Worst of 2020 - End of Year Report

So for all the shite that occurred in 2020, the films I saw weren't all that bad, just very bland or disappointing. The good certainly outweighed the bad. But here are the 10 worst films I had the displeasure of seeing last year. Don't be afraid but please do avoid.

10. The Gentlemen (2019)

Guy Ritchie's body of work has really declined since, well, since the beginning. This is a pale echo of his best days, when geezerism was at its most endearing (if you swing that way). I have a kind of sad feeling that Ritchie's legs have gone, that the best days are well behind him. Even Hugh Grant playing nicely against type and Colin Farrell, hamming up the Oirish, can't salvage this.

9. The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

So it seems Bowie was human after all; fallible, imperfect. This film was a real disappointment, hovering around my radar for many years, I finally saw it last year and well, ponderous and dull probably sum it up for me. Let's call it a minor glitch in the Bowie Matrix.

8. Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

The first on the list that I can blame on the kids. Emily Blunt toils heroically with the simpering material but can't lift the twee mess from anything other than failed, post-Disney vacuity.

7. Digby: The Biggest Dog in the World (1973)

Another attempt to feed the kids some quality entertainment, this sadly didn't pass muster. Building a film around a dog the size of a diplodocus but neglecting any humour, peril or human character development has turned poor old Digby into a damp squib.

6. Men in Black: International (2019)

A tired, worn-out franchise, unable to be saved by his-Thorness, Chris Hemsworth, though the cast turn the charm dial up as far as it will go. Same old story, nothing to see here. Move on folks.

5. Hotel Transylvania (2012)

Some coked-up movie executive must have green lit this on the premise alone - "Hey dudes, what if the monsters were actually the heroes. Get it? WE'RE the real monsters. It's frickin' awesome, right?" Has the whiff of Sandler about it and the awful musical number at the end just cranked up the vomitometer.

4. Rampage (2018)

The Rock. Massive animals. Piss-weak gags. Cut and paste storyline. In fact, I've forgotten most of this 'film'. I don't know, maybe that's what the kids want these days. I'll be in my nostalgia vault if anyone needs me.

3. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)

Another Guy Ritchie offering, one which makes number 10 on this list look like Snatch. So very boring, with a wooden lead (Charlie Hunnam) and a handful of better actors wasting their time and ours. Who would have thought that giving old British mythology the Ritchie treatment would have produced such a steaming pile? Every-fucking-body, that's who.

2. Honest Thief (2020)

Why? Why was this made? Aside from Liam Neeson, who is still a likeable screen presence (though he seems to be doing everything he can to undermine that), this film is packed with bog-average no-names. And that's not the worst of it. Atomic dullness permeates the screen, 'action' scenes fizzle like wet socks, lines are read like out-takes from some dodgy 80s TV soap. Cripes, it's bloody awful.

1. Shrek 2 (2004)

Ok, I didn't care much for the first Shrek and I only watched this to satisfy the kids (those pesky kids are responsible for FOUR of the films in this list! Won't someone think of the children!?). Shrek 2 is full of post-90s drivel aimed at kids, but through a nudge-nudge, wink-wink prism of borderline smut. Now, I'm not averse to smut, don't get me wrong, but wedged into a PG cartoon? No thanks. The supposed jokes are crap, the voice work is annoying, the animation is headache inducing and the music is wincingly shite, even the Cave and Bowie stuff. It's not often I have to physically massage out a full facial sneer after a film. Fuck off Shrek, you big green twat.

Comments

F1: The Movie

As opposed to F1: The TV Show, or F1: The Book, or F1: The Function Key. Yes, this is a film about Formula 1 racing and it really wants us to love it, the racing even more than the movie itself. Brad Pitt is Sonny Hayes, a grizzled driver who jumps around from race to race, a drifter, a mercenary. After one of these races, Daytona, his old mucker, Ruben (Javier Bardem) shows up and offers him the chance of a lifetime. Come back to Formula 1. Hitting all the right beats so far. And continues to do so. If you've seen any sports film, you know this film. Just for the record, yes, there's a cocky young pup co-driver, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) and a gorgeous (thankfully middle-aged) love interest, Kate (Kerry Condon). It's no surprise that the writer/director combo here, Ehren Kruger and Joseph Kosinski, was also responsible for the underwhelming Top Gun: Maverick . This is a better, more grounded (pun intended) version of that film. It may be derivative but F1 is pretty s...

