My 10 Worst Films of 2011

Whoops, I had actually forgotten I was writing this but this is the last of my 2011 wrapup pieces, promise. I think it’s a common misnomer that critics enjoy trashing bad movies. It can be painful to sit through a bad film so - with the exception of “Season of the Witch” which I saw during a Nic Cage-a-thon - it’s not something I would subject myself to intentionally. I skip most things that seem like a complete waste of time so you wont find “Jack & Jill” or “Chipwrecked” or “The Zookeeper” on my list because I haven’t seen them and have no plans to. Below are the films that, despite their best intentions, just did not work for me in 2011.

1. This Must Be The Place (Paolo Sorrentino)
A complete disaster. Sorrentino’s last film “Il Divo” was a crazy rock ‘n roll mashup of Fellini and Scorsese. I was excited for his follow-up, an English language film starring Sean Penn as a Robert Smith-type aging rock star who goes on a road trip across America to find an ex-Nazi war criminal who imprisoned his father. At the time I thought, “this is so crazy it just might work!” but now I know that it’s the synopsis for one of the worst movies of all time. This makes it’s U.S. premiere at Sundance in a few days so consider this a warning.

2. Cars 2 (John Lasseter, Brad Lewis)
Painful. This film is everything Pixar had previously stood against - cash grab sequels, cheap pop culture gags, nonstop action in place of character development - which makes it like a knife in the back from your best friend. It’s all the more upsetting to see Pixar head and co-director Lasseter continuing to defend the film instead of just admitting he made a mistake. Critics don’t have it out for you, John. We’re just not going to tell you that you’ve made a great film unless it’s true.

3. Sucker Punch (Zach Snyder)
A confession that may get me kicked out of the movie nerd community: I actually like Zach Snyder! At the very least he’s one of the most distinctive genre filmmakers working today and I have a soft spot for his “Dawn Of The Dead” remake, “300” and (most of) “Watchmen.” But “Sucker Punch” is a different story all together. Poorly written, ugly, and uninvolving, Snyder is totally lost and mostly incompetent without existing source material to guide him. There are no stakes, no consequences and nothing invested. It’s worse than bad, it’s boring.

4. The Green Lantern (Martin Campbell)
Marvel has had a real resurgence in the last decade but I’ve always been a DC kid at heart. So it’s unfortunate that both DC and Warner Bros. (who’ve done such a great job with the Batman franchise) had a bomb this big on their hands. It was definitely risky material: a cocky lead character, an otherworldly setting and yet another clunky love story but somehow Marvel made all those obstacles work with “Thor.” But “Green Lantern,” with its cartoonish CG, bad acting and an overstuffed plot was not so lucky.

5. I Saw The Devil (Jee-woon Kim)
I’d heard quite a bit of good buzz about this Korean revenge thriller before I went to see it this time last year. But my hopes dissapated almost instantly as I watched this relentlessly stupid film. As I said in my review, imagine the (perfect) ending of “Se7en” stretched out for 2 1/2 hours and you’re somewhere close to the tedium of “I Saw The Devil.” I’m convinced that people assume that because they’re reading subtitles the film is somehow smarter than it is because if this had been made in English it would have been laughed out of theatres.

6. Season of the Witch (Dominic Sena)
Okay, this is cheating a bit since I knew this would be horrible. January release? Silly action/horror plot about hunting down witches? Check. Nic Cage? Check. Yes, this was going to be bad. But unfortunately it was - with the exception of Stephen Graham’s hilarious New Yawk accent - pretty blandly bad. Cage was very subdued here which is not why you go to see a bad Nic Cage film. Thankfully “Drive Angry 3D” a month later was pretty awesome.

7. Scream 4 (Wes Craven)
I loved the “Scream” films when they were released. The first one still stands up as a genre classic even if the sequels are a product of diminishing returns. But this was something else entirely. Original cast members are dragged back and given nothing to do while the new castmembers are an even greater waste of space. I found myself squirming through the film, not because of the violence, but because I felt bad for everyone involved.

8. Circumstance (Maryam Keshavarz)
The first and worst film I saw at Sundance last year, this Iranian drama actually took home the Audience Award at the fest. Though I suspect that had more to do with the films sympathetic backstory (the filmmakers had to escape Iran to make the film) than the film itself, where story threads disappear, slo-mo happens all too frequently and the film really just runs out of steam. “Circumstance” was marketed as some kind of steamy lesbian drama which, probably would have been more interesting.

9. The Hangover: Part 2 (Todd Phillips)
Take the first film, Find And Replace “Vegas” with “Thailand” and Delete all the jokes. (Sorry Zach.)

10. Twixt (Francis Ford Coppola)
I was at the world premiere at TIFF and did my best to be fair in my review of the film because I do like everyone involved but it was an extremely amateurish production. How the same filmmaker who made “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now” and even “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” was responsible for this I will never know.

Dishonorable Mention: Fright Night, The Sitter, Take This Waltz, Detachment, Hobo With A Shotgun.

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Scream 4 review

I loved the original “Scream.” I probably saw it at least a dozen times, maybe more, around the time of its release. It was a completely fresh, original and self-referential take on a modern slasher film that didn’t sacrifice its scares even as it winked at the audience. It was an amazing balancing act by director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson. Unfortunately it was an act that could not be repeated though many tried. Remember the “I Know What You Did Last Summer”s and “Urban Legend”s and “Teaching Mrs. Tingle”s and “Scary Movie”s and even the sequels to “Scream” itself? None came close and in the passing decade new horror trends have come and gone, “The Ring” brought in Japanese horror remakes, “Saw” brought in (for lack of a better term) torture porn, and recently “Paranormal Activity” has ushered in its own slew of imitators.

These passing fads are something that “Scream 4” attempts to address in a cute, meta opening featuring a half dozen cameos in about as many minutes. But once the real film kicks in I found myself squirming through most of its running time, not because of the violence, but because I felt bad for everyone involved. I was surprised to see Dimension soldiering on with the franchise and the trio of original cast members (Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette) instead of just starting over a shiny new remake. That said, the mix of young newcomers and survivors from the original film never quite meshes. The new cast aren’t given enough time to develop any personalities whatsoever and the original cast are also underserved. (Cox in particular looks like a million years have passed in between installments.) I kept hoping for them to be killed off just to release them from this tired franchise.

The killer(s) is/are completely preposterous but that’s really the least of the film’s problems. A huge cast is assembled likely because they had hoped to be involved with a film as good as the first one but those days are long gone. Only Alison Brie manages to walk away unscathed and super cute (though her fate in the film is not as kind). The main thing I thought during this film is how outdated it felt. 15 years ago “Scream” was like a revolution for horror movies, today it’s as tired as the films it’s supposedly skewering. It’s crazy to think that only 12 years had passed between Craven’s breakthrough “A Nightmare On Elm Street” in 1984 and more time has passed between the original “Scream” and current installment. I’d like to think Craven has another great horror film in him but it’s time for him to move on from this series.

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