The Worst Films Of 2017

Best of this; top 20 that; breakthrough the other. At some point in our ever-comprehensive year-end coverage, especially after a pretty great movie year like this one, we simply get sick and tired of scanning our thesauruses for synonyms for “awesome.” And when that happens, we like to aggregate a list of splat-rated films, bloated follies and our own personal loathe objects, and hate-watch the shit out of them in preparation for this feature, which serves as the Kylo Ren to our Best of 2017’s Jyn Erso, or maybe the poop emoji to the rest of our coverage’s thumbs-up smiley face. Bringing Balance to the Force, welcome to the bile repository that is the Worst Films Of 2017.

Yes, there’s been a lot that’s great this year, but there have also been a bunch of truly, truly dire films. The reasons for direness are manifold — some are dull, some are dumb, some are despicable and some are all three. But before normal, sunshine-and-daisies transmission resumes tomorrow, here’s our weirdly cathartic evisceration of the 20 films we found most life-sapping this year.

Click here for our full coverage of the best of 2017, including Best TV, Best Scores & Soundtracks, Best Cinematography, Posters, Trailers, Horror, Action Sequences, our Best Films Of The Year, and the 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2018

20. Tulip Fever”
Harvey Weinstein obviously had his… hands full this year. But before the thunderous rains of retribution poured down on him, the then-not-disgraced, but still routinely despised studio chief’s bigger problem was the fetid stench of would-be Oscar bait turned obvious dud “Tulip Fever.” Directed by Justin Chadwick (“The Other Boleyn Girl,” “Mandela: Walk To Freedom”), the film was bounced three times from the release calendar and nothing says “this movie sucks” more than Weinstein throwing it onto the release date roundabout. When the release could not be further postponed, TWC pulled the press screenings, released a nudie trailer to highlight Alicia Vikander’s gratuitous skin and dumped it quietly on a Friday where only hyper-curious critics paid to see it. The results, we can tell you, aren’t so much terrible as they are stupefying dull. Layered with superfluous erratic voiceover that comes and goes randomly “Tulip Fever” centers on [yaaaaaaaawn] a wealthy aristocrat in 17th century Amsterdam (Christoph Waltz, once again playing Christoph Waltz) who hires a young artist (Dane DeHaan, dude) to paint a flattering portrait of his young trophy wife (Vikander). Given that the young girl is sick of her pompous husband perfunctorily emptying his daily seed into her every night in hopes of conceiving an heir, the comely lass is taken with the young, instantly lovestruck artiste. As their affair grows more brazen, hubby grows suspicious, while the adulterers invest in “tulip futures” — the bitcoin of its day — as “tulip mania” sweeps the nation. Written by Tom Stoppard from a script that feels like it was commissioned five hours after “Shakespeare In Love” won the Oscar in 1999, minus any faint trace of joy, “Tulip Fever” is a relic from the bygone era when Harvey Weinstein could turn his morning bowel movement into an awards contender. Now, though, the days when such turds could be made to smell like flowers are long gone.

19. “Justice League”
As you’ll see, there are several movies released across the past twelve months that were much more awful than this grinding DC product. However few involved so many people, and so much money, working in conjunction to deliver the kind of over-managed, aggressive mediocrity that is “Justice League.” Let’s remove the context of expectation — both creatively and commercially — surrounding the movie. Strictly focused on its execution, it’s remarkable that neither Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon (brought in for extensive reshoots) — both at the very least distinctive filmmakers — managed to leave their stylistic imprints on the picture. Rushing to meet a release date so executives could cash their bonus, at a certain point, Warner Bros. and DC clearly just gave up on a releasing a quality movie, and just wanted any movie in cinemas. It shows. With a story hacked down without much thought from a larger, two-movie arc, embellished with tossed-off visual effects, and an array of characters either one-dimensionally defined (The Flash, Aquaman) or not at all (Cyborg), it feels like a Campbell’s Soup blockbuster. Various parties along the way tossed in their two cents, some water was added, and the result was heated up and served into multiplexes. Watery, thin, and not something you’d ever want to eat again, “Justice League” proved these iconic superheroes could be felled by nothing more than studio second guessing and the obvious indifference of everyone involved to the end result.

