Time: 92 Minutes Age Rating: Contains low level violence. Cast:
Ioan Gruffudd as Dr. Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic
Jessica Alba as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman
Chris Evans as Johnny Storm/Human Torch
Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm/The Thing
Doug Jones as Norrin Radd/Silver Surfer
Laurence Fishburne as the voice of the Silver Surfer
Julian McMahon as Dr. Victor Von Doom/Doctor Doom
Kerry Washington as Alicia Masters
Beau Garrett as Captain Frankie Raye
Vanessa Minnillo as Julie Angel
Andre Braugher as General Hager Director: Tim Story
Reed (Ioan Gruffudd), Susan (Jessica Alba), Johnny (Chris Evans) and Ben (Michael Chiklis) face an intergalactic messenger who has arrived to prepare Earth for its destruction. While the enigmatic being wreaks havoc around the world, the heroic quartet must also contend with the unexpected return of their enemy, Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon).
Fantastic Four was not a hit critically so it was a surprise that a couple years later a sequel would come out. When it comes to this movie as a sequel, some see it as an improvement, others see it as a step down, I’m personally in the latter category. Not only did the sequel not improve many of the aspects, it made even more mistakes. The first half is borderline atrocious and the second half is mildly enjoyable but still not good. I’m surprised that they managed to make a worse Fantastic Four movie since the original.
The first half of the movie is absolutely terrible. It focuses on uninteresting aspects, especially around the wedding of Reed and Sue. This first half could pretty much be titled First World Superhero Problems: The Motion Picture or Keeping up with the Fantastics. This sequence was so uninteresting and annoying, it was such a pain to sit through. It’s difficult to care about the characters, which makes it worse. Also the very cheesy moments in the first film, there’s more of that here. There is a dance scene involving Reed Richards and it is worse than the dancing scene in Spiderman 3. I will say that the second half of the movie is better, still not good though. The second half has a lot more action (the action in this movie being okay). However there are still a lot of aspects of this film which are terrible. Galactus is a cloud (which really isn’t accurate to the comics at all). To make matters worse, both the Silver Surfer and Galactus aren’t really the main villains in the final act, it’s Doctor Doom again.
The acting is about as good/bad as the previous movie. Ioan Gruffudd is fine but unmemorable and boring, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis were some of the best parts of the film and Jessica Alba was…. yet again Jessica Alba (still the biggest miscasting I’ve seen in a comic book movie). In all fairness, Julian McMahon as Victor von Doom is actually pretty good casting. The writing was bad for the character and from what I can tell, is nothing like the comic book character. The best part of the film is the Silver Surfer with Doug Jones playing him and Laurence Fishburne providing the voice. It’s not accurate to the comics but he definitely made an impression in the movie.
The special effects of Rise of the Silver Surfer aren’t as bad as the effects in the previous movie but they still aren’t good either. The fire effects and shield effects for Johnny Storm and Sue Storm were good enough. Reed Richards’s stretch ability were better than in the previous movie. The Silver Surfer visual effects were pretty good. As I said, the last half of the movie is better and is more enjoyable as it has a lot more action and it is entertaining enough to watch, even if it isn’t great. The music is fine.
I know that Fant4stic gets a lot more criticism but I find Rise of the Silver Surfer to be the worst Fantastic Four movie. This is a sequel, and Fox and Tim Story should’ve learned from the previous movie. This film made many of the main mistakes that the first film made. What we get instead was a film with an awful first half surrounding a wedding and was just completely annoying, the second half while enjoyable wasn’t anything special. Overall this movie was just terrible, and is for me the worst Fantastic Four movie.
