iCritic | Worst Films of the Year

Starting off our list is the (hopefully) final installment of Sony's 'Venom' series (and just a heads up: Venom ain't the only superhero we'll be discussing in this list). "Venom: The Last Dance" makes the baffling decision to completely scrap most of the older cast members (save for Tom Hardy and his black passenger) and end this "trilogy" in a way that feels inconsequential even to the previous two movies. It is largely boring with action sequences that don't deliver any thrills and was just one of three examples of why Spider-Man villains typically aren't interesting without the famous web-slinger to play off of.

In another world, "Harold and the Purple Crayon" would have been a fully animated film, about a young boy who can create anything he wants by drawing with a purple crayon. Indeed, the opening hand-drawn animated sequence near the beginning was the blueprint for what could have been a very good family film. Instead, the movie ages the character to be a man in his forties who DOES create things by drawing with his purple crayon, but rather than creating magic, the film creates cheap laughs and cringe-worthy situations. A bit more creativity would have been much appreciated here.

While "Emilia Perez" seems to be popping up on many critics' Best Films of the Year lists for being "bold, daring, and timely," call me a grump because I found this whole affair to be stupid. Aside from a story that isn't as interesting as it thinks it is, the film is also directed by a French man who is making a movie primarily in English and Spanish (the problem: the director speaks neither of these languages). Throw in the fact that the movie peddles in some of the worst stereotypes about Latinos, and I'm making the bold prediction that people are too afraid to admit that this isn't a good movie. Well, I'm not afraid: "Emilia Perez" is not a bad movie, but a TERRIBLE movie!

"Argylle" is a movie that bombed so hard, that it caused Apple to rethink their commitment to releasing movies in theaters (hopefully this year's "F1" is a good enough movie that it causes them to rethink their lack of commitment again). The problem is you can't pin your hopes on being a successful movie studio by releasing something as terrible and obnoxious as this. While the movie hinged on the mystery of who (or what) the title character was, the movie was so dumb that audiences stopped caring about the mystery long before it was solved (and then they hated the movie more when the mystery was revealed).

If "Detective Pikachu" and the 'Sonic the Hedgehog' films have been proving that video game adaptations can be enjoyable popcorn films, something like "Borderlands" comes along to try and bring the medium back to the dark ages. Extremely ugly, completely non-sensical, with top-tier talent looking like they are trying their hardest to look like they understand what the screenplay is forcing them to say, and you get a movie that is less memorable than the botched launch of the real-life video game "Concord."

While I told myself I would put myself through the wringer a second time after I picked the first half as the worst film last year...well, here we are. I admit this time around I may have been on my phone half the time only half paying attention, but this is just as bad and a waste of time as the first part. Adding to the frustration is that the R-rated director's cut of this same movie was released a few months later and WAS an improvement like the first director's cut (though not enough of an improvement to be worth watching)!

Ultimately, I was debating whether I should consider this at all. However, the same issues apply that not only is this just as bad as the worst film last year, it also has this weird thing where the filmmakers had a better version of the movie that they purposefully held off on releasing until later. In the days of DVD this made sense: you could sell the movie on disc twice to consumers (potentially). This strategy has never made sense on Netflix since a stream for one movie is worth the same as two streams for a movie (which is: $0.00). The fact that they did this twice with equally terrible movies is not only worth a second strong rebuke but a reminder that Netflix does not value your time (or mine).

