I just couldn't with these next five movies. I knew some of them might be bad, but they were worse than I expected. These were purely straight up hot messes.
THE UGLY
Starring: Sharlto Copley, Hugh Jackman
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Writer: Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell
Blomkamp has such wonderful potential, but his last two movies have suffer from too many ideas crammed into a contrived plot that does little to enhance the characters but offers up an amazing amount of social commentary. Chappie ends up being filled with so many ideas and thoughts about humanity and culture that the story gets lost. You come to care about Chappie enough that you don't want to see him harmed, but beyond that, the characters are shallow - especially Hugh Jackman's villain who is only motivated by personal fame and wealth.
Which is fine, but it's so hokey and poorly played out that you roll your eyes every time he's onscreen. And the pacing is choppy at best - there's no real flow to the story - one minute you're enjoying Chappie reading books, the next he's holding a gun acting all gangsta. It's a silly movie that tries so hard not to be - it's best just to avoid this one.
Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James
Director: Robert Schwenke
Writers: Brian Duffield, Akiva Goldsman, Mark Bomback
I know this movie came out 4 months ago, but I can barely remember anything about it. And that's the worst offense of all - being unremarkable. Divergent actually had some decent world-building and the story was pretty good. Except that the sequel does no favors in improving that world. Instead, it's a big giant mess where you don't know who's on who's side. It's all confusing and they throw in this MacGuffin, which is a box that will tell people how to live.
Instead the box (spoiler) shows the city that actually everyone is just part of some grand experiment. It is not a bad twist, but it does not get thoroughly explained and it just ends with no real resolution. Now I know that there is a sequel coming, but there really wasn't a nice wrap up for this 'chapter' of the trilogy. I am increasingly becoming bored by what the films have to offer and I certainly don't care too much about what happens next.
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm
Directors: Kyle Balda, Pierre Coffin
Writer: Brian Lynch
I know, putting a kids movie on this list seems a tad overboard, doesn't it? But when you have a movie like Inside Out this year that happens to hit all the right notes, Minions just looks bad. The minions are perfect foils to Gru from Despicable Me, but can't carry a movie. Almost all the best parts are in the trailers. There's one promising jolt of energy the movie has when the minions get picked up by bank robbing family, but they're soon forgotten once Sandra Bullock's lame villain character comes along. Scarlett Overkill has no personality and her husband, who is actually the best character, gets very little screen time.
I shouldn't be picking on this movie that much, but I was just expecting a lot of insane hijinks from the minions. I wasn't expecting an actual story, but the movie persistently tries to switch from silly gags and jokes to telling a very dull story about Scarlett Overkill's desire to be the best villain. It just doesn't work and the movie would have been better served if it didn't rely on telling an actual story.
Starring: Jai Courtney, Emilia Clarke, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Director: Alan Taylor
Writers: Laeta Kalogridis, Patrick Lussier
My thoughts on the Terminator can be summed up over at Daily of the Day. Genisys did not help revive the franchise and quite possibly is the worst entry into the series. Bad acting, very underwhelming action scenes and a convoluted story with unnecessary plot twists all have a hand in making this the worst Terminator film. Not even the powerful drug of nostalgia can fix the mess of Genisys.
Seriously, there's only so many ways to re-tell this plot and it's getting old. I don't care what they have in store for us in the planned sequels, if they can't get the first movie right, the rest will more than likely suck too. And the action is so ho-hum - if you're expecting to be wowed at any time during this movie, just forget about it. I couldn't care less about Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor and John Connor. For such a riveting world James Cameron built, the movies seems stuck on these now-lifeless characters like their the glue holding everything together. It's a disappointing result and don't even bother seeing this one.
Starring: Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry, Clark Duke
Director: Steve Pink
Writer: Josh Heald
This is by far, the worst movie this year. What a heaping pile of shit. Seriously, all the jokes are juvenile and land with a thud - whereas all the jokes from the first movie were juvenile, but they ended up being funny because of the characters. In the sequel, the characters are so outrageously dumb and obnoxious that you can't get past it.
Most of the movie is set in the future and you'd think there'd be some great jokes about science fiction but most of it ends up being fart and dick jokes, just with a glossy, hologram background. The film makes no sense and the central plot of trying to find who shot Rob Corddry is quickly dropped the instant they land in the future. And it felt like they shot 5 or 6 different endings to the movie but decided that all them were equally funny (they were not) so they're all in the final cut. It's complete nonsense and just stay far far away from this movie because it'll make you rethink how funny the first movie is (which it still is, I promise).
