TOP TEN WORST FILMS OF 2014

Its been a helluva year for films this year and I have decided to cap it off with my highlights for all the right and wrong reasons this year. I would like to also make it clear that this is my list and it does not reflect the opinions of Axia ASD ltd or the views of the people that regularly read this blog it’s just my personal picks fell free to disagree with me and if you liked a film on this list that’s great I fully accept that and it’s not my place to take that enjoyment from you I’m just stating why I Hate/love these films. Also these aren’t going to be in depth looks at each film there just going to be quick summaries of what I thought of the film and why it made the list. Some of the films that made both lists I did review however

Now before we get too deep into this I must admit these list are going to be a bit incomplete seeing as how I didn’t see every film that came out this year though with reviewing 10 and seeing close to at least 30 movies outside of review (I lost count) I think I made a good stab at it. I particularly missed a lot of films that came out in the latter portion of the year as I can only do so many cinema trips and not at lot of them are out on DVD yet, for example I haven’t seen the final Hobbit movie or the awards contenders like Mr Turner. I did, however, get a large amount of movies under my belt this year, even though I only managed to review 10.

Now obviously with my new schedule that is going to increase next year, though I would say I think I can make a fair assessment of what have been some of the highlights of the year. That being said, I also did not deliberately go out to check out every movie that I heard was awful, for example I haven’t seen the Michael Bay film Ouija which is already on a lot of top ten worst films of 2014 list or the myriad of supposed awful comedies that came out in 2014 like Sex Tape and Dumb and Dumber To, so don’t expect to see that one on this page. I should also state, that in order for a film to make my list it must receive its initial UK release in 2014 at either cinema or on DVD, film festival releases do not count as they are not released to the general paying audience, you need to be able to walk into a cinema or pick up a DVD copy by random chance. If those films get released on DVD this year they will count, but aside from that you will have to wait until next years list, for example Giovanni’s Island which did come out at several film festivals this year won’t count for my list as it’s gonna receive its DVD release later this month and believe me I will get round to reviewing that film.

This also means that films that came out in 2013 but got most of their press from their DVD releases in 2014 will not count. I don’t care if American Hustle got a lot of its popularity in the UK in 2014, it was released in 2013 so it’s not eligible for this list. That being said while I think of this as one of the few years where I saw more good films than bad films, though a lot of these bad films were really awful. None of which have entered my worst films of all times list, which means that there must be a victory in some sense, but with all ten of the movies which have made this list, I never want to see any of them again. They were all just excruciating at the time or have gotten worse the more I think about them. There are a few films that didn’t quite make my list, but I think they need to take some pain. Here’s a quick run down of some dishonourable mentions, these films were bad, but they didn’t quite make my list.

Rio 2, I Frankenstein, Pompeii, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, The Purge Anarchy, Grace of Monaco, Tarzan 3D and just barely escaping my list were Maleficent and Sharknado 2, both of which any other year could easily have made the list, the former for being a really stupid boringly waste of the source materialand the latter because the joke is not funny anymore stop making these B movies which are designed for taking money from peoples wallets out of a joke, you are singlehandedly promoting a bad image of sharks! Stop it immediately! But if I put that film on this list it would have been rewarding them even further. Now here is the actual list:

10: Need for Speed.

Yep its another awful live action adaptation of a video game. What a surprise. I actually thought this film was going to be genuinely good when I saw Aaron Paul’s interview on Top Gear. He promoted this film like it was going to be like one of the classic car films such as Bullet and Vanishing Point, but what it is, is an un-inspired waste of time. For a film called Need for Speed, this films pacing is slow as hell. Aaron Paul and Dominic Cooper are completely wasted and while it’s admirable that the film is using actual cars rather than CGI, it makes the destruction scenes of very expensive (near £200,000) cars seem even more wasteful and given the way the economy is going at the minute that may not be the best way to go, as your audience have paid a lot of money at the cinema to see this. Couple that with a story that tries to combine the plot of too many games in a short space of time and you have pure pain. Don’t see this one, it’s a waste of time.

