Top 10 Worst Movies of 2019
Now, it's time to go over the worst movies I've seen in 2019. To be honest, I don't think I've seen enough bad movies. Compared to 2018 where I watched hundreds of movies thanks to my Moviepass subscription and then my AMC A-List subscription, I try to cut back on going to the theater and allow time for more valuable things. But I've found 10 films that range from subpar to disastrous.
10. Gemini Man
Will Smith plays an assassin who has retired but is called back into action when he finds himself pursued by a mysterious somebody who turns out to be himself but younger. Despite it being in development hell for over 20 years, it sounded like an interesting premise. But the ending result falls short due to a very weak script from three writers from different backgrounds, including David Benioff of Game of Thrones. They also shot the movie in a very high frame rate, 120fps, which I didn't see it in but judging from other people's feedback, it was best not to watch it in that format. They said it made the action look like a daytime soap opera. Besides being charismatic, Will Smith can also be a great dramatic actor, and I think he and his co-stars, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Benedict Wong, have their own charm. And the CGI to make young Will Smith is impressive enough but it seems like his only function is to look sad throughout the film. Think back to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode, "Papa's Got A Brand New Excuse" where Will's estranged dad comes to visit only to leave him again. In the last heartbreaking scene, Will goes through different emotions from denial to anger to sadness. Anyway, while some of the action scenes can be cool if not a bit ridiculous as young Will Smith uses a motorcycle to punch old Will Smith, this movie's lackluster script couldn't be helped by its actors or director.
9. Black Christmas
Full disclosure, I haven't seen the original Black Christmas or its other remake. The new remake brings a feminist approach to it but it's done in a very tacky way with predictable kills and scares and trite dialogue like "Did you just 'not all men' me?" I felt this could have been a good satire on woke culture. One scene that stood out to me is when the main character Riley scolds her friend, Kris, saying that her whole SJW agenda will not protect them from the killers. She has made a good point there. But it goes back to pandering to that agenda in the climax. It was so stupid that it almost felt like a parody.
8. Hellboy
After plans for a Hellboy 3 fell through due to creative differences between Guillermo del Toro and Hellboy creator, Mike Mignola, this reboot was made. Even though the first trailer made it look like a Guardians wannabe, I was curious, and the second trailer made it look better. But it turned out to be a shoddily made reboot that went all over the place with its story and tone. Not to mention continuity errors like in the giant fight scene, Hellboy's stone hand switches sides at one point, and if you look closely, you can see a zipper on his back. It was needlessly gratuitous with very poor CGI. This movie was just all-around ugly to look at, except for Milla Jovovich. But, as David Harbour put it, everyone did their best...I guess? Honestly, this belongs in the bargain bin of every Wal-Mart store. To me, there's only one Hellboy and that's Ron Perlman. He can make the phonebook sound badass.
7. The Addams Family
I guess no IP is pervious to reboots. This new version of The Addams Family brings an all-star cast but none of the macabre charm or entertainment value. It does that thing some family films do where it brings in modern elements, but we all know how well that works. It's just bland and forgettable with no creepy, kooky, spooky, or ooky things that made the family memorable.
6. Terminator Dark Fate
Every time a new Terminator movie comes out, people roll their eyes, but maybe this one may be different. With Deadpool director Tim Miller making it and Linda Hamilton returning as Sarah Connor, this could have potential. And it did get a little bit of good buzz from people. So I went and watched it and...I was let down by it. The movie opened on a head-scratching note with its story but whatever, I'll bite. On a positive note, Linda Hamilton is still a badass and I also liked this different Terminator that Arnold plays. But aside from them, I just didn't care for the new characters or their struggle, and it didn't amount to anything that noteworthy. Maybe it's best to leave this franchise alone and let the legacy of the first two live on.
5. Dark Phoenix
Fox's era of X-Men comes to a close with another attempt to bring the Dark Phoenix storyline to the big screen. While I thought X-Men The Last Stand and X-Men Apocalypse were flawed but not that bad, this one just didn't stick the landing with a weak and jumbled story. X-Men producer Simon Kinberg, who co-wrote The Last Stand, also writes this movie as well as makes his directorial debut as apparently, Jennifer Lawrence wouldn't star in it without his involvement or so I've been told. As if Jean Grey's conflict wasn't enough, they also include these shapeshifting aliens that were supposed to be Skrulls I think but they didn't want it to be similar to Captain Marvel so they don't explain much about them and also reshot the climax that was going to take place in space originally. It's had different release dates before finally being released in June last year, but by then I lost all interest in it and a lot of people as well as it bombed in the box office. I say Logan was a much better send-off. However, we still got The New Mutants which is finally coming to theaters in April, I hope, but honestly, I'm not that interested in it, too. Nonetheless, it may be the only full-on Marvel horror movie we'd get if Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will not be all that.
