At the end of last week, Stan's "2022 in film (Ann and Stan)" and Ann's "2022 in film (Ann and Stan)" went up at their sites. This week, they looked at the worst, see Ann's "Worst films of 2022" and Stan's "10 Worst films of 2022" below:
That's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "THE PEW loses it." Ann and Stan here with one more joint-post following up on our "2022 in film (Ann and Stan)" is their annual look at the best in film. and Stan's "2022 in film (Ann and Stan)"
We offered with out look at the year's finest in film. However, a few of you e-mailed asking about the worst because we had floated the idea of doing our picks for the top three films and using the rest of our space to go over the train wrecks. Well here are the ten worst films of 2022.
10) HALLOWEEN ENDS.
Hideous
film. It was supposed to be the end of the series and the ads promised
you a confrontation between Jamie Lee Curtis' Lauri and the monster
Jason. Instead, the film was about Jamie Lee's granddaughter falling in
love with a bad boy who was more evil than Jason and who torments
Jason. The big confrontation for Laurie comes in the last 20 or so
minutes of the film. Throughout, you are strung along waiting to see
what you paid to see but being forced to endure one dull courtship scene
after another that played out like a really bad teen soap opera on THE
CW. And insult to Laurie, an insult to Jamie Lee and one of the worst
films of 2023.
9) LIGHTYEAR.
There
is only one Buzz and it's Tim Allen. DISNEY tried to deny that they
weren't punishing Tim but they fired Roseanne Barr for her politics
(don't e-mail us 'racism, we're both African-American and we don't see
her joke as racist) and they dropped Tim's hit show LAST MAN STANDING.
It didn't take Patricia Heaton calling DISNEY out for everyone to
realize that Tim was pushed aside because of his politics. LIGHTYEAR
didn't just flop. It left a bad taste in the mouth that has seriously
effected other DISNEY animated releases. They need to address that
issue and they need to stop hiring people based on political stands. We
are not calling on the corporation to change their guidelines for
employees and the workplace. We actually applaud those stands. But we
are saying that it was a mistake to deny Tim the role he made famous and
it is a mistake to hire or not hire based on someone's politics. If
they're right for the role, they need to be cast in the role.
8) THE FABLEMANS.
After
the bomb that was Steven Spielberg's WEST SIDE STORY, you'd think the
great Spielberg would come back with something strong. Instead, he
offers this nonsense. Michelle Williams gives a lousy performance,
looks lousy on the screen and is a case of Jew-face. We don't approve
of Black-face. Why would we approve of Jew-face? Look her up, his
mother looked nothing like Michelle Williams. Why did he cast her? If
he saw his mother as beautiful, that's fine. We're all allowed to see
our parents in our way. But if he saw her as beautiful, he should have
cast someone like Nicole Kidman. By 2016, Michelle's looks were gone.
And so were any surprises she might deliver. Her performances have
become a standard cliche. She draws attention to herself as if to say,
"Look at me, I'm acting." Well, she's trying to at any rate. Awful
film sunk by an awful actress -- a deserved box office bomb. A big
stinking bomb.
7) AMSTERDAM.
AMSTERDAM
was another big box office bomb. And let's make a point here. BROS was
the best movie of 2022. When it wasn't selling tickets, the right-wing
was screaming bomb and cackling with glee. It ended up making back
over half its production budget (14.8 million ticket sales). Seven
weeks after it was released, THE FABLEMANS still hasn't made that much
in ticket sales nor has AMSTERDAM. And those two films had production
budgets much higher than the $20 million for BROS. They have not made
back half of their production budget. These were true bombs. And these
films deserved to bomb. A<STERDAM, from rage-a-holic David O.
Russell, was supposed to be about the attempted overthrow of the US
government -- a plot Smedley Butler exposed (see his book WAR IS A
RACKET) and one that British outlets (including the BBC) will note
Prescott Bush was a part of. But David makes a dull film that rewrites
history and turns As C.I. noted, everything about it was off including
the dialogue which in no way reflects the period and goes to what a poor
writer David is. Speaking of bombs, if you're looking for BABLYON, you
won't find it on this list. Why? Like most of North America, we
avoided the film. We're only detailing films we actually saw.
6) THE BANSHEES OF IRISHERIN.
Sadly,
we saw this. At least we caught it on HBO and didn't waste money on
tickets. It's the tale of ended friendship and, honestly, if we were
Brendan Gleeson and had to endure all those cow eye moments from Colin
Farrell, we would have ended the friendship as well. What might have
made the film work? Uh, maybe if you set the film in 1923, the people
act like it's 1923. You don't impose the present upon 100 years ago.
