Black Ribbon's Worst Films of 2015

Worst Films of 2015

Within all the greatness of movies across the year, there inevitably is set to be a wide range of turkeys, movies that set themselves aside from the rest from being something utterly worse than mediocre and plain boring but in fact, loathsome, hateful and at the end of the day, utterly pointless. Before unleashing the best 2015 has had to offer in the world of cinema therefore, I thought it was only reasonable to highlight film's that probably should have been missed this year, those flicks that are guaranteed to swiftly be buried under the proverbial carpet and those that highlight the ways in which films should not be constructed. Here we go...

10. Hitman: Agent 47

It's not that hard to understand why films that are based upon the premise of a video game always seem to get a negative amount of spin before they are even announced, particularly in regards to the rafter of films that have been simply awful after making such a leap in format such as Doom, Max Payne, and most of the Resident Evil series. Carrying on that formula is Hitman: Agent 47, a staggeringly dull and wholly unoriginal take on the popular video game franchise which aside from being an overblown Audi commercial, is also an overblown, extended video game cut-scene hell bent on tarnishing the good nature of the video game business once and for all.

9. Sinister 2

All hail the remarkable workmanship at Blumhouse Productions, the raging antipathy of death, hell bent on destroying the entire horror genre, who frustratingly, when try to get it right, can in fact make some brilliant movies with The Gift and Whiplash being key examples, yet when resort to making trashy, cash-eyed horror sequels only resort in my hatred ever-growing. It's a love/hate relationship, one that isn't proved upon with Sinister 2, a pointless, hopeless sequel which abandons all sense of horror and scares for a quick buck instead. One of two on this list produced by those at Blumhouse. 

8. Jupiter Ascending

Unintentional camp sci-fi is as painful as a throbbing nail through the hand and the highly comical Jupiter Ascending reasserts that sometimes too much over-acting can result in one of the most cringe-worthy performances of all time. That's right Eddie Redmayne, I am talking to you. Put down your Oscar, sweep away your plaudits and bow your head in shame for your simply dire performance as a 21st century dodgy update of Flash Gordon's Emperor Ming in The Wachowski siblings' simply stinker of a sci-fi movie, stealing riffs from Star Wars, Star Trek and Terry Gilliam's Brazil whilst using the greatest array of tacky wardrobes I think I have ever seen. It's really bad. 

7. Poltergeist

When is a remake not a remake? When crafty producers decide to proclaim it as a "re-imagining", a word that essentially means they are saying, "hey, you know that really classic and interesting film that was made all those years ago and was really quite important? Well, why don't we remake it and grab a few extra million?" Oh dear. In the case of Poltergeist, a film that I really do cherish and one that made up part of my early horror movie experience as a child, why did it really need to be remade if not for a slight financial gain on the producers part? It's not that I hate it, it's just I find it slightly unnecessary and a complete waste of time. It's a film which makes the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre look good.  

6. Fantastic Four

And here we are, the biggest blockbuster let-down of the year in the form of Fantastic Four, a film so mixed in its' tone, setting and well, everything, it wouldn't be surprising if 20th Century Fox suddenly confessed to releasing it without actually putting it through the editing stage or even as a late April fools joke. With young acting talents such as Miles Teller, Kate Mara and Michael B. Jordan, Fantastic Four is let down by one of the most preposterous plots I have ever scene and a final act which is simply mind-blowing in terms of its' sheer incompetence. I suggest you try again lads and lasses. 

5. The Interview

Oh how the genre of comedy has fallen into the hands of pubescent, immature teenagers where the funniest thing on earth is seeing a man reveal his most intimate of parts and swing it mercifully around in front of corrupt North Korean soldiers. Hardy flippin ha... The Interview is so bad it is not even worthy of respite. It's a comedy so low on the intelligence scale it hurts my brain to think about it. So I won't. And neither will many others. 

4. Fifty Shades of Grey

You want to do what to her? You said what? That room is full of what? Do you really want this dialogue in the movie? These are the sort of questions any right-minded producer, director, actor, whatever, should have been saying on the set of Fifty Shades of Grey, a template example of un-sexy sexiness where eroticism and romance is replaced with sniggers and raspberries due to its' simply awful dialogue and acting so wooden it began to spurt woodworm. AWFUL. 

3. The Cobbler

The bravura acting talent that is Adam Sandler continues his excruciating form of cinematic rubbish with The Cobbler, the creepiest and most sadistic stalker film that isn't actually based around a stalker but instead is meant to be a life-assuring comedy drama about a man who finds magical powers within his role as, you guessed it, a cobbler. Featuring the longest 90 minutes of film I can remember, The Cobbler is a tragic example of an actor well and truly scraping the barrel. 

