Meanwhile...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Some Other Movies I Saw in 2014 (Part Four: Almost There...)

 Well, gang, we're nearly done. After this roundup, the Cap'n is switching over to individual reviews for the "Best of 2014." I think you'll find that's easier to read, and, also because some of them are already written. Maybe they have been since last year, and you didn't see them the first time around. Either way, thanks for sticking around through these crowded recaps. Just looking back at it, 2014 may be the year I saw more contemporaneously released films than any time in the past. The challenge of writing up all of them - and trying not to include some of the spill-overs from January - has been daunting, to say the least. But we're very close now.

 Is there something disingenuous buried deep within Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard's "documentary" 20,000 Days on Earth? I don't know. There's certainly been talk about how much of the film, about Nick Cave celebrating the titular "event", is real and how much is staged. For my money, it doesn't really matter. At all. Certainly Cave didn't just happen to be driving around while collaborators from his past and present sat in the back seat, chatting about their working / personal relationships. The official synopsis refers to the film as "fictitious." But who cares? When you have a subject as riveting as Cave and a film as well made as 20,000 Days on Earth, what does it matter how the information is presented to you?

 Think of the film more as a meditation on Nick Cave, if you prefer, and not a documentary. Sure, there's some candid footage of Cave and The Bad Seeds recording Push the Sky Away, and there are versions of the same songs being performed at a concert later in the film. Cave visiting his archives, and telling stories about living in Berlin in his twenties, or visiting Warren Ellis (not the writer, but his musical collaborator), and seemingly writing his own life story at a typewriter (see poster) may or may not have been captured so much as composed for the camera. It doesn't really matter. Nick Cave: musician, author, composer, screenwriter, sometimes actor. Partly truth, partly fiction. Just watching him be is worth the price of admission.

 Yes, there's a certain artifice to having Cave drive around with Ray Winstone (The Proposition), Blixa Bargeld, a former member of The Bad Seeds, or Kylie Minogue, with whom he had the biggest "hit" of his career on the album Murder Ballads. He mostly listens as they talk, although Cave grows more animated with Minogue, as the seeming disparity between their perceived "place" in music crumbles onscreen. Similarly, a discussion with psychoanalyst Darian Leader doesn't feel spontaneous in the slightest, but is that necessary when it reveals more about Cave as a boy? It's a glimpse into the creative process of a renaissance man, one who doesn't always grasp - or care about - the significance of what he's doing. He only knows he needs to keep doing it, and we have an opportunity to enjoy the mercurial Nick Cave in as close to unguarded as we're ever likely to get. I don't give a lick how much of it is and isn't carefully composed for the camera: it's a great movie either way.

 One thing you might have noticed that's been missing from this recap - at least since the "good" section started - is the presence of horror films. Science fiction ended up with its own recap, but for a change, I didn't see that much horror this year. At least not new to 2014. I think, technically speaking, everything from Nevermore would qualify as 2013 or before, which is why I'm not sure whether to include The Shower or not. The link to the review is embedded in the title, and it's absolutely worth seeking out (when you can). Until October, it was probably the most enjoyable new horror comedy I'd seen last year. Hopefully 2015 brings the means by which to show it to friends who weren't at Nevermore - the film spent most of last year on the festival circuit, but otherwise there was no way to see it.

 While two sequels - V/H/S Viral and See No Evil 2 - made their way to the "Worst Of" list, there were two that not only lived up to their originals, but in many ways both are superior films. Let's start with The ABCs of Death 2, which is like V/H/S 2 in that it takes everything that worked about the first film, jettisoned most of what didn't, and was more fun to watch. The premise is still the same: twenty six directors each receive a letter from the alphabet, and have free reign to come up with a 2-3 minute short film that conveys a word and, in some form or fashion, death. The ABCs of Death had some interesting entries ("Unearthed" was a good one), but leaned heavily on scatological humor ("F is for Fart" was the tip of the iceberg, it turned out), and then there were the "oh, I didn't need to see that, not ever" letters. Like "Libido" and "Pressure." It turns out there are things you might want to un-see, and several of them are in The ABCs of Death.

The ABCs of Death 2, by comparison, has nothing as traumatic, and I would suspect it would play a lot better with an audience than the first one did. Watching that one at Nevermore, there was a lot of... shall I say, stunned silence as the film went on. There are certainly some "what the hell was that?" parts in the sequel, but nothing you're going to apologize for exposing someone to. The only thing that comes close is the last segment, "Z is for Zygote," which is centered around an already unforgettable image that closes on an even more disturbing note. I know that people don't like "P is for P-P-P-P-Scary!" but I thought it had an unhinged quality, somewhere between the weirder Betty Boop cartoons and Black Lodge-era David Lynch, that worked for me.

 As with the first film, you'll find highlights ("A is for Amateur") and lowlights ("V is for Vacation"), but there's nothing in The ABCs of Death that comes close to 2's "M is for Masticate," a slow motion gross out with a wicked joke at the end. There's also "D is for Deloused," which reminded me a bit of a Brothers Quay short. I'll leave most of the discovery for you, but if you kind of liked the first film, I strongly suspect you'll enjoy this one more.

 Whilst on the subject of sequels, Dead Snow 2 might be more ambitious than even if can handle, but I'm not faulting Tommy Wirkola for going for broke and turning everything to "11." The parts of the film that don't work (the Zombie Defense Squad, mostly) come and go quickly enough, the film is nutty, to say the least, and Wirkola somehow manages to keep the ever expanding story from collapsing in on itself. Here's a portion of the Shocktober Review:

 "Much of that is due to Wirkola's demented sense of humor and ability to acclimate to a larger budget. Dead Snow didn't necessarily feel hampered by its scale, but the sequel opens up in so many different ways that it's all the more admirable he manages to retain the anarchic sense of "anything goes" while not totally losing control of the story. The humor is still intact, and Dead Snow 2 is much funnier in its use of gore as a punch line (in this respect, I'd say it's fair to compare its approach as a sequel to Evil Dead 2). I thought that there was no possible way to use Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" for comic effect again, but its placement in Dead Snow 2 is a great payoff of a setup you likely forgot from earlier in the film. To say any more would be to spoil the very end, which might have you laughing and gagging at the same time."

