The Worst Films of 2020
While I always have lists for the good films and some other truly memorable ones every year, the hugely disproportionate ratio tilted towards the mediocre to the downright deplorable movies every year, urges me to compile this list of of bad movies annually. Monumental disasters in most departments of filmmaking, these films failed to provide something even remotely resembling mild entertainment (let's not even get into their creative or technical aspects).
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- DirectorAnil RavipudiStarsMahesh BabuRashmika MandannaVijayshantiAn army major sent to Kurnool to give company to his injured colleague's family ends up locking horns with a corrupt minister who is targeting the family.Sarileru Neekevvaru is the kind of masala movie that sets the genre back decades, regardless which industry such turds emerge frm. Firstly, this #MaheshBabu starrer adhers to every cliche in the book, some of which have long since been buried in the 70s, and reduces military strategy, operations, and protocol to a big, fat joke. Secondly, it's regressive to a whole different level, turning domestic abuse, child marriage, and forced marriages to a laughing matter, promoting rape culture, and actually suggesting that women should still marry their molesters/rapists, amongst a deluge of other cringe-worthy misogyny. It's no wonder that Allu Arjun's, Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo, which had released alongside it, was better received both critically and at the box-office, and thankfully, I had chosen to watch it in the theatres back then over this hot mess — in a year where you had wonderful masala fare like Ala and Bheeshma, this comes along and leaves a bitter taste for everyone.
0/5 stars - DirectorThomas KailStarsLin-Manuel MirandaPhillipa SooLeslie Odom Jr.The real life of one of America's foremost founding fathers and first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Captured live on Broadway from the Richard Rodgers Theater with the original Broadway cast.If I want to see a musical on stage, I'd book tickets to the theatre, not watch it on screen. Disney's Hamilton is the singular biggest experience of being cheated that I've felt after watching a film in recent times. Heck, none of the songs are even remotely hummable. This travesty is up for the Golden Globes and is a possible Oscar contender. And then fingers are lifted on our awards shows by pseudo-intellectuals over here. At least, we respect our majority audience's choices.
0.25/5 stars - DirectorSanjay GadhviStarsRucha InamdarAmit SadhRahul DevThe film is a fictional story based on true events which depicts a groundbreaking jail break.Operation Parindey is more like 'operation darindey' on the idea of filmmaking itself. At 54 minutes, it feels like 5 hours and 40 minutes. If the makers were looking to finish 2020 by being credited with the year's worst film, then they've made a terrific headstart toward that goal. From a jail break (based on true events, but God alone knows which true events have been adapted) that's the kindergarten equivalent of cops and robbers to dialogues that second graders would feel ashamed of writing in their very first essay, this Zee5 web movie has every atrocity possibly imaginable. On a cautionary note, this shouldn't be shown to the jailers and cops involved in the actual manhunt, lest they may initiate the entire jail break again just to clear their image and set the record straight of the real efforts that had gone into recapturing such dangerous fugitives. In fact, there are only two reasons we can think of to watch this Amit Sadh-Rahul Dev (no offence to the actors, who do try their best) monstrosity: a.) If you're sloshed out of your mind and want to laugh your butt off at something that's so bad that it's good or b.) You've captured your worst enemy and are the kind of Machiavellian fiend who derives sadistic pleasure from condemning a person to watch this. Did Sanjay Gadhvi, the Director of Dhoom and Dhoom 2 (two of Indian cinema's finest action films) actually make this trite or was it his cheaply assembled clone? For my sanity, I'm going to assume that it was the latter.
