The Turkey of the Year Awards: 2017 Edition
As I sit down to prepare to look back at the movies I've reviewed since last Thanksgiving which I absolutely disliked, I am pleased that only 21 movies received low enough marks (D+ to F-) to be in the running for Turkey of the Year!
Now this list is going to contain some movies that were both popular and critically acclaimed and in some cases garnered (or still might garner) award recoc
However for me, they did absolutely nothing.
I found myself bored with most of the films on this year's list.
For me, that's the biggest crime a piece of entertainment can be, and that's boring.
Naturally, your mileage may vary! :)
As usual, I'll try and stick to the "big name, big budget " films and ignore some of the lesser known, but still just as awful films from this last year.
Meet The Blacks, I'm looking at you. Though to be fair, they did like and retweeted (twice!) my review of the film. : )
Let the games begin!
X-Men: Apocalypse -
Only the strong will survive. That's a great tag line for a film. Little did I know, they meant that was for the audience to endure the latest film in the X-Men franchise. To be quite honest, I'm not one that is passionately yearning for Marvel to regain the rights to the X-Men. Until they began the reboot with First Class, it's really a franchise that I only mildly enjoyed in the first place. Everything they had worked for since that time apparently culminated with Days of Future Past. This returned the muddled cast of thousands that I was quite frankly, bored with from start to finish. Remove the Quicksilver scene, and I have no memory of anything that really happened in this film.
Speaking of X-Men...
Logan -
Yep, I am a hater of the critical darling, Logan. Yay! We have an R rating! Let's drop F-bombs and buckets of blood. And let's usher Hugh Jackman off after nearly 2 decades of running around as Wolverine. I know many people loved this one, and have clamored for it to win awards and nominations for Jackman and Stewart. I am not one of those clamoring. If I had to go back and watch any Logan solo outing, I'd pick any of them again before I watched this one.
Yes, even X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
:)
Legend of Tarzan -
It looked visually stunning, but everyone was bored and lost interest with it within the first 20 to 30 minutes, though it felt like we had been watching it for over an hour at that point. I don't know, is it the character? I'm not sure that Tarzan has ever had a decent film made about him yet.
This was no exception.
Hardcore Henry -
I'm not sure if I'm not a fan of 1st person shooter movies, or if I'm not a fan of movies where there is no main character with which the audience can truly sympathize/empathize as you watch them go through the paces. Either way, this was a failed experiment in my eyes. Plus an ending that's telegraphed at the beginning, it just adds up to one big "Game Over".
Manchester By The Sea -
I told you there would be critical darlings and award winners on the list. This sums up both in one package. I think I let this one play for nearly an hour, and just realized that I really didn't want to spend another minute with Casey Affleck's character. I don't care what kind of emotional roller coaster he's been on. That said, I'm very happy that Amazon and Netflix (and other) studios are getting things made that are being reviewed very well and earning award nominations. So there is that silver lining for this dreary cloud.
Assassins Creed -
Clearly video game adaptations are placed under intense scrutiny around here. Long, convoluted, and again, boring. The set pieces set in the past looked amazing, but I frankly didn't care about anyone or anything I was watching. Not sure what the actual length of this movie was, but it felt like it dragged on for hours, and that's another cardinal sin for an action movie. Long AND boring? The double kiss of death.
A Monster Calls -
For proof that I'm a heartless monster, I give you this tale about a monster who comes to visit a boy during the most traumatic time in his life to tell him stories. Meanwhile his mom is dying of cancer. By the middle of the first story within the story, I was dying of boredom and clicked it off.
Beauty and the Beast -
How dare I!?!
All this movie did was make me cringe often, and yearn to be watching the far superior animated version. I've given Disney a pass on their live action remakes before, usually for being bland and not offering anything better than what they have already given us in animated form. This, however, was more than I was willing to forgive. I suppose it starts with the lead, Emma Watson, who reminds me of the woefully miscast Kristen Stewart as Snow White, the fairest of them all in the Huntsman films. I know, it's shameful to judge a book by its cover or an actress by her looks, but when the line of the song states "it's no wonder that her name means Beauty..." eh... not feeling it. Or when her acting skills in a poignant moment raise an eyebrow or a chuckle instead of sympathy... yeah... you're doing it wrong.
Sausage Party -
Did it get funnier after the first 20 minutes? Because that's really all I bothered with, then walked away. These movies often remind me of the "just because you can doesn't mean you should" axiom. Add to that the negative press of the animators not getting paid/credit for their effort, and that just added insult to injury on this one.
Snatched -
I think I've made it abundantly clear that I'm never going to buy into the Amy Schurmer experiment. She's better in support of a movie than in trying to carry it. I've tried, but I don't get her appeal. Then the dreadful misuse of Goldie Hawn, and really the entire supporting cast of this film, that was just disappointment from the word go on this one.
And that's it.
A special shout-out to Johnny Depp for NOT being on this list for the first time in a long time!
We'll see if 2018 is as kind, I do have a Pirates of the Caribbean movie review on the horizon.. ;)
Time to reset the clock to zero and begin looking for next year's turkeys, and as always, hoping I honestly don't find any.
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!
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