Worst of 2021 - End of Year Report

Swine after pearls, here are the 10 films that either disappointed, annoyed or mortified me in 2021. In descending order, have a gander at some of this shite.

[Check out the full reviews by clicking on the title]

10. Clue (1985)

Found this on a streamer and kind of wish I hadn't. The cast has a lot going for it - Tim Curry, Michael McKean, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd - but none of them can rise above the forced energy and boring story. Films based on board games, eh? A product of its time.

9. The Toll (2021)

This was a huge disappointment. An interesting cast, including Michael Smiley, Iwan Rheon, Annes Elwy (best in show) and Paul Kaye, couldn't save the material. It was trying to be many things all at once, but sadly none of the angles worked. The novice writer and director will hopefully learn from this ambitious mess.

8. Death Note (2017)

This Netflix adaptation of the Japanese manga, then anime, then three (!) live action Japanese films, was entirely unnecessary. Really, how much of one slightly naff idea do we need? I guess it was made for the subtitle-averse crowd, but honestly, fuck them anyway. Sometimes I look back and wonder why I even chose certain films. This was one of those moments.

7. Candyman (2021)

We selected this as a prize for winning a film quiz at the Perth Girls' School Cinema. Mistake. Incoherent, dull, NOT scary (aside from some squirmy body horror bits) and just cack-handed. Some of the messaging was admirable but it didn't really have any focus and the director, Nia Da Costa, let it be overrun by functional murdering and a confusingly rushed ending. No, the Candyman can't.

6. The Goya Murders (2019)

This fell apart pretty quickly. A Spanish police thriller (?) about a dude who kills his victims and arranges the crime scenes to look like Goya prints, it plays out like overboiled spuds. There are two police officers who have their own problems - templated, colour-by-numbers shit - a perplexing motivation for the perp (I don't even remember it, to be fair), and a climax that was presumably meant to shock but, in fact, seems overly brutal. A script full of bollocks, nothing makes sense. Dire.

5. Spawn (1997)

An obscure director, mostly known for visual effects, has turned out a real stinker with this film (ironically, with terrible effects). Part of a glut of minor comic book adaptations in the 90s (The Rocketeer, The Shadow, Tank Girl, etc.), this was one of, if not alone as, the worst of the lot. Martin Sheen and Nicol Williamson (famous Shakespearian stage thesp) chew off as much meat as they can locate, and possibly my least favourite 'actor', John Leguizamo does his thing - irritate. Awful tripe.

4. Legend (1985)

Chimpanzee that! A Ridley Scott film in the best AND worst list of 2021. Imagine for a moment, going from your debut, The Duellists, to Alien, to Blade Runner and then....to this. Forgettable guff about an evil wizard (I think) who wants to do something or other but Tom Cruise is in the way and ummmm, well, it's hard to recall. This might have been cutting edge in the mid-80s, but it certainly hasn't aged well. Oh, and oddly, it's the second film in this list with Tim Curry in it. He had a busy 1985.

3. Annette (2021)

What a pile of pretentious crap. It seems to have its fair share of supporters, mainly in the critic circles, but I haven't seen a film for ages that spilt the critics and the punters like this did. So, it's a musical drama (almost totally 'sung-through') with a great central pairing in Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver. The issues aren't with them, but with the 'too cool by far' script by the Mael brothers (of the band, Sparks). It's repetitive and dull, and they try very hard to be tossers. They succeed. In fact, they give tossers a bad name.

2. The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds (1965)

I actually gave this so-called film a nest icon instead of a star rating because I don't really classify it as a film as such. But that's getting into the whole 'what is art?' area, so I'll just say this is a real Barry Crocker. The guy behind it all, Bert Williams (he directed, wrote, starred, produced, etc.), plays some kind of agent dispatched to the swamps to find someone and things go pear-shaped. All well and good plot-wise, the problem is Williams clearly had no budget and, it would appear, no talent either. The whole experiment is one of the worst things ever put on celluloid, student films included.

1. French Exit (2020)

But worse than a film that isn't really even a film, comes this horrid turkey. Around 5 minutes in, I knew I was going to hate this. Rich, entitled, snobby Americans talking like nobody outside of 'literature' - what a recipe! Story - Michelle Pfeiffer and her son, Lucas Hedges, lose all their money and decide to move to Paris. People appear out of paper-thin logic to muddle the narrative. Then there's a talking cat that's supposed to be whimsical, I guess. Ah, fuck this, I'm getting angry writing about it....