0.5/5 stars (only from a place of symapthy for Amit Sadh, Rahul Dev and Aakash Dahiya's unwillingness to throw in the towel) - DirectorChloé ZhaoStarsFrances McDormandDavid StrathairnLinda MayA woman in her sixties, after losing everything in the Great Recession, embarks on a journey through the American West, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.Not only is Nomadland more effective than a box of sleeping pills, able to thrust you into slumber-land for days on end (watching paint dry on walls would be infinitely more interesting), but it's also pointless in its plot, wantonly and manipulatively glorifying a group of people who either deliberately choose to be 'LOSERS' or have fallen on hard times and don't have a way out. Producer and lead actress Frances McDormand, who delivers another cantankerous, enraged performance as if the entire world is out to get her, should be asked that if she finds the nomadic life so romantic, why doesn't she forgo her plush mansion and opt for it. This weak attempt at neo-realism as also McDormand's performance is up for multiple Golden Globes and is one of the hottest Oscar contenders this year — another in a line of virtue signalling and social pandering movies that ruin awards seasons every year, only to be forgotten months later.
0.5/5 stars - DirectorThomas VinterbergStarsMads MikkelsenThomas Bo LarsenMagnus MillangFour high-school teachers consume alcohol on a daily basis to see how it affects their social and professional lives.Danish film Another Round is straight out of the pages of the niche European school of filmmaking, where the flow is abrupt, the scenes are disjointed, the characters are on their own trip, the emotions are deliberately stifled in a vague quest of realism, and the pace is slowed to the speed of a crawling turtle. This is a classic case of awards bait (it's been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Golden Globes, has snagged a truckload of accolades at myriad film festivals, and is all but a shoo-in at the Oscars), where the makers pull out every pretentious, narcissistic trick in the book to lure voters into a false sense of prestige viewing. Certain Indian filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap and their handful of fans, who love boosting their ego by following or attesting to this school of cinema may like it (probably pretend to like it to appear edgier and smarter), but what's more surprising is how a Director like Thomas Vinterberg, who had made the superlative The Hunt in 2012 (also with Mads Mikkelsen, his leading man this time around) and the grilling Kursk, could have also sold our for awards bait. (Available online.)
0.5/5 stars - DirectorShirish KunderStarsJacqueline FernandezManoj BajpayeeMohit RainaWhen a doctor gets jailed for a string of shocking murders, his loyal wife sets out to commit a copycat crime to prove his innocence.Writer-Director-editor Shirish Kunder has tripped so far on what only he knows he was trying to whip up, that Jacqueline Fernandez's hysterical shrieks in the name of anger and jarring sobs in the name of emotion seem like forgotten footnotes in front of the pillars of follies that unfold. Before you're midway through the film you'd either be laughing your butt off (if you're the stoical kind) at the sheer absurdity of it all or cowering away in fear (if you're the sensitive kind) at the thought of being scarred for life. Manoj Bajpayee manages to save the climax to a minuscule extent purely down to his genius at making even the most incredulous look incredible. Other than that, the film is on a trip that needs to be seen to be believed, but only if you have the guts to sit through it. Forget the so-called twists and turns or the shabby back stories and motivations of every character, and just imagine an entire town following a handful of police officers wherever they go or said town suddenly conjuring psychedelic fields of exotic flora straight out of a Japanese anime. All things considered, Mrs. Serial Killer is a perfect 'so-bad-that-it's-good movie', which can easily be enjoyed on a night with your drinking buddies. If you're not intoxicated enough though, chances are you'd merit a bravery award and jars of aspirin after surviving this trainwreck.
0.5/5 stars - DirectorZu QuirkeStarsSydney SweeneyMadison IsemanJacques ColimonAn incredibly gifted pianist makes a Faustian bargain to overtake her older sister at a prestigious institution for classical musicians.Amazon Prime's Nocturne, from Blumhouse's new spate of OTT Halloween specials, is an arty-farty kind of pretentious horror movie, that's heavily derivative of both Dario Argento's 1977 Italian Giallo, Suspiria, and the 2006 Japanese anime, Death Note, but falls flat on its face as something that believes it can be better, but doesn't end up being a patch on either of the two masterpieces. A few good ideas here and there hardly compensate for the general lack of energy, engagement, or anything remotely eerie.