9: Lucy

Yes, I think half of you knew this one was coming. I’m surprised this film has such a large fan base because I really don’t get it. I have heard that there are a couple of other films that are stupider than this one that came out this year, but I didn’t see them so I am stuck with this one. I said in my review, that this film gets worse the more you think about it, and it really has gotten that way. I’m now starting to think I was too kind in my review to it. Scarlett Johannson and Morgan Freeman are talents that are completely wasted. The villains’s plot is stupid and makes no sense and there was no reason for this film to be in IMAX, it was a complete waste of money and the only reason it isn’t higher on this list is because it was mercifully short. If you enjoy it, good on you, you see something that I don’t. But I couldn’t stand this!

8: Robocop (2014)

This was such a crushing disappointment. I really wanted the Robocop re-make to be really good it makes sense to remake this film with all the changes in technology in our society that lead to ideas that could easily be implemented into new Robocop movies, but what is turned out to be was a completely under-developed movie. It makes tons of references that this is a crime riddled society that really needs something like Robocop to save it, but we’re never ever seeing it. The original made great satire that is still relevant to this day, but this one is so completely un-subtle to get out it’s drone warfare political message that was done a lot better in Captain America, the Winter Soldier. I really hated this one. Joel Kidderman really should be up for a raspberry for worst actor, he plays Alex Murphy as a boring lifeless drone before he ever becomes Robocop and Michael Keaton, you may have picked one bad film after another this year, but thank god you have got Birdman out because if you didn’t this film and Need for Speed probably would have sunk your career.

7: Legend of Hercules

Yes, anyone who paid attention to any of the films that came out in January knew this film was coming. It has been widely publicised as being awful and they are not wrong, it was just a bore to sit through. Yes some of the action sequences were pretty good, but its so clear that they are ripping off 300 that you almost want to get Zack Snyder on the phone to say please sue someone! If Kellan Lutz is not nominated for worst actor at the raspberry’s it would be a real travesty, because he is just awful in this role. He gives the worst performance I have seen all year, he’s only a couple of steps above Tommy Wiseau in The Room for crying out loud. If you couple that with the pretentious camera work and awful story, then you will realise you have wasted a good chunk of your day on this crap. I can’t believe there have been two awful Hercules movies in one year.

6: Legends of Oz, The Return of Dorothy

Yep, two years in a row A Wizard of Oz property has ended up on my Top Ten Worst Films of the year list. I don’t understand how film workers are having so much trouble with what is essentially a very simple source material , but clearly it’s more difficult than I imagined because this film seems broken in every single way. The story is not engaging. The characters are poorly acted and the animation is horrible. It’s one of the worst animated films I have seen that was released in cinemas all year and I didn’t even see it in the cinema. If anyone paid to see this in a cinema I hope the frame rate was at least decent because I was having trouble on my laptop screen, god knows what it would have been like in the cinema. This clearly was a direct to DVD movie that never should have seen the light of day and I just don’t care to see any future movies with the Oz brand. Hopefully Wicked is going to be a lot better when someone gets round to producing it, but for now we are stuck with this and Oz The Great and Powerful.

5: Devil’s Due

Yes, it wouldn’t be a my personal worst films of the year list if there wasn’t a found footage movie in the mix (and by the way I didn’t see Into the storm or As Above So Below but they probably would have been my pick for the worst found footage film had I seen them from what I’ve read and seen) . It’s been a really dire year for horror films this year and while I may not have seen The Babadook which got good reviews this year or Ouija which got some of the worst reviews I saw all year, I did see Devil’s Due and it’s an experience I never want to repeat! This is one of the most clumsily and un-original found footage films I have seen in a long time, considering how un-original found footage films are already, that’s saying a lot! This is clearly a ‘Rosemary Baby’ rip off, except its poorly acted, poorly shot and has absolutely no suspense whatsoever. If I was meant to believe this was genuinely happening the poor effects took me out of it completely and almost had me in hysterics. For crying out loud stop making found footage movies and bringing them out in January. I have had enough of people making a ton of money off this with no new release schedules to challenge them. It’s a practice just to make a quick buck and its getting annoying. Go away!