If there is a bright spot to movies that were bad this year, it's that most of them didn't premier in theaters but on streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. Movies like "Bright," "Naked," and "Sandy Wexler" would all certainly be worthy to include on a list such as this, but thankfully premiered on a streaming service where valuable additional money was not spent on them, and (most) of them ultimately were quickly forgotten about. Therefor this list will be limited to the movies that WERE shown in theaters, and which had the nerve to rob us of our time AND money! First, the dishonorable mentions:

The most interesting thing about "Justice League" as a movie was not in how bad it was (which seemed destined to fail based on how the DC Extended Universe series has played out so far), but to witness fans of the characters want so much for it to be good, that they actually went online to decry us terrible critics for being "out of touch phonies" who wouldn't know a good movie if it bit them in the butt. The actually reality is that us evil critics are more in touch with what makes for a good movie and what doesn't, and this Frankenstein of a creation certainly doesn't qualify. I admit that while Zach Snyder's original version was likely terrible, it would have been consistent in its vision, which may have resulted in it avoiding a spot on this list. However, by bringing in Joss Whedon to make changes after most of the film had been shot, all the studio did was create a visually/tonally/aurally inconsistent mess that tries way too hard to please...well, I don't know who it was trying to please, but even Ben Affleck looked bored to be here. Many fans may be content to simply be happy the movie exists. I, however, feels it could have existed in a better form.

It's hard to believe the Academy Award-winning director of "Ice Age" would fail so miserably in his first live action outing, but here we are. "Monster Truck" gets props for being an original movie in a year of reboots and sequels, but despite this the film actually feels like it was based on a toy in the eighties, with a concept that feels outdated and stale, while also not being very clever. The saddest thing is that good actors like Danny Glover and Barry Pepper had to star in this, showing that Hollywood can completely mismanage their talent (though this would not be the worst offense...as you'll find out later).

A good rule of thumb is to count your eggs before they're hatched, but it is a rule that many in Hollywood are not heading before diving headfirst into building their own cinematic universe. Warner Bros. found that Batman and Superman wasn't enough to launch a cinematic universe, and Lionsgate found that planning for four Divergent films was one film too many. Universal had high hopes for their Dark Universe though. It was going to be a universe where the Invisible Man, Dracula, and all the classic monsters lived and fought together. Sadly for them, the first entry was the very generic "The Mummy," where Tom Cruise does a lot of running and not a whole lot more. Audiences stayed away in droves while those who saw the movie weren't keen on watching eight more if they were all going to resemble this one.

Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series was long sought after for a potential movie adaptation, as it was considered ripe for franchise potential. Being one of the best books King has written, many wondered what took him so long to sell the rights. I am asking that same question, however I am asking after having seen the movie based on the source material, as it is so dull, so void of inspiration, that I can't help but really wonder why it took so long if the final product was so by-the-numbers in the end? All these years and this was the best they could do? At least (unlike "Justice League" fans), the audience for this movie accepted that it was terrible and have moved on, so I don't think we'll be talking about "The Dark Tower 2" anytime soon.

If there was one thing the world could unanimously agree on last year (other than how awesome the Nintendo Switch was), it is that "The Emoji Movie" represents everything wrong with movies today. It represents the most bankrupt of ideas and most desperate of attempts to sell products to an audience that is first and foremost paying to be entertained. In a year of bad experiences, you'd think the movie where the main characters must hack into Dropbox to save the day (and fly on the Twitter bird to surf in cyber space) would be the worst experience you'd have all year. But, ho boy, that just goes to show just how bad this year really got.

I'm not normally one to judge a movie before it's seen, but when I heard in advance that the director actively sought out Charlie Sheen to star in this drama about the real-life tragedy...well, I knew something was bound to go wrong. This is a movie that makes the tragic mistake of trying to convince the audience that out of thousands of people who are dying on screen, all that matters is saving a few people who are trapped on an elevator. Surely, THESE are the people worth caring about above all others! Also, I have to admit, it rubs me the wrong way to be making fake stories based on this event when there are literally thousands of personal stories from real people that you could make a movie out of (all of them more interesting than this "fictional" one).

The sad thing about "Snatched" is that had it not starred Goldie Hawn, I might have honestly forgotten about it when it came time to wrap up the year. The fact that this incredibly talented, Academy Award-winning actress was dragged out of retirement to make a bunch of boob jokes rubbed me such a wrong way that it secured a spot on this list. After going through everything (and sampling it a couple more times on Netflix) it dawned on me how truly awful this was. Like "Suicide Squad" from last year, seeing truly talented people completely wasted on trite and really elevate how miserable a movie going experience is.