Top twenty WWII films

The Guardian recently ran an article on the ten best World War II films, as voted by respondents to a Deltapoll for The War Movie Theatre podcast (see their list and link at the end of this piece). As this year is 80 years since the end of hostilities, I thought it might be interesting to run down my top twenty World War II films. Here we go: 20. Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg - 1987) This China-set drama of expats during the war in the Pacific theatre was Christian Bale's first big role at the age of 13. He's pretty bloody good too, as are most of the cast, including John Malkovich and Nigel Havers. Spielberg saw this J.G. Ballard story as a chance to make a comparatively 'darker' film about the loss of innocence and it turned out to be one of his very best. 19. The English Patient (Anthony Minghella - 1996) All the press for this film was the love story angle between dreamy Ralph Fiennes (pre-Voldemort, of course) and elegantly icy Kristin Sc...

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

This eighth entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise feels like a good place to end things. The series is rapidly ripening and it's possible that any more and we might be getting into the fruit fly stage. It's not going out on a limb to say they will probably continue until Tom Cruise is in traction but, by the looks of this warlock, he'll outlast us all. The Final Reckoning is many things to many people. On the one hand, it's great fun, packed with tension and brilliantly edited to within an inch of its celluloid life (kudos to the editor with a name like a British snooker player, Eddie Hamilton). On the other hand, it reeks with honking dialogue and convoluted exposition that wastes an awful lot of its lengthy run-time (170 mins, no thanks Mr. Bladder). One character actually says, "It's the end of the world as we know it." At this stage, I didn't feel fine. And for your bingo card, make a cross in the square for 'characters saying the name o...

The Tasters

My final tilt at the 2025 German Film Festival turned out to be a Swiss/Belgian/Italian co-production, directed by Silvio Soldini. It's based on a book by Rosella Postorino called At the Wolf's Table , about a year or so in the life of Margot Wölk. This luckless woman was one of 15 official food tasters for Hitler when he was staying at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia (current day Poland). Rosa Sauer (Elisa Schlott) arrives at her parents-in-law's house in the town of Parcz to await the return of her husband from the Eastern Front. Not long after, she is co-opted into a perverse gig at the military compound just outside the town - Rosa and several other young, healthy women must taste the Fuhrer's food before he eats it, in case it's poisoned. The dynamic between the women is well played. Some are suspicious of Rosa, due to the fact that she's from Berlin; one is young and naive; one is blindly loyal to the Reich; one is staunchly discreet. All are bricking ...

Münter and Kandinsky - The Blue Rider

Artist biopics are few and far between these days. Mr. Turner in 2014 and Daaaaaali! in 2023 come to mind as relatively recent examples, and Van Gogh and Picasso are always popular subjects. This German production, directed by TV stalwart Marcus O. Rosenmüller, looks at the life of Expressionist maestro, Wassily Kandinsky, but crucially, via the perspective of his lover and ex-student, Gabriele Münter. The film starts and ends with her and Vanessa Loibl gives the character a vivid intensity. We see Münter's dissatisfaction with the lot of women in turn of the century Munich. She wants to study and practice her art and so is chuffed when she hears of a studio called the Phalanx, where women are allowed to attend. This is where she meets the intense Kandinsky, a lecturer at the college. After some visible romantic tension, a painting excursion to picturesque Kochel brings them together. Post coitus, Kandinsky tells Münter that he wants her to leave the trip early as his wife is com...