 I didn't go into Zombeavers expecting it to be any good. This sounds counter-intuitive with what I said earlier in the recaps about trying to avoid bad movies, but I didn't watch Sharknado and this seemed like it might be an acceptable substitute. I mean, it couldn't possibly get better than the poster, or the inherently stupid premise, right? It would quickly get lazy and then I would get bored, like I normally do with Syfy Originals or movies that look like that (*coughTheAsylumreleasescough*).

 So imagine my surprise to discover that Zombeavers is a (slightly) higher budgeted version of a movie like Blood Car or Rise of the Animals. True, this is not a scrappy, home made production - how could it be with a "From the Producers of American Pie, Cabin Fever, and The Ring" on the poster? - but it has the same anarchic spirit of those movies. At times, it's actually as bad as those can be, but what helps Zombeavers (a lot, actually) is that every time you think it's not worth sticking through, something you wouldn't expect either happens or comes out of someone's mouth. Either the film takes a truly unexpected turn - which it does - or one of the characters has a line that evokes a "wait, what?" and you don't mind sticking around.

 I felt like I was in pretty good hands during the prologue, which features Bill Burr and an unrecognizable John Mayer (yep, "Your Body is a Wonderland"'s John Mayer) as drivers hauling around chemical waste and shooting the shit, often in increasingly strange ways. They eventually hit a deer, which leads to a barrel of said chemicals rolling down into a stream and to (dun dun DUUUUNNN) a beaver dam. Because, yes, this is a movie about zombie beavers. Or Zombeavers, if you will. Also, there are three college students: Mary (Rachel Melvin), Zoe (Courtney Palm), and Jenn (Lexi Atkins), who are having a "girls' weekend" in order to forget about Mary's boyfriend Sam (Hutch Dano) cheating on her. But he shows up anyway, with Tommy (Jake Weary) and Buck (Peter Gilroy) in tow, so it becomes a slightly uncomfortable couples weekend. With Zombeavers.

 You might struggle through the "set up" part of the film, and I nearly turned it off while the girls were on the way to the cabin, but some of the lines are so out of left field that I stuck with it. The tone is borderline surreal, from the "is this serious" hunter (Rex Linn) that they run into, to the neighbors near the cabin (Brent Briscoe and Phyllis Katz), who turn out to be way more savvy about kids than you'd expect. And there's a bear, but mostly, it's the Zombeavers. Which look like nothing more than marginally articulated puppets and are hilarious. You see, sometimes a cheap looking monster can elevate a B-Movie from "that was okay" to "that was amazing," and the titular zombified beavers are worth the price of admission. It doesn't hurt that Zombeavers gets even weirder when the "rules of infection" kick in, but the monsters are the stars of the show. Stick around after the credits - which include a song about the movie that puts Richard Cheese to shame - for an even better zombie related pun. If it sets up a sequel, I could be onboard with that, but if not, well played, Jordan Rubin...

 On the opposite end of the spectrum from gonzo creature features is Michaël R. Roskam (Bullhead)'s The Drop, which is a distant relative

 Like Robert Pattinson's character in The Rover, it's hard to tell if Bob is slow and meek, or just wants you to think he is. One night, while walking home, he finds an abused dog in the trash can belonging to Nadia (Noomi Rapace). She doesn't trust him, but agrees to help him with the dog until Bob can decide if he's really willing to keep it. What Bob doesn't know is who put the dog there: Eric Deeds (Matthias Schoenaerts), a local heavy who claims to be a big time killer. He's also Nadia's ex, and decides to take exception to Bob adopting "his" dog. A robbery at Marv's Bar also brings in the attention of Detective Torres (John Ortiz), although Marv is more concerned about the men he answers to. Torres snooping around, however, could make things very difficult, especially when the Chechens decide that Marv is going to be the drop for the Super Bowl...

 The Drop is a deceptively straightforward film, one that's so low key you might not even see where it's going until all of the pieces fall into place. It's not a big "twist" movie, but rather the sort of film where situations lead characters to hatch schemes that overlap, always underestimating the other guy (or gal). While it was nice to see Gandolfini one last time, The Drop is really more a showcase for Tom Hardy. Marv is a pretty one-note character, but Hardy's Bob is all internalized, all observant, with a hint of something just out of reach. I've heard he's fantastic in Locke, which I have not had the opportunity to see, but Hardy is the big draw in The Drop. The film has a similar "community first" tone to God's Pocket, but is even more ruthless in the way people behave towards each other. But, then again, we are talking about Dennis Lehane, so that shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

 If you prefer your slow burns that explode into bursts of violence a little more Southern fried, may I suggest David Gordon Green's 2014 joint, Joe? It wasn't as well received as Prince Avalanche, but the Cap'n digs it. Yes, it's a bit of a downer, but it has a bit going for it. For starters, David Gordon Green excels when he makes smaller films, as you might have noticed in comparing Prince Avalanche to, say, The Sitter. Secondly, it continues the path of interesting choices for Tye Sheridan, who is quickly becoming a young actor I pay attention to, following him from The Tree of Life to Mud and now Joe. The final factor, I guess, might be the other reason why people were expecting something else, but for me a good restrained performance from Nicolas Cage is always worth checking out.

 Yes, I complained that he didn't really go "Mega" in Left Behind, but that's because it was Left Behind and you only hire Nicolas Cage to be in a remake of Left Behind because you spend your afternoons watching clips of The Wicker Man on Youtube. If I see he's going to be in a David Gordon Green movie playing an ex-con with a temper problem trying hard to set and example for a younger kid, I'm not expecting "Mega." I know that it's hard to believe he can do anything else, particularly in the last ten years, but he was once also considered an actor worth watching not because he went crazy. Leaving Las Vegas is the easy go-to, but I'd also point you in the direction of Bringing Out the Dead. Sometimes, when Cage takes work not because he needs to pay off the T-Rex skull he bought or cover taxes on his castles in Europe, he might get invested in a role and really do something good. Like Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, another movie I bet you thought was terrible. (SPOILER ALERT: It's not)

 Anyway, Cage is the titular character, who runs a probably slightly legally dubious business working for companies who need forests removed. The only problem is that they can't legally do that, so they pay Joe to hire day laborers to poison the trees. It's hard work, but Joe pays well for an honest week's labor and the guys he employs seem to trust him. He has a good reputation among them, even if he's known around town as a guy with a short temper. He's had a few run-ins with the law, and they harass him, mostly because once provoked he'll fight them, drunk or not (but often drunk). He was in jail for a while, and he and his dog get into some trouble at a local brothel (mostly because Joe brings his dog to fight the other dog, or I guess kill it). He's been warned to keep it together by his one friend on the police force, Earl (A.J. Wilson McPhaul ), but it's hard when nobody thinks you're worth it.

 Joe sees himself in Gary (Sheridan), who comes looking for work. Gary is fifteen, and wants to provide for his mother and sister, because his father Wade (Gary Poulter) is a violent drunk. Wade, or G-Daawg, spends most of his time trying to find ways to drink, mostly by stealing money from his son. Wade has a shot to work for Joe, but immediately blows it and goes off to get drunk. It's clear from the first scene of the film that Wade is abusive, but there's a moment late in the film with a homeless man where you see just what he'll do. All to get some hobo wine. Rough stuff. Joe doesn't like what he sees, and admires Gary's genuine effort to better himself. He offers to sell Gary his truck, to help him learn a trade and defend himself, but this isn't the kind of place where improving your station in life is easy. Especially when people like Willie-Russell (Ronnie Gene Blevins) are around, with grudges they're happy to roll over from Joe to his protégé...

 It is true that Joe isn't a fun movie to watch, and at times it's not even an easy movie to watch. The film is based on Larry Brown's novel, and screenwriter Gary Hawkins doesn't make anyone easy to like. Joe is stubborn to a fault when pressed, and it seems like he's incapable of letting it go when a deputy pulls him over. He blows a lot of opportunities to do something better, even as he helps Gary out of a nasty spot, one that gets nastier as the film goes on. I suppose I'm okay with the figurative rebirth metaphor at the end, which one could argue is kind of obvious, but is tied up with a monologue from someone who trusts Joe and his word. So I'll let it slide. Cage is very good, as is Sheridan, and Gary Poulter, who is no longer with us, is a fearsome presence indeed. He was, in fact, not an actor, but a homeless man that Green cast in the film, and he's hard to take your eyes off of when he's onscreen. Joe might not be an easy watch, but I'd say it's worthy of your time.

 No one could accuse the real life Chris Rock of being like his character, Andre Allen, in Top Five. Other than the fact that they both started out as comedians who transitioned to film, there doesn't seem to be a lot of middle ground. Andre Allen quickly sold out and made actions movies where he's the voice of a Hammy the Bear. Rock has been remaking Erich Rohmer (I Think I Love My Wife) and producing documentaries about hair. But this is probably my favorite thing Chris Rock has been involved in since he produced Louis C.K.'s Pootie Tang, and it's the rare comedy that has something to say and doesn't feel heavy handed in the process. Where else can you hear a character argue that Tupac might be a senator if he'd lived, or he might be the "bad" boyfriend in a Tyler Perry movie?

 Andre Allen is a man looking for respect, in spite of himself. He's marrying reality TV star Erica Long (Gabrielle Union), on television, but really he wants to talk about the movie he just made, Uprize. The one about the Haitian slave uprising, that no critic wants to watch. His fans want more action movies. His friends wonder why he abandoned standup after getting sober. And in the midst of this, Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson) wants to do an in depth piece for the New York Times. She'll follow him around, dig into his essence, or something that Andre couldn't care less about. But she's not leaving, and bit by bit she starts to break down his defenses. How much of Andre Allen is an act, or a reaction to negative reviews? Does it matter? How much of her prodding is he willing to take? What is she really after?

 While Top Five does take the time to answer these questions, what's arguably more fun about the movie is the cast that Chris Rock assembled for Andre's friends. Most of the film is Chelsea following Andre around New York, where he hasn't been in a while, seeing his old friends. The best of these is an assemblage of SNL talent in an apartment: Jay Pharaoh, Leslie Jones, and Tracey Morgan, and Hassan Johnson, who knew Andre "back when," and are present for where the title comes from. Chelsea asks them to name their top five MC's, and the answers vary based on age and personal preference. She later asks Andre to name his top five comedians, which also an insight into Rock's influences (I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this is another trait Andre and Rock have in common).

 The "top five" thing only comes up a few times, because it's more about hanging out. J.B. Smoove plays his bodyguard / confidant, Kevin Hart has a cameo as his manager. Cedric the Entertainer plays a purple drank promoter in a flashback. Luis Guzman, shows up as his co-star in Hammy the Bear 3. Romany Malco has a small role as Erica (Union)'s assistant. The legendary Ben Vereen shows up halfway through the movie as an old timer who gives Andre grief for selling out, and who quietly asks him for money before he leaves. When he explains to Chelsea who it was, everything makes more sense. Even Tyler Perry technically has a cameo, thanks to a poster for a Madea movie that I know doesn't exist (yet). Apparently Louis C.K. was supposed to be in the film, but couldn't work it into his schedule. Rock finds a way to include him during a third act trip to a comedy club (one that will be very familiar if you watch Louie), so he's still there in spirit.

 There are at least two celebrity cameos I wasn't expecting, neither of which I'm going to spoil. One makes sense, and happens during Andre's bachelor party (it's actually one of three people, all of whom play themselves and are friends of Rock). The other one is maybe the funniest moment in the second half of the movie, when things mostly get serious. I give a lot of credit to Chris Rock for ending the movie the way everybody assumed it would when you read the synopsis, but not in the way you'd expect it to. Instead it closes on a knowing smile from Smoove when one of the many seeds planted earlier in the film reappears. The film has a lot to say about the state of black actors in Hollywood as well, and I thought it was strange to read some of the negative reviews on IMDB. Some of them seem to be attacking Top Five for not being the kind of movie it's commenting on. The good news is that what it is not isn't as important as what it is, and that's a film you should seek out.

 The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby is actually three films: Her, Him, and the hybrid of the first two, Them. The only version I had the opportunity to watch before the recap began (it was actually the last movie I watched in 2014) was Them. From what I've read, writer / director Ned Benson would prefer Them be the one you should watch last, and reviews indicate that Them is the weakest of the three (ideally, they're designed to be seen the way I listed them above), but the choice was to not see it at all or to take what was available. I opted to be able to watch any version of it, and I'm glad I did. Without question, if Them is the weakest version of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, then I very much look forward to watching Her and Him.

 I'm not sure that the person who wrote the quote on the poster and I saw the same movie, but it certainly starts as a romance between Conor (James McAvoy) and Eleanor (Jessica Chastain). Them (and, presumably, Him and Her) moves backwards and forwards in time, in an elliptical fashion, jumping around to suit emotional states rather than narrative. When we meet them, Conor and Eleanor are eating at a restaurant, when he admits that he doesn't have enough money to cover the bill. They decide to pull a "dine and dash" and end up in a park nearby. By the next scene, Eleanor is on a bridge, and tries to kill herself. She's rescued after landing in the water, and Conor comes to visit her in the hospital, but we don't see the conversation they have. Eleanor decides to move home with her parents (Isabelle Hupert and William Hurt) and her sister (Jess Weixler). Conor tries to contact her, but she has no interest in speaking to him.

 We don't know what happened, and won't for much of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. Benson reveals the details of the tragic event that fractures their relationship in small ways over the course of the film, and by the end we know the broad strokes, if not the specifics. I'm of the mind that it's better you not know going in, but it's not going to ruin the film if you read it somewhere. It's not as though the film hinges on why Eleanor decides to leave (that accounts for the title, in case you thought this was a more tradition thriller, ala Gone Girl). Benson is more interested in the way that the couple chooses to deal with her decision, and how it affects their friends and family in the process.

 Assembled around Chastain and McAvoy is a surprisingly loaded supporting cast: Hurt and Hupert are a pointed contrast as Julian and Mary Rigby, who want to support their daughter but don't really understand her. Conor's father, Spencer (Ciarán Hinds) is as distant and withdrawn, in part because his son refuses his overtures to work for him (both are restaurateurs, but Spencer the more successful of the two). Julian helps Eleanor go back to school, where she meets Professor Friedman (Viola Davis), a no-bullshit, straight talker who doesn't want or need another student, but grudgingly takes her in. They bond more outside of the classroom than in, as their life experience overlaps in strange ways. Meanwhile Conor is trying (and failing) to keep his bar / restaurant open, with Stuart (Bill Hader) as his head chef and Alexis (Nina Arianda) tending bar. If, on the off chance, you don't recognize the name Jess Weixler, but her face seems familiar - as it did to me - she was the star of Teeth, a movie I'm quite fond of from 2007.

 Generally speaking, though, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby is Chastain's film. Them attempts to keep McAvoy in the story, but it often distracts from Eleanor's story early in the film. When they cross paths again, there's a certain logic to cutting away to what he's doing, but I understand why Her and Him are necessary. Cutting down two 100 minute movies into one that's a little over two hours means a lot is going to get lost, and I can see how the parallel stories would juggle them better. When Eleanor and Conor's stories overlap, I'm guessing, is the bulk of Them. There are moments in the film that feel like something important is missing - like the aforementioned hospital scene - or where we're seeing part of a moment. What keeps Them together is Chastain's performance. Eleanor shuts down at the beginning of the film, and we don't really know much more about her than her parents seem to. Chastain internalizes Eleanor's pain, revealing it slowly, and in tiny moments, but all the while she remains and actress who is impossible not to be riveted by. I find it telling that Benson had originally planned for Eleanor to be a minor part in the story, only to increase the role when Chastain took the part and began asking questions. Them may not be the perfect marriage of two films, but it's certainly one with a lot of promise, and the good news is that there are two more out there with missing pieces. More importantly, I don't have to see them: I want to.

 Finally, I've gone back and forth about where to put Nightcrawler in the recap. In the time since I reviewed it, I've softened a bit on its faults. It's a movie that sticks with me, despite my disdain for Louis Bloom as a protagonist (if ever there was a more appropriate anti-hero, I struggle to think of one). Nightcrawler has, perhaps rightly, been compared to Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole. And, you know what, that's fair. Wilder was accused of being too cynical, and now, sixty years later, Nightcrawler accurately reflects the seedy underbelly of "journalism."

 Still, I can't quite put it in the "Best of 2014" list, as I had originally considered. It's almost there, so close, but not quite. The music may be intentional, but it's nevertheless jarring and often inappropriate, ironic or not. Jake Gyllenhaal's performance is fantastic, and while I'll never understand not nominating him for Louis Bloom, the film will endure long after the snub. I may not love it quite as much as many critics do, but I admire it and remain haunted by what it says about humanity. Here's some of my original review:

"Nightcrawler follows the narrative structure of a "rags to riches" story almost exactly, only to horrifying ends. Louis buys a camera and a police scanner, makes mistakes, but eventually finds some usable footage and sells it to the lowest rated news channel in Los Angeles.[...] He hires an intern and relentlessly insults his inability to do exactly what Louis wants when he wants it. But they make it work: accident after accident, crime scene after crime scene, Louis builds his reputation. He's not above sneaking into somebody's house or moving evidence around for better shot composition. When he arrives at an accident before the police get there, Louis even moves a body in order to get more compelling footage.
 [...]
 I would recommend Nightcrawler on the strength of its performances, provided you don't mind seeing a movie where the evil are rewarded and the good mostly punished, or otherwise relegated to obscurity. The point of view in the film is strictly from Bloom's perspective, so don't be surprised if your impressions of him match the befuddled reactions during points when he does encounter a genuine human being. Louis isn't one, and he's perhaps the least likable antihero in a long line of them, but if you don't mind taking a ride into the depths of darkness, Nightcrawler is a compelling trip downward."

 Okay, thus ends the long, crammed together version of the 2014 recap. From here on out, it's one entry per film. We are, at long last, at the top of the top, the crème de la crème of last year. Odds are you've noticed certain films missing from certain categories, so you might be able to guess. They should be coming more regularly than the longer pieces, if only because I only have to focus on one film at a time. Also, some of them might already be done, and you maybe missed them earlier this year. Stay tuned...

The Worst Movies I Saw in 2014

 So the year is very nearly over (which year? check the title, I guess...), and as with every Year End Recap, I like to start at the bottom and work my way up. The Cap'n tried very hard to avoid movies that looked like they'd be a waste of time this year, but that doesn't mean I missed all of the rotten apples. I just didn't feel like talking about all of them, and only one had the dubious distinction of being a "So You Won't Have To". That said, unless I somehow muster up the interest to finish watching Tusk before the 31st (outcome: very unlikely), it's safe to say I've watched the worst of 2014 that I'm going to see.

 One thing you'll notice is the lack of obvious punching bags around the internet: as a general rule, if I'm not at least a little bit interested, I'm not going to see it. So that means no Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, no Transformers 4, no Adam Sandler or Seth McFarlane movie. I didn't even watch Jingle All the Way 2, although I did trick people into thinking they'd be seeing it*. That said, anything that makes this list is something I truly loathe, or felt like time was wasted watching. Or, maybe in the case of one movie, one that made me feel stupider, kind of like Lockout did. But we'll get to that one. Aside from the very worst movie of 2014 - which closes out this recap - there's no particular order to this, just a general cathartic primal scream of "Bad Movie! No Doughnut!"

 Shall we begin? (SPOILER: yes)

 V/H/S Viral - Remember how V/H/S was too long and only had a few good segments, but the frame story was fairly interesting even though why would you tape a Skype conversation and put it on a tape? And then V/H/S 2 was a marked improvement in every way, because it was shorter and the vignettes were more concise and creepier, even if the frame story was kind of a mess? I guess when the time came to make V/H/S Viral - which might as well be "3" based on the end of the movie - everyone involved from the producers to the writers and directors forgot that.

 The wrap around story makes almost no sense until the very end, and aside from an amusing cookout gone wrong, there's nothing but gore for gore's sake until the mysterious van that causes people go turn violent is shoehorned into the V/H/S mythos (such as it is). If clips from the first two films weren't crammed in as cutaways, you wouldn't even know it was supposed to be part of the same series. The "tapes" are abandoned completely, leaving us with a combination documentary / found footage story of a magician whose cape gives him real powers, a trip into another dimension that, initially, looks like ours but really, REALLY isn't, and twenty minutes with the most obnoxious skaters you're likely to meet, who are eventually killed by zombies or eaten by a demon the zombies are summoning.

 Of the segments, the second one - "Parallel Monsters" - by Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes) is the only one worth watching. That said, it's so over the top that you're liable to start laughing at the "reveal" of how the alternate universe is structured. The Day of the Dead / Skater video only gets remotely interesting near the end, when it's clear they can't kill the cult members in Tijuana. Everything else is an absolute waste of time, and I worry that trying to turn the series from a Videodrome-like vibe to a "viral video" ending (think The Signal or Pontypool, but much worse) isn't going to serve V/H/S well.

 Left Behind - Look, I know that the only reason anyone reading this was even considering watching the 2014 remake of Left Behind is for ironic purposes. You heard that Nicolas Cage was in it and then saw the awful trailer and thought "see you later, Sharknado 2!" Well, I have some bad news for you - this is every bit as boring and sanctimonious as the Kirk Cameron Left Behind, and Cage doesn't go anywhere close to MEGA until and hour into the movie. Even then, it's not for very long, because he's just trying to avoid hitting another plane. The worst sin Left Behind commits - worse even than oxymoron-ic internal logic, wafer thin characters, and groan-worthy dialogue - is being boring. Like, really, "geez this thing is still on?," boring. I can't prevent you from watching it ironically with your hipster friends, or convincing yourselves that you enjoyed it somehow, but I'll never watch it again, nor will I subject an audience to it during Bad Movie Night.

 And I made them watch Things.

 Horrible Bosses 2 - Cranpire and I disagree on this, but I found this to be a perfect example of a lazy sequel coasting on the goodwill engendered by fans of Horrible Bosses. The jokes are lazy, the shock value is lazy, most of the three times I laughed came from surprised outbursts of profanity, and even Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day seem to be phoning it in halfway through. They dutifully go through the motions, but it's abundantly clear that the new titular characters (a father / son duo played by Christoph Waltz and Chris Pine) are ahead of them every step of the way, and neither Waltz (barely in the movie) or Pine (in way too much of it) can muster the same sense of pure evil that Kevin Spacey does, literally phoning it in from behind a plexiglass wall in prison. You've seen every good joke in the trailer, and when Jamie Foxx's Motherfucker Jones only made me laugh once - it involves driving through a chain link fence - you know you're in trouble.

 What If - I do not understand this movie. Like, do not get it. Who is What If for? Because it feels to me like this is a movie that would appeal to Men's Rights assholes, who believe that "friend zone" is a real thing they are being subjected to. The moral seems to be that if they persevere, she totally wants you and it will work out, but it's cool to have unrealistic expectations and lash out at each other for interpreting deliberately mixed signals. I genuinely am confused about this film, because it makes a concerted effort to be a romantic comedy that portrays both sides (Zoe Kazan and Daniel Radcliffe) trying to "just be friends," but feel ambivalent about it, make overtures to be more than friends (on purpose, because there are scenes set before and after that reinforce we did not see one of them misinterpreting the other) and then get angry at the other one. Rinse, repeat.

 What is the purpose of this film? I'm being serious, because I've seen some outlandish concepts for romantic comedies, but What If goes out of it's way to represent the concept of "friend zone" as just another obstacle to true love. It would be one thing if it was just Radcliffe's Wallace being a creep, or Kazan's Chantry being totally misunderstood, but the narrative makes a concerted effort to show both of them acting behind the scenes in a way that you know they'll end up together (she refuses to introduce him to her friends, he tries to sabotage her engagement) and then spending lots of time with them not speaking to each other for doing just that! It has all the elements of a romantic comedy: the meet-cute, the dramatic plane flight to profess your feelings, the friends who set them up in secret (in this case, Wallace's roommate and Chantry's cousin, Allan, played by Adam Driver who playing Adam Driver's character from Girls). There's even the whimsical indie rock soundtrack, and because Chantry works for an animation company, her drawings come to life and float around to convey her feelings. But it all feels so unseemly because the message is that you should not respect another person's feelings about your friendship because they are into you and you just have to wear them down. I guess as long as you're Daniel Radcliffe and she's Zoe Kazan, the Men's Rights assholes are correct: just ignore the "friend zone" and keep pushing, because she'll totally realize what a great guy you are.

 In all honestly, I'd love to hear the female perspective on this movie. It feels like a movie made by guys to reinforce a particularly deplorable view of relationships that turns out exactly the day it never would. It's the meanest romantic comedy I've seen in a while, and no amount of saccharine at the end can take away the bitter aftertaste.

 The Expendables 3 - Take everything I said in my original review, and then compound it. This movie does not get better with repeated viewings. In fact, I'm kinda on the Conrad Stonebanks side of things now, because Barney Ross was a chump in the movie.

 Life After Beth - I've seen this in nearly every review of Life After Beth, but sometimes the oft repeated phrase is true: this would have been a pretty clever short film. I could see it playing at festivals, maybe winning some awards, and you'd have the added bonus of keeping the cast in place. But as a ninety minute feature? No, Life After Beth stops being funny a long time before the titular character-turned-zombie (Aubrey Plaza) goes full on undead. The premise is fun, and Dane Dehaan does an admirable job playing the straight man in what I think is the first time he isn't playing a totally sullen jerk (depending on how you feel about him in The Place Beyond the Pines).

 Most of the rest of the cast are there to play one-joke roles, like John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon as Beth's parents. It's not clear why Paul Reiser and Cheryl Hines are in the film at all until their dead parents show up (it's not just Beth who comes back, although the movie takes a while to get to that). While it's always nice to see Anna Kendrick, her part is so insignificant and underdeveloped that you wonder if the film even needed a love triangle. Plaza seems to be having fun as the increasingly unhinged Beth, who doesn't know she's dead and can only be calmed with smooth jazz, but largely speaking, Life After Beth has a lot of good small ideas that do not sustain its running time.

 The Sacrament - It's maybe not fair to put this in a "worst of" list, but I don't feel like Ti West's retelling of the Jonestown Massacre holds up under its own "found footage" gimmick. If you can't sustain your own internal logic, I don't care how interesting the cast can be or what suspense you manage to generate.

 They Came Together - For the first time that I can remember, I found myself thinking (and eventually saying out loud) "I think I hate this David Wain movie." Say what you will about how over-exaggerated parts of Wet Hot American Summer or The Ten are, at least there's some bite to the way they approach their subject matter. Wain, who co-wrote They Came Together with Michael Showalter, brings a sledgehammer to romantic comedies, and approaches the tropes with all the subtlety that Gallagher brings to a watermelon. It could be funny, like Wet Hot American Summer, except there's a lingering sense of "see how funny we are to skewer these movies?" And by that, I mean literally, the characters look at the camera after saying something stupid or cliché to undermine the entire façade.

 It reminds me of how a friend described the difference between Joel and Mike on Mystery Science Theater 3000: Joel was a guy who made the best out of a bad situation by poking fun at movies, but you got the sense that Mike really wanted to stick it to these turkeys. That's They Came Together in a nutshell: a movie that aggressively tears apart every overused rom-com gimmick and then stands there and says "look at what I did; I really gave them what for, am I right you guys?" What's weird is that Showalter already did this in the much better The Baxter, a movie about the guy who the girl always leaves for the lead character. It's a smarter movie, the jokes are better developed, and the execution isn't as grating or obvious, which makes They Came Together all the more baffling. The film even lacks most of Wain's signature non-sequitur moments, the ones that really make movies like Wet Hot American Summer memorable. Instead of "I'm going to fondle my sweaters," Christopher Meloni's character shits himself at a costume party and tries to pretend he came dressed in a robe. That's the joke. I guess the fact that her parents are white supremacists or that his grandmother wants to have sex with him are supposed to be funny in a shocking way, but Wain is far to invested in sticking it to romantic comedies to go anywhere with either setup.

 Were it not for Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler trying really, really hard to keep me invested, I think I might have turned They Came Together off after twenty minutes. The rest of the cast, who includes Bill Hader, Ellie Kemper, Michael Ian Black, Cobie Smulders, Ed Helms, Melanie Lynskey, Jack McBrayer, Kenan Thompson, Ken Marino, Adam Scott, Michael Shannon, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Randall Park, John Stamos, and Michael Murphy, land mostly on the side of "annoying," showing up for a scene or two to mug shamelessly and then exit the film. If you had told me this was the Farrelly brothers follow-up to Movie 43, I'm not sure I would have doubted you, but it shocks me that I hated a David Wain movie this much.

 See No Evil 2 - I'm not going to waste much time talking about this movie. I guess that maybe I thought going from a porn director in See No Evil to Jen and Sylvia Soska (American Mary) could have only have been an improvement, but apparently the only memo they got was "use fluorescent lighting in a hospital and make every hallway look the same." I thought the first movie was underdeveloped on every level, but at least it was grimy. This one is sterile, dull, and the gore is perfunctory. Maybe you could say that it's cool to see Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps) and Danielle Harris (Rob Zombie's Halloween 2) in the same movie, but SPOILER they both die. In fact, forget it, SPOILER everybody dies except Jacob Goodnight (Glen "Kane" Jacobs), who the Soska's can't find anything to do with other than kind of give him a "monster" costume, consisting of a mortician's apron and one of those masks NBA players wear when they break their nose. Forgive me if I sit out the inevitable See No Evil 3, because WWE Films loves to make franchises out of movies that don't need them (*coughTheMarinecough12Roundscough*)

 Lucy - If you hadn't guessed, Lucy is this year's Lockout. It may be the stupidest "high concept" sci-fi / action movie I've seen since, well, Lockout. I guess Luc Besson genuinely didn't understand the "10% of our brains" metaphor, because he literally uses brain percentage as the hook for how Scarlett Johannson goes from normal party girl to transcendent god-like being in ninety minutes. It's a mind-bogglingly stupid movie, in just about every way it can be, and in good conscience I couldn't put it anywhere other than on this list.

 That said, if you have some friends coming over with a case of beer, Lucy is a rollicking good time as bad movies go. Make no mistake, you're going to feel less intelligent by the time it's over, and if you happen to know a scientist (in any field, but I suppose a neuroscientist would be the best), there will be a lot of "wait... no, that can't happen" said aloud. In fact, I can almost guarantee you this will be playing at Bad Movie Night in a few months, possibly with Lockout. I'll see if I can't lower the IQ of the room by a few points. Besson goes all in with audacious stupidity with Lucy, and if you can put aside the improbability of, well, everything, it's a breezy ride of dumb fun. Just don't pretend it's anything else.

 Sin City: A Dame to Kill For - I was just going to link this to my "So You Won't Have To" review from earlier this fall and be done with this terrible movie, but when it came out on Blu-Ray, I read a couple of write-ups from reviewers I normally respect giving Robert Rodriguez a pass for this piece of shit. That I cannot abide. Being forgiving of Sin City: A Dame to Kill for because it has more of a narrative through line than Machete Kills is, to me, unacceptable. It's like saying that Resident Evil 5 is okay because it's not as terrible as Resident Evil 4. No, it's not okay - at the end of either one you feel cheated and that you wasted time that could have been put to better use. Interesting tidbit about Resident Evil 5 and Machete Kills: both are glorified trailers for as-yet-unreleased sequels disguised as a feature film.

 Is it true that Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is better than Machete Kills? Eh, maybe. Does it matter? Nope. Unless you're some kind of die hard Sin City fan that can also somehow divorce yourself from how much cheaper, poorly thought out, and lazily constructed the second film is from the first (let alone the ways it mangles the source material despite that fact that the creator co-directed the adaptation), there's nothing worth watching this for. Nothing. If you really need to see Eva Green naked and don't have the internet, pick almost any other film she's been in. Hell, watch the Frank Miller-based 300: Rise of An Empire, which while also not great, is better than A Dame to Kill For in nearly every aspect. Want to see Joseph Gordon Levitt in a crime movie in over his head? Watch Looper or The Lookout. If you watch Looper you'll even see Bruce Willis giving a shit about his role. For everything else, just watch Sin City. As many problems as I have with the first movie, it still does everything better than A Dame to Kill For.

 I'm genuinely convinced that Robert Rodriguez forgot how to make movies, or maybe just does not care anymore. Maybe he was too interested turning From Dusk Till Dawn into a ten hour miniseries I couldn't finish. The only directorial flourishes in A Dame to Kill For are ones that echo the worst parts of his digital era to the present. This is easily the worst movie I saw this year, and I watched Things twice. This year! At least Things rewards you with this at the end of the movie:

 A Dame to Kill For is one of my favorite Sin City stories, which makes it all the more egregious that Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller butchered it so badly. There's nothing to give this movie a pass for, and I totally feel like it deserves the rotten reputation it has. I don't think critics were overly harsh panning this crap - the negativity is right on the money. Avoid it at all costs, and just read A Dame to Kill For again.

---

 Next time we'll go up the ladder a bit, discussing some movie the Cap'n liked, or kind of liked. I might save the movies I had high hopes about for its own column, since it'll cover many of the major releases that didn't get coverage at the Blogorium this year. Stay tuned: the top of the list is a random assemblage this year...

 * Instead, we watched Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever, which has the distinction of being either the second best or second worst "talking cat" movie I saw this year, depending on how you feel about A Talking Cat?!?!?

Cap'n Howdy Presents: The Five Worst Movies I Saw in 2012

 For a change, I saw more good movies than terrible movies in 2012. I know, this must come as a shock to you, but it's true. Looking back, there are several movies I saw that were "okay" to "meh," but very few that outright stank. Well, that were made in 2012 anyway: Horror Fest and Summer Fest entries don't count this year, with one exception.

 The very bottom and the very top lists for 2012 aren't going to be too long, but while I try to put together some kind of notion of how I want to organize the "Best Of"'s, there's not much question in my mind how the bottom of the barrel stacks up. (The middle is going to take me a little while...)

 In the interest of fairness, I didn't see many of what people tell me are the very worst of this year, including: That's My Boy, Battleship, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Total Recall, The Watch, Guilt Trip, For A Good Time Call, Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2, Parental Guidance, or The Apparition. Unfortunately, I can't be of any help to you in that respect, but I can promise you that this list serves as one last So You Won't Have To for last year.

 So without further ado, let's count down from 5 to 1 of the Worst Movies of 2012.
 

 5.Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies - So of the three films about Abraham Lincoln released this year, I saw two of them, and instead of picking the one with the vampires from the director of Wanted, the Cap'n wisely(?) chose the knock-off instead. From what I hear, The Asylum's cash-in / rip-off is arguably the better of the two, and if that's the case then I'm glad I didn't watch Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. This movie was terrible, and only became watchable as the anachronisms began to pile up, along with the shoehorning in of a young Theodore Roosevelt, who helps Lincoln, his secret prostitute mistress, Stonewall Jackson, and John Wilkes Booth (a member of the Secret Service... yeah, I know) to protect Fort Pulaski from zombies.

 And trust me, while that last sentence may have you intrigued, Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies in no way deserves your attention.


 4. (tie) Underworld: Awakening and Resident Evil: Retribution - Here we have the case of two sequels, well into their franchise lives (four and five, respectively) that serve no purpose other than to set up the next sequel. While it's true that I've given up on the Resident Evil series, I held out just a sliver of hope that the return of Kate Beckinsale to the Underworld universe might up the trashy factor, but it was not to be. Underworld 4 was a lot of moping, Scott Speedman body-doubling, more pointless philosophical debate about what it means to be a vampire when Lycans control the world, and just a smidgen of Stephen Rea chewing scenery. If there's a fifth film (and Awakening is going to look awfully silly if there isn't), I can't say I'm all that enthused that we'll ever get back to the campy tone of the first flick.


 As for Retribution, well, there isn't much I would add to the review linked above. It's not really a movie, but a series of extended (read: boring) fight sequences peppered with pointless dialogue designed to reset the story (again) so that we can get to a "more interesting" movie next time. Since it looks like the next film is going to have even less of a plot, it's hard to imagine how hard Paul W.S. Anderson is going to have to work to screw it up. Then again, he lives to disappoint, so he'll find a way...

 3. (tie) Piranha 3DD and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance -  Speaking of disappointing, what the hell happened with these two totally unnecessary sequels? They were primed to be very necessary, very schlocky, audiovisual overload based solely on the combination of source material and director. On the one hand, you have John Gulager, director of the hyper-ridiculous gorefest Feast, directing the sequel to Alexadre Aja's T&A meets Blood & Guts remake of Piranha. And on the other hand, you have Nicolas Cage returning as Ghost Rider and behind the camera are the directors of Crank and Crank 2: High Voltage, two of the most ridiculous movies in Jason Statham's already ridiculous action movie career. Oh, and both movies were shot in 3-D! They couldn't lose! It was impossible!

 Somehow, both films end up being complete and total wastes of time. Not only are Piranha 3DD and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance not the anarchic clusterfucks you would hope for, but they're something even worse: Boring.

  Yes, boring: neither film is remotely fun to watch, in a trashy way or in a "what the hell was that?" way, which is a cardinal sin when making sequels to two absurd movies. Gulager not only doesn't deliver on the DD's his title promises (unless you count the first and last five minutes of the film), but all of the energy of Feast is replaced by the worst tendencies on display in Feast II and III. Instead of kinetic camerawork and editing, he instead falls back on a love of flatulence and cameos for the sake of having cameos, so that while he can't make a baby piranha swimming up a girl's va-jay-jay and biting her boyfriend's pecker interesting, he sure can give us three different montages devoted to David Hasselhoff running in slow motion.

 Far be it from me to point this out, but when the Spongebob Squarepants Movie finds a better way to use a superfluous cameo by David Hasselhoff, then you're doing something wrong.

 Meanwhile, Neveldine and Taylor not only don't add to the gonzo stupidity that was the first Ghost Rider, but they dial back the insanity and Mega-Acting / Neo-Shamanism by Cage and give us the tamest possible version of Spirits of Vengeance. We get less Ghost Rider, more mumble-cage, a supernatural knock-off of Terminator 2, and to top it off they find a way to waste Anthony Stewart Head, Ciarán Hinds, and Idris Elba. Thanks, assholes. Now we'll never get a properly stupid Ghost Rider movie.

 2. Taken 2 - Can we just agree not to let Olivier Megaton make movies anymore? While I didn't see Columbiana and maybe it's actually good, Megaton has now ruined not one, but two franchises with shitty sequels. First he stripped the absurdity from the Transporter films, giving the world the first boring Jason Statham action film, and then in 2012 he took Taken and drained everything good out of that with his awful sequel.

 Taken was a pretty simple concept: sex slave traders take Liam Neeson's daughter. Liam Neeson kills everyone standing between him and his daughter, in increasingly brutal ways, because that's what he does. He has a very particular set of skills, skills that make him a nightmare for people like you. Presuming that you are Eastern European sex slave traders, of course. It's a stripped down action film that delivered simple, no frills beat downs and torture.

 So logically you'd follow that up by having the families of everyone Liam Neeson murdered (yes, he has a name, and it's Brian Whogivesashit) want revenge on him and his family. In his infinite wisdom - well, really to nail Famke Janssen now that Xander Berkley wasn't asked to come back - he invites his wife and daughter to join him in Istanbul, where Neeson and Janssen are promptly kidnapped. So okay, that means Maggie Grace is going to have to do the inverted version of Taken, right? She'll save her father and mother than maybe kill Rade Serbedzija, because who else would be playing the father of the guy Neeson electrocuted to death?

 Nope. Liam Neeson gets out, crashes into the American Embassy and somehow doesn't end up being shot or prosecuted for property damage (because he calls Leland Orser, returning along with John Gries and D.B. Sweeney who is reprising someone else's role for a quick cameo paycheck). We then don't see Maggie Grace (sorry, Kim Whogivesashit) until after Neeson goes back to rescue Lenore Whogivesashit and kill all of the bad guys. Because that's what he does. Also she passes her driving test, which is somehow integral to the plot. (Not kidding)

 Only this time you can't tell that's what he does because Olivier Megaton doesn't know how to shoot a comprehensible action sequence to save his life. I literally ended up with headaches during the three (the ONLY three) fight scenes in Taken 2. It's virtually impossible to tell what's going on, who is hitting who, or where anyone is in relation to the person they're in combat with because Megaton and his editor throw rapid cuts of extreme close-ups on the screen to guarantee that nobody has the slightest idea what they're seeing. So not only is Taken 2 a LOT of setup for very little payoff, but when the time comes for Liam Neeson to use his particular set of skills, you don't even know what the hell is going on, and it hurts your brain.

 I HATED Taken 2, and there's no possible way that an "Unrated" version could be an improvement, because unless they hired a competent director and editor to reshoot the entire movie, it's a total waste of time.

 But Taken 2 isn't the worst movie I saw this year. It's not even the worst Luc Besson produced movie I saw this year, because that distinction goes to:


1. Lockout - Here's the deal: I'm willing to be veeeerrrrrry forgiving when it comes to cheesy science fiction. There are a lot of things I'll put up with if a movie can easily be summed up as "Escape from New York in Space," so even if Lockout was rocking a 17% Fresh Rating on Rotten Tomatoes the night we went to see it, I was prepared for that. I knew we wouldn't be watching high art, but instead a goofy, illogical, dumbed-down crowd-pleaser that catered to the cheap seats. As long as I got Guy Pearce as a bad-ass for ninety minutes, I figured we'd be okay. Besides, after that we'd be seeing The Cabin in the Woods. Surely it couldn't be that bad.

 And sure enough, it starts out promising. In fact, the opening of the film is the European Trailer, which is Guy Pearce making wisecracks and being punched while Peter Stormare interrogates him. And then we flashback to why he's being interrogated, and there's a clever joke involving jumping out of one window and into another gone wrong.

 And then there's the high speed unicycle chase that looks like a Playstation (One) cut-scene.

 Okay, that's really bad, but let's keep going, right? It'll get schlocky soon.

 And then Lockout fell apart. As I said, I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to movies like this, so I'll let things like repeatedly putting up a title card to let us know what we're looking at even if we've seen it five times. It's like watching a TV movie without the commercial breaks, I guess. It supports the theory that Lockout is "a series of movie-like images taped together." But then it gives up on the laws of physics while still trying to use said laws of physics as critical plot points. Then your brain begins to melt a little bit, then you start laughing. Not at what's going on in Lockout, because that ceased to make sense a long time ago, but because it's the only way to express what the movie is doing to your brain.

 Do yourself a favor and click on the link embedded in the title. It's called "Four Reasons You Might Be Drunk Enough to Watch Lockout," and while I don't recommend watching Lockout, especially not while drunk - as you are likely to do harm to your television for subjecting you to Lockout - it may give you some idea why, try as I may, I couldn't find a worse movie to watch in 2012.



 (Dis)Honorable Mention: Men in Black III, American Reunion, The Campaign - All of which were okay, I guess, but not movies I'm probably going to watch again.

 Extra (Dis)Honorable Mention to The Amazing Spider-Man, a reboot so pointless and so tedious that I couldn't even talk myself into finishing it.

Meanwhile...

 

 

 

 

 

Coming this weekend!