AFT Awards: Worst Movie of the Year

This is the twenty-third category of the 9th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors, or dishonors in this case. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category. I’m fortunate not to see too many truly awful movies, but here are the ones I hated this year.

The winner:
The Gunman still has me laughing, and I can’t decide whether Sean Penn wrapping himself in a towel to protect himself from deadly active flames is more ridiculous than him managing to get the drop on his pursuer after passing out cold in the middle of a chase. Truly terrible stuff.

Other nominees:
The Face of An Angel was a perfect example of a film with decent actors that should have been good but focused on all the wrong things. Western was my least favorite film at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015, a documentary that never managed to get anywhere and billed itself as much more interesting than it actually was. Effie Gray could have benefited from a different actress in the lead role – I suggested Saiorse Ronan – and any number of more interesting moments than the ones ultimately included. Closer to the Moon set out to tell an intriguing story-within-a-story, but it didn’t end up covering any worthwhile ground or making either story inviting.

AFT Awards: Worst Movie of the Year

This is the twenty-sixth category of the 5th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors, or dishonors in this case. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category, which includes films that received an F grade.

Runners-up:
I Am
Bombay Beach
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

The winner:
Super was so unbelievably horrendous that it was hard to believe everything in it was actually happening. A superhero comedy starring Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page should have been great, but this was entirely and unspeakably dreadful.

Other nominees:
Zenith was a convoluted, messy, boring dystopian story with no ability to engage its audience. Hesher tried and failed to put children into an ugly and violent tale. Brother’s Justice purported to be a documentary much like “I’m Still Here,” but it was far too obvious and self-aware. Faces in the Crowd was a laughable story about someone unable to recognize people’s faces, and having Milla Jovovich in the lead role was not its biggest problem.

AFT Awards: Worst Movie of the Year

This is the twenty-fifth category of the 4th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors, or dishonors in this case. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category, which includes films that received an F grade.

Runners-up:
THE OTHER GUYS
HEMINGWAY’S GARDEN OF EDEN
SALT
COP OUT
HOT TUB TIME MACHINE
AFTER.LIFE
HAPPINESS RUNS
DADDY LONGLEGS

The winner:
Knucklehead was appallingly bad, and one of its worst offenses was that it was so unbelievably unclear who was supposed to be its target audience, since jokes seemed to be aimed alternately at adults and at babies.

Other nominees:
Skyline tried to be inventive in its alien invasion storyline but failed so miserably, valuing senselessness over dialogue, characters, and, you know, plot. The Last Airbender, by far M. Night Shyamalan’s worst project, should have been dazzling and exciting. Instead it was deathly boring and hopelessly childish. Clash of the Titans featured superhuman beings and therefore didn’t feel as if it needed to be grounded in logic or coherence, emphasizing stupidity instead. Centurion gave way to violent tendencies and one of its characters’ senses of smell rather than a compelling epic wartime survival story.

AFT Awards: Worst Movie of the Year

This is the twenty-fifth category of the 3rd Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors, or dishonors in this case. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category. I'm proud to announce that I have seen none of the Razzie Award nominees from this year, but there are still a few films I loathed from 2009.

Runners-up:
THE STRIP
THE PROPOSAL
THE INTERNATIONAL

The winner:
Bruno was heinous, crude, offensive, shocking, and in no way good. It was especially difficult to bear after the success of “Borat” and its blatant failure to reproduce that same creativity.

Other nominees:
Observe and Report was despicable, unfunny, crude, and off-putting if you managed to stay awake. The Ugly Truth took two good actors and gave them nothing to work with save for the same recycled jokes that weren’t anywhere near as unhinged or perverse as they should have been. The Girlfriend Experience was a terrible exercise in artistic filmmaking which got so wrapped up in its portrait of a porn star that it disregarded story and sequence altogether. Whiteout featured so many things that didn’t make sense which made being trapped in Antarctica the least of its characters’ considerable problems.

AFT Awards: Worst Movie of the Year

This is the twentieth category of the 1st Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order by film title. Winners will be announced in late February.

I have said most of what I feel about these films in the full reviews I posted a while back. Check those out for further thoughts on why these movies are among the worst of the year.

Runners-up:
BEOWULF
TRANSFORMERS
SLEUTH
THE SIMPSONS MOVIE
300

The nominees:
GOYA’S GHOSTS
Javier Bardem had better hope that no one sees this dismal failure of a film if he wants to win the Oscar for “No Country for Old Men”. Both he and Natalie Portman are trapped in the worst roles of their careers in a film that is horrifically bad and not even meagerly enjoyable if watched with a mocking eye. The story of an Inquisition official given a taste of his own medicine by a devoted father has nothing to offer – and even casts Portman as her own daughter.

NEXT
There is not one ounce of sense in this film. Cage walks around as if he is the coolest thing since sliced bread, anticipating the next two minutes of his future. Instead of taking off from this intriguing premise, the film stays grounded in a twist – he can see further into the future of one girl! – and some embarrassing acting by Cage, Julianne Moore, and Jessica Biel.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END
The first one was excellent, the second was bad, and this one is just ugly. Johnny Depp being alive in the first place makes no sense, and this final installment is relegated to senseless physical comedy and an even more inane plot (Keira Knightley as the pirate king – say what?). Tack on a miserable ending and this is one pitiful end to a trilogy that should just have been one terrific film.

SOUTHLAND TALES
It is incredibly difficult to describe this movie. The director of the wildly popular cult classic “Donnie Darko” takes another stab at end-of-the-world fatalistic drama with infinitely less success. The first half (of two and a half hours!) is bizarre and puzzling, while the second half further enhances the confusion and makes literally no sense. It is still fascinating to watch to try and understand who thought any of this was a good idea, but it gets awfully boring when there is no coherent payoff of any kind.

WALK HARD
Judd Apatow was on such a hot streak with “Knocked Up” and “Superbad” and then he had to go and co-write this abysmal parody of “Ray” and “Walk the Line” (not two films that to me seem moral targets for parody, but that is besides the point), capitalizing on the pain and suffering of each of the performers and making it into a running, gratingly unfunny joke. John C. Reilly and Jenna Fischer disgrace their good names with their participation in this film.