner “London Has Fallen.”
There was also Sacha Baron Cohen’s clunky action-comedy “The Brothers Grimsby,” mirthless Sundance comedy “The Bronze,” Anthony Hopkins and Al Pacino sadly united for “Misconduct,” Julia Stiles and Anthony Hopkins in the awful “Blackway,” Kevin Costner in thriller “Criminal,” pointless Lance Armstrong biopic “The Program,” Jake Gyllenhaal in the generic “Demolition,” Anna Kendrick and Sam Rockwell being unable to save “Mr. Right,” the instantly forgettable and utterly pointless “The Huntsman: Winter’s War,” and the deeply bad (though not quite bad enough for the list) “Warcraft.”
Anything else? Let us know what you hated most in the comments.
BvS at no.2? Thats just some pandering BS.
… To whom? Not everything is a conspiracy or a click-bait take-down, some things are just bad.
But this isn’t one of those cases. There’s no way in hell that movie even belongs on this list – unless you’re one of the many sobbers that still can’t over that the film showed *GASP* Batman killed bad guys??? waaaahhh!!!
K.
My reaction Exactly :*
You all must not have seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. Good for you.
I liked the first one! Didn’t quite bother with part 2, though.
No way in hell you actually believe BvS is worse than that turd Sandler flick or that atrocity Alice in Wonderland sequel. I get it, it’s the big Snyder flick and you guys would feel weird if you missed a chance to high five over anti-fanboy clickbait garbage, but seriously, you can do so much worse than that flick.
BvS on the worst list and not “Ghostbusters?”
oh don’t you know the new Ghostbusters is empowering
I agree, BvS was the only film here that did not deserve to be on the list. If they should have put anything on the list, it should have been God’s Not Dead 2
grrr… “God’s Not Dead” shows up in my Facebook list of movies, even though I haven’t seen it & never will. Can’t delete it either, which means that somebody paid facebook to promote it. Kevin Sorbo should go back to playing Hercules, and leave the religious movies to that former sitcom star who made the “Left Behind” movie. Not that I’d watch that either.
The Do-Over is amazing.
Emma Watson’s Colonia. Sweet Jesus, Colonia. It makes Regression look like a masterpiece. I’m not exaggerating.
“Time-pinched trolls”
The URL might’ve changed, but The Playlist remains the same.
Batman vs. Superman really wasn’t that bad. Unless you’re a Marvel stan and then it was The Worst Thing That You’ve Ever Seen or Will Ever See!11!!
the scene (and music) when superman saves the girl in the day of the day is absolutely haunting
This post brought to you by the word “nadir.”
we must be friends. I posted something similar before meeting you, oh soul-matey one.
Warcraft?
It’s on some lists but all of them because not everyone thinks it’s one of the worst movies of 2016.
WARCRAP is bad enough to make the top five. Ugh, what a disappointment Duncan Jones.
“Let us know what you hated most in the comments.”
Your Juvenile, amateurish self bored hate-filled troll diatribes
Oh Yee Nattering Nabobs of Negativity
Shailene Woodley sucks, and I am happy to see her flounder. I pray she never works in Hollywood again. And as for Gods Of Egypt, I can’t find a worse film this year.
a lot of americans despise SW because she told the truth about snowden
How about The Lobster…oh snap!
Haha!
You left out some truly crappy movies and BVS should not be anywhere near number 2. Your Snyder hatred is boring. He’s still doing Justice League so get over it.
This list sucks.
For the most part, yes. I was surprised Batman Vs Superman was in it, honestly.
Civil War should be near the top of this list.
it made a lot of people happy
Nadir. That is all.
This website is manned by faggots.
How can I tell?
YOU CAN’T PUT THE ENTIRE FUCKING LIST
ON ONE FUCKING PAGE
YOU WORTHLESS SHIT EATING FAGGOTS.
I object to the term shit-eating.
Yeah but they sure don’t.
So full of shit. Apocalypse was fun as hell. Dirty Grandpa was funny as fuck. I didn’t see the new Turtles movie, but the writer condemns it solely based on it being a stupid premised franchise (sorry, but people love TMNT, you can’t say the franchise has no merit), didn’t even say anything specific about why the movie failed.