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Life is Life

Here's another serving from the Italian Film Festival , this one set mostly in the fictional town of Bellesammama in Southern Sardinia, the beautiful Spiaggia di Tuerredda standing in for the beach paradise. The recognisable story goes that a rich company wants to buy up the land on the beach to build a resort, promising to create jobs and bring untold wealth to the struggling area. Everyone is confident things will be done and dusted in no time until the real estate company runs up against an immovable object, old farmer Efisio (Giuseppe Loi). Offered ever increasing sums of Lira, then as time goes on, Euros, he rejects all. This is his home, he doesn't need anything else. The townsfolk cajole Efisio and chivvy his daughter Francesca (Virginia Raffaele), hoping they'll see reason. The head of the Milanese real estate firm, Giacomo (Diego Abatantuono), sends a foreman, Mariano (Aldo Baglio) to sort things out, and even enlists the local mayor and police. No dice. Althoug...

Resident Evil

This latest Resident Evil is a slight zombie viscera flick that doesn't really say much but is a bit of fun anyway. Director Zach Cregger impressed with Weapons , and folk have good things to say about his film before that, Barbarian , too (I'm yet to watch). His latest is a reboot, retool, reimagining, however you'd like to put it, of the film series spawned from the game in 2002, that eventually mutated to six entries, all gamely starring Milla Jovovich. Now before this new iteration, I'd only seen that first one, but quite possibly one or two more (like the creatures in the film, I'm guessing they all meld together). My gaming credentials are even more paltry - I seem to remember playing a version once years ago, but it could have been any zombie shooting game. So drawing a long bow, I'm going to say this one aims more for the shits and giggles than the others, borrowing from Cregger's previous life as a comedy actor/writer/director. Austin Abrams plays ...

Classmates

This solid, if not super original, slice of high school life in gritty Euro-environs looks to be a change of tack for director Umberto Riccioni Carteni. Much of his back catalogue appears to be on the frothy end of the spectrum, and oddly, Classmates is listed as a 'Drama, Comedy' in the festival programme. It's not all that heavy but it's a stretch to call it a comedy. It starts with English teacher, credited as Professoressa (Anna Ferzetti) arriving at her new school in a rough-ish area of north-east Rome called Rebibbia. The final year students of this class are generally downheartened nihilists, all carrying problems related to poverty, drugs or family. A more difficult start might have been expected for the Prof but most of her students respond well to her, due to a policy of treating them like humans, not the garbage they (and other teachers) believe they are. A familiar trope of students shouting at each other, insulting and threatening, soon shows itself to be...

The Odyssey

Christopher Nolan is one of the few active directors who can entice punters to the cinema (along with Denis Villeneuve), and they've come out in droves for his latest, a retelling of Homer's The Odyssey . Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, the king of Ithaca who is co-opted to join his overlord, Agamemnon, in his attack on Troy. After near 10 years of siege, culminating in the Trojan Horse event, the silly bastard then decides to take the scenic route home, and gets plumb lost. What follows is a technically brilliant rendering of mythical nonsense made to feel real. Odysseus's mini-fleet of three ships and maybe 100 (?) men run into several hardships, notably the Cyclops; a small army of huge men called the Laestrygonians; the sorceress, Circe; and some salacious sea nymphs. These set pieces are fantastic, especially the Cyclops (played by TARS voice from Interstellar , Bill Irwin), and Circe's cottage, where she has a way with greedy menfolk. Samantha Morton is almost best...

Coyote vs. Acme

While there have been loads of Looney Tunes feature films, this is the fourth to mix live action with the animated favourites. There are two Space Jam films, but if you can remember 2003's Looney Tunes: Back in Action , you're doing better than me. This new hybrid, directed by Dave Green, stars Will Forte and John Cena as opposing lawyers in a case brought against Acme by Wile E. Coyote. Oddly, this film is actually based on an article for the New Yorker magazine, written by Ian Frazier, about the downtrodden desert dog and his annoyance with Acme Corporation and their faulty products. I realise that some younger crew will have no idea of the content of the Looney Tunes Road Runner cartoons, so to sum it up: "Road Runner, the Coyote's after you. Road Runner, if he catches you, you're through." Yep, it's a classic, constant chase, and as this film posits, maybe the chase is the point. Logically, and in nature, the coyote would probably eat the bird, if i...

