While we may have had highlights in the cinematic landscape so far this year, there's been plenty of awfulness along the way to balance it all out.
With the likes of the usual suspects - 'Fifty Shades Freed', basically - and some schlocky horror in the form of 'Winchester' and 'Insidious: The Last Key', 2018 has seen some serious duds falter through and land flat on their proverbial faces before they emptied their bowels all over the screen.
Graphic. Scroll on for more horror.
More like 'The 15:17 To Get Actual Actors, Clint Eastwood'.
A textbook example of squandering a decent cast with a story about the worst movie of 2015's source novel. This is like when a dog eats its own poop and then poops out more poop. It's twice-filtered poop. It's awful is what we're saying. Just awful.
Melissa McCarthy manages to stretch out a ten-second joke from '30 Rock' into an entire film with exactly the results you'd expect. In fact, let's not even bother posting the trailer for 'Life Of The Party' and let's show you the ten-second joke from '30 Rock' that obviously kicked off the whole writing process (hah, like this film had a writer at all).
It's fair to say that while Charlize Theron, Joel Edgerton and David Oyelowo are all talented actors who are capable of doing interesting and compelling work, 'Gringo' was clearly a favour to Joel Edgerton's brother and reminds us that Hollywood types are, in fact, good people when you come right down to it. Who would turn up for crap like this and have their names attached unless it was a dig-out for a friend? Exactly.
Clive Owen, man. What happened? You went from starring in one of the most pivotal and groundbreaking sci-fi films of the past twenty years - 'Children Of Men' - to starring in what's essentially 90-odd minutes of social media / technology scaremongering. If this was a movie, it would wear a fedora and have a chin-strap and have very strong opinions on libertarianism.
Winchester started with promise, having a few fun and silly jump scares, but as it progressed, the film caved in on itself, becoming more and more ridiculous, nonsensical and completely un-scary. It never quite decided whether it wanted to be a genuine horror or to make fun of them. It ends up doing neither and is just plain bland. Helen Mirren deserved better.
The less said about Fifty Shades Freed, the better. At least we can be thankful that the trilogy is over now. The films were poorly written, poorly acted, dumb and not in the slightest bit sexy. They're also grotesquely sexist and misogynistic with the term 'Freed' in the title making no sense as the female lead seems more entrapped than ever. In the very least, it works as a reminder of why humanity is doomed.
A film so forgettable, so utterly bland, that we are now desperately struggling to eke out a further sentence on it. The truest definition of a clapped-out horror franchise that has long since gone past its sell-by date. Just bad.
'Den Of Thieves' is a movie for people who wear shirts five times too small for their physique and are just as likely to send unsolicited dick pictures as they are to tell you that they don't like movies, but they loved this. 'Den Of Thieves' is 'Heat' for people who don't like movies. It's the EDM of heist movies. It is so deeply lacking in originality, so completely devoid of any kind of artistry or nuance that it's about as effective as Gerard Butler or 50 Cent trying to act. There is nothing redeemable about this film. It's awful. And the fact that there's already a sequel underway for it proves that humanity no longer deserves to reside on this planet.
1. 'How To Talk To Girls At Parties'
You could argue that 'How To Talk To Girls At Parties' is trying its best to be original, earnest and uplifting. It wants so desperately to be good and is trying its damnedest to make you care. Instead, it just comes off as a noisy, stupid, completely fake and utterly lacking in authenticity. It's a punk movie that doesn't have any integrity or authenticity. How is that EVEN possible?
