Watson's Twenty Worst Films of 2014

“Abandon all hope, you who enter here.”

–Dante Alighieri

(and William Watson)

I set out to see at least 100 new releases in 2014 as a kind of geek affectation/New Years Resolution. I wound up seeing 145! You can imagine there were some REALLY DREADFUL MOVIES in the mix. Don’t worry gentle jerkwads! I saw them so you didn’t have to. Here is my review of the 20 WORST movies of 2014!

126 IN SECRET

Admittedly an artsy adaptation of Emile Zola is not my cup of tea, but this flick was so Francoise it surrendered to itself and then opened forty bottles of wine to mourn the loss. When you are actually rooting for Draco Malfoy to win, you know the characters are two steps below Scrappy-Doo.

127 THAT AWKWARD MOMENT

I think the awkward moment was when the studio head greenlit this mess. Many stinkers start with a bad script. That is incredibly true here because the cast is brilliant (Efron, Jordan, Teller) and it has a passably interesting concept. Unfortunately, they didn’t have anything to work with. There WAS one laugh out loud moment of the film though. Zac Efron (who has come a long way from High School Musical) wears a costume to a party that had me rewinding to watch again.

128 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE

Interestingly, I’ve never seen the original, but in my quest to see a bunch of movies, sacrifices are made! This movie is definitely a cotton candy film. All sugar, no nutrition. If you could watch a movie on mute and still get the same impact as having the sound on? Probably not much there.

300. The number of people who paid to see this sequel.

129 IF I STAY

This movie is exactly what I was afraid the movie Fault in Our Stars would be when I went in to see that (decent) film. There is no crossover appeal to this movie. In fact, I am guessing that there isn’t any non-crossover appeal either.

130 ENEMY

I literally had to look this one up to remember what it was. This movie certainly wasn’t your friend… It was a boring Jake Gyllenhal non-thriller. I cannot believe this guy was in one of the best thrillers of the year (Nightcrawler), and this turd.

131 RIO 2

A total waste of a big budget. Like someone ate a box of 64 Crayolas, threw up on the screen, and set it to the music of Bruno Mars. A lot of other films did WAY more with way less.

132 NUTJOB

Nutjob was NOT one of those films that did more with less…

133 TRANSCENDENCE

If you told me that a Sci-Fi movie starring Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman, Paul Bettany, and Cillian Murphy, & directed by a protégé of Christopher Nolan would be in the bottom 20 of my list, I would have been stunned. Yet, here it is. A total stinker. Is Johnny Depp done? Have you seen the trailer for Mordachi?

134 SERIAL KILLER CULTURE

This is a prime example of a terrible documentary. It didn’t have a narrative. It was just a camera and some creepers talking about their creepiness. I’d try to think of something snarky, but I don’t care enough about it…

135 THE CONGRESS

I love when people try to do something different (especially the Drafthouse folks), but this movie really needed to be viewed on acid. Since I do not do acid, this movie is here. This and Akira would be the worst possible double feature.

136 TRANSFORMERS

Mark Wahlberg is so dreadful! He was even worse than Shia Labouf. How freaking hard it must have been to be worse than Shia! There should be an award for THAT! This series just keeps getting worse. The only saving grace for this one was that I paid the discount fare and I snuck in two minis of Jack Daniels. For Wahlberg films, beer and wine just don’t get the job done.

gobots — Tell ya mutha Leader-1 said hello…

137 EARTH TO ECHO

This movie boldly tried to be the E.T. of the 21st Century. Since the E.T. of the 20th Century still holds up, just go watch that one. This was not good.

138 I, FRANKENSTEIN

I, Frankenstein? No. You, Stink. Where Dracula Untold kind of went somewhere decent with the movie monster as action hero premise, I, Frankenstein missed the mark. Interesting premise, terrible execution. Sad because this should have been passable.

139 SABOTAGE

This movie gets a courtesy have star SIMPLY because I like Auh-nuld! This was a bland, boring action movie. Sorry, Governator. No one sabotaged your box office. Your movie just stunk.

140 SIGNAL

This movie wins the award for the biggest disappointment of the year. A Sundance entrant that covered Sci-Fi. The trailer looked brilliant and Garcia and I couldn’t wait to see it. As we walked out, we couldn’t speak at first we were so let down. We pretty much shook our heads and got in our own cars and drove away.

141 THE MACHINE

A low budget Sci-Fi film that I watched on iTunes on a Saturday when I had the flu. It made me even sicker. Watching the HD version was probably a bad idea because it simply illustrated how low weak the production values were. Dr Who has better sets and effects. Dr Who!!!

Eli Whitney’s cotton gin actually had greater production values than this movie.

142 VAMPIRE ACADEMY

This movie SUCKED. Heh. See what I did there.

143 PING PONG SUMMER

This movie was compared to The Way Way Back (my #1 film of last year), but it was everything that wonderful “away from home for the summer” dramedy wasn’t. If you view this as an 80’s parody of films like Karate Kid and get really drunk, it might be funny. But I don’t THINK that was the angle of the director. This movie was a walking cliché which I watched with utter disbelief.

144 UNDER THE SKIN

This must have been a terrible movie to be the second worse film out of the #145 I saw this year. You know why? Scarlett Johansson was nude for nearly 2/3 of this movie; much of it FULL FRONTAL. I am very attracted to Ms. Johansson so that is a huge plus in the ledger. Yet it was one of the worst films I have ever seen. They fact that it appears in several Critic Top 10 lists is a mystery to me. It wasn’t intriguing. The premise is not as clever as the reviews suggest. This movie was so dreadful that I want them to recast Black Widow with Shailene Woodley. Stick to viewing the screencaps on Google images and pass on the film itself.

145 IDA

So we come to the bottom; Ida. This movie will likely be nominated for Best Foreign Film. It may even win. This film, however, is the reason I know I will never be a TRUE pretentious, arthouse hipster. Because this movie was pure, self-indulgent crap! Nothing interesting happened! Only ennui! When I saw it in the theater based on the 90%+ Rotten Tomatoes score, there was no Run Pee listing available (RunPee is the app that tells you when to go to the bathroom where you won’t miss much if you have the bladder of a pigmy newt as I do). I don’t think it needed a listing. The entry would just say “Go anytime you want to pee. NOTHING IS GONNA FREAKING HAPPEN IN THIS WHOLE CRAPPY MOVIE!”