The Flop 10 – the Worst Ten Films of 2012

Upon me falls the sad duty to take stock and tell you, honestly, what were the worst or most disappointing ten films of 2012. So here we go.

 

10 To Rome With Love

Some films feature on this list, not because they were objectively amongst the worst films of the year, but because they were very disappointing in comparison to a precursor. After the surprisingly ironic and thoughtful Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen’s return to farce and stereotype – even though not without some good jokes – is one of these disappointments.

 

9 Wrath of the Titans

Wrath of the Titans is the opposite of To Rome With Love: An equally clear and unexpected improvement on the first film of the franchise. However, when that first film is the abismal Clash of the Titans, this by no means indicates that Wrath… is any good. At least it did feature an actual titan…

 

8 Man on a Ledge

Poor Sam Worthington stars in two movies on this list. Bu unlike Wrath of the Titans, Man on a Ledge actually had the balls to pretend it was a smart and sophisticated thriller. Something that was finally disproved when Genesis Rodriguez (that’s her actual name) strips down with no apparent reason in the plot. Nice to look at, but utterly stupid. Much like the film then.

 

7 Dark Shadows

Perhaps we should give Tim Burton some credit for actually trying to adapt a crap soap opera. Perhaps. But Burton has a reputation. He has talent – as he showed later in the year with the gorgeous Frankenweenie. For a film maker of Burton’s stature there is simply no excuse for making something so boring and incoherent.

 

6 The Watch

Alien invasion films are so 2011. Vince Vaughn was never funny in the first place. Stiller must be expected to deliver more. Jonah Hill was supposed to have grown up a bit after Moneyball. And the fabulous Richard Ayoade deserves a much better Hollywood debut. Extra dislikes for ruining an apparently original set-up.

 

5 On the Road

It is good that we now know for certain that Jack Kerouac’s famous beatnik novel does not translate well to film. And is genuinely outdated. Terribly unlikable characters are a stallwart of the worst fiolms of 2012, and On the Road is no example. Especially the talented female actors in this film (Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst) are particularly badly treated.

 

4 Rock of Ages

Really. These 1980 wannabe rock songs did not need sugarcoating. Nor did they need to be performed by kids who appear to have wandered straightaway from the Disney channel. Good supporting roles by Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand cannot save this trainwreck of a musical.

 

3 John Carter

Missing all your marks, looking like a drug addicts fever dream, being utterly silly and failing massively at the box office (Disney reportedly lost some 200 million dollars on this single film) are not enough to be called the worst film of the year. But it does get Andrew Stanton’s trainwreck of a blockbuster on third spot.

 

2 Alles is Familie

Another film that is here because it utterly fails to live up to the standards of a precursor. 2007′s Alles is Liefde was a delightful romantic comedy – even better than Love Actually, from which it stole its concept. But this ‘semi-sequel’ has no likable characters, nothing ot no-one to relate to, no balance or structure, and – most importantly – no good jokes.

 

1 Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

A ‘film’ that looks and sounds like a computer game. Like there are so many out there – every summer. But this one (produced by Tim Burton and directed by none less than Timur Bekmambetov) had the guts to sideline the sad history of slavery as something invented by fantasy monsters. Shocking.

Review: Total Recall (dir. Len Wiseman)

Story: In a dystopian future the working classes are oppressed and forced to live in Australia. Factory worker Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) is dissatisfied with his life and goes to the shady ‘Recall’ company to have memories of a more exciting ‘secret agent life’ implanted. However, something goes wrong in the process and Quaid finds himself on the run, chased by his government-employed wife (Kate Beckinsale) and capable of some proper combat. All he now needs to do is to find out what, and who, he really is.

Let us first of all remark how different this Total Recall is from the 1990 Paul Verhoeven film of the same title, which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone. Unlike the first adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” this new film is no tongue-in-cheek satire. It is a very serious, very straightforward action sci-fi flick, which only one second thought serves as a commentary on modern society. This gives relevance and legitimacy to the film. A simple copy-with-younger-faces-and-better-CGI-effects would not have added anything new.

However we must note at the same time how few new things we see and hear. It is curious how a film about false memories can be such a deja-vu trip. The world of Len Wiseman’s Total Recall seems built out of leftovers from the sets of other Philip K. Dick adaptations: The Colony (Australia) is basically Blade Runner’s futuristic LA. And the more up-scale United Federation of Britain is a multi-storey version of Washington DC in Minority Report. Furthermore there are flashbacks to I, Robot, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (armies of synthetic soldiers) and The Matrix (plugged in brains, close hand-to-hand combat).

Certain plot points also reminded me of The Matrix as well. But it is not fair to criticize the film on this account, because Philip K. Dick’s original short story predates the Wachowski movie(1999) by 33 years. Nonetheless, as earlier in the year with John Carter, we can acknowledge that the source material might have been original, but that we – nowadays – have already seen it done in film before. Many times. And better.