I’ll be honest, 2015 was for me a bit of a disappointing year for movies, well at least in terms of the blockbuster films, aside from a few gems (The Force Awakens, Mad Max, Kingsman, etc). Although I liked Spectre, thought Jurassic World was decent and secretly liked Terminator Genysis, they all felt a little disappointing. None of those made the list as for me as those were more disappointing than bad, there are far worse movies that actually deserves some criticism. I didn’t watch a lot of bad movies as I don’t watch every movie that comes into cinema, most of these were from watching them in 2016 to catch up on the lowlights of the previous year. But I watched enough bad movies to make a top 10 worst movies of the year list.
Honourable Mention:
The Assassin
The reason I didn’t do a review for this movie was because there wasn’t enough for me to say about it to fill up an entire review. This movie got a lot of awards, including one at the Cannes Film Festival and before watching it, I had a feeling I knew what sort of film it is. Having seen it, I don’t personally understand all the acclaim it’s been getting. It seemed like a slow burn film with style over substance. And the worst part is that it felt like a lot of scenes of literally nothing happening, with long shots of characters doing nothing (the last shot of the film is a complete joke). This movie wasn’t the worst, it is certainly shot beautifully and looks great, however despite this movie being under 2 hours, it felt like it was over 2 hours and a half. However this movie is only on this list as an honourable mention as it really isn’t my type of movie, so I’ll cut this movie some slack.
10. The Lazarus Effect
The Lazarus Effect is another one of those modern horror movies that just fails at delivering. The jumpscares weren’t effective at all, it got quite boring at times, and all the clichés that you can expect from this premise happens. It’s nowhere near as bad as some of the movies on this list and it still has a good cast and an interesting premise that prevents it from being an even worse movie. But it’s still by no means a good movie and it’s really not worth anyone’s time, unless anyone’s interested in remaking it into a much better movie, which I think could be done.
This is one of the only movies on this list that I think might be worth checking out which is why it’s lower on my list, however it’s for all the wrong reasons. Jupiter Ascending is another recent failure of the Wachowskis. Although it’s not their worst film (Speed Racer is still their worst in my opinion) it’s still a pretty bad movie. There are admittedly some enjoyable moments, intentional or not, the action is well directed, the soundtrack was really great and Channing Tatum and Sean Bean manage to rise above the bad writing. And there were unintentionally enjoyable moments like some of the ideas like bees being genetically created to sense royalty was hilarious. There was also Eddie Redmayne’s performance which featured a voice which was a mix of Richard Harris’s Dumbledore, Ralph Fiennes’s Voldermort, for his whispering voice and a little bit of Michael Shannon’s Zod as he just snaps and ends up screaming out of nowhere every so often. All of this made him sound hilarious and one of the highlights of the film in the worst possible way. However there were quite a lot of political exposition and at times it could be pretty boring, so the movie was not quite at the level of The Happening or The Room. Jupiter Ascending is overall not a good movie, but I have a feeling in a few years it will be known as one of the most entertaining trainwrecks in cinema history.
The Loft in short was pretty much a bad version of Clue, with a horrible script with hateable characters, a plot which gets boring and convoluted and includes lazy twists forced in to make this film seem smarter than it really is. The worst part is, after watching it, you immediately pick up on all these plot holes and inconsistencies which completely destroy the plot. The talented cast barely have any moments to show off their talent as they aren’t given good characters or even any good dialogue to work with. How this director managed to direct both the original and remake of Loft and manage to (apparently) succeed at the original but yet screw up at the remake I have no idea. This is definitely one whodunit to miss.
The Gunman had a great cast and director but just like with The Loft, the poor script let everyone down. What made it worse that The Loft was while it wasn’t good and a little boring at times, there was a little bit of interest of how it would end, but with The Gunman, it was so dull and lacked any sort of effort in the script that I didn’t care at all what happened in the end. No one is interesting and particularly likable, so there’s no reason to care about what’s going on. Aside from Sean Penn, every other actor, no matter how great they are, get at most 10 minutes of screen time and don’t have anything to work with. Even the action wasn’t that special, and this is from the director of Taken. I have no idea how this movie managed to go wrong but whatever the case, this movie doesn’t have much reason watching.
A lot of people hated Fant4stic (yes I’m calling it that, that’s how it was marketed) and after seeing this movie I could see why. Even though I don’t hate it like everyone else, I still do think that it was a disaster, and a colossal disappointment from a studio that has made great superhero movies, a great director and a good cast. Fant4stic unlike its 2005 predecessor tried to go in a much darker and grittier direction, which initially sounded like a good idea considering the last two attempts at a Fantastic Four movie. However a big problem is that it tries to set up its own world and forgets to be its own movie. And it’s made all the more worse when nothing is going on and because of how joyless it is, it makes the experience all the more painful. I still think that the cast of Fantastic Four was decent with what they had but they are very restricted. And in my review I stated this many times, Fant4stic has the worst climax of any superhero movie I’ve seen so far. The effects suddenly got worse and more noticeable, Doctor Doom was underdeveloped, comes out of nowhere, has poor character motivations and the fight between him and the Four (which is by the time the only time in the movie the Four use their powers together) is about 5 minutes long. I still can’t say in good conscience that this is the worst Fantastic Four movie, as the only movie out of the four Fantastic Four movies that I actually kind of hate was Rise of the Silver Surfer, but it’s probably worse than the 2005 film, which I thought was as bad as this reboot could get. Unfortunately it wasn’t. This is the fourth failure at making a Fantastic Four movie and seeing as how this movie made about half of its budget back, it’s safe to say that Fox will finally give up the licence for good.
Mortdecai was another nail in the coffin of Johnny Depp’s career. Even if Black Mass revived his career, no one is going to forget Mortdecai. There are some opportunities that Mortdecai had, and most of them were wasted. Johnny Depp here was pretty much British Jack Sparrow, only much more annoying and insufferable than in his other roles. The talented cast consisting of Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor and many others are serviceable, but don’t get a chance to show off their skills, only Paul Bettany manages to shine in a smaller role. Mortdecai wasn’t good at all, worst of all it was pretty boring and forgettable. I hope that Johnny Depp learns from this movie and Black Mass what projects he should take on and which he should avoid like the plague.
Taken 3 is one of the worst directed action movies I’ve ever seen. I don’t remember Taken 2 so I can’t say for certain if Taken 3 is better or worse than it but on its own, it was a pretty terrible action film. It had a story plot that made no sense, countless plot holes and of course, poorly filmed action scenes with close up shots as well as shots that don’t last two seconds before cutting to the next shot. Because of the performances from Liam Neeson, Forrest Whitaker, Maggie Grace and Famke Jensen, the movie still had a little bit of credibility but honestly, that was it. Taken 3 unlike many of the other picks on this list had no potential, it failed on almost every level. The film was basically The Fugitive starring Liam Neeson, under the title of a Taken movie, even though a kidnapping isn’t a major part of the movie. One of the taglines of the movie was ‘It Ends Here’, I certainly hope that’s the case for this franchise.
Unfinished Business was supposedly a comedy but it completely failed on every level. The actors weren’t funny, the movie was boring, the comedy was forced and at times cringe worthy (the gloryhole scene, and pretty much every single scene with Dave Franco), everything in this movie is at best mediocre and at worst, annoyingly bad. Unfinished Business wasn’t a good movie and worst of all it was a complete waste of time. There is no reason to watch this movie, there’s not one aspect which even works okay. It’s a shame when you come across a comedy which doesn’t feature one even mildly amusing joke.
This was a movie that was absolutely dead on arrival. It was a movie based on a book that was Twilight fanfiction, so I knew what I was going to get going into this movie. However it was much worse than I could’ve expected. This movie as I could tell before watching it, was horribly written. However I had no idea how boring this movie would be. The only way I could’ve enjoyed this movie is if it went bonkers and embraced what it was, horribly written fanfiction (adding the narration with the horribly written lines from the book would help), then it could be enjoyed as a guilty pleasure or a so bad it’s good movie. However looking at it now, I got the feeling that this movie was trying so hard to be credible with one of the worst material, so it actually collapses and fails. This movie might be entertaining in very brief 5-10 minute short scenes as a so bad it’s good film but not as one continuous feature film. The only things that didn’t suck was that the scenes were shot well and Dakota Johnson turned out a better performance than most people in her position. As I said in my review, this is one of the only movies that I regretted watching, even for a review. However that wasn’t the worst of the year for me.
