Over time, I’ve gotten better at knowing what movies I’m going to hate ahead of time and, therefore, not go to them. I knew to steer clear, for instance, of the “M” movies this year: Marry Me, Morbius, and Moonfall. Or flicks that had ‘disaster’ written all over them from the start – Amsterdam and Bros.
There was a time in my life, however, where I was susceptible to indie hype. The indie film world had this amazing marketing gig going whereby they insisted that whatever the latest indie film was, it was the greatest film in the world. And I bought into it every time. Despite stumbling out of 90% of the films looking like a lost turtle.
Apparently, my bad movie radar has not been perfected yet because, as you can see, I still carved out 20 hours of my life to watch these duds. Let me know what you think of my picks and, of course, share you own Worst 10 in the comments sections. I’m curious to see what you guys disliked.
10 – A Christmas Story Christmas – As someone who religiously studies screenwriting, one of the things that frustrates me to no end is when a writer does everything technically right and, still, the result is flat. A Christmas Story Christmas should not have been as boring as it was. It’s a fun take on a sequel. The original film showed the quirkiness of Christmas through the eyes of a child. The sequel showed it through the eyes of a father. The script does everything in its power to create a main character who’s struggling in life and who has a fatal flaw he must overcome. Just like the original film, we have a wacky cast of characters meant to keep the story continuously entertaining. And yet it all lands with a giant thud. I suspect, like most scripts that never get off the ground, the problem started with the main character, specifically that seeing a holiday through the eyes of an uncynical child is a lot more entertaining than seeing it through the eyes of a cynical adult. I’m not sure the movie ever overcame this handicap. A lot of screenwriters are making this mistake recently. They’ve been handed these older legacy characters and try to make them the hero in a movie that, traditionally, would not have them as the hero. One of the most lifeless movies of 2022.
9 – The Adam Project – I debated whether to put this one on the list. There is passion in the way this movie is put together. Ryan Reynolds truly wanted to make a Back to the Future for this generation. But the screenplay makes a classic Scriptshadow mistake, throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the story, and, as a result, creating a movie that’s all over the place. I’m not even sure who the main character is. Is it young Ryan Reynolds? Is it old Ryan Reynolds? The movie definitely suffers from an inability to understand whose eyes we’re supposed to be experiencing the adventure through. Can you imagine Back to the Future if it was unclear whether Marty or Doc was the main character? And Adam’s problems don’t stop there. There’s a ton of weird time-travel nonsense going on, which only gets in the way of a story that’s already got a lot to keep track of. A writer needed to come in and streamline the heck out of this thing.
8 – The Bubble – Say what you will about Judd Apatow. He was the last guy in America to consistently pump out feature comedy films that brought masses to the theaters. Since him, comedy has descended onto streaming channels. The Bubble proved one valuable piece of info to me – which is that nobody wants to watch movies about Covid ever again. Bo Burnham’s Covid film was great. And that was about it when it comes to good Covid films. This topic brings back feelings of depression and anger, with everything that went on during those two years. Who wants to experience that again? Not me. With that said, this movie did start to find its groove toward the last 45 minutes of the film where the characters legit started going crazy. Apatow seemed to finally figure out what his movie was about. But it was too late.
7 – Thor: Love and Thunder – The badness of this film hits me once in the gut and once in the face. Because, before this movie came out, I thought director Taika Waititi was going to be the savior of Star Wars. But this movie was so bad – and it only gets worse in your memory – that I’ve lost a considerable amount of faith in Taika. The film continues to perpetuate the Mary Sue myth, turning Natalie Portman into a God cause, um, cause women kicking butt is the number one priority for Hollywood films in 2022? The film also felt considerably low-stakes. Its biggest sin, however, is wasting a great performance by Christian Bale. This might’ve gone down as an all-time performance had the film not been so bad. This script also taught me that comedy needs boundaries. It can’t be “anything goes.”
6 – Nope – Yep. Whether you want to admit or not, Peele wrote and directed an awful movie. The number of flaws in this story is endless. The third act alone has more “wait a minute, what?” and “WTF” moments than a 1983 Saturday morning cartoon episode. The more I look back at this film, and knowing what I know about Peele through the interviews he gave, the more convinced I am that he spent an entire year high as f—, writing and directing this movie. It’s the only thing that makes sense considering how sloppy it all is. The movie’s climactic moment is a desperate attempt to photograph an alien ship with a fake amusement park water well camera, despite the fact that the alien ship is going to crash into the ground any second and be accessible for the whole world to see and take pictures of. Oh wait, the alien ship can’t be filmed on a digital phone (/eyeroll). Only physical film. Cause, um, yeah, those are the rules. What even was this movie??? A complete and utter clustrf—k of ideas conceived during copious amounts of weed-smoking. If you want to go smoke weed and make wacky short films with your buddies that you post on Youtube, like Donald Glover used to do, great. I’m all for it. But if you’re asking us to pay 20 bucks to see your film, do us the dignity of sobering up and thinking through your narrative and your rules so that the story you put on paper actually makes sense.