We now get to the worst film of the year. I would normally take this time to express my extreme distaste for the movie and how much I disliked it (and I did), but an interesting thing happened before I could make this list: Harvey Weinstein was caught in a sexual abuse scandal. Following this other prominent figures in Hollywood found their careers in shambles after they received sexual assault allegations of their own. The #MeToo movement began and the Golden Globes was basically one long commercial for the new Times Up movement, which is meant to fight for less oppression and more opportunities for women in Hollywood. What fascinates me about all this is the culture shift. "Fifty Shades Darker" was released before the scandals broke, and while the movie is certainly bad, it didn't enrage anyone. The world has changed a lot in a year, and all of a sudden a movie where a woman is emotionally manipulated and abused in a relationship comes off as not only bad, but outright offensive.

For the record, I always found the idea behind this franchise to be abhorrent in every possible way. It is immoral to the ninth degree. What is going to be interested going forward is if the cultural shift is going to result in the final film being a hit or a failure. Will women turn on "Fifty Shades Freed," or will it, too, be an unquestionable success? If it is, does that say anything about how little the world has learned from the past few months? Does it mean the culture shift is more of a fad to follow at the moment? I have no idea. For that we will actually have to return next year for a follow up (as I'm sure the final film will be somewhere on this list again).

While this site has not been as active as it once was, I DO still watch almost all the movies out there and I DO still write the occasional review! In fact, many reviews I write have simply not been published, existing in a folder on my OneDrive account, waiting to be edited, waiting to be read...

In truth, I'm uncertain about the future of the site. While I am happy to be writing again, I'm starting to understand what famous recluse J.D. Salinger meant when he said "there was great peace in writing for [himself]." I am working on my next Oscar book (or two), but I find the process of actually publishing reviews for a blog to be less and less interesting as time goes on. So much so that I have written reviews for some of the movies on this list that I still have yet to publish. It would bother me more if I was making real money doing this in the first place, but now that I have found a semi-career on YouTube, this blog gets less and less attention as time goes by. Still, one thing I DO still enjoy is putting together my yearly Top 10 lists, and so I am taking the time required to make lists this year as well. As is tradition, we get the worst out of the way first, so let's start this show with the dishonorable mentions (in alphabetical order because...well, why make number 11 feel bad if we don't have to):

I've had to state this before and I'll state it again: Some years the tenth film on this list is not worse than movies that didn't make the cut. I would certainly watch "Welcome to Marwen" again over trash like "Venom" and "Book Club." It has a unique concept for a film, tells a story worth telling, and does very interesting things with motion capture animation. The reason it finds itself on this list is because it handles all of the good things about the film badly, and squanders the potential this could have had. Make no mistake: This had the potential to be a GREAT movie! And with the director, stars, and unique techniques behind it, this should have been the next modern masterpiece. Instead, it is a movie that had me feeling so lukewarm I wound up angry that things ended up this way. So while it is more tolerable than other movies I've seen, this had the most to lose by not getting it right, and boy, did they not get it right by ten-and-a-half miles.

When did Hollywood decide that the story of Robin Hood was just too much fun and that all future adaptations must be taken too seriously? I've seen several new incarnations of Robin Hood in the past several years. Both in film and TV. Heck, acclaimed director Ridley Scott even took a shot at the legend. Yet what can one say when the property is so consistently dismal, that "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" is looking more like a faithful adaptation of the source material than the parody that it actually is? I'll give this year's "Robin Hood" this though: It does attempt to be fun at times. That is never succeeds is partly why it's on this list. The other reason is that it is still taking itself WAY too seriously, and being completely stupid in the process! Special points go to Jamie Foxx, who probably realized that this movie was dead from the starting point, and thus gives us a performance of Little John that is so laughably bad, I suspect he did it on purpose because he knew YouTubers were going to have a field day with the movie, and he wanted to give them something to talk about. To his credit, it IS the only thing about this snore fest that actually stuck with me.