Thunderbolts*

This is the sixth and final film in phase five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and by my reckoning, it's the second best of the phase (after the third Guardians film). It's certainly an improvement on the flaccid Captain America: Brave New World from a few months back. Kevin Feige has done a good bit of business getting the right team together here, not unlike the film itself. The reasonably unknown crew includes director Jacob Schreier, writers Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, and cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo. Schreier hasn't actually directed a feature for ten years (he's been involved in TV) but they all have some interesting credits to their names. The film picks up the story of Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), adopted sister of Black Widow. She's taking jobs for Valentina de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), mostly illegal cleanup gigs with high body counts, but is becoming disenchanted with all the drudgery. She's in a murderous malaise. A fatality funk...

Revelation Film Festival 2025

The Revelation Perth International Film Festival 2025 is almost upon us and there are some promising looking films on offer again this year. Rev Program Director, Jack Sargeant picks 5 of the films he's excited about: Lesbian Space Princess [Australia/87min Directed by Emma Hough Hobbs, Leela Varghese] Pavements [United States/128min Directed by Alex Ross Perry] Alice in the Cities [Germany/113min Directed by Wim Wenders] Pater Noster and the Mission of Light [United States/96min Directed by Christopher Bickel] September Says [Ireland, UK, France, USA, Germany/100min Directed by Ariane Labed] Aside from these, I'm also looking forward to the following: Of Caravan and the Dogs [Germany/89min Directed by Anonymous, Askold Kurov] The Thinking Game [United States/84min Directed by Greg Kohs] U are the Universe [Ukraine/101min Directed by Pavlo Ostrikov] Eddington [United States/148min Directed by Ari Aster] 1978 [Argentina/76min Directed by Luciano Onetti & Nicol...

The Surfer

The Surfer is an Australian/Irish co-production, filmed in the south of WA. If you can get over the premise that Nicolas Cage was born in Australia and gained an American accent after the age of about 15, then maybe you'll go with this a bit more than I did. Cage stars as the otherwise unnamed Surfer, who returns to Lunar Bay (Yallingup) to buy his old family home that overlooked the beach where he used to surf. Upon arriving with his teenage son, intent on having a surf, he find the beach occupied by a gang called the Bay Boys. He's very quickly told to fuck off and that if you "don't live here, don't surf here." After taking his son home, he returns to the carpark above the beach and here's where events start to go off the rails. The surfer's board is stolen, then his shoes, his car battery dies, his phone battery too, he trades his sunglasses for a pair of binoculars from an old beach bum with a grievance. This idea of him being unable or unwillin...

Sinners

Hats off to Ryan Coogler for turning out this vibrantly bloody cracker with only his fifth feature. It's also quite a hand brake turn after two Black Panther films and one Rocky spin-off to deliver a singular story like this (I'm presuming there'll be no Sinners Cinematic Universe but I could be wrong). I say singular but actually, this owes a lot to Tarantino, and many other genre directors. I'm dancing around the issue here as the best way to watch this is to be completely unaware of what you're going to get. What I can say is that this is great fun. It really zips along, there's hardly a scene without forward momentum. Even the wonderfully ambitious musical numbers (relax, it's not a musical) add background to the story. Coogler's script crackles, especially in the mouths of the excellent cast - more on them later. One of the best things about this is that it disguises itself really well, you're not sure where it's going until it arrives the...

28 Years Later

23 years after 28 Days Later , and 18 years after 28 Weeks Later , comes this third in the trilogy. If it really can be called a trilogy, considering the biggest disappointment about it is that 28 Years Later is actually the first of another proposed trilogy. Like so many recent films, this has to be seen as big screen TV, leaving story elements to stretch out over further 'episodes'. Structurally, this is composed of two longish acts and then a third act of about 10 minutes, if that. So, yeah, not a lot of space for a resolution. Luckily, the end of the film offers some tasty possibilities for 28 Years and 28 Days Later (sounds shash but the third act starts with that time stamp). If this wasn't from the minds of writer Alex Garland and director Danny Boyle, there might be cause for concern. The story starts on an island off the coast of north-east England. The folk here have managed to stay mostly safe since the rage virus decimated the British Isles. There's a nar...

Film Shapes

Search This Blog