4. Climax
This one I may be in the minority because some people like it. It's about some dancers rehearsing in a school but things take a turn for the worse when they discover the sangria has been spiked with LSD. First things first, the dancing is really good. I'll give the movie props for its opening number which was all done in one long take. It's only when things get out of control that I started to dislike it. The last two-thirds get very unpleasant that it became torturous to watch. Its runtime was only an hour and a half but it felt much longer and I was just wondering when this nightmare will end. "When will we get to the end credits?" I thought. It turns out the movie displayed the credits in the middle so it just ends with the title and that was it. Granted, it was interesting to see a movie in this day and age end without any credits like the old days. But this was so dark and messed-up for my taste. I could handle Joker but this was so pretentious with its shock value. My thoughts on this movie are similar to the thoughts of the woman sitting next to me had about Uncut Gems, another A24 movie. While I like that movie better, she was panicking over every bad decision Adam Sandler made in that movie. "This is terrible," she would say. "I can't take this." When it was all over, she said: "It was fascinating but I never ever ever ever ever ever want to see it again." In the end, I guess Gaspar Noé isn't for me, but he did his job in making me feel uncomfortable and offended.
3. Serenity
This film starts off as a thriller but it has a twist that is so mind-boggling you'd be like "Where did this come from?" It felt like it was trying to be deep but with the twist, it just fails. It also doesn't help that it wastes the talent of its actors. Matthew McConaughey would either be paranoid or acting aggressively out of nowhere in a laughable manner. Anne Hathaway gave a one-note performance, acting like a femme fatale in a 40s noir film. And Jason Clarke's normal Aussie accent would slip through often. Aside from those elements, it's so boring. I fell asleep when I first watched it in a theater and missed the last 30 or 20 minutes. When I watched it again on Amazon Prime, my eyes got drowsy again and I had to finish it the next day. Honestly, you have to see this movie to believe it. You will be dumbfounded when you see what it's building up to. For now, I'll only be watching the good version of Serenity that is the feature-length continuation of the beloved gone too soon show, Firefly.
For those who don't care about seeing the movie and want to know the twist: the events of the film are part of a game that McConaughey's son developed to help him cope with the death of his father and to give him a fantasy of his dad killing his abusive stepfather (Clarke) so he can do it himself.
2. The Fanatic
Why do you have to pop up again, John Travolta? You were such a charismatic star back in the 70s and 80s then your career went into a slump until you made a good comeback when you got cast as Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction. Now fast forward 25 years later, you star in The Fanatic. I first heard of this movie when I saw an image of Travolta as his character, Moose. I thought this will be a trainwreck but then it started to get attention for its super poor box office performance, making only $3,153, and YouTubers were reviewing it. So I decided to give it a watch and I'll give it this, it was more entertaining than Gotti.
Moose is a movie fanatic who I guess is supposed to be autistic. I'm not gonna lie, I could relate to him a little, being someone with PDD. Still, the way he looks and acts over the top, it's quite something. His first line in the movie is "I can't talk too long. I gotta poo." We're going with that, huh? Moose hears that his favorite actor, Hunter Dunbar, is coming for an autograph signing. But when Dunbar rejects him, he decides to stalk him until his idol will comply. From there, we get some shocking turn of events but the execution of it all is just ridiculous and all logic is thrown out the window. It's impossible to take this seriously; I couldn't help but laugh at Travolta. Now some may get a different reaction out of this. Some may find it offensive, embarrassing, or like me, they'll get a kick out of it and laugh their butts off. I can see this having a following for how entertaining it is in all its awful glory. Where else could you find a movie directed by Fred Durst, the lead singer of Limp Bizkit, where the characters actually listen to Limp Bizkit?
1. Cats
There are so many things wrong with this movie. When the first trailer was released, there was a massive outcry over how the "cats" look. They looked like abominations from a lab experiment gone wrong. Everyone had their own descriptions of how horrifying they look. The taglines read "You Will Believe" and "The Most Joyful Event of the Holiday Season." More like "You Will Be Terrified" and "The Most Petrifying Event." But the filmmakers apparently felt confident about it as opposed to the makers of Sonic The Hedgehog who changed the design of the character after people reacted negatively to the original trailer.
Unlike some people, I was familiar with the original musical and how it was adapted from a collection of poems by T.S. Eliot. I remember watching a promo of the 1998 direct-to-video version on a VHS of The Borrowers. Fast forward to now, I watched it at last and I thought it was good for what it was. I like how playful some of the songs were, not dismissing the most famous one, "Memory." But even some people thought the original musical was overrated and dated.
Now we have the theatrical version and my Lord, if you thought the trailer was frightening, they didn't show stuff that was even more freaky. In The Old Gumbie Cat number, we meet Jennyanydots, played by Rebel Wilson, who's lazy and clumsy because that's Wilson's main shtick. The song mentions how she teaches mice some tricks and has an orderly group of cockroaches. In the original, the cats dress like mice and cockroaches, but this movie has mice with human kids' faces and cockroaches that also have human faces! And then Wilson unzips her skin, revealing another skin with a dance outfit and even starts eating some of the cockroaches!
At another point, you hear a dog barking but you never see the dog! But I don't want to think about what dogs would look like in this film.
Other characters include Macavity (Idris Elba) who's a criminal cat and has the ability to disappear; Bustopher Jones (James Corden) another fat cat; Gus the theater cat, played by Ian McKellen who's truly committed to acting catlike; Rum Tug Tugger, a sexy male feline (Jason Derulo); the list goes on. Some of these characters you'd only see once for a musical number. As I'm writing this, I'm slowly realizing how the structure and approach wouldn't work for a movie unless changes they could make will translate well to film, but the execution falls apart. It was kind of obvious how rushed this movie was to get a holiday release when people first noticed glitches and CGI anomalies. The studio then sent an updated version a week later but it didn't do the film any favors. I've only seen it a week after its release. There were only seven or eight people in the theater, myself included. When Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson) appeared, two guys sitting on my row were laughing at her. Grizabella is supposed to be a sympathetic character, but even I admit, her look didn't help her performance though I think she did well singing "Memory" especially the big climax of the song. When it was all over, there was applause but I think it was meant to be patronizing since I heard one person say it was "fucking awful."
This movie was just an eye-sore from beginning to end. Why did they have to go with this CGI? Why couldn't they use costumes? Better yet, why couldn't they make this animated?! Something that looks freaky in live-action could look better in animation. Steven Spielberg was attached to make an animated version of this but it never came to be. It should've been the route to take. Overall, it was a total cat-tastrophe.
Dishonorable Mentions
Dumbo
Will Smith plays an assassin who has retired but is called back into action when he finds himself pursued by a mysterious somebody who turns out to be himself but younger. Despite it being in development hell for over 20 years, it sounded like an interesting premise. But the ending result falls short due to a very weak script from three writers from different backgrounds, including David Benioff of Game of Thrones. They also shot the movie in a very high frame rate, 120fps, which I didn't see it in but judging from other people's feedback, it was best not to watch it in that format. They said it made the action look like a daytime soap opera. Besides being charismatic, Will Smith can also be a great dramatic actor, and I think he and his co-stars, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Benedict Wong, have their own charm. And the CGI to make young Will Smith is impressive enough but it seems like his only function is to look sad throughout the film. Think back to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode, "Papa's Got A Brand New Excuse" where Will's estranged dad comes to visit only to leave him again. In the last heartbreaking scene, Will goes through different emotions from denial to anger to sadness. Anyway, while some of the action scenes can be cool if not a bit ridiculous as young Will Smith uses a motorcycle to punch old Will Smith, this movie's lackluster script couldn't be helped by its actors or director.
Full disclosure, I haven't seen the original Black Christmas or its other remake. The new remake brings a feminist approach to it but it's done in a very tacky way with predictable kills and scares and trite dialogue like "Did you just 'not all men' me?" I felt this could have been a good satire on woke culture. One scene that stood out to me is when the main character Riley scolds her friend, Kris, saying that her whole SJW agenda will not protect them from the killers. She has made a good point there. But it goes back to pandering to that agenda in the climax. It was so stupid that it almost felt like a parody.
After plans for a Hellboy 3 fell through due to creative differences between Guillermo del Toro and Hellboy creator, Mike Mignola, this reboot was made. Even though the first trailer made it look like a Guardians wannabe, I was curious, and the second trailer made it look better. But it turned out to be a shoddily made reboot that went all over the place with its story and tone. Not to mention continuity errors like in the giant fight scene, Hellboy's stone hand switches sides at one point, and if you look closely, you can see a zipper on his back. It was needlessly gratuitous with very poor CGI. This movie was just all-around ugly to look at, except for Milla Jovovich. But, as David Harbour put it, everyone did their best...I guess? Honestly, this belongs in the bargain bin of every Wal-Mart store. To me, there's only one Hellboy and that's Ron Perlman. He can make the phonebook sound badass.
I guess no IP is pervious to reboots. This new version of The Addams Family brings an all-star cast but none of the macabre charm or entertainment value. It does that thing some family films do where it brings in modern elements, but we all know how well that works. It's just bland and forgettable with no creepy, kooky, spooky, or ooky things that made the family memorable.
Every time a new Terminator movie comes out, people roll their eyes, but maybe this one may be different. With Deadpool director Tim Miller making it and Linda Hamilton returning as Sarah Connor, this could have potential. And it did get a little bit of good buzz from people. So I went and watched it and...I was let down by it. The movie opened on a head-scratching note with its story but whatever, I'll bite. On a positive note, Linda Hamilton is still a badass and I also liked this different Terminator that Arnold plays. But aside from them, I just didn't care for the new characters or their struggle, and it didn't amount to anything that noteworthy. Maybe it's best to leave this franchise alone and let the legacy of the first two live on.
Fox's era of X-Men comes to a close with another attempt to bring the Dark Phoenix storyline to the big screen. While I thought X-Men The Last Stand and X-Men Apocalypse were flawed but not that bad, this one just didn't stick the landing with a weak and jumbled story. X-Men producer Simon Kinberg, who co-wrote The Last Stand, also writes this movie as well as makes his directorial debut as apparently, Jennifer Lawrence wouldn't star in it without his involvement or so I've been told. As if Jean Grey's conflict wasn't enough, they also include these shapeshifting aliens that were supposed to be Skrulls I think but they didn't want it to be similar to Captain Marvel so they don't explain much about them and also reshot the climax that was going to take place in space originally. It's had different release dates before finally being released in June last year, but by then I lost all interest in it and a lot of people as well as it bombed in the box office. I say Logan was a much better send-off. However, we still got The New Mutants which is finally coming to theaters in April, I hope, but honestly, I'm not that interested in it, too. Nonetheless, it may be the only full-on Marvel horror movie we'd get if Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will not be all that.
This one I may be in the minority because some people like it. It's about some dancers rehearsing in a school but things take a turn for the worse when they discover the sangria has been spiked with LSD. First things first, the dancing is really good. I'll give the movie props for its opening number which was all done in one long take. It's only when things get out of control that I started to dislike it. The last two-thirds get very unpleasant that it became torturous to watch. Its runtime was only an hour and a half but it felt much longer and I was just wondering when this nightmare will end. "When will we get to the end credits?" I thought. It turns out the movie displayed the credits in the middle so it just ends with the title and that was it. Granted, it was interesting to see a movie in this day and age end without any credits like the old days. But this was so dark and messed-up for my taste. I could handle Joker but this was so pretentious with its shock value. My thoughts on this movie are similar to the thoughts of the woman sitting next to me had about Uncut Gems, another A24 movie. While I like that movie better, she was panicking over every bad decision Adam Sandler made in that movie. "This is terrible," she would say. "I can't take this." When it was all over, she said: "It was fascinating but I never ever ever ever ever ever want to see it again." In the end, I guess Gaspar Noé isn't for me, but he did his job in making me feel uncomfortable and offended.
This film starts off as a thriller but it has a twist that is so mind-boggling you'd be like "Where did this come from?" It felt like it was trying to be deep but with the twist, it just fails. It also doesn't help that it wastes the talent of its actors. Matthew McConaughey would either be paranoid or acting aggressively out of nowhere in a laughable manner. Anne Hathaway gave a one-note performance, acting like a femme fatale in a 40s noir film. And Jason Clarke's normal Aussie accent would slip through often. Aside from those elements, it's so boring. I fell asleep when I first watched it in a theater and missed the last 30 or 20 minutes. When I watched it again on Amazon Prime, my eyes got drowsy again and I had to finish it the next day. Honestly, you have to see this movie to believe it. You will be dumbfounded when you see what it's building up to. For now, I'll only be watching the good version of Serenity that is the feature-length continuation of the beloved gone too soon show, Firefly.
For those who don't care about seeing the movie and want to know the twist: the events of the film are part of a game that McConaughey's son developed to help him cope with the death of his father and to give him a fantasy of his dad killing his abusive stepfather (Clarke) so he can do it himself.
Why do you have to pop up again, John Travolta? You were such a charismatic star back in the 70s and 80s then your career went into a slump until you made a good comeback when you got cast as Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction. Now fast forward 25 years later, you star in The Fanatic. I first heard of this movie when I saw an image of Travolta as his character, Moose. I thought this will be a trainwreck but then it started to get attention for its super poor box office performance, making only $3,153, and YouTubers were reviewing it. So I decided to give it a watch and I'll give it this, it was more entertaining than Gotti.