5 – Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness – As soon as they introduced the random Latina superhero sidekick who had absolutely zero chemistry with Dr. Strange, I knew this movie was doomed. But somehow it doomed itself even more, turning an alternate version of its main character into a zombie, despite the fact that nothing at all in the rest of the movie was equipped to handle a zombie character. But the biggest issue of all was that the movie squandered a fun idea. You’re on a road trip between multiple universes. You could’ve had so much fun creating all these different worlds. And yet that part of the script was relegated to a tiny 10 minute section. It was bizarre. One of the messiest movies I saw this decade. And that category is quite crowded these days.
4 – Matrix Resurrections – In retrospect, I know why this movie was so bad. Lana Wachowski said that, as they were shooting the film and Covid hit, she considered it a blessing in disguise because it meant she didn’t have to finish the film. Reading the subtext of several other interviews she gave, Lana seems to have been bullied into making the sequel. It was not something that was high on her priority list. It goes to show how important pure unadulterated passion is to writing and making movies. Screenplays and films are not forgiving mediums if you’re only kind of into what you’re doing. You have to be beyond passionate. Which is why Avatar 2 is such an experience. That is a movie made by someone obsessed with making that movie. Resurrections started out okay. It had some interesting ideas. But just like anything that you’re not giving 100% to, it eventually falls apart. There’s this moment midway through the film where a big fight is taking place and one of the characters from the former films, the Merovingian, is randomly screaming out obscenities, and you’re just sitting there wondering, “What is happening right now?” It’s so bad.
3 – Licorice Pizza – I know this was technically released last year but I watched it this year. I apologize to all of the Paul Thomas Anderson lovers out there. But I seriously question whether the modern day version of this man has any talent at all. His last good movie was There Will Be Blood. What has he done since? The Master, which was average at best. The Phantom Thread, which managed to be so uninspired that, despite having the greatest living actor in the world in it, no one watched it. Inherent Vice, whatever the heck that was. And now this movie. Which is so nonsensical and so devoid of a clear narrative, that you almost think Anderson is playing a joke on you. I kid you not, one of the plot developments is our high school main character opening a mattress store. That’s not a misprint. That actually happens. Literally, nothing in this movie makes sense. It’s so agonizingly bad. I will say, however, that, Alana Haim’s performance was good. I hope to see her in more films. And the main kid is a good actor as well. But there’s no story here for them to work with. At least not one that makes any sense. I say this with complete conviction – if this script appeared on Amateur Showdown, it would finish with the least amount of votes.
2 – Deep Water – For as confusing and untethered as Licorice Pizza was, it doesn’t hold a candle to how dumb, clunky, and amateurish Deep Water is. It’s movies like this that make me wonder if anyone in Hollywood knows anything. Here you have Ben Affleck, who is considered one of the smarter actors in Hollywood. He’s also on the A-List. So he gets sent the best of the best material. And he chose to make this movie?? If you have Hulu, I want you to go watch the first 20 minutes of this film and report back to me on whether you have any idea what’s going on. Cause I sure didn’t. And if you can manage to be that confusing in the opening of your film, you have a special kind of talent for being awful. There isn’t a single story beat that makes sense in these first 20 minutes. How did anybody allow this movie to happen???
1 – Spiderhead – I said it at the time. Spiderhead is an example of the worst thing about Hollywood. Which is that the industry is more interested in getting movies made than making good movies. To a certain extent, I understand this. It’s so hard to get films made that, if you have something that can get made, despite its low quality, someone will make it, because nobody wants to leave free money on the table. But boy is Spiderhead a cautionary tale on what happens if you let that philosophy guide you. Reese and Whernick were hot writers. They’re shepherding the Deadpool franchise. They had an old dusty script in their drawer. It was terrible but their agency and the studios knew they could get it made with their names on it. So they put the package together and made the thing without ever asking why anyone would want to a make a movie where not a single scene in the screenplay makes sense. I mean, this is a movie about a corporation forcing tests on its patients where the patients can just waltz up to the control room any time they want. I’m sorry but if those are the rules of your story, you’re not writing a movie. You’re writing garbage. Everything from the concept to the mythology to the timeline that was chosen to tell the story in ensured that you left this movie enraged that you wasted two hours of your life. This movie is the epitome of awful.
Tomorrow, I share my 10 favorite movies of the year. And a couple of them are going to surprise you!