2. The Bad Education Movie

Why hate on Cornwall? It's a lovely place and features more spectacular entertainment than The Bad Education Movie provides in it's overlong attempt to make us laugh. Well guess what, you didn't, and instead you managed to make us cringe in despair at the sheer wastefulness of time spent watching such trash. Not only is it another example of movies failing when moving from the small screen to the big, but it just reasserts the notion that comedy is slowly becoming a dying art, with intelligence and gusto being replaced with immaturity and vulgarity. Please dismiss. 

1. The Gallows

And here we are at last, my least favourite film of the year and alas, it is a horror, a genre that continues to be tarnished by the ridiculous amount of mediocre examples that continue to plague our cinemas each and every year. This year however, the one taking all the plaudits for sheer awfulness is The Gallows, one gigantic rip-off of genre classics such as The Blair Witch Project and Halloween whilst featuring the stupidest use of shaky-cam I can remember and a final act in which I can barely keep track of the amount of sheer movie-making mis-steps over it's startling lack of threat and, or scares. Please, if 2016 brings anything with it, please don't let it bring any more creaky, crappy horror movies. I think it would force me to abandon hope for the genre to return from the seemingly dead end films like The Gallows are driving it into. 

The Fantastic 4 - Sinking Faster than The Thing on the Titanic

Dan - With my local multiplex offering the chance to watch a preview screening of Marvel's new Fantastic Four, a reboot of the widely panned Chris Evans/Jessica Alba films released ten and eight years ago respectively, it was one of the rare occasions in which I went into a high-profile release without a sense of whether it was set to be a masterpiece or a complete turkey due to the miracle that is social media, something of which I believe results in a much more reliable and fresh opinion in one's opinion of that film. One thing that has always impressed me about the abundance of Marvel movie releases and the subsequent Cinematic Universe, harking back to the release of Iron Man in 2008, is that throughout its long list of releases, all the films within such a universe have always tended to be in the positive spectrum when it comes to a critical stance, where although some are much better than others (The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy), nearly all have also been rather solid, if rather formulaic, without one seemingly sticking out and declaring itself as the black sheep of the bunch. With the release of Fantastic Four however, although not being a part of the MCU in terms of the bigger picture, it seems that this particular run of good Marvel fortune has seemingly come to an end, with Josh Trank's reboot being a complete mess from beginning to end, resulting in a movie on par with the widely panned original releases ten years previous.

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When boy genius Reed Richards (Miles Teller, Whiplash) is given the opportunity to further his studies into the boundaries between parallel dimensions by Professor Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey, House of Cards), he and his team of like-minded scientists including Sue Storm (Kate Mara, House of Cards), Johnny Storm (Micheal B. Jordan, Chronicle) and the reluctant Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell, Dead Man's Shoes) successfully gain access to the parallel world known simply as "Planet Zero". One drunken night, Reed, Johnny, Victor and close friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell, Jumper), decide to be the first to venture into the unknown plant and inadvertently witness Victor seemingly fall to his death, whilst bringing back with them a range of powers that have not only changed their own genetic structure, but that of Sue who was attempting to help them return from Planet Zero. With their new-found powers and abilities, the team not only must adjust to their radical changes, but the threat of impending doom from something they thought they had once lost but has now returned with a vengeance. So, in terms of the premise of Fantastic Four, it is pretty much what we all expected, with a redesign of the origin of our four main heroes and an influence of their biggest enemy, Doctor Doom, in an attempt to give them their first taste of heroism, all of which was given away in the rather overplayed trailers. So with a solid, if rather unsurprising, story to helm it, Fantastic Four was never set to be anything as good as previous superhero entries but the completed picture can only be classed as something of a complete disaster with a wide range of faults and issues that succeed only in making it one of the biggest disappointments of the year so far. 

With recent superhero movies attempting to redesign the notion of what such a film entails, helped by the success, both critically and financially of The Dark Knight trilogy, Fantastic Four seemingly has decided to completely disregard such ideas, with the added depth that has been highly prevalent in recent comic-related movies missing entirely, resulting in characters that I don't overly care for and a story that is completely off the chains to say the least in terms of its' narrative structure and discipline, evidenced by a final act that not only is rushed completely off its' feet, but has no dramatic or logical impact whatsoever aside from the fact that a big-budget Hollywood movie like this has to have at least some sort of scene whereby destruction and only destruction is the key concept. I mean come on guys, did your editing or production team simply bypass watching the film as a whole before releasing it, or were they just not bothered about the critical appeal of such a film and instead took the Micheal Bay approach in that big explosions and fire results in making big money? Well if that is the case, unfortunately for you, Fantastic Four will not take Avengers-like levels of cash and instead will only be seen for what it is; a fantastic disaster from start to finish which not only will anger cinema viewers who will no doubt pay to witness such drivel, but the Marvel fans who were waiting for at last a solid take on one of their most beloved comic creations, something of which they definitely did not get this time around. 