Moose is a movie fanatic who I guess is supposed to be autistic. I'm not gonna lie, I could relate to him a little, being someone with PDD. Still, the way he looks and acts over the top, it's quite something. His first line in the movie is "I can't talk too long. I gotta poo." We're going with that, huh? Moose hears that his favorite actor, Hunter Dunbar, is coming for an autograph signing. But when Dunbar rejects him, he decides to stalk him until his idol will comply. From there, we get some shocking turn of events but the execution of it all is just ridiculous and all logic is thrown out the window. It's impossible to take this seriously; I couldn't help but laugh at Travolta. Now some may get a different reaction out of this. Some may find it offensive, embarrassing, or like me, they'll get a kick out of it and laugh their butts off. I can see this having a following for how entertaining it is in all its awful glory. Where else could you find a movie directed by Fred Durst, the lead singer of Limp Bizkit, where the characters actually listen to Limp Bizkit?
There are so many things wrong with this movie. When the first trailer was released, there was a massive outcry over how the "cats" look. They looked like abominations from a lab experiment gone wrong. Everyone had their own descriptions of how horrifying they look. The taglines read "You Will Believe" and "The Most Joyful Event of the Holiday Season." More like "You Will Be Terrified" and "The Most Petrifying Event." But the filmmakers apparently felt confident about it as opposed to the makers of Sonic The Hedgehog who changed the design of the character after people reacted negatively to the original trailer.
Unlike some people, I was familiar with the original musical and how it was adapted from a collection of poems by T.S. Eliot. I remember watching a promo of the 1998 direct-to-video version on a VHS of The Borrowers. Fast forward to now, I watched it at last and I thought it was good for what it was. I like how playful some of the songs were, not dismissing the most famous one, "Memory." But even some people thought the original musical was overrated and dated.
Now we have the theatrical version and my Lord, if you thought the trailer was frightening, they didn't show stuff that was even more freaky. In The Old Gumbie Cat number, we meet Jennyanydots, played by Rebel Wilson, who's lazy and clumsy because that's Wilson's main shtick. The song mentions how she teaches mice some tricks and has an orderly group of cockroaches. In the original, the cats dress like mice and cockroaches, but this movie has mice with human kids' faces and cockroaches that also have human faces! And then Wilson unzips her skin, revealing another skin with a dance outfit and even starts eating some of the cockroaches!
At another point, you hear a dog barking but you never see the dog! But I don't want to think about what dogs would look like in this film.
Other characters include Macavity (Idris Elba) who's a criminal cat and has the ability to disappear; Bustopher Jones (James Corden) another fat cat; Gus the theater cat, played by Ian McKellen who's truly committed to acting catlike; Rum Tug Tugger, a sexy male feline (Jason Derulo); the list goes on. Some of these characters you'd only see once for a musical number. As I'm writing this, I'm slowly realizing how the structure and approach wouldn't work for a movie unless changes they could make will translate well to film, but the execution falls apart. It was kind of obvious how rushed this movie was to get a holiday release when people first noticed glitches and CGI anomalies. The studio then sent an updated version a week later but it didn't do the film any favors. I've only seen it a week after its release. There were only seven or eight people in the theater, myself included. When Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson) appeared, two guys sitting on my row were laughing at her. Grizabella is supposed to be a sympathetic character, but even I admit, her look didn't help her performance though I think she did well singing "Memory" especially the big climax of the song. When it was all over, there was applause but I think it was meant to be patronizing since I heard one person say it was "fucking awful."
This movie was just an eye-sore from beginning to end. Why did they have to go with this CGI? Why couldn't they use costumes? Better yet, why couldn't they make this animated?! Something that looks freaky in live-action could look better in animation. Steven Spielberg was attached to make an animated version of this but it never came to be. It should've been the route to take. Overall, it was a total cat-tastrophe.
Dishonorable Mentions
Dumbo
The first Disney remake of last year puts more focus on the human characters and I'll give them credit for doing something different than the original but the human characters are so dull, especially the kids. It looks nice and Dumbo is very cute, but it's very shallow.
The Lion King
This one tries too much to be like the original but in CGI that's trying to pass off as live-action. The way it's presented lacks the heart and passion that made the original a beloved classic. Some scenes we've loved are rushed and some are padded out like the hair of Simba going through a lot of things including ending up in a ball of dung. The animals show little to no emotion and the performances don't help. The animals in The Jungle Book remake showed more emotion and it worked fine. But at least, Timon and Pumbaa were funny. Seth Rogen as Pumbaa was inspired casting. This remake feels like it was made by a corporate machine, instead of a group of passionate animators and storytellers, just to make a quick buck. And sadly, it's working as it's the second highest-grossing movie of last year.
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