1/5 stars - DirectorAjay LohanStarsUrvashi RautelaGautam GulatiRajiv GuptaBhanupriya, a conservative girl decides to lose her virginity but fails in her every attempt. A soothsayer predicts that it is an impossible task and it will not happen to her. She decides to overcome this bad luck.Urvashi Rautela s Virgin Bhanupriya should've remained a virgin on the drawing board itself — it's not enough that this Zee5 web film is so bad, it also unapologetically indulges in homophobia, body-shaming, patriarchy, man-children, guilt-trip manipulations, date rape, abuse of feminism, and every toxicity imaginable. Honestly, and for the interest of sanity, how did this ever get green-lighted, how did the actors agree to sign on, and who in their right mind invested money in this horrendous, cringe-worthy mess?
1/5 stars - DirectorNicolas PesceStarsTara WestwoodJunko BaileyDavid Lawrence BrownA house is cursed by a vengeful ghost that dooms those who enter it with a violent death.This version of The Grudge — a reboot of the 2004 American film by the same name, which in turn was a remake of the 2002 Japanese film, Ju-On: The Grudge — is riddled with plot contrivances, script inconsistencies, narrative discrepancies, and logical loopholes, trapping the entire film in a loop of confusion and unevenness, never allowing its flow or our attention to settle, all of which we'd have still overlooked had it been remotely scary, tense, or had even sent a one-off tingling chill down our spine. Alas, this is as bland, shoddy and cliched as a horror film — regardles the category — could possibly get, beginning 2020 on a horrible note for the genre. Watch it only if you "Grudge" your happiness.
1/5 stars - DirectorGirish MalikStarsSanjay DuttNargis FakhriRahul DevA man rises from personal tragedy to lead a group of children from a refugee camp to victory, transforming their lives through the game of cricket.The opening sequence straps you in for a gritty drama mixed with human emotions and the shots are excellently framed to juxtapose both the beauty and mortality of Afghanistan against each other, which makes it all the more sour when the initial promise fizzles out into a film that get progressively messier. The screenplay is so jumbled that the narrative keep hopping (not shifting) between random scenes, leaving several of them dangling in thin air. At one point, it feels like writer-Director Girish Malik (Bharti Jakhar is the co-writer) simply may have assembled his cast on the sets over different days and strung together whatever arbitrary shots sprung in his mind. The narrative becomes so cluttered after the halfway mark that you feel like you've been dropped in the warzone yourself, simply awaiting your fate. Dilip Deo forgetting to edit and Nargis Fakhri still learning to act add to the woes. All the noble intentions in the world cannot save Sanjay Dutt's Torbaaz from being messier than a waddling baby trying to do the garba.
1/5 stars - DirectorOlivier MarchalStarsLannick GautryStanislas MerharKaarisCaught in the cross hairs of police corruption and Marseille's warring gangs, a loyal cop must protect his squad by taking matters into his own hands.Netflix's French crime film, Rogue City, is a perfect cure for insomnia. If no sleeping pill has helped you in the past to get a good night's rest, then simply start watching this. You'll find yourself drifting off to slumberland in no time with its cardboard character, pedestrian script, lackadaisical direction, lack of anything remotely interesting, and most importantly, a complete absence of energy or impetus in the plot, so much so that good ol' Jean Reno, too, can do little to save it from crashing. A bit of caution though: Try not to force yourself to stay awake to the very end, lest this movie “bores you to death”.
1/5 stars - DirectorPuneet KhannaStarsYami GautamVikrant MasseyAyesha Raza MishraThe film follows headstrong Ginny who meets Sunny for an arranged marriage, but turns him down, and then shows how Sunny teams up with Ginny's mother to win her love.Netflix 's Ginny Weds Sunny celebrates the toxicity of Indian arranged marriages by justifying evrything from parental manipulation to stalking to gullible women to patriarchy with a pinch of salt. The fact that this Vikrant Massey-Yami Gautam starrer is a rom-com, which neither appeals to the romantic in you nor tickles your funny bone, takes a back seat, goes to show just how regressive a psychology it's imbued with.
