The Big Picture: The Terrible Twenty Films of 2014 Part 2

[DanielG]

I remember watching the Robocop remake and then realizing that there wasn't any crime in the movie. Why do you need robot cops when there is no crime and there doesn't appear to be any danger? Heck, the only two cops in any danger worked undercover and I'm pretty sure that you're not going to be replacing them with robots. (Although I would love to see the scene where one is replaced with an ED-209.)

Samuel L. Jackson was wasted in this movie, acting alone in a big empty room and showing us holographic pie charts. Oh, and there was coverage of a senate vote, because that's what I want to see in an action movie.

 

[Cyberstrike_v1legacy]

What gets me is that The Amazing Spiderman 2 had all the elements to be fantastic. I loved the talent involved and the film looks beautiful. However, it's so inanely scripted that it's insulting. Likely not all the blame fall on Orci and Kurtzman (but based on Star Trek maybe still a lot) as studio pressure surely helped turn it into an incoherent mess.

I deserves to be on the top ten not because it's the worst movie on the list, but it's there because it represents the worst cynicism and creativity of the business right now.

Also Bob, shame on you for not having Transformers 4 anywhere on here, aka the first Transformers movie I had to stop about an hour and thirty minutes in because I was hating life more and more every minute I watched it.

As producers Orci and Kurtzman have made some good movies Eagle Eye (although I'm sucker for Rosario Dawson) and Now You See Me was a lot of fun to watch, and Transformers: Prime TV show was the best Transformers TV shows in recent years.

But as writers they just simply suck. None of the films that they have written scripts, that I've seen (Transformers, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and Star Trek) were awful, they might be fans of Transformers, Star Trek, and Spider-Man but they clearly have no clue how to write them.

In case you don't know Bob actually liked Transformers 4 even saying it was the second best TF film following after the 1986 animated movie.

 

[Clankenbeard]

My wife's family Redbox'd TMNT. I rather liked it. Okay, I rather liked some of the OTT action scenes in a "so bad it's good" sort of way. Sledding a 16-wheel big rig truck? Pole vaulting an Infantry Fighting Vehicle (not over it, but the actual truck)? I'm down.

Hmmmm. I was unaware of the aforementioned ridiculous OTT action segments in the aforementioned movie. I may actually have to watch this movie now. It might hold me over until the Kung Fury Kickstarter is released this year. Maybe India will come out with something crazyagain to make physics professors weep.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

[stuff]

I think you misread my post.

 

[ryukage_sama]

I'm hoping for a good Christian movie or movie based from Biblical narratives that is actually good.
I'm tired to evading giving reasons to my sister why I want to not watch certain films because I lack the heart to tell her "It looks awful and terrible". I respect her opinions on certain films and I don't want to influence her perception of them if she sincerely chooses to watch them. I'm just tired of finding an honest way to explain "PLEASE DON'T FORCE ME TO WATCH IT" without being a dick.

I'm confident it is possible to do good Christian movies. I suppose the lack of funding could be an issue since there seems to be a "that's lame" stigma attached to the idea of faith.

We live in hope. It's most likely also quite a mega irony to benefit financially from Religion.

Noah was pretty amazing, but Christians seem to hate it.

While the antagonists in the story and I guess the old testament are the Cainites it seems like the director really didn't hesitate to show the parallels between them and modern western christian culture of excess.

Ultimately people raped the earth. God tried to kill them off. Didn't work, people were shitty again. Jesus died for their sins. Then people were shitty again and they're surprised as to why the rest of us snub their beliefs. even by their own faith they're terrible people and their own god doesn't like them very much. Not trying to be mean but thats what it looks like on paper.

My wife and I loved Noah, but that's coming from the perspective of both of being "severely lapsed Christians".

I'm curious to hear the perceptions of Jewish audiences. I found that the film felt very Old Testament both it its portrayal of human civilization and in the dispensing of heavenly wrath. The darker tones of many Old Testament stories is surprising to many Christians who are unfamiliar with the material or are only familiar with Old Testament tales featuring a far more New Testament portrayal of God.

 

[RenegadeDuck]

A few of these choices really got to me. Not because I was shocked that Bob didn't like them, but because I was shocked at how right he was about them being awful.