Oh and Mr. Right was fucking awesome. Rockwell was amazing, RZA was rad, Kendrick was great. It was funny as hell. One of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time.
You condemned Hardcore Harry for the wrong reasons. I turned it off during the opening credits because it was obviously murder porn made for serial killers to get their kicks. It starts with random, anonymous people having their heads and necks cut open in slow motion set to fun music. But your criticism was that the story was too simple? Jesus. Your article makes me wanna actually watch the whole thing now. If this guy hated it, then it’s probably not that bad.
You are so wrong about Mr. Right. That movie sucked balls! I’d rather slit my wrists than walk into a room with that movie playing in the background. good god man.
Mr right was awesome Sam rockwell still got it! and i agree Kendrick was Hilarious. @Stiflab We all like different movies for different reasons. Just like everything else in the world.
remember the music that ruined his arms selling scene in IRON MAN 2
https://youtu.be/rRGZuTrmCBQ?t=4m27s
see the leaked trailer is better
I kinda wish they dropped the list closer to now so they could swap out one of these with Cell.
I am so disappointed and Angry with The Cell! I read that book twice, loved the book. The movie was a butchard nightmare .. Im shocked King let that POS be released !!
And this is what happens when feminist review films.
BvS wasn’t that bad to be considered the worse film of 2016. It had it’s flaws but to be the worse is just wrong. I still don’t understand why directors try to justify why they take different approaches to a story when the entire fan base is totally against it. The Lex character just ruined it and I myself, had to watch around it just to enjoy the film.
Well probably because there’ll be far more than just the comicbook fanbase that’ll be seeing and supporting the film.
Your assessments is the number one. ie Top of the list.
So after your Top Worst movies, you still had to compile all the OTHER films that could’ve made the list. Let’s see – what movies DID you like? When you hate that many movies, you may want to consider that maybe you’re not the best judge of them.
this is why I don’t go by ANYTHING ANYONE has to say about movies. #1 It is your opinion and not very good one at that , #2 do you enjoy anything or do you nitpick at every little detail in every movie! Look at what you are reviewing? When i what X Men or any superhero flick or cartoon turned into a live movie etc. I go in for entertainment and eye candy! ! Lighten up Lady and Get the stick out of your butt! The world is a scary place lately and with all the politics and hate crimes , I love to watch movies and escape from the reality of our world with an open mind and to have some fun! isnt that the point.. critics suck and Haters gonna hate ! Blah!
aren’t you just the greatest little self hater? the world is a scary place with all the hate crimes, so you like to watch movies that promote hate. makes sense.
You made a fair list and BvS deserves to be in the top five. I love Batman to death and still can’t give that movie a high grade. And no trolls a killer Batman and Snyder are not the reasons I didn’t enjoy the film. The plot was convoluted and the editing didn’t help matters among other issues. The fact that even fans of the movie give the extended cut such high praise and question the important scenes cut from the film gives credence to editing issues at the very least.
really? bvs was worse than warcraft? 5th wave? grimsby? you lost me there.
i saw BVS in the cinema i loved it especially JE as LL
empire magazine gave the Lance Armstrong biopic “The Program 4 stars
The weird thing about Divergent/Allegiant was it was supposed to be a two part movie, but the first part (Allegiant) covered the entire story. You make sense of it.
I almost took these movie reviews seriously until all the BS about the movies being sexist, racist, anti-feminist’. Reading this is like listening to a liberal arts lesbian b**ch about political correctness and white guilt. Movies are now judged based on whether there is a properly diverse cast and is PC friendly.
well, she’s writing the article and you are what… commenting? her opinions are published and your gripes are simply tacked on. have problems with women much? angry a little? as far as i could tell, she didn’t say anything about white guilt. thats your own little no longer unexpressed issue.
You have to understand that PC to Mr. Jeff means white middle class men miss the time when they could put down women and other races with no repercussions. Sharing governance and power with the rest of American cultures makes them feel like they are the real victims when all they have to do is look around and see 90 + percent of the power and money in this country is still controlled by them.
Suicide Squad should be on the list. First for the disappointing hype. Second for the 1980’s special effects. Third for the silly notion that bullets, boomerangs and a bat is enough to stop any super villain. Fourth for the pointless plot. Only Will Smith and Margot Robbie made the film bearable to watch to the end.