1/5 stars - DirectorMaradona Dias Dos SantosChris RolandStarsPaulo AmericanoRaúl RosárioHakeem Kae-KazimTwo cops, two brothers. One is out for justice, the other revenge. They may kill each other before capturing the bad guys.Think the most cliched Bollywood movies from the 80s and 90s, with the most hackneyed plots and cheapest production values, and you get Netflix's new South African/Angolan co-production (for the uninitiated, pirated Hindi movies are a huge draw throughout Africa), Santana, which reeks of amateurish writing, more amateurish direction, laughably executed action scenes, and tolerable acting at best. But the makers seem so confident about their product, that they even set up a sequel. I hear though that this is the first action movie from the Central African nation of Angola, which doesn't even have a film industry so to speak, so, I guess, you've got to start somewhere.
1.25/5 stars - DirectorLee Isaac ChungStarsSteven YeunHan YeriAlan KimA Korean American family moves to an Arkansas farm in search of its own American dream. Amidst the challenges of new life in the strange and rugged Ozarks, they discover the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home.Minari (2020) is a unique film, in that though being American it's largely in Korean, and to its credit, it's pretty interesting for the first act, but gets progressively dreary and underwhelming thereafter, with an emotional family yarn about roots and shifting cultures being swapped for mundane daily activities of a family, which no common viewer, I suspect, would've any desire to watch. Steven Yeun pours his heart out into his character till the very end, but is let down by yet another American writer-Director (Lee Isaac Chung, the culprit this time) adhering to the so-called niche European school of filmmaking (many Bollywood ones like Anurag Kashyap also peddle this these days), where dull, slow, arbitrary, and a lack of cohesiveness is narcissistically displayed as a badge of honor under a pretentious sense of prestige. Honestly though, this has no business being nominated in the Foreign Language Film category at the Golden Globes when Korea has its own superlative products like Beasts Clawing at Straws, Intruder, Time to Hunt, and Innocence released in 2020.
1.25/5 stars - DirectorAjai VasudevStarsMammoottySiddiqueJohn VijayA ruthless moneylender must tackle a wicked man's plan to outsmart his way out of the debt to achieve what's rightfully his.Mammootty's latest movie, Shylock, should have been renamed "Slo-Mo-Lock" with the tagline, "Satisfied to Ride On the Charisma of Mammootty". The ageing superstar still rocks every frame he's in, but the film is nothing more than an endless collection of slow-motion cuts, with the makers too awestruck by the aura of their lead actor to even attempt something remotely resembling a plot. This Malayalam entry is a blueprint on why today's generation is getting disillusioned with masala cinema that forms the core of our cinematic roots — it's because other than Rohit Shetty, Atlee, and A.R. Murugadoss we don't have solid masala filmmakers anymore in the country.
1.5/5 stars (only for Mammootty) - DirectorJacob ChaseStarsAzhy RobertsonGillian JacobsJohn Gallagher Jr.A monster named Larry manifests itself through smart phones and mobile devices. Feature film version of the 2017 short film.Come Play is proof that not all horror short films are meant to be transcended to full-length features unless their titles read Saw or Lights Out. While writer-Director Jacob Chase's Larry worked as a 5-minute showcase of a unique monster manifesting itself through electronic devices, its feature adaptation is clueless about how to weave a plausible story around that concept, eventually resorting to every cliche and mundane trick in the paranormal handbook, yet delivering them so routinely that they offer very little in the way of genuine scares to compensate for the lack of plot or character development. This desperate spook-fest ends up being a tried-and-tested snooze-fest.