In particular, The Amazing Spider-Man 2. I was honestly starting to think Bob was being a little overly dramatic about TASM2 after seeing his review. I mean, a movie ruining Spider-Man forever? That's just dumb, right? Well... then I saw it. Then Spider-Man was ruined for me forever. I couldn't even finish this movie in one sitting. I had to walk away from the TV like three different times to go do something else for a bit just to get out of the foul mood I was in. Messy plot, horrible characters and motivations, wretched writing, and worst of all, a complete disrespect for the character and his origins. What they did to Electro, Rhino and Goblin would already have been enough to make me hate the film, but sprinkle all of that nerd-rage-inducing crap on top of what is objectively a bad movie and you've got a recipe for a very, very, very unhappy duck.

And the Christian one, God's Not Dead... oh boy...

That movie actually caused pain to my very soul. As a person of faith myself, I just kept shouting at the screen "NO! NO, YOU IDIOTS! THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS! STOP IT! YOU'RE MAKING IT WORSE!" If anything, I'm pretty sure this movie just made more atheists. It's preachy, whiny, skewed, biased, hypocritical, everything that could ever be wrong with a Christian movie and then some. It's one thing for a movie to be boring or factually inaccurate or poorly written, but it's a whole other thing for it to be flat-out offensive. Trust me when I say that this movie not only disgusted all people who weren't Christian, but a large portion of Christians themselves. It's things like this that make me want to keep a lid on the fact that I'm a moderate Christian, lest anyone try to peg me as the sort that likes or supports crap like this.

 

[Revolutionary]

A lot of inexplicably shitty religious movies this year, I'm surprised Kirk Cameron's turd smear of a film didn't make it to the list. I guess you couldn't have a list of just shitty religious movies, gotta' share the love around.

 

[Rag Doll]

Wait, are we just ignoring the Transformers movies by this point?

From what I've heard, Transformers 4 succeeds in what it's trying to be, and manages to entertain as well. Interstellar does not. It was also expected to be one of the better films this year, and the "dissapointingly generic Summer blockbuster" nieche is pretty well covered by TMNT and Spider-man 2.

 

[squallina]

No Tusk then? Must have been somewhat ok and not so disappointing despite the scathing review he gave it.

 

[karamazovnew]

For me, number 1 was Interstellar. By far. And it cost me extra money to watch it in the launch day. Imagine how pissed I am about it. I'm a bit ashamed that I let it get to me this much, which is why it's probably the worst movie I've ever seen. I think it even beats Ken Follett's "Eye of the Needle" book which flew out of my window when I finished it.

I've seen a lot of bad movies this year, but Interstellar is in a class of it's own. We most agree about bad movies. When I left the cinema, I was actually laughing at how bad it was, it was almost entertaining. But when I arrived home and expected to see it bashed by critics for the same reasons I hated it, and instead I saw it was praised and marketed for the exact same reasons, I almost went nuts. Even now, while you can find a few voices pointing out just how insulting this movie is to the physics it dared to depict, most critics still only mildly dislike it for "movie critic" reasons (even you Bob). I literally had to watch the movie Sunshine that very night, just to regain my calm.

 

[JimB]

Wait, are we just ignoring the Transformers movies by this point?

There's a case to be made for it. I'm not sure we should be enabling Michael Bay by giving him the attention he craves.

No Tusk, then? Must have been somewhat okay and not so disappointing despite the scathing review he gave it.

It was in the previous video of the bottom twenty worst movies.

 

[josh4president]

Did the people who made the Amazing Spider-Man films kill Bob's family or something?

 

[Mr.Mattress]

Noah was pretty amazing, but Christians seem to hate it.

As a Catholic myself, and as someone who's read most of the Bible, I wouldn't say I hate Noah, but there's a lot of weird choices in the movie. Now, I haven't seen the Movie in it's entirety, but I have seen parts of it. The two main problems in the Movie (for me) are as fallows:

1) The biggest issue with the movie, they make Noah freakin' insane! He doesn't get a message directly from God on the impending Flood, he just keeps getting dreams about it and then his grandfather tells him "Yeah, there's going to be a flood, don't you know?" Also, he tries to kill his son's girlfriend and his pregnant wife on the ark (His logic? Anyone else besides him and his family will be just as evil as the rest of Humanity!). He also let his Grandfather drown in the Flood instead of bringing him along, when his Grandfather was the nicest person in the entire movie (The guy protected the Fallen Angels, Told Noah of the Flood, and healed Noah's wife of barren-ness). Yes, Noah was a religious person, but he wasn't a nutjob!

2) There's no reason to have an Army in the movie at all. It would've been better had it been more of a Character Study or a Character Interaction film (Like the TV Show The Walking Dead) but instead they tried to make it a Lord of the Rings rip-off, which is not what the point of Moses and the Flood is. There was never a siege for the ark (Everyone else thought Noah was crazy).

Still, it is definitely better then many Christian Films made today, and it is at least watchable (From what I've seen).

OT: Most of the movies on this list do indeed look bad, but seriously? The Amazing Spider Man 2 is the worst film? I doubt it severely. I never seen the movie, and don't really like Super-hero movies, but it certainly doesn't look like it warrants the Worst Movie of 2014 award. I understand if your dissapointed with it, but I just don't see how this is the worst film of last year...

 

[Aedwynn]

Don't worry about it, Bob.
When I was a kid my favourite superheroes were The Shadow and the Green Lantern (Hal Jordan)...

 

[Mr.Evil]

Darn, late to the party this time. Oh well.

10: I didn't actually intend to see this, but circumstances in a motel room changed that. It was utterly, irredeemably forgettable.

9: Yeah, Johnny Depp needs to vet his scripts a bit better from now on.

8: Really? I knew you didn't like this one, but one of the worse of the year?

7: I didn't hate this one, but it does nothing for me either. Also a forgettable movie.

6: I either forgot or never heard of this one... and now I automatically hate it.

5: I think I'll save some hate for this one as well.

4: No. I will not experience it.

3: Michael Bay has already tainted one of my nostalgic memories with his style of filmmaking. I'm not letting him ruin a second one. This will remain unwatched.

2: You know, it is possible to create a religious-themed movie that also works as a good movie, but 2014 sure as hell didn't have any examples of that.

1: Back when Bob was kicking the crap out of ASM I had commented that he was going overboard and needed to move on. Then again, I didn't think ASM was that bad.

I don't have such feelings this time. ASM2 was not good (though I doubt I would have put it as Number 1).

 

[tyriless]

In case you don't know Bob actually liked Transformers 4 even saying it was the second best TF film following after the 1986 animated movie.

Holy crap, I don't know how he managed to put up with that film let alone sort of like it. It's a shallow, poorly scripted, lazy, and downright mean-spirited mess of an overlong movie. At least when he tepidly recommended Pain and Gain, it came off as an interesting failure. Well no one can accuse him of being Bay-hater anymore.

 

[RJ 17]

Why Bob bothered to watch them is beyond me.

Probably because it's his job to watch them.

Which brings me to my other point regarding people complaining about Bob's picks. Just keep in mind that a critic is little more than someone that is paid to share their opinion...with opinion being the keyword there.

 

[LagomorphX]

I'm hoping for a good Christian movie or movie based from Biblical narratives that is actually good.
I'm tired to evading giving reasons to my sister why I want to not watch certain films because I lack the heart to tell her "It looks awful and terrible". I respect her opinions on certain films and I don't want to influence her perception of them if she sincerely chooses to watch them. I'm just tired of finding an honest way to explain "PLEASE DON'T FORCE ME TO WATCH IT" without being a dick.

I'm confident it is possible to do good Christian movies. I suppose the lack of funding could be an issue since there seems to be a "that's lame" stigma attached to the idea of faith.

We live in hope. It's most likely also quite a mega irony to benefit financially from Religion.

Prince of Egypt. If you (somehow) haven't seen it, it is probably one of the best animated movies ever made too, with great music.

 

[Mandalore_15]

So it looks that - to at least some extent - Bob's SJW tendencies are starting to invade his critical faculties, i.e. his ability to do his job. Looks like I'm going to have to look elsewhere for my film reviews. AGAIN.

 

[tyriless]

So it looks that - to at least some extent - Bob's SJW tendencies are starting to invade his critical faculties, i.e. his ability to do his job. Looks like I'm going to have to look elsewhere for my film reviews. AGAIN.

Curious to which movie you are objecting to being in his Top Ten Worst. My guess would be American Sniper. Is it? Now I am hoping that it is American Sniper because, if it's not, that means it's likely is God is Dead. By the way, you might confusing the social justice warrior with his liberalism or maybe they are the same in your mind. Oh god, is the movie I, Origins?