4: Kite

This was the most boring movie I saw all year. I got this on DVD as soon as it came out and I was so bored by the middle point that I was actually surfing the internet on my IPad and was only half watching the film. It’s a by the numbers live action remake of the anime, but because of the more mature content of the animated version this film can’t go all out because of it’s 15 rating. It’s just a bore, none of the actors are giving a decent performance, even Samuel L Jackson looks like he’s not having any fun. Replacing the location from Japan to South Africa doesn’t improve it in any way. Its ending is way too contradictory to the anime and whether you like the anime or not you have to admit it had a better ending that left a much more ambiguous and less simple answer than this one did. I don’t even get the choice of Anime to adapt, why Kite? it was so ridiculously over the top and over violent that it would have been impossible to faithfully adapt to live action from the start. Surly there are a lot better anime that deserve a big screen adaptation. That being said If western studios want to develop more live action films based on anime they are going to have to put more care and attention into to it than they did this one, because between the poor action sequences and the awful dialogue I just wanted to stop watching!

3: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Once again see my review that I made back in October if you want a more in depth look into why I hate this movie, but this was heartbreaking. Michael Bay took characters and settings that I really enjoyed and he completely screwed them to within an inch of their lives. There was no fun in watching this. Terrible special effects! Awful acting! A plot line so full of plot holes and retrospective continuity changes that it took everything within me not to yell at the screen “why are you doing this”! The 3D conversion is in no way beneficial and it did the worst thing that a movie adaptation can do, it made me question whether the source material it was based on was ever that good in the first place. Well done Michael Bay.

2: Planes: Fire and Rescue

This movie obviously thinks kids are stupid because there is no other reason for this film to exist. Remember when pixar films used to take years in development? This one came out less than a year after the original Planes, and it really shows. I haven’t seen such a carbon copy sequel since Hangover Part 2. They have just replaced the word Racing Plane for Fire Fighter, the animation has somehow managed to get worse and the fact that this was left in cinemas for as long as it was, meant that more parents took kids to see this than decent children’s movies that came out this year (seriously Despicable Me 2 and the Croods were much better than this). kids deserve a better class of movie than this. The cars films were dreadful, Planes was even worse. I haven’t even seen the boat spin-off but I can assume that is awful as well and if there are any plans to make more of them in the future then expect them to turn up on future lists as these films have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

1 Transformers: Age of Extinction

Yeah, yeah I know this is a cop out and I know lots of people like this movie, but this film offends me in its creation. It’s against everything that I think is good about cinema. Once again Michael Bay pushes all the plot and character so the special effects can be the star of the show and I think in a lot of levels its even worse here than all the previous Transformers movies. This one tops the list though because of all the films that have made this list, I at least stuck through to the end with all of them. This one took me two goes, I gave up an hour and a half into watching it first time because I couldn’t stand doing it for another hour and I was on a plane with literally nothing else to do. This film is too long! Too poorly written! Too poorly shot! Awfully acted! Ruins Mark Wahlberg’s career all over again! and the characters were so annoying. Just to bring up a point Mr Bay, just because you point out what you are doing is painful and stupid with a few in jokes doesn’t make it any less painful and stupid (yes I know I am quoting The Nostalgia Critic, but I don’t have any other better way of putting it). If you enjoyed this movie, more power to you but I thought I was done with these after the third film, but now I got to sit through another two more films. Great, just great. There was no film that was worse for me this year than this one and I hope to never ever see it again!

Those were my Worst Movies of 2014. If you enjoyed these movies, that’s fair enough I don’t have any right to take away your enjoyment of them I am just stating why I think they are awful. As I said if a film didn’t turn up on this list it either didn’t do enough to annoy me to make this list, or I didn’t see it.

If you have a film that you think should be on this list please leave some comments, I would to see what films were awful for you this year and I would even love to see your own Top Ten Lists in the comments section. Remember, you don’t need an account or live in a specific location to leave a comment and we will accept all opinions and you can be as brief or as long as you want. Also, just a reminder we are accepting user content and if you want to send your own review send it in a word document to calvin@axia-asd.co.uk. For more details on that go to my Big Eyes review, which I posted last week.

I can’t end the first year of the axia film society on a negative so check out my best films of the year list which is on line now where you will also find out what the first review of 2015 will be.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant