With the end of the year right around the corner(albeit a few blocks away), it’s about time I started going over my favorite movies of the year. There were a lot of great films to come out this year, both theatrically and direct-to-video. But before I do that, I have to acknowledge that there were some…..questionable films released this year. Obviously, movie studios need to make money, so some tend to rely on established franchises with sequels and reboots. But for every great film released this year, there is a total stinker to mock it. Yeah, there were….a few of them here in the States, but there were also some that were from other countries, but weren’t released on video until this year, so they count. So, let’s dig into the gutter of 2019 and see what’s been pushed in there.
The Worst: Kung-Fu League
Oh, god. Where do I begin with this one? As a huge fan of martial arts movies, I’ve seen a lot of great films. From Enter the Dragon to The Raid, there is an enormous amount of fantastic martial arts films to choose from. Unfortunately, for every Enter the Dragon, you get a Remo Williams. Kung-Fu League is easily the worst movie I’ve seen this year and one of the worst martial arts movies I’ve ever seen. The concept is not a terrible one: You have four famous characters from Chinese cinema, three of whom are actual historical figures, and you put them into one movie together: Wong Fei Hung, Ip Man, Huo Yuan Jia, and Chen Zhen(the fictional character). So do we get some righteous epic action in Kung Fu League? NO! What we get is a limp-dick romantic action-comedy that fails at nearly everything that it’s trying to go for. There are one or two fights in the film that are decent, but everything else is cheap and horrendously obvious wire-fu. The jokes don’t land and the romantic aspect of the film is incredibly weak and awkward. The final battle is so poorly conceived and executed it’s not even funny. Considering the talent involved here, I would have expected something more competent than what we actually got. This was a COMPLETE waste of an interesting concept. The ghost of Grumpy Cat is NOT amused.
I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu
If you wanted to create a sequel to one of the most notorious and savage films from the 70s, how would you do it? Would you take a year or two and come up with a legitimate story about the original film’s female lead and how she manages to cope with the trauma that she suffered? Or would you rather wait 40 years before attempting a story like that? I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu is the only sequel to 1976’s I Spit on Your Grave. There was a remake in 2010 that was followed up by two sequels, but I’m not talking about those. No, Deja Vu is a film that really had no business being made. The original film was extremely shocking and brutal with a sexual assault that lasted 30 minutes. It was incredibly rough to watch, but the revenge sequence was pretty satisfying, even though the film was criticized for that as well. If you were a going to make a sequel to a film like that, wouldn’t you want to try and push the envelope even further? Not only does Deja Vu NOT push the envelope further, it is actually rather tame in comparison. It’s also dull as ditch-water, because the film’s director, Meir Zarchi, doesn’t know when to cut a shot. There are sequences that go on for far too long with nothing happening in between. The film also runs at two and a half hours. Not only is it boring, a lot of the acting is incredibly awful, with the exception of the film’s two leads, Camille Keaton and Jamie Bernadette. That and the effects are practical, mostly. There is nothing truly shocking about this film except for the fact that it even got made in the first place.
Aladdin
I’m a huge fan of Disney’s animated films, particularly the ones from the mid-90s on back. One of my favorite animated films was Aladdin. Why? For one, it was colorful, fun, had catchy music and above all, it had Robin Williams as the Genie. In fact, he’s the reason the animated film was so good. When he passed away and it was announced that a live-action adaptation was announced, who would play the Genie? My only thought was Will Smith, and apparently, the execs at Disney thought the same thing. He’s good. Naomi Scott as Princess Jasmine is good. Everything else sucks, though. The music is not as good as the original, even though some of the newer versions aren’t awful. The costumes and set designs look extremely cheap and artificial as the film was apparently trying to be it’s own Bollywood film. The character of Aladdin is one of the most generic portrayals I’ve ever seen for a character like that, but one of the biggest sins this movie committed was the portrayal of Jafar. He’s nowhere near as threatening as the animated character. He doesn’t have the gravelly voice and intimidating demeanor that the original version had. Ultimately, the live-action version of Aladdin fails on nearly every level. I was debating whether or not I should put The Lion King on this list, but at least that film was astounding from a visual and technical perspective and the music was still good…mostly, but this…abomination was a disaster.
Hellboy
I don’t know what it is about Hellboy that makes these movies so unmarketable. The original Guillermo Del Toro film is one of the coolest superhero movies I’ve ever seen, with an outstanding performance from Ron Perlman. The sequel wasn’t half-bad either, but apparently neither of those films did well enough to warrant a third film, so Lionsgate snaps up the rights to the character and pushes forward with a hard R-rated reboot. At the helm is noted British horror film director Neil Marshall with Stranger Thing’s David Harbour as Hellboy himself. Despite me coming down really hard on the film in my review, I’ve learned to start liking the film more and more with each viewing. But the problems with the film’s production are increasingly self-evident. From what I’ve read, the film’s production was very troubled. It’s too bad, there were some things in this film that were legitimately cool. The Baba Yaga sequence was genuinely creepy and a lot of the action was pretty good. The problem was the tone of the film was all over the place and the film’s soundtrack was very schizophrenic and not in a good way.
Terminator: Dark Fate
This one had a lot of promise. There was legitimate interest in the film because James Cameron had returned to write and produce the film with Linda Hamilton reprising her role as Sarah Connor. Seeing Linda and Arnold Schwarzenegger on screen together for the first time in nearly 30 years was something that I was looking forward to and for the most part I wasn’t disappointed in that regard. While I gave the film a solid 8/10, I can’t help but shake the feeling that this film was mismanaged right from the get go. For one, Tim Miller was directing and while he did a fantastic job with Deadpool, he couldn’t stop himself from butting heads with Jim Cameron, the creator of Terminator. The opening sequence of the film pissed off a lot of people and the story line was basically a carbon-copy of the far superior Terminator 2. While I’m grateful, this film bypasses the previous three movies, it’s just not good enough to justify its own existence. Again, I enjoyed it a great deal. It had some really awesome action and the performance of the lead actors was great, but nobody’s going to remember this movie as evidenced by the dismal box-office results.
Game of Thrones: Season 8
Ending an epic show like Game of Thrones is not a task that I would ever ask for. This is a show that people have adored since 2011 with incredible stories, mind-blowing effects and epic battles. But it was also a show that wasn’t afraid to subvert your expectations and go in directions that nobody could ever see coming. It would be around the 5th season where the show would begin deviating from the books, because George R.R. Martin hasn’t finished them, so the show-runners, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff would head off in their own direction with the final three seasons with some input from Martin, but you can absolutely tell from season 6 onward that the show is having issues. They would also shorten the final two seasons. Season 7 would have 7 episodes and season 8 would have 6, but the episodes are a bit longer. By doing that, Weiss and Benioff wrote themselves into a corner that they couldn’t get out of. Certain plots were rushed and a number of characters didn’t have satisfying conclusions. I’m not going to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, but after spending 7 seasons with a lot of these characters, season 8 feels like a slap in the face. I didn’t hate it entirely, as the production values are beyond anything that I’ve ever seen in a TV show before. There’s a lot of good things in this season, but those are overshadowed by writing that feels rushed and completely antithetical to what they were initially trying to do. Ending a story as grand as Game of Thrones was NEVER going to be an easy task, but I, like a lot of people, didn’t think this was the way it should’ve happened.
There are a number of other films out there that I think weren’t as good as they should have been, but these were the ones that really stuck out for me, even though Game of Thrones is actually a TV show, but it still counts. My list, MY rules. Every year is going to have movies that not everybody is going to like. As fair as I try to be, there are going to be films that I find disappointing or some that I genuinely hate. Most of the selections on this list I don’t completely hate, except for Kung Fu League. I try to find the positives in nearly everything that I see, but sometimes, I just don’t find them. While I believe that the late Grumpy Cat would approve of this post, I’m pretty sure he would still hate everything. All hail Grumpy Cat(RIP)!!