Adding to the mediocrity of Fantastic Four is its' fundamental contradictory in what it wants to see itself as. Is it a dark, adult, comic film in similar vein to Watchmen, or instead a light-hearted, comedic take on the superhero movie like Guardians of the Galaxy? Too many times the film seemingly flipped in and out of its' true intentions with cheesy one liners being offset with scenes of shocking violence whilst the calm and collective beginning being transposed with a shoddy collapse at the films' conclusion all resulting in a film, which although must have had good intentions, seemingly being made without a care in the world, something of which angers me deeply as lover of film. The one saving grace of the film? The cast, with Miles Teller leading the way in doing the best he can with the script he was handed, whilst it is good to see Reg E. Cathey getting more of a shot in Hollywood after his heart-braking performances in House of Cards. But in terms of the good, that's just about it. Ironically, director Josh Trank has come out this week stating that the reason for Fantastic Four sucking so much is due to the input and influence of 20th Century Fox, and that his version would be receiving much better reviews if not for their desire to edit and change. Well Mr, Trank, if that is the case then you have my sympathies, but for now we are left with a shoddy, out-of-place, disaster-ridden raspberry that not only will be quickly forgotten, but will hopefully be lost in the vaults of cinema completely and left to die along with its' equally as bad predecessors ten years previous. Want my advice? Watch Ant-Man again.

Overall Score: 3/10

Pete - Lets put it this way, Fantastic 4 is as fantastic as an empty bottle of Fanta filled with lukewarm piss. Its as if Josh Trank wanted to make the worst Marvel movie in history. How someone can actually enjoy this, I will never know. We can't even class it as a child's entrance film into the MCU because there is so little substance, you may as well let your kid watch paint dry.

Let me make one thing clear, these actors suck. They suck more than Kim Kardashian. The casting was just awful. Pretty much every incarnation I've seen of FF source material has involved adults. The group were of a serious age to be taking part in space age opportunities, not borderline psychopathic children that where clichés from High School Musical. The teen angst drips from this and it has to be one of the most painful experiences I've ever had the displeasure of watching. Oh, big spoiler here, Doom dies. Deader than a doornail. Sucked into some power hunger hole that tore him into pieces and it was probably for the best. Hopefully he will never come back to grace the screen with his awful costume that looked more like a morph suit than it did the real Doom. Don't insult the source material with such an awful depiction. Although, this is honestly the only action that happens in the film. The last 10 minutes of the film is occupied with it while the rest of the experience is tortuous attempts at storytelling.

Dan speaks of the indecisiveness of the plot from gritty and dark to 'comedy' and I couldn't agree more. Every attempt at character development was removed, deaths were played off as something not relevant and these "incredibly smart children" are fucking morons. I've watched many movies in my time and more so with the creation of this blog but I don't think I've ever felt like throwing faeces at the screen and swinging out like fucking Tarzan 10 minutes into a film. Sure, The Counsellor was bad, like real bad; but Christ, at least they tried.

You know what made it worse? The acting. Even the extras were awful. Often you would catch one staring at the camera lens like its some sort of mythical creature with a creepy grin slapped across their face. Obviously they're just extras who somehow landed a quick role in the flick but when the main cast can't type on a keyboard in a convincing manner, is almost an indefinite sign that they have no idea what they're doing. At least put a little effort into what you are 'doing'. Perhaps write an essay on how you're such a terrible actor and that you really don't want to be on a film that everyone will see because you don't want your reputation to sink any further into the precipice of Josh Trank's vacant mind than it already has.

I'm not going to argue against Dan. I'm in fact, going to congratulate him on such restraint. The awful composition, shots, music, story, acting, character development, design and visuals were trash for a Marvel film. Perhaps if 20th Century Fox actually worked with Marvel on this, we could have finally got the FF we deserve but noooooo. I'm almost tempted not to give this a score. Giving it score would acknowledge is actually exists and I don't feel like it even deserves that. Dan's score says it all and heed these words, we do not want another. I saw you had it scheduled, stop it. Now. For the love of god, kill it off now and please don't fuck up X-men...

OVERALL SCORE - 3/10 - DO NOT WATCH

News: Fantastic Four Trailer

The Fantastic Four Return! 

With the orgy of film trailers that have been released this week featuring Star Wars, Batman Vs. Superman, and Star Wars: Battlefront, Marvel must have felt a bit left out as now we have the second Fantastic Four trailer to indulge in too! Check out below.