I’ve never seen a comedy movie so humourless, so obnoxious, so frustratingly generically bad, until I watched this movie. Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara play some of the most annoying characters I’ve seen in a movie but they shouldn’t be blamed for this movie’s failure, Cate Blanchett wouldn’t be able to give a good performance with their material. The script is horrible with obvious and unfunny jokes, the characters are annoying and very contradictory in their personalities and characteristics and there was never a moment or aspect that was done even okay. There is nothing to gain from watching this movie. If you want to spare yourself 85 minutes of your time, don’t spend it on this movie, it’s not worth it. The only thing I can give Hot Pursuit credit is the fact that they made a worse movie than Fifty Shades of Grey, which was quite the accomplishment.
Time: 100 Minutes Age Rating: Violence Cast:
Miles Teller as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic
Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm/The Human Torch
Kate Mara as Susan “Sue” Storm/The Invisible Woman
Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm/The Thing
Toby Kebbell as Victor von Doom/Doctor Doom
Reg E. Cathey as Dr. Franklin Storm
Tim Blake Nelson as Dr. Harvey Allen Director: Josh Trank
Transported to an alternate universe, four young outsiders gain superhuman powers as they alter their physical form in shocking ways. Reed Richards (Miles Teller) becomes Mr. Fantastic, able to stretch and twist his body at will, while pal Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) gains immense strength as the Thing. Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) becomes the Human Torch, able to control and project fire, while his sister Sue (Kate Mara) becomes the Invisible Woman. Together, the team must harness their new abilities to prevent Doctor Doom (Toby Kebbell) from destroying the Earth.
Ever since its release, Fant4stic has received worldwide criticism, making only half of its budget back and having a 10% on rotten Tomatoes, there’s also been news of Fox interfering with the movie during filming. I will say that I don’t hate this movie but I don’t think it’s good either. It is an interesting take on the Fantastic Four with great actors and good ideas. However it is let down by a slow pace, obvious reshoots and a horrendous final act.
This movie is a different take on the Fantastic Four, it aims to be much darker, grittier and more of a Science Fiction film, with elements of horror which I can give credit for. The main problem of the movie is that there is not much of the four doing anything in this movie, it takes a long time before they even get their powers. The film feels like it’s trying to build its world but forgets to be its own movie. The best two scenes of the movie is when they are on Planet Zero and when they discover their powers, it actually seemed like Sci-Fi horror. The second act doesn’t have much going on, and feels extended for no reason. The final act though is one of the worst climaxes I’ve seen in any movie. Doom pretty much returns to earth to destroy it (because why not?) and despite how powerful Doom is made out to be, the final fight with him (which is also their only fight) is about 5 minutes long (even though he has the ability to kill people just by looking at them). It breaks the slow tone that the rest of the film was going for and feels rushed, probably a reshoot as well.
The acting was decent but it’s pretty clear that these actors are underused and don’t have much to work with. The worst part was that Marvel’s first family didn’t really feel like a family, most of them only bond in the first act, and then are reunited to fight Doom. Toby Kebbell was wasted as Doom, he was decent in the first act but he’s only the villain in the last act of the movie and was completely underdeveloped. I couldn’t even tell it Kebbell was playing Doom in those latter scenes.
The special effects are fine for the most part but there are many times where it’s quite obvious that green screen was used, especially when in ‘Planet Zero’. I also think that The Thing’s design was much better than the 2005 version but again, the CGI at times looks fake. There are many scenes where it’s pretty obvious that there have been reshoots, whether it be Kate Mara occasionally wearing a fake wig or Miles Teller having disappearing and reappearing facial hair.