1.5/5 stars - DirectorLester HsiStarsNing ChangCheng KoJ.C. LinUniversity students, planning a bravery initiation test for their fellow classmates, choose a campus bridge rumored to be haunted by a vengeful female ghost.If you want a movie where the plot is all over the place, the characters bumble and fumble their way through it, nothing is clearly defined, the writers and Director themselves break the rules of the world they build, muddled over what they're trying to say, and the ghost, too, seems to be wondering what the "exact fu*k" it's doing here, then watch Netflix's new Taiwanese horror movie, The Bridge Curse — without a vestige of doubt one of the worst horror films I've watched in the last ten years, and certainly the most wayward one. A few good scares sporadically peek out from beneath the mess, but that's not worth wasting almost 90 minutes over.
1.5/5 stars - DirectorImtiaz AliStarsKartik AaryanSara Ali KhanRandeep HoodaWhen professional ambitions clash with personal feelings for a modern-day couple, a love story from a bygone era may offer some wisdom.Kartik Aaryan, Randeep Hooda, and Sara Ali Khan do their best (especially the former two), but are sandwiched between Love Aaj Kal's bearable first half and terrible second half. Imtiaz Ali tries doing a Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung on love and relationships, but all he ends up being is a paltry government-sanctioned student counselor, with an online degree, who's masquerading as a pseudo-psychologist, without the first clue in the world of what he's taking about or getting at. The first half has a few telling moment and makes you curious enough to know what comes ext, but Imtiaz's shortcomings both as a narrator (read Director) and love guru (read writer) unravel post interval, with the trajectory of the movie going haywire and his vaguely defined characters becoming progressively worse to follow despite his actor's best efforts. This lethargic love story will not connect with you 'aaj', 'kal', or evre.
1.5/5 stars - DirectorAhmed KhanStarsTiger ShroffRiteish DeshmukhShraddha KapoorA man embarks on a bloody rampage to save his kidnapped brother.Baaghi 3 is similar to Rambo 2 and 3 in terms of the one-man-army concept and resembles Tiger Zinda Hai and War in terms of scale and ambition. Sadly it neither holds a candle to any other aspect of those films nor does it comprehend that the swag and star-power of your leading man alone can't compensate for the lack of thrill or adrenaline in an action movie. Leaving aside the brainless plot and ridiculous settings, the worst crime Baaghi 3 commits is to severely under-utilise the ferocity and power of its biggest deaw. None of Tiger Shroff's action scenes pack any thrill, and worse still (barring one in a car dump), they come across as stale and wooden. The big scenes involving tanks and military choppers are added for mere show, with weakly conceived action choreography and set pieces. With such bland presentation of the one aspect that the audience pays to see such films, what else could Tiger do to save it as hard as he may have tried. What's more, the ease with which Tiger pulls everything off, reducing dangerous terrorists to buffoons, makes nothing seem earned or fought for, deteriorating the exchanges between our hero and his foes to nothing more than backyard hide-and-seek between school kids. Ahmed Khan could really do with a crash course in direction before taking on the onus of mounting such lavish projects. Barring a couple of exciting moments in the first half, the movie is nothing more than a glossy shell with nothing within it. Moreover, Tiger is criminally wasted in this poorly scripted and directed mess.
1.5/5 stars - DirectorCharlie KaufmanStarsJesse PlemonsJessie BuckleyToni ColletteFull of misgivings, a young woman travels with her new boyfriend to his parents' secluded farm. Upon arriving, she comes to question everything she thought she knew about him, and herself.As much as you may be a fan of renowned scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman, you'd have to admit that his plot goes off the rails and hits a roadblock at several key junctures as he's simply unable to delve into the deepest, darkest, weirdest crevices of the human mind as he's wont to, since his story and characters offer no scope for the same this time around, making Netflix's I'm Thinking of Ending Things nothing more than a bunch of long-winded, mundane conversations that lead nowhere except for generating a soporific effect. It doesn't help either that his direction is severely below par that what we've seen from him in his short stint behind the camera, which horridly wastes a quartet of delectable performances from his main cast. A handful of interesting ideas, but that's it, and even they evaporate into this air due to the lack of efficacy in execution.