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Well, well, well. This thing has done some business. It's currently SIXTH in all time worldwide receipts, with Titanic in its sights. But, of course, it's problematic to rely on public opinion as a judge of quality. Or maybe that's just me. Because I found this new Spider-Man film to be just slightly above average. They are quite a few positives to take from it. Tom Holland has a winning presence, the omnipotent Zendaya is his equal (they have some nice moments together), and the cameos are fun - Mark Ruffalo's Hulk, Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova, and John Bernthal's Punisher big screen debut. Aside from the performances, the city of New York is almost another character, and it's portrayed lovingly here. The jumpy, swingy scenes feel more realistic than previous films, and there's a dark edge to the story as well, to do with change and maturity. The first grown-up Spider-Man? On that note, I read his situation as a late arrival at puberty. Bear with me...

Dune

Denis Villeneuve's long-awaited Dune finally arrives in Australian cinemas and it's a technical marvel. To start with, there's the amazing production design by Patrice Vermette. A lot of the sets and machinery have been physically created, to add weight to the visual effects. A highlight is the appearance of the 'ornithopter', a clunky, dragonfly of metal, that flaps its wings to fly. The scale of the buildings and cities is mammoth, many of them made on a studio lot in Budapest (see this Architectural Digest article for more). The cinematography, by Melburnian, Greig Fraser, is suitably magic, in keeping with Villeneuve's stylistic requirements, For example, desert scenes have a tendency to go all wind-whipped and blurry, but even when a dragonfly enters a storm, acuity is admirably maintained. The visuals are just a part of Villeneuve's signature language - the almost ethereal long shots across vast rooms and landscapes; the measured, even slow paci...

Queen: Budapest

Pure class. A Hungarian director, János Zsombolyai, and his crew filmed Queen's concert at Népstadion in Budapest in 1986 with a fair number of 35mm cameras. It's recently been finessed for IMAX and the result is a bloody ripping concert film. There's a short preview promo featuring sit-down interviews with Brian May and Roger Taylor and then the concert begins. The band played this unprecedented gig at the end of July, just a couple of weeks after their Wembley sets, and as part of the Magic Tour. It was one of the first stadium concerts played behind the Iron Curtain by a 'Western' band, and apparently around 80,000 punters turned up, with more than half that number listening from outside the stadium. The band run through a typical set list of favourites, starting with One Vision , Tie Your Mother Down , and (my favourite from the gig) Seven Seas of Rhye . Other belting highlights include Under Pressure , Now I'm Here , Hammer to Fall , and Radio Ga Ga . Watch...

Migration (Me) (Kids)

A whole family trip to the cinema for this animated duck movie, written by Mike White (of The White Lotus fame) and directed and co-written by Benjamin Renner. It's a fairly simple storyline - mum and ducklings fancy a trip to Jamaica, risk-averse dad is reluctant. Of course, for the sake of the plot, dad comes around. The journey is physical as well as offering a chance to experience personal (duckal?) growth - the spirit of adventure is enhanced, and the kids, mainly the older lad, transition from childhood to adulthood. There are numerous POV flying scenes - through clouds, between buildings in New York, in a nightmarish kitchen, down water slides, through a jungle - seriously, it's enough to make an adult dizzy. Admittedly though, it feels kind of reductive to even talk about all this as a grown up human. The colours, sounds, Looney Tunes style sight gags, are all mechanically tooled for little grommets to lap up, let's face it, this type of film isn't for the lik...

Prometheus

It has taken me a few days to start this entry as I needed to ponder a number of issues. Without thinking too much about it, I really enjoyed Prometheus . It looked great (2D), the cast was pretty solid, Fassbender excellent, but I'll return to him later and the story was satisfying in its connection to, and, at the same time, its distancing from Alien . Let me explain that last messy clause. I think you can watch this without any knowledge of the Alien series but as most of us over 20 know about the other films, its quite good fun to recognise the hints and echoes throughout. The only slight issues I have are regarding the details in the story. Here's where it may get a little/very SPOILERY, so please look away if you haven't seen the film. Firstly, the religious angle irritated me a bit but I guess if you're investigating the origin of humanity, you might at least pay lip service to "the great magic". And of course, Christianity is at the heart of the ...

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