This year there were two big budget video game adaptations that bombed in theaters. However "Tomb Raider" was close to being a good movie, so instead we're talking about "Rampage," which has more in common with the terrible 1998 "Godzilla" movie than I would have liked it to. Not even Dwayne Johnson's performance could save this from being a total turkey. Not only is this a stupid movie, it's a LOUD stupid movie, which means audiences got the "pleasure" of hating what they were seeing AND having a headache when the film was over!

Like "Welcome to Marwen" earlier on this list, it pains me to put "The Predator" on this list because this movie had the potential to be good. Unlike that film though, the potential this one had is in concept only. It was written and directed by Shane Black, who is known for directing quality films. It was from a studio who not only wanted to reboot the franchise, but wanted to bring it back to its R rated roots. The actors were all capable of doing the film justice. Somehow, "The Predator" managed to be so bad, it felt like an amateur project from a B-list movie studio that wanted to make a popular franchise. If this was your first exposure to the Predator franchise, you'd have no idea that it was part of a highly acclaimed action series that has been around for years, as this film is stupid, obnoxious, and even a little offensive in ways I don't think it was intending to be. The final product was so bad, the studio even scrapped a planned 3D release because, well, it would be adding insult to injury to be charging an additional $3 for this on top of charging them for it in the first place.

There were at least nine new releases to choose to see on Christmas day if you wanted to see a movie. If you selected "Holmes & Watson," you got a lot of coal in your stocking. You would think that a Sherlock Holmes comedy would be a fairly straightforward proposition, and thus would be difficult to screw up. Well, not only did they screw it up by making it feel like every other bad Will Ferrell slapstick comedy we usually get, but they take the goofiness SO far that you would be hard pressed to think this was a spoof of anything! It feels more like a drawn out "Saturday Night Live" sketch than it does a spoof of the classic character Maybe one days studios will realize that actors shouting as loud as they can while running around isn't actually funny or clever, but until they do we will have to continue watching movies like "Holmes & Watson."

I actually had a conversation with a friend who believed that "The Happytime Murders" was so offensive in concept, that it should be used as grounds to bar director Brian Henson from Hollywood for life. Granted, he hadn't seen the film, and was basing that opinion on what he believes puppetry should be used for in the first place, but his reaction still resonates because as much as people want their childhood heroes to grow up, there is something unsettled about taking a legacy that is typically seen as innocent and repacking it with more filth than any sane person needs. The Broadway musical "Avenue Q" showed that you could make a risqué puppet production (and have it be award-winning to boot), but "The Happytime Murders" failed to find any heart or purpose to exist outside of trying to be 'mature' by being as immature and gross as possible. Not helping matters is a completely superfluous performance by Melissa McCarthy, who does such a bad job that in any other year this would set her career back by a whole decade. Thankfully, she has that critically acclaimed movie that is still floating around in theaters, so she should be safe. I sense Brian Henson will be living in exile for some time after this one though.

I didn't realize going into "Little Women" that it was a release from Christian film studio Pure Flix, who now seem content to not only tarnish the Holy word with their awful movies, but now have set their eyes on ruining classic literature as well. They may have picked a wrong topic as "Little Women" is a highly beloved book, and one that has much better film versions available. This new edition sets the story in modern times, makes everyone so happy and sunny all the time, and makes main protagonist Jo so unpleasant and annoying, that it's amazing anyone in this movie even puts up with her. I know 1994 was a long time ago, but if parents want to introduce their kids to a film version of this timeless story, that version is still the best one to date. This is a hippies cliff notes version, which makes it more worthy of being in the trash than on the big screen.