1.5/5 stars - DirectorJung KwakStarsSon Byong-hoGa-Yoon HeoGo Jung-ilA trainee policeman, a job seeker and a hacker team up to find out who sent the message "What is the significance of your life?" to a woman who ended up committing suicide.A very intriguing premise is completely ruined after an engrossing first act as the makers run out of ideas and find no way back into the mystery they promised early on.
1.5/5 stars - DirectorPushpendra Nath MisraStarsNawazuddin SiddiquiRagini KhannaRicha ChadhaAn aspiring writer from a small town in U.P. runs away to Mumbai. He gives himself 30 days to try and prove his worth.Ghoomketu is one, big, unequivocal MESS — no two ways about it! In fact, the 'rahu', 'ketu' & evrything else in this Nawazuddin Siddiqui starrer is completely 'ghoom'. In his quest to include so many sub-plots and balance a melee of characters, writer-Director-editor Pushpendra Nath Misra totally loses all sense of script and narration. A major part of the story revolves around Ghoomketu attempting to write a script in every genre possible and failing miserably, and ironically, it's symbolic to how Mishra handles the film. There's no sense of time or situation or placement when it comes to the story arc — non-linear storytelling is one thing, and incoherent rambling is another thing all together. After Rani Mukerji's Aiyyaa, this is Anurag Kashyap's second attempt at reimagining a production of the multiple-award-winning French film, Amelie, which had released back in 2001, and it's clearly not working out for him.
1.5/5 stars - DirectorRamesh SippyStarsHema MaliniRajkummar RaoRakul Preet SinghWhile on holiday, Avi meets Naina and falls in love with her. Smitten, he decides to stay and work in her cafe. He confesses his love in a letter, however it's Naina's mother who mistakenly reads it.Along with going down as Hema Malini and Rajkummar Rao's worst performances of their careers, Shimla Mirchi is also a clear signal that it's probably time that Ramesh Sippy hangs his Director's hat with dignity. It's heartbreaking to see both Sippy and Malini reduce themselves to tripe.
1.5/5 stars - DirectorAnvita DuttStarsTriptii DimriAvinash TiwaryRahul BoseA man returns home after years to find his brother's child bride now grown up and abandoned, and his ancestral village plagued by mysterious deaths.Bulbbul bores you stuff before reaching a predictable end — barring the opening sequence on child marriage, followed by a scary encounter in the forest, and perhaps one or two eerie moments thereon, Netflix's new web film turns into a snoozefest after the first 15-20 mins. Undoing all the atmospheric milieu created by some A-grade cinematography, the web movie gets progressively slow without the subject demanding a languid pace and every opportunity for some chills, thrills, or evn half scares is forgone in favour of dreary family drama that drags and drags, and then drags some more. It's almost like writer-Director Anvita Dutt felt apologetic about making an outright horror movie, prompting her to slow the pace down to a crawl, injecting long-winding TV soap-styled family flimflam, and make things as soporific as can be in the quest of some unfounded artistic glory. A worthy feminist angle is thrown in, but the crux behind it, and the big reveal it leads to can be seen frim miles away even by a blind person. If you have trouble sleeping, watch Bulbbul, which is nothing short of a test of your conviction to stay awake; if you are looking for a half decent scary film, shut it after the first 20 mins.
1.5/5 stars - DirectorNatalie Erika JamesStarsRobyn NevinEmily MortimerBella HeathcoteA daughter, mother and grandmother are haunted by a manifestation of dementia that consumes their family's home.Australian horror film Relic (2020) is a classic case of the writers and Director being too smart for their own good and going overboard with their pseudo-intellect, instead of first focusing on the basics by striking a balance between the grave subject of dementia juxtaposed against a graver haunted-house backdrop. In the bargain, they ruin a perfectly promising premise and waste a triumvirate of solid performances from Emily Mortimer, Bella Heathcote, and Robyn Nevin essaying three generations of women in this snoozefest. The only thing horrifying in this is getting bored stiff in anticipation of something to happen.