But how are they supposed to get a younger audience to watch the movie. If it doesn’t have outrageous shit kids wont watch it i should know i’m 17and have three younger brothers and we all watched suicide squad.
This is not an insult to your age but when you are old enough to see many more movies you’ll notice the production formula most movie studios are running into the ground. That is the same boring, unimaginative plots and acting you have seen a dozen times. It’ll get really old by the time you are twice your age.
Lost me the second it called Zoolander 2 an improvement over Anchorman 2. The whole article, even the few reviews that did in fact point out an actually terrible flick, was truly obnoxious.
The rest I agree, but X-Men: Apocalypse and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice are not that Bad… granted not the best Box Office Movie but certainly does not deserve to be called the worst.
There were worse than BvS, Otherwise the author needs to stop attempting wit. I love all the racism lines but 3 guys dying in a plane crash over 50 years ago was rapier like wit?
I do agree with the whitewashing of “Gods of Egypt” though. How dare they use white actors to portray gods in a fantasy world based on a long dead religion from an area where there is so much genetic diversity the actors should have been gray. I come from a region very close to North Africa and were the stepping stones for every army, tradesmen, and others from all over the place. Yes, the cast should have been racial mutts, but the racism calls were not entirely intelligent either. Egypt is more culturally separate than racially different from other regions. Kind of like saying England and the USA are 2 different races.
At least Christianity and Judaism have been represented culturally in film…..
Batman vs. Superman felt like it was written by a committee of 8 year olds. And I actually fast-forwarded through Apocalypse. But I was sooooooo shocked when it turned out that Jean Grey was able to defeat the purple guy. Compleeeeetely unexpected.
The Neon Demon should be at the top of this list. Complete hyper-violent crap disguised as an art film.
I really really wanted to be with you on this list. I usually try to defend these things… but, how can you say that Cabin Fever can’t be counted but straight to Netflix movies like “The do-over” and clearly slapstick, turn your brain off movies like “Shades of Black” can be counted? Then you had the nerve to say that Batman versus Superman ( which had some really amazing moments, despite being over all lackluster) was number two on your list and Ghostbusters didn’t even make the top 10??
This can’t be a real list. I feel like this is trolling…
I am sure This list of worst movies is best rather then any other list.
http://www.viralblocks.com/2016/11/17/these-films-are-the-worst-of-the-worst-prettyfamous/
This list is stupid. Shit list. X-Men: Apocalypse doesn’t deserve to be on this list. And how could you put BvS below that dumb Adam Sandler shit flick? And how could you put X-Men: Apocalypse below Zoolander 2 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Jessica Kiang and Oliver Lyttelton, you are both retarded. You both suck balls.
I loved BVS. Too many people use marvel movies as a template. People wanted to see a DC version of a marvel movie. DC is inherently darker. Metaphorically and literally. Anyone notice how in most marvel movies they always fight during the day? And then there are people that bitch about storylines. No one mentions how mcu totally erased “mutants” or that bane was nothing more than a henchman. A lot of people took their cues from critics, the fact that critics are still reviewing movies is laughable. The only people dumber are the ones that take their cues from them. The critics and people that gave movies like Sucker Punch, Spider-man 3, the phantom menace, daredevil and the abortion of a movie catwoman. The fact of the matter is if enough people are reading a movie isn’t good they start to believe it. God forbid people think for themselves. Im sorry that dc doesnt just puts together the movie for you piece by piece like marvel. The plot wasn’t bad, the weak spots are their choice for Lex and the martha part. The rest made for a great movie. The same thing with Suicide Squad. Everyone went in saying “try not to compare jokers” yet did it anyway. Sorry it didn’t fit into what you wanted the joker to be, but the joker is never supposed to fit anywhere..
Civil War should end #1 and Deadpool make that list… never saw a film so overrated with a poor story and zero replay value !
Hey I think you are harsh on Criminal. I thought that was a very good and entertaining movie. And don’t forget Independence Day: Resurgence. That movie was an abomination just like the Ben Hur Remake.
X-men:Apocalypse and The Do-Over, but especially The Do-Over, were awesome.
I cannot stress enough how anyone who liked Billy Madison should love The Do-Over, it is an amazing film and exactly what I have been waiting for from Adam Sandler and David Spade.