Friday 13 January 2017

Five Most Disappointing Movies of 2016


2016 has been a pretty decent year for films, in my opinion at least. Naturally, some of the most highly anticipated films of the year were disappointing, such as Suicide Squad and Batman Vs Superman (the latter I had no hope for whatsoever). However, there have been some great films outside the mainstream (where the films were pretty disappointing) but today I'm going to focus on the films I was looking forward to but let me down.


Highrise


Having liked much of Ben Wheatley’s previous efforts (especially the shockingly brutal Kill List) to find Highrise wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be is very disappointing. There’s plenty that is very impressive about the film, the post modern set design is terrific, and the special effects, which creates the feeling of being in a tall building, are perfect. What I didn’t like was the general incoherence of the film, there’s extravagantly dressed parties at the top whilst Luke Evans dances at the camera (for some reason). People argue that the works of J.G. Ballard are unfilmable, Ben Wheatley has proven that.

Hail Caesar
Once again, I liked most of the filmmakers (the Coen brothers in this case) works before Hail Caesar, however, their latest effort was probably one their weaker films. Looking back at Hollywood cinema of the past, and featuring the usual Coen stuff (zanny characters, bizarre plots, and a very loosely connected storyline), the film just doesn’t work. The issue is the storyline just feels unconnected and directionless in a way that’s episodic, rather than anything intentional, as some characters and their stories are more interesting than others. It’s a bit of confused film, lacking satirical bite and cutting humour.

Cafe Society


Cafe Society is quite similar to Hail Caesar as it’s a satirical look at Hollywood’s past. Like Hail Caesar it fails to do this in a funny way and like Hail Caesar it's a narrative mess (its easier to forgive Hail Caesar for this). Cafe Society is Woody Allen in sleepwalking mode, but he has made a film a year since the 1980s so it’s not a surprise that one of his films will miss the mark. The production design, cinematography, and costume design are all exceptional, but the fault lies with the film’s story where Woody Allen’s script, about a love triangle, fails to grip, and is peppered with name-dropping of the stars of a bygone era.

Suicide Squad


A film that almost literally everyone was disappointed by. It’s a film that stunk of studio interference which, unsurprisingly, led to a messy, incoherent film. Everyone was hoping for an ensemble film as fun as The Avengers, but with extra bite and more violence, instead it was a film that failed to build chemistry between the squad members and took the horrendous misstep of making it almost impossible to see what’s happening in the final fight scene.

Love and Friendship


Critics loved this movie, and the trailers seemed pretty good but it didn’t click for me. Whit Stillman’s script has moments of humour, but I could not care about the banal lives of these people. Kate Beckinsale was good, and was the visual appeal of the film, but I found very little of interest outside that.

15 comments:

  1. THANK YOU for putting Hail, Caesar here. Sometimes I feel like the only person that hated that movie.

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    1. Haha. You are never alone in disliking a movie.

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  2. Glad to see someone else who didn't enjoy High-Rise!
    I did like Hail, Caesar! but it was nowhere near as good as I'd hyped it up to be :(

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    1. I feel thats the general feeling with Hail, Caesar.

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  3. I agree with all except L&F which I quite liked and Cafe Society which I haven't seen yet but yeah the other ones were such let downs :/

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    1. I am certainly in the minority when it comes to L and F

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  4. Cafe Society and Hail, Caesar were...good, but far from great and could have been so much better.

    I loved the hell out of Love & Friendship, though ;-)

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    1. Haha. I'm starting to feel alone in my dislike ot L&F

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  5. I've only seen Suicide Squad. I actually liked it, but understand it was disappointing to most.

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    1. I might check out the extended verson. See its if any better.

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  6. Part of the misfire in High-Rise, I think, was departing from J.G. Ballard’s theme in favor of one about class struggle. Class struggle can be a fine subject for a movie, but it was a secondary issue at most for J.G. Instead, the novel High-Rise was something like The Lord of the Flies, but with adults and with an opposite cause. Ballard came to believe that our artificial post-modern world is deeply at variance with our animal natures and so disconnected from the sort of physical and social environment for which we evolved that psychological stress can lead to a breakdown in civilized behavior. The residents’ ids ran wild. Admittedly, this is a little hard to film.

    David Cronenberg had some success (albeit not the commercial kind) with Crash (1996) and Spielberg with Empire of the Sun, though the latter is atypical Ballard.

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    1. Thanks for the interesting comment. It certainly sounds as though Ballard does discuss complex that are tough to film.

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  7. 1) I agree with HAIL CAESAR.
    2) I didn't like CAFÉ SOCIETY, but I can't agree with it being a disappointment. Ever since he began making a movie per year, Woody has been hit-or-miss.
    3) I thought SUICIDE SQUAD was alright, but I still agree with it being a disappointment. The trailer was literally one of the best I've ever seen, so I was expecting something better.

    There were a lot of movies that people call disappointments but that I don't agree with because I wasn't expecting them to be good in the 1st place. Almost all of those were sequels and about half of them were made over 5 years after the original. With that in mind, these were the movies (aside from the aforementioned HAIL CAESAR and SUICIDE SQUAD) that disappointed me the most:
    -CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON 2.
    -WARCRAFT (I know there are no good video game adaptations but, with Duncan Jones behind the camera, this one seemed like it could've ended that trend).
    -X-MEN APOCALYPSE.
    -ZOOLANDER NO 2.

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    1. Yeah. I agree. I haven't include BvsS because I had very low expectations for it. I actually enjoyed Warcraft and didn't care enough about Zoolander to find either Zoolander and Warcraft disappointing. X-Men I agree with and perhaps should have included it.

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  8. Yep, Kill List was effective, especially that last third. Agree on High-Rise, a struggle to even care what happens. Love and Friendship wasn't as good as the hype suggested.
    Everybody Wants Some!! was disappointing and bland to me, not among Linklater's best. The animated The Little Prince was also really disappointing, weaker than the book.

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