1.5/5 stars - DirectorÁngel Gómez HernándezStarsRodolfo SanchoAna FernándezRamón BareaDaniel and Sara have a 9-year-old son, Eric, and they've just moved to a new home not knowing the neighbours call it "the house of the voices". Eric is the first one to notice the odd noises behind each door.By resorting to every cliche in the haunted-house handbook and then replicating them in the most cliched manner possible; Netflix's Spanish horror movie, Don't Listen (original title, Voces), ends up being criminally devoid of even an iota of scares or remotely frightening sequences. It went through its motions strictly by the numbers till the point I was left utterly bored and impatient waiting for it to end even at just over 90 minutes in length.
1.5/5 stars (only for the game performances) - DirectorDarius MarderStarsRiz AhmedOlivia CookePaul RaciA heavy metal drummer's life is turned upside down when he begins to lose his hearing and he must confront a future filled with silence.On the one hand you have poignant, profound, deep, absorbing, and layered cinema like The Trial of the Chicago 7, Promising Young Woman, Judas and the Black Messiah, Mank, and The Father at the #Oscars this year, and on the other you have pretentious, hollow work like Amazon Prime's Sound of Metal, adhering to the obscure and niche school of artsy European filmmaking, with precious little to say. Riz Ahmed is good, but hardly merits a Best Actor Oscar nomination, and the film is nothing but awards bait, with random cuts, disjointed scenes, and vague narration passing off for prestige cinema, — a classic case of a film that despite snagging a bagfull of Academy Award nomination (six, including Best Picture) is bound to fade into oblivion sooner rather than later. That being said, it's still better than trite favorite Nomadland, which may take home Best Picture and Director this year.
1.5/5 stars - DirectorPedro C. AlonsoStarsEddie MarsanPaul AndersonIvana BaqueroA radio star experiences the worst night of his life when stalkers assault the radio station where he's working.My “feedback” for Feedback is that here's a movie that wastes some really good acting and a promising setup on the back a unique premise for a home-invasion horror, with needless social commentary and long-winded diatribes between the victims and assailants, which eventually erodes any thrill, excitement, or even some semblance of tension that the film was initially going for.
1.65/5 stars (0.65 for Eddie Marsan alone, who valiantly tries salvaging a sinking ship) - DirectorSeverin FialaVeronika FranzStarsRiley KeoughJaeden MartellLia McHughA soon-to-be stepmom is snowed in with her fiancé's two children at a remote holiday village. Just as relations begin to thaw between the trio, some strange and frightening events take place.There are two kinds of atmospheric horror movies: One which creates a sense of dread with the help of ingenious camerawork and lighting for a Director to use as a tool to make a frightening story more effective, and the other that uses the same tricks to alternate for the lack of an eerie story and to act as a crutch for some unimaginative direction. The Lodge certainly falls in the latter category and to make matters worse, it's saddled by an insipid performance by Riley Keough in a central role that demanded far better skills. An effective climax ends things on a somewhat better note, but can hardly makeup for the tediously painful pace, incoherent writing and bland execution that precede it. Can't believe that this is the same Austrian Director-duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, who had delivered the chilling and shocking Goodnight Mommy.
1.65/5 stars (the extra 0.15 stars is only for the climax) - DirectorStephen GaghanStarsRobert Downey Jr.Antonio BanderasMichael SheenA physician who can talk to animals embarks on an adventure to find a legendary island with a young apprentice and a crew of strange pets.Other than a few scenes involving Robert Downey Jr. and Antonio Banderas, and another sequence with a tiger, Dolittle has precious 'little' (pun intended) to immerse you in the world of its CGI animals or their adventure. RDJ also renders a pretty bizarre performance, made worse by a weird accent. This might work for kids aged 8 and below, but everyone else could 'do' a lot better (again, pun intended) than 'Dolittle' this weekend.