Fant4stic has many flaws but it’s not the worst superhero movie I’ve seen. The acting was decent, there was some good ideas but a lot of it was wasted and did nothing with it. It culminated in the worst final act of a superhero movie that I’ve seen and the movie is overall a massive disappointment. It is worse than the 2005 Fantastic Four because it least had the four acting like a team and the tone fitted much better. I’ll have to see Rise of the Silver Surfer to see if it’s the worst Fantastic Four but in any case, Fant4stic was a let-down, I’ve still seen worse from 2015 though.
Time: 106 Minutes Age Rating: Violence Cast:
Ioan Gruffudd as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic
Jessica Alba as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman
Chris Evans as Johnny Storm/Human Torch
Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm/The Thing
Julian McMahon as Dr. Victor von Doom/Doctor Doom
Kerry Washington as Alicia Masters Director: Tim Story
Four astronauts have their lives changed forever, when they end up being hit by a cloud of cosmic radiation. Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) now has the ability to stretch his body like elastic. Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) is now the invisible woman. Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) becomes the human touch and Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) becomes the ‘Thing’, a man made out of rock. But there is one problem. The journey’s sponsor, Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) has also been affected and with full power, is a dangerous force which needs to be stopped, before it’s too late.
After hearing about how bad the latest Fantastic Four movie was, I decided to check out the first attempt at a Fantastic Four movie. Fantastic Four came out in a time when superhero movies were trying to be good with Batman Begins, X-Men and Spiderman, so naturally this wasn’t appreciated upon its release. While I don’t think it’s a horrible movie, Fantastic Four is not by any means a good movie. It has two dimensional characters, not much of the Fantastic Four doing anything and the cheesy tone which really worked against the movie.
The worst part about Fantastic Four is that they don’t do much with their powers. There’s one incident (which was caused by them) which had them save people and then there’s a fight with Doom at the end, that’s it. The rest of the time they are just dicking around with their powers. There’s so many opportunities for the Four to do stuff but they never do much of value. This is also a lighter hearted comic book movie, which I’m not against, Guardians of the Galaxy is one of my favourite Marvel movies. But the jokes are so cheesy and sometimes terrible and works against the film significantly.
The acting wasn’t great and the worst part is that all the characters felt two dimensional. Ioan Gruffudd in this movie was very bland and didn’t leave much of an impression. The worst casting for me though was Jessica Alba as Sue Storm. I think this might be the worst casting in a Marvel movie, even though Alba looks the part, she’s supposed to be playing a scientist, and there’s no moment where she reflected that. Also she and Gruffudd share no chemistry whatsoever, despite there being a ‘romance’. I will say that Michael Chiklis and Chris Evans are actually well suited for their roles and do fine with what they have. From what I hear, Victor Von Doom in this movie is not comic book accurate but he even fails as a villain on his own. He is such a cliché villain and by the end, you are left wondering what Victor’s plan was, the film forgot to give a reason for him to be a villain.
The effects can be pretty goofy, Human Torch’s flames and Invisible Woman’s shields have pretty fake CGI but Reed Richards’ stretch powers is some of the most cringe worthy effects I’ve seen in a superhero movie. To be fair though I don’t know how it’s possible to show it on screen without it being silly. The Thing is shown by using a body suit, which wasn’t the best option. I know that if they went with CGI they would make him look terrible but still, he looks like something out of a B movie.
I can’t say that there isn’t any enjoyment in the movie, when the action is on screen, it is entertaining, if badly done and fake looking. I also don’t hate this movie as much as everyone else but it’s not a good movie either. The effects are terrible, the humour is annoying and there isn’t enough of the Fantastic Four actually doing anything. I’ll have to check out its sequel and the reboot but I hope that they aren’t worse than this film.
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The Cinema Critic 