All of which does not mean that this Total Recall is a bad film. It is a perfectly acceptable Friday night’s piece of entertainment. It has spectacular action sequences and likeable actors. I always enjoy watching Colin Farrell, and he is definitely a more appropriate Douglas Quaid than the Governator ever was. Kate Beckinsale is nice and feisty as the not-so-loving wife of Quaid, Bryan Cranston is a proper bad guy and Bill Nighy elevates any film with his presence. Only Jessica Biel is slightly short-changed as mystery woman Melina.

Final verdict: I had brought my 3D glasses to the cinema, as I was somehow convinced that this was a 3D film. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not. However, it is perhaps slightly worrying that this is what I will remember best of Total Recall. And that was not a problem that ever haunted Verhoeven’s campy, ultra-violent satire.

Half year report: Film in 2012

Top 5:

1 Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

2 The Muppets (James Bobin)

3 Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)

4 Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)

5 The Hunger Games (Gary Ross)

Flop 5:

5 Dark Shadows (Tim Burton)

4 On the Road (Walter Salles

3 Rock of Ages (Adam Shankman)

2 War Horse (Steven Spielberg)

1 John Carter (Andrew Stanton)

Thursday Movie News Flash Update Blog-message

Things that we’ve learned this week:

 

There will be a new Anchorman!

And also a new Mummy.

And more Women in Black

Ashton Kutcher will be Steve Jobs (didn’t see that one coming)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and

The disaster that is John Carter costs Disney 200 hundred million dollars… (200,000,000.-)

Tharks, Zarks and Barfs – the John Carter review

It might very well be that somewhere in the classic stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs (also the creator of Tarzan, by the way) about John Carter and his exploits there lurks a diamond of a sci-fi adventure movie. But John Carter (previously titled John Carter of Mars) is not it. I feel slightly uncomfortable trashing this film. Arguing that it is not very original is just unfair. Rice Burroughs’ science fiction stories are over a century old, and if this film seems like a cheap Star Wars rip-off, then it is only so because George Lucas was inspired by those stories when making his big break-through film.

But it does feel awfully familiar, and that is probably the reason it took so long before anyone dared to bring John Carter to the screen. Studios must have felt intuitively that a story about a displaced hero, a princess, warring factions, green aliens called Tharks and shape shifting blue baddies would, to modern audiences unacquainted with Rice Burroughs’ work, be a bit daft and at the same time terribly cliched. At best.

Basically, the one thing that Disney’s take on the material has to offer is its director. Andrew Stanton is a legend. He is the guy who wrote the Toy Story trilogy. Who made Wall-E, and Finding Nemo. Not just excellent kids’ or family films. Excellent films. The failure (artistically, financially John Carter will no doubt do as its meant to) of this film is all the more painful considering the CV on which it is a stain.

The story, for whoever cares, is as following: It is 1868 and disgruntled Civil War veteran John Carter (Taylor ‘what’s-in-a-name’ Kitsch) seeks for gold as he is mysteriously transported to the planet of ‘Barsoom’. There he is captured by tall green aliens, but he manages to save a human-like princess of a city that is at war with another city and he gets mixed up in the local affairs. Everyone wants him on their side, because John Carter is incredibly strong and agile on this strange planet with a lower gravity.

If that does not sound daft enough for you, the locals are called names such as Tars Tarkas, Dejah Soris, Tardors Mors and Sab Than. And there aren’t just Tharks, there are also Warhoons, Zodangans and (you won’t believe this) Heliumites. The latter, by the way, do not speak with an inexplicably high pitched voice, unfortunately. All these strange and uninteresting people are at war with themselves and each other, on a planet that for an unapparent reason is apparently dying. And the bad guys have a weapon that is based on the mysterious blue ‘ninth ray’ of something.

If that does not sound problematic enough for you than please do also consider that the film is a mess. The plotting is all over the place, the dialogue is heavy in tone yet meaningless in, well, meaning, and the action scenes are outright boring. Compared to this, Avatar was a text-book example of disciplined and swift storytelling.

But the most terrible thing is that the film is so ugly. The art director must have been on some nasty drugs when designing the world of Barsoom, and the color scheme is all over the place. I had to physically look away (!) from the screen regularly to protect my eyes. I am not even interested in criticizing the worst 3D I’ve seen as of yet, because however bad the 3D is, there is nothing there for it to ruin.

I feel sorry for the actors who, some way or another, found themselves in this train-wreck of a film. Ciaran Hinds at least shows that he knows he is in a drunken panto farce. But It is painful to see Dominic West, Mark Strong, Lynn Collins and the actually quite charismatic Taylor Kitsch trying so hard.

Trailer Tuesday: Superhere, Superthere, Superheroes Everywhere

The Avengers

Dir. Joss Whedon. Starring: Everyone (Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Downey Jr. , Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, Chris Hemswort, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Hiddlestone & Jeremy Renner)

Release date NL: April 26, 2012

 

The Amazing Spiderman

Dir. Marc Webb. Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans & Martin Sheen

Release date NL: July 4, 2012

 

John Carter

Dir. Andrew Stanton. Starring: everyone who is not already in The Avengers (Taylor Kitsch, Willem Dafoe, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West, Polly Walker, James Purefoy, Lynn Collins & Thomas Haden Church)

Release date NL: March 8, 2012