1.75/5 stars - DirectorWilliam EubankStarsKristen StewartVincent CasselMamoudou AthieA crew of oceanic researchers working for a deep sea drilling company try to get to safety after a mysterious earthquake devastates their deepwater research and drilling facility located at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.Underwater is a dreary, dithering, confusing, haphazardly conceived, badly shot, and shoddily executed Alien-The Abyss-Deep Blue Sea-The Descent wannabe hybrid, only far inferior than all those films. Easily a contender for one of the worst horror films of the year and you can add another bland Kristen Stewart act to the list of contenders for worst performances of the year, too.
1.75/5 stars (the extra 0.25 stars are only for a few slightly tense moments) - DirectorGlen KeaneJohn KahrsStarsGlen KeaneBrycen HallRuthie Ann MilesIn this animated musical, a girl builds a rocket ship and blasts off, hoping to meet a mythical moon goddess.Netflix's Over the Moon is an anything-goes kinda family film in the vein of A Princess Bride or The NeverEnding Story. However, that's where the similarity ends. The animation and colours are gorgeous and the start holds some interest, but other than that, there's absolutely no uniformity in this (a strict no-no when your entire plot hinges on the audience suspending disbelief and opening their imagination), the narrative is all over the place, the emotions are too sappy, and the songs are inserted for the heck of it, with many doing nothing to take the plot forward. Most importantly, you can't have an anything-goes scenario in a Disney mould as the studio is known for deriving success from set tropes, and that's where this American-Chinese web film falls flat in the middle.
1.75/5 stars - DirectorCraig ZobelStarsBetty GilpinHilary SwankIke BarinholtzTwelve strangers wake up in a clearing. They don't know where they are, or how they got there. They don't know they've been chosen - for a very specific purpose - The Hunt.On the surface, the new people-hunted-for-sport-in-an-anarchic-scenario movie, The Hunt, is nothing more than a kindergarten derivation of infinitely superior genre fare like the 2000 Japanese film, Battle Royale, 2007's The Condemned, The Hunger Games trilogy, or producer Jason Blum's own The Purge franchise. Below that surface, the problems with this film run far deeper as it presents several distorted, lopsided, and downright laughable in-your-face political views of how every leftist is a vegan-loving, pseudo-liberal, climate-alarmist, snowflake freak who hates innocent and innocuous right-wing Trump supporters, wanting nothing but to mind their own business and make "America great again" with their bleeding patriotic hearts. The only three good things here are a kick-ass action heroine turn by Betty Gilpin from Netflix's GLOW, a terrific cameo by 2-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank of Million Dollar Baby fame, and their hand-to-hand combat scene in the climax. Other than that, it's not so much a bad movie as it's a terribly troubled one.
1.75/5 stars - DirectorBrandon CronenbergStarsAndrea RiseboroughChristopher AbbottJennifer Jason LeighAn agent works for a secretive organization that uses brain-implant technology to inhabit other people's bodies - ultimately driving them to commit assassinations for high-paying clients.Brandon Cronenberg seems to have inherited all the great ideas and innovative themes that his legendary father and horror auteur David Cronenberg had. Sadly, he needs to comprehend his dad's sense of execution, too, especially how art and commercialization must be balanced, if he desires to make a mark with horror movie-buffs and not only the critics. After Antiviral, Possessor is another textbook example from him of a genius concept, which also begins on a very promising note, only to peter out midway into a lethargic, tedious, indulgently arty affair till the point where you battle the urge to abandon the film before it arrives at its long-winded conclusion. And even if he wishes to leave a trail will his own sense of style, he absolutely has to begin getting the pacing, and balance between art and commercial elements right for future projects. Such a potentially pathbreaking horror movie flushed down the drain among the sludge of other “what ifs”.
1.85/5 stars (0.85 purely for that concept)