2018 was not a kind year to MoviePass. The company wanted to be the Netflix of movie theaters, and at the beginning of the year they turned heads by slashing their movie subscription service to a mere $10 a month, which would give people access to a movie a day (any day of the week). While that did give the company a lot of love from consumers, the result was that they creating a service that was born to be abused, and they ultimately blew through so much money that the company is now on life support, and prospects of them surviving beyond 2019 is in doubt (though this was also said of them making it past 2018, yet here we are). The next step was to make their own movies so that they could lose less money in theaters and push consumers to watch those films. If "Gotti" is any indication, they know as much about making good movies as they do about running a business. Granted, the film was finished BEFORE they acquired it, and it had been a pet project for star John Travolta for over a decade (which, on a side note, isn't it strange how so many of Travolta's "passion projects" end up being major disasters?), so it's not like MoviePass was personally giving the ok for the project to end up in the state its in.

The fact that they wanted to spend valuable money owning any piece of it at all though did not speak highly of their ability to pick quality films for theatrical release. It should be noted that other movies they have released have been much better received on whole (including another release that is actually making my Best of the Year list), but "Gotti" is a special kind of embarrassment that only comes along once in a blue moon, and for it to come from a studio who was trying to build a reputation for being a player in the movie business, it was all the more of a joke when people finally got to see it in action.

Top WorstFilms

Top 10 - Venom: The Last Dance

Top 9 - Harold and the Purple Crayon

Director: Carlos Saldanha

Top 8 - Emilia Perez

Director: Jacques Audiard

Top 7 - Argylle

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Starring: Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O'Hara, Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, John Cena, Samuel L. Jackson

Top 6 - Boarderlands

Director: Eli Roth

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Jamie Lee Curtis

Top 5- Madam Web

Director: S. J. Clarkson

Top 4 - Kinds of Kindness

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Top 3 - Sasquatch Sunset

Director: Brian Henson

Starring: Melissa McCarthy

Top 2 - Kraven: the Hunter

Director: J. C. Chandor

Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Top 1 - Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver

Director: Zach Snyder﻿

Top 10 - Monster Truck

Director: Chris Wedge

Top 9 - Justice League

Director: Zach Snyder

Starring: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, J. K. Simmons

Top 8 - The Mummy

Director: Alex Kurtzman

Starring: Tom Cruise

Top 7 - The Dark Tower

Director: Nikolaj Arcel

Starring: Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey

Top 6 - King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

Director: Guy Ritchie

Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law

Top 5- Transformers: The Last Knight

Director: Michael Bay﻿

Top 8 - The Emoji Movie

Director: Tony Leondis﻿

Top 3 - 9/11

Director: Martin Guigui

Starring: Charlie Sheen, Gina Gershon, Luis Guzman, Whoopi Goldberg

Top 2 - Snatched

Director: Jonathan Levine

Starring: Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn

Top 1 - Fifty Shades Darker

Director: James Foley

Starring: Tom Cruise

Top 10 - Welcome to Marwen

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Top 9 - Robin Hood

Director: Otto Bathurst

Starring: Taron Egerton, Jamie Foxx, Ben Mendelsohn, Eve Hewson, Jamie Dornan

Top 8 - Rampage

Director: Brad Peyton

Starring: Dwayne Johnson

Top 7 - The Predator

Director: Shane Black﻿

Top 6 - Life of the Party

Director: Ben Falcone

Starring: Melissa McCarthy

Top 5- Tag

Director: Jeff Tomsic

Top 4 - Holmes & Watson

Director: Etan Cohen

Top 3 - The Happytime Murders

Director: Brian Henson

Starring: Melissa McCarthy

Top 2 - Little Women

Director: Clare Niederpruem

Starring: Sarah Davenport, Allie Jennings, Lucas Grabeel, Ian Bohen, Lea Thompson

Top 1 - Gotti

Director: Kevin Connolly

Starring: John Travolta

Director: Zach Snyder

Director: Michael Bay

Director: Tony Leondis

Director: Shane Black