18. “Atomic Blonde”
Not all that many of the movies on this list, let’s be honest, were ones that anyone were really looking forward to, at least in Playlist HQ. But “Atomic Blonde” was a movie we were all legitimately excited for — how could you not be excited for a movie about Charlize Theron as a bisexual ‘80s female James Bond in a movie from one of the directors of instant action classic “John Wick” — and then all deeply disappointed by. Unlike some others here, it had some redeeming features — the crunchy action sequences with the same well-choreographed nature as director David Leitch’s previous picture, a colorful supporting turn from James McAvoy, some decent production design. But it squandered so much of its potential otherwise, from a story best described as ‘extremely stupid John Le Carre,’ as boring as it was nonsensical, to the unusually sleepy performances from fine actors like John Goodman, Toby Jones and even list MVP Theron herself (stuck under a wonky British accent) to the overwritten, underpowered dialogue, to the general vibe of an MTV Europe Music Awards after-party five minutes after throwing-out time. Were this worse movies this year? Absolutely. Did many hurt more than this? Not really. Well, maybe “The Snowman” (see far, far below).

17. “The Leisure Seeker”
If we want to avoid making a false-teeth joke, it’s unfortunate just how many soft, chewable foods serve as metaphors in describing Italian director Paolo Virzi‘s English-language debut: cheese; treacle; schmaltz. This cloyingly obvious, mawkish claptrap stars revered veterans Donald Sutherland (in a decent, sympathetic performance) and Golden Globe-nominated Helen Mirren (yeah, no) as a long-married couple, both beset by illness, who decide to go on a quixotic cross-country journey in the titular vehicle — an ancient RV of dubious roadworthiness that neither of them seems fit to pilot anymore. Hilarity ensues, if your bar for hilarity is set so low that all you need is “old people doing stuff old people are not known for doing!” or daffy Helen Mirren chewing on her Carolina accent as though she’s run out of scenery. Husband and wife are wanly fretted over by their ghastly whitebread adult children, played by Christian McKay and Janel Moloney, as they wend their adventuresome way down to the Florida Keys despite increasing bouts of incontinence and forgetfulness (him) and queasy stomach pain (her), making this whole trip less a last hurrah than a crashingly predictable last harrumph into a hanky. And then it has the sheer nerve to end on such a successfully manipulative note that you’ll feel actively resentful of the tears brimming in your eyes: bring tissues to this one, but not because it’s so deeply moving, just because you will not want to let anyone know you cried at this codswallop.

16. “Kingsman: The Golden Circle”
The gratuitous, sniggering but, by comparison, oddly sincere crassness of the first “Kingsman” is largely absent from the second go-round, which is also the brainchild of visionary genius Matthew Vaughn. But the problem is, it’s replaced by absolutely nothing: there’s a jaded emptiness so dense at the heart of this flashy exercise in pointlessness that it’s basically the cinematic equivalent of dark matter. And just like a black hole, it sucks in everything in its orbit — a galaxy of embarrassingly overqualified stars (including Julianne Moore, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Halle Berry, Emily Watson, Michael Gambon, Thomas Turgoose and Bruce Greenwood) a nebula of gadgets, Elton John, and a whole asteroid belt of fan service to the first film. There’s another pub fight, more Bond-emulating nonsense in a cable car sequence and, in the form of a tracking device expressly designed to be vaginally administered, another grossly sexist maneuver that is so belabored (oh god, it practically gasps, pleeeeease be shocked) it overshoots offensive by some distance and lands squarely on pathetic. Especially when it’s shot so that the camera actually follows the thingie into the woman’s insides, because everyone knows there nothing sexier or smuttier than looking at someone’s uterine walls. Phwoar. Even Taron Egerton seems disengaged from the franchise that made him, like he already knows this golden circle is nothing but a big, fat zero.