It could have been a modern film. But artiste Martin McDonagh chose the
setting (he wrote the script, he directed the film) and there's no
reason for it. He brings nothing of 1923 to the film. A huge waste of
time.
5) TOP GUN: MAVERICK.
For
years, Tom was groomed by older men. Robert Duval in DAYS OF THUNDER,
Paul Newman in THE COLOR OF MONEY, Dustin Hoffman in RAIN MAN . . . Paul
Rudd once compared these men to Walter Brennan during his hey day. And
now? Tom has become Walter Brennan. And grasp that by the time
Brennan was making John Ford's MY DARLING CLEMENTINE with Henry Fonda,
Brennan was only 52. That's eight years younger -- younger -- than Tom
Cruise is right now. Letting the US military dictate the script, Tom
was able to get the aerial footage that is the film's only selling
point. A woman's in the cast (Jennifer Coolidge) but Tom was more
convincing back in 1986 pretending to be attracted to Kelly McGillis.
It's really something to grasp that the only woman Tom ever had
chemistry with onscreen was Rebecca De Mornay. Even sadder, the only
person he ever seemed to be in love with onscreen was little Jonathan
Lipnicki in 1996's JERRY MAGUIRE. He's the male Joan Crawford whose
hung in by his teeth and nails for five decades of stardom. A real
shame that he has so little to show for it. Tom's lucky that AVATAR:
THE WAY OF WATER was released so late in the year. Otherwise TOP GUN:
MAVERICK would not be the biggest moneymaker of 2022. Released in the
US on December 16th and the film now has a global box office of $1,401
million. $1,488 million is how much Tom's movie grossed -- and it took a
month after its US release for it to gross a billion world wide (14
days was how long it took AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER to reach that mark).
(Both films were released earlier outside the North American market.)
4) THE WOMAN KING.
Everything
about this film was false -- including the 'heroes' of the film who, in
reality, were capturing Africans and selling them off into slavery.
False is also the notion that fatso Viola Davis could be a warrior with
that pudgy body. Angela Bassett, in BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER,
looked formidable. Viola? She just look fat. And squat. And lazy.
And that kind of describes her performance as well. The film never
reached 70 million in ticket sales in North America. A woman who looked
like a warrior might have delivered at the box office. Oh, well, maybe
Viola can find work in one of Tyler Perry's films.
3) TILL.
Grandma
Whoopi Goldberg just knew she knew what kids today wanted and it was a
bad film about Emmett Till. In her ivory castle, Whoopi doesn't know
about any events impacting African-Americans that took place after the
60s. Corn on the Boomer! So she took time off from attacking the Jews
to promote this bad film she produced and tried to act in. One critic,
you may remember, felt her performance would have been more convincing
without that fat suit. This resulted in our favorite movie moment of
2022 that was not in a movie: Whoopie fuming on THE VIEW that she wasn't
wearing a fat suit. Oh, Whoopi, next time just say "Thank you" and be
grateful that most people haven't seen you in over a decade and have no
idea just how overweight you've become. The film's a bomb. 9 million
world wide in ticket sales.
2) DON'T WORRY DARLING.
It's
a story as old Hollywood, a young ingenue puts out for a director with
the hope of a film career. The only twist? The director was a woman:
Olivia Wilde. The ingenue? The hairless like a sphynx Harry Styles.
Harry, next time you fork it over for a role, have a talented director
mold you. Olivia is not a talented director. She's now demonstrated
that with two films -- two films that North America has largely
ignored. Even when she posed -- what director doesn't -- for the cover
of VANITY FAIR with her ass exposed and in the air. The good news is
Harry's dumped her. The bad news is that MY POLICEMAN goes a long way
towards arguing that Harry's best filmwork just isn't up to speed.
1) MARRY ME.
We
both, wrongly, thought this was the film Armie Hammer got replaced on.
That, we felt, explained how the dud that is Owen Wilson ended up in
this romantic comedy. He offered no chemistry. He's a bad actor. And
no one wants Jennifer Lopez to end up with someone so milquetoast.
However, this bad film is far worse than we realized. SHOTGUN WEDDING
is the film Armie dropped out of. That film will debut on AMAZON at the
end of the month. So that means this film got a greenlight by an idiot
who wanted to pair Jennifer with Owen. By the way, grasp that 2022 was
the year we found out that Armie's wife was working with the women
floating allegations against him and her messages that have now been
published show her orchestrating the whole thing to get custody of the
kids. It's past time Hollywood stopped ostracizing Armie.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"