In my various travels to Sundance, SXSW, Telluride and Fantastic Fest, I missed a number of sure contenders for this list. Ride Along, I Frankenstein, The Nut Job, Sex Tape, Think Like a Man 2, I’ll take your words for it. Yet I absolutely hated some really beloved movies this year.
That’s good though. That’s what these lists are for, so we can all understand each other. I write about movies less to convince anyone else to like something, although I do champion movies I would like to see get a chance to at least be seen. I don’t mind if we disagree though. I just want you to understand me. Movies are such a big industry that we can use them as vehicles to relate to each other. Yes, that also means I’m taking mental notes about you when I read your published work or follow you on Twitter.
Check Out: CraveOnline’s 14 Worst Films of 2014
So please, consider where I’m coming from. Like whatever you like, and I’m happy some of the below movies made you happy. The point is not to ruin your enjoyment of any film, though for numbers 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 there will be little love lost. This list is to summarize a year at the movies, particularly where I wanted different things out of Hollywood or indie movies. And as Franchise Fred, I have a number of bad sequels to answer for, although I’ll never stop encouraging them to make more and do better next time.
Fred Topel’s 14 Worst Films of 2014:
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
The 14 Worst Films of 2014 - A Third Opinion
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14. Chef
This made me so angry. I get what Jon Favreau was trying to do, but there’s nothing gained by defying formula when it means your characters make the most illogical decisions possible. That makes it a good case for sticking to the tried and true formula, but of course it’s not that. There are many clever ways to defy convention, as well as many clever ways to abide by it in new ways. I’m glad Favreau made a movie he believed in. It wasn’t for me, but I still think he’s money.
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13. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
I know this is everyone’s favorite Marvel movie but I really hated it. I get applying the spy movie tropes to a superhero, but you don’t have to make the most generic, clichéd spy movie there is. For political depth, it felt like the Huffington Post wrote a spy movie. And I agree with The Huffington Post more often than not, but that doesn’t make Patriot Act talking points a good screenplay. It was neither the first nor last fake death in a Marvel movie, though probably the one with the most relevance to the plot. Black Widow becomes a poster child for sexist male fears and gets championed as a feminist icon. But anyway, I went into depth in my second opinion.
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12. The Monuments Men
George Clooney is a good director, and he’s great at making meaningful stories out of political subjects like Good Night and Good Luck. That’s why it was so shocking that his film about a lesser known WWII effort was so meaningless. A platoon assigned to rescue priceless art from Nazi strongholds raises questions about what we value, and to what we devote our limited resources. The film asks the questions but does very little to weigh in. By the end, all it feels like The Monuments Men said was “this also happened,” and it was a dry history lesson at that.
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11. Video Games: The Movie
I caught this documentary on Netflix. After reading the book Console Wars by Blake J. Harris, I was fascinated by the history of retro video games, so I was hoping a documentary on the subject would contain more compelling history. Sadly, Video Games: The Movie feels like it was made by people who just now heard about video games and wanted to be cool. It emphasizes celebrities like Wil Wheaton, who surely has gamer cred, but the filmmakers put it all together in a condescending package focusing on basics that only tell you what became popular and when. It has very little to do with technological and cultural phenomena, even though they’ve interviewed the people involved. Zak Penn’s documentary Atari: Game Over is much better.
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10. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Here we go. Aren’t you glad he has mechanical web shooters now? And how did no one tell Jamie Foxx that he looked like Mr. Freeze? Shailene Woodley dodged a bullet getting cut out of this movie. The crazy thing is the action sequences are really good. They’re just in the completely wrong context. My colleague Courtney Howard is trying to convince me that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is actually a magnificent masterpiece of bonkers creative decisions, like my interpretation of Winter’s Tale. She’s probably right but I’m not quite there yet.
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9. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
I hated this half of a movie so much I actually split my review into two parts. You’re allowed to do that now. Since I call myself Franchise Fred so much, perhaps I should explain. Yes, I do want more sequels to everything, but each sequel has to be a complete part. Just splitting a sequel into two parts doesn’t count. I’ve already got objections to the franchise. A morally ambiguous deathmatch in which the heroine never has to kill someone the audience doesn’t like is hardly a provocative narrative. But the only thing interesting about The Hunger Games is the Hunger Games itself. Now that they’re over we’ve just got rebels vs. evil government which has been done way better before, also in youth-oriented fare. So has media propaganda.
