In a few years, we might look back at 2022 as the year the movies broke. There was the streaming war, the collapse of the theatrical market, the continued dominance of franchises over everything else. It didn’t help much that the public was treated to a metric ton of crap, and not even the kind of fun crap that helps a Saturday night fly by. For those who avoided the 10 worst movies of the year below, consider this a warning against wasting time and money. To responsible filmmakers and studios, let this serve as an act of public shame.
1. Morbius
A hack-tastic effort to turn golden intellectual property into lung-clogging coal, director Daniel Espinosa’s Spider-Man spinoff is irredeemable in every way. He is charmless, incoherent, ugly, and aggressively stupid. There’s just no joy here, even for those (like me!) who can appreciate a nonsensical CGI show that knows it’s hogwash and only asks its audience to forget their worries for 90 minutes and play along. In Morbius, no game to play, no guilty pleasures to be found, just excruciatingly boring pain. Much pain.
2. Black Adam
Like anyone blessed with superpowers (in his case, supercharm and superstrength), Dwayne Johnson could choose to use his gifts for the good of humanity. Unfortunately, The Rock has sided with the forces of darkness in most cases by producing the most evil and evil blockbusters. And coming from the hand of shows as terribly empty as jungle cruise Y red notice (the latter my pick for worst movie of 2021), Johnson’s DC Extended Universe movie black adam it arrives as an especially diabolical plot to suck the remaining life out of moviegoers. See Johnson turn to social networks to test that the movie will end up turning a profit, all while the Superman cameo he helped design preceded by Warner Bros. kicking Henry Cavill to the curb, was the moldy cherry on stale ice cream.
3. Triangle of sadness
There are films that are in the nose, and then there is Ruben Ostlund’s. triangle of sadness, a satire™ that’s so pharyngeal it’s the movie equivalent of a COVID-19 swab. Hitting theaters this fall after capturing the prestigious Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival in the spring, triangle of sadness he was received as a breath of fresh air for telling it like it is. By which I mean exposing unspoken truths like: Aren’t they the worst social media influencers? And the Russian oligarchs? Ugh, awful! But by setting and then destroying such easy targets, Ostlund has created a lazy, self-indulgent rule that mistakes anger for wit, scolding for irony, and vomit for jokes of real substance.
4. Pinocchio
Good news, Guillermo del Toro: you did not do your worst pinocchio film from 2022. Instead, that honor belongs to Robert Zemeckis, whose version of the fairy tale arrived on Disney+ this fall with all the grace of a rotting log destined for the wood chipper. The CGI wooden boy in this movie looks like a creepy aberration that wandered from the Child’s play franchise, unnatural and stomach-churning. And he leaves it to you to guess how the filmmaker treats the most harrowing sequence in history, a misadventure on Pleasure Island. “Nightmare fuel” may be too strong a description, but if you have small children at home who you might like to see get some sleep from time to time: be warned.
5. Black light
Take it from an expert on Liam “Action Daddy” Neeson thrillers: you’ll be steered clear of the actor’s new effort. black light with many questions. The first is: can I get my money back and 107 minutes? No, probably not. But also: Is Liam Neeson…well, financially or otherwise? The fact that he’s producing a forgettable nothing like black light suggests: no.
6. Sugar
Yes Sugar, Prime Video’s first “Canadian Amazon Original” movie, is destined to plant the streaming flag in the domestic market with confidence, so someone needs to call back Jeff Bezos from space to testify in front of the Senate because Ottawa, we’ve got a problem. Is this a drug thriller? even legally allowed to call itself a movie? The scenes make no spatial sense, the performances are terrible in that unique open mic night kind of way, and the entire effort is packed with enough shots of exotic locales to make Prime Video subscribers wonder if they accidentally touched the screen. savings option on your Apple TV.
7. Empire of Light
A starchy, sad mix from a filmmaker who should know better by now, the Sam Mendes drama. empire of light desperately argues that the social ills of 1980s England (but, you know, today’s too) (racism, sexism, homophobia) can be cured with a trip to the movies. But even the most ardent supporter of the cinematic experience will be forced to inject Netflix into his veins after going through this condescending and soulless journey into cinema.
8. The man from Toronto
A stupendously boring action comedy that lacks both emotion and humor. the man from toronto features Kevin Hart at his most Hartish, playing a fast-talking beta guy who must pose as a hitman codenamed “The Man From Toronto” (Woody Harrelson). Directed/hacked by Patrick Hughes, the film represents the nadir of the once-reliable action/comedy genre. The humor is tasteless. The fights are incoherent. And the characters are half-baked annoyances cooked up with Mad Lib-sponsored Final Draft malware. Deport this fool.
9. Bard
The semi-autobiographical drama of Alejandro G. Iñárritu Bard he knows exactly how to play games with his audience, but he cheapens the emotions he extracts with false and expensive tricks from an imagination weakened by years of self-aggrandizement. At the end of the movie, following a successful journalist/documentarian who has a stylized and even physical character to resemble his director, you will feel full of emptiness, and why? The privilege of being a passenger on a guided tour through the brilliant and tormented mind of two-time Oscar winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu.
10. The unbearable weight of massive talent
A cheap, sloppy jab at celebrity culture barely an inch above the material you think is so sharply satirical, Tom Gormican’s film is the definition of disappointment. I’d say the filmmaker hit the jackpot by convincing Nicolas Cage to star in his Hollywood comedy (was his backup choice John Travolta?), but that goes against the film’s own reality-mining conceit. : as we have seen in time. and again, Cage will take any project that lands on his lap. The difference between The unbearable weight of massive talent and Cage’s VOD crap like Primitive, chain of death Y Arsenal not that much of a difference at all. Cage’s name still sells, even if he can’t sell his own movie. And the joke is still on the audience.
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