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8. Almost Human
Not to be confused with last year’s Fox show (which I liked), I saw the movie Almost Human at Toronto last year and didn’t even recap it because it seemed unfair to pick on a first time filmmaker with no distribution. Well, now IFC picked it up so it’s been bumped to the big leagues. I get down and dirty gonzo filmmaking, and there are a couple fun money shots, but horrible shakycam, terrible writing and a cheap aesthetic even by “cabin in the woods” movie standards ensure it is not the next great horror discovery.
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7. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
It’s no secret, I have not been a fan of the Hobbit prequels. I gave them a fair shot and even watched the extended edition of An Unexpected Journey. But The Battle of the Five Armies is the worst one yet. It is the most pointless since it’s 90% embellished stuff that Tolkien didn’t even write. Once again, I am Franchise Fred, but that’s for sequels, not prequels. And to cite the Mockingjay example again, each film needs to be a complete story. Tolkien kind of did that with the Lord of the Rings books so that was okay, but this was not okay.
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6. Tusk
I am a huge Kevin Smith fan. I will go with him many places, including the giant in-joke Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and even the generic buddy cop comedy Cop-Out. I fully supported him making a movie about turning a man into a walrus. That idea should exist because it’s awesome. Tusk is not awesome though. Making a movie about podcasters was a self-indulgent mistake and it is not funny. The horror stuff kind of works, and Justin Long’s character is so obnoxious he kind of deserves it. Then the Guy LaPointe cameo is the worst thing ever.
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5. Annabelle
James Wan launched the lucrative Saw franchise, quite unintentionally, but that series kept Leigh Whannell on as writer for a while. The Conjuring may prove to be another lucrative franchise but to call this prequel straight-to-video quality would be insulting the many inventive straight to video franchises out there. The story of how the Annabelle Higgins doll got possessed is not the least bit scary or interesting. And it doesn’t seem to matter because the film opened big in October.
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4. Ouija
The best thing about Ouija was my joke that it is the biography of Mario’s brother Lou Ouija. It’s weird that this is considered a board game movie because plenty of movies have been about ouija boards. So they just made another generic ouija board movie with brand recognition. While perhaps competently made, there’s just no reason to see it. There are no inventive kills, no clever take on the occult/afterlife. Oh, Lin Shaye is good in it. There’s always that, but again, it didn’t matter. You call a movie Ouija, open it in October and people will go see it.
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3. Walk of Shame
Well, we knew this movie was in trouble when it opened unceremoniously in May on VOD and Elizabeth Banks distanced herself from it. It should be no surprise that it is a lame, racist, sexist, homophobic comedy trying to be raunchy. You might be surprised how poorly it is made though. Simple continuity is disregarded. Kevin Nealon changes wardrobe in the same scene, and he’s only seen in a helicopter! That must’ve been a one day shoot in one location, but they couldn’t keep the outfits straight from scene to scene. So in addition to how bad you already expected the movie to be, it is also incompetent.
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2. About Last Night
I only went to see About Last Night because it was so well reviewed. Independently, I would have just assumed it would not be for me. I don’t care for “men are like this/women are like that” relationship comedies, but I was assured by many reviews that there was something special about this one. It turned out to be everything I feared. About Last Night celebrates the worst of codependent enablers. These are awful people who seem to have attracted each other by the simple law of nature: like attracts like. And they’re meant to represent the universal problems we all may be having in our relationships. I took this movie personally. However, it is a competently produced film, so that leaves room for one more on this list.
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1. Vampire Academy
Who was this movie for? If you were a fan of the book you wouldn’t appreciate having all of its mythology turned into blatant exposition that the characters explain to each other for 90 minutes. If you were new to the series none of that backstory would matter to you and you’d wonder why they kept talking about stuff that wasn’t happening in the actual movie. This must be when adaptations go horribly wrong, when pleasing the fans turns into sloppy exposition, when trying to appeal to new viewers renders the film incomprehensible to anyone. I could’ve solved their problem too. An opening text scroll isn’t great but if it lets you move on with the story, it would be better than this mess.
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