Top 25 Worst Movies of 2016

As 2016 draws to a close. We celebrate the shittiest films to one of the most shittiest years a great majority of us lived through. So here are my Top 25 Worst films of 2016

25) Ben-Hur - A completely unnecessary remake of a classic masterpiece that never needed a modern remake of the story is rushed, the action is filmed poorly, and the effects are faker than the 1956 film it was based on.

24) Ride Along 2 - A marginally better sequel than it’s predecessor, yet it's still not saying much as Hart and Cube reprise the same schtick that was equally annoying in the 2014 film.

23) Mother’s Day - [Un]fortunately Garry Marshall’s last directorial film of his career, Mother’s Day follows the same formula as his previous two films New Years Eve and Valentine’s Day but on a cheaper budget and a thinner written script 

22) Jason Bourne - When I thought the Bourne Legacy was weak, this unnecessary sequel attempts to tie up loose ends of the original trilogy but only leads up creating ridiculous open-ended questions you end up not caring for in the end.

21) Now You See Me 2 - A sequel that had nothing to offer but more of the same but with more twists than usual. I went to a press screening for this and then the film’s premiere on a separate day. On the second viewing, I spent the majority of my time sitting in the stairway making friends with security guards and Mark Ruffalo. It has its fair share of cool sequences, but in the realms of the story NYSM2 has little to nothing to offer,

20) Batman: The Killing Joke - Hey, this was in theaters for three days so yes I’m going to count it. With one of the greatest Batman comics being adapted to a full R RATED 75 minute animated DC comics feature, what did we get? A 30-minute episode of Sex and the City centered on Batgirl that turns into the rushed version of the adaptation we wanted. It feels like three different movies as we have one Batgirl movie, a rushed Joker backstory film, and finally, The Batman Killing Joke movie that we wanted which none of them connect together. The only saving grace of the film is the voice work of Mark Hamill who can easily save every Batman related property solely on his voice. Other than that it is a huge disappointment.

19) Rules Don’t Apply - Warren Beatty’s return to cinema since the year I was born, Rules Don’t Apply is a huge mess. For a majority of films I’ve seen this year that featured poor editing (most notably Ghostbusters), this is the worst I’ve seen this year. The film is charismatic and  ambitious just as Warren Beatty, but the film just comes off as a two vignette of shenanigans with Howard Hughes

18) Alice Through the Looking Glass - What if you gave Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland the Days of Future Past treatment? You get this sequel nobody asked for and nobody cared for. The film opened with the Just Like Fire P!ink music video, but holy crap did I prefer that music video on an hour and 40-minute loop than rewatching this film. The effects are incredibly less impressive than it’s predecessor, the characters serve little to no purpose to the story, and Alice is just plain unlikable due to one dumb decision after another. This movie was the only dud of the winning distribution streak Disney was on beforehand.

17) Mechanic: Resurrection - As the first Mechanic was dark and gritty and entertaining, this film is the complete opposite. This film is the Adam Sandler of Jason Statham films for the first 30 minutes is Bishop on vacation and you’re sitting in the theater waiting for something cool to happen. It does feature one cool scene but the rest of the film is run of the mill. It’s the generic your princess is in another castle action film centered on a romance with Jessica Alba that is incredibly more unbelievable than any of the action you see Bishop do in the entire film.

16) Ratchet & Clank - Rainmaker Entertainment’s second film boasts dazzling animation, but this video game adaption is dull, unfunny, and full of nothing but unlikable characters. As everyone picked on The Angry Birds Movie for being an Angry Birds Movie, people forget that it was trying to tell a story and deliver a message. This movie has none of that. It barely even has a clear focus and the film is named RATCHET & CLANK! For a family film, The Angry Birds Movie tried. This did not. The only redeeming quality of the film is the new Ratchet & Clank video game adaption based on the film based on the game, other than that this film is nothing but a forgettable failure. It hurts too, because due to the low box office receipts we probably won’t even see the studio’s next film which was supposed to be the Sly Cooper movie which has arguably a much better story to tell than Ratchet & Clank, but due to this being an epic fail, it’ll be a miracle if we do get it.

15) Dirty Grandpa - What if we got acting Academy Award-winning legend Robert DeNiro to act like your 11-year-old juvenile delinquent younger brother who just watched porn and believes he’s now sexually active because of this and pair him up with Zac Efron as a straight man Zac Efron? You get one of the most disheartening comedies you feel ashamed DeNiro starred in since Little Fockers. There’s a moment where he even has to drop an “N” bomb during karaoke and when you pray to god he doesn’t, he does it anyways. It’s that level of pathetic. 

14) Zoolander 2 -Yes I went to the premiere of this film and I will say it was one of the coolest premieres I went to. I sat behind Ninja of Die Antwoord, held a conversation with Kyle Mooney for the first time, and did the Blue Steel with Ben Stiller. Yeah, I had a fun time at this film’s premiere, but this film is abysmally hard to sit through. It takes whatever intelligence of the first Zoolander and squanders it to the dumbest and the laziest excuse of comedy sequels by doing the same gags as the predecessor that made it original and fun in the first place. It’s the Dumber and Dumberer To of Ben Stiller films. It’s sad because I loved the first Zoolander and loved different elements of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty but this is just a huge disappointment that you know Stiller is more capable of doing. It’s not even his fault, it was the fault of fans who pressured him to do a sequel when you know there isn’t much to build upon especially 15 years after the first film. 

13) Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice - A near 3-hour snoozefest of a superhero film that tries so hard to be political while being a lead up into the Justice League by any means necessary yet failing to meet in the middle. I remember leaving the IMAX theater at 10 PM after the screening when I saw this at 8 and feeling exhausted. When I saw Doctor Strange at the same IMAX theater, I came out around the same time excited, happy and blown away. It's really frustrating when the film builds its political statement storyline that was built on the critical backlash of the destruction in Man of Steel up so much to ultimately forgetting about it and add much more destruction in the final act. It was Snyder trying so hard not to be Snyder that he was so tired by not being Zack Snyder that by the end the most Zack Snyder came out in ways you've never seen before.

But what really insulted me was not only the poor character choices, poor casting of Eisenberg as Luthor, or the poor CG design of Doomsday, but when I thought in the theater, “Jesus they are throwing everything including the kitchen sink with this movie,” Batman literally took a kitchen sink and threw it over Superman’s head. I call bullshit on that. Something bout that really pissed me off. Maybe it’s because Snyder tries to be too deep with subliminal messages or tries to integrate certain themes in his films, but this was a thing I KNOW  Snyder did as a joke to the audience and I consider him bitter asshole for it because I think he knows that this film was throwing everything including the damned kitchen. sink Watching this film was a chore to sit through and could never bring me to watch again. But hey, Ben Affleck Batman kicked ass, though.

12) Ice Age: Collision Course - Where The Fast and the Furious franchise started to grow around their fifth film, Ice Age reached so low that it refuses to die. What makes this such an aching pain is that this is the fifth sequel to a film that was entertaining, featured great characters, and had a lot of emotions. Go back to the scene where Manny, Diego, and Sid are in the cave with the baby where you see Manny’s backstory from the art on the wall. Here’s the video to help you remember.

This scene made this an Academy Award nominated feature back in 2002. Now go watch the the trailer for Collision Course. Tell me it doesn’t break your heart to see this is what this franchise became. I knew it breaks mine.

11) Why Him? - It’s great to see such an actor of high-caliber like Bryan Cranston who was nominated for an Oscar last year to limit himself to bathroom humor and having the endure the uncanny nuisance that is a constantly cursing James Franco in this R-rated reverse Meet the Parents filled with nothing but juvenile humor aimed at teenagers. Wait, no it's not. It's actually rather quite degrading.

10) Nine Lives - Do I need to say much? Kevin Spacey is the voice of a CG cat in a cheaply made production from the director of all of the Men in Black films that somehow found it’s way to a big screen. Granted I had fun with this but at the end of the day, it's a terrible film that you’ll stumble into on Netflix someday as you cringe and scroll left to watch anything else.

9) The Brothers Grimsby - While Why Him? featured a lot of juvenile humor, The Brothers Grimsby is filled with NOTHING  BUT JUVENILE HUMOR that makes up to be an 83-minute film when it feels like an 183. This humor would be considered daring in the 1990s but due to the number of comedies similar to this that was made much more clever, the film keeps trying to go raunchier as it considers itself as clever for doing it but as an audience member you know it’s immature as hell. It pisses me off actually because of a friend of mine saw this at a screening in December of 2015 and said how good it was, but was unsure how I’ll feel because of the juvenile humor. Well, at least he knew my detest for it because this film hardened it.

8) When the Bough Breaks - I broke my reviewing format to write a personal letter to Screen Gems in hopes for not another one of these lazy and generic black thrillers for the certain black demographic who eat this up year after year. I still find this counter-programming cruel and offensive, but honestly, I kept laughing at how terrible each action a character made was. But then my inner critic kicked back in as the film was drawing to its conclusion with an ending that had me laughing so hard I screamed at the top of my lungs “FUCK YOU!” with the audience I saw this with. And everyone laughed as I was laughing with them. 

7) Assassin’s Creed - *insert terrible video game to film adaptation here* No story, no clever dialogue, no character, and most of all no entertainment value at all. NEVER adapt an M rated video game into a PG13 film and make it bloodless. 

6) Yoga Hosers - I met Kevin Smith at the premiere of a certain film that is on the list and I said: “hey can’t wait for Yoga Hosers.” I waited for all the way until December to watch this and wow….this is one of the worst comedies I’ve seen this year. I only had two chuckles, but something about this fascinated me Don’t get me wrong, this film is an atrocious piece of garbage that is cheap and poorly put together in the realms of filmmaking, but I was just drawn of how low the film would turn. One minute we have these girls singing, then their crush being a Satanist, then bad effects of bratwurst nazis, it goes on and on. I can’t imagine what cinematic value this had to be given an actual theatrical release. SPEAKING OF WHICH!

5) Norm of the North - Yeah I have no idea how the hell this film ended up in a theater. I remember seeing this trailer attached to The Peanuts Movie last year and a 4-year-old boy in my row questioned, “what type of movie is that?” I laughed so hard until I realized, “shit I actually have to watch this sometime next year.” God damn this is movie hard as hell to sit through. The story is ill-conceived, the animation is not worthy enough to be in a theater or on Netflix for at least Netflix animated material are ten times better than this, and most of all it is dull dull dull DULL. No parent should let their child be anywhere near to this film by any means whatsoever. If you are that parent that decide to put this on over a film like Zootopia, then congratulations you are a fool. I even recently went to a Rite Aid and saw this film on DVD for sale for the price of $5. I kid you not. Norm of the North, a film released in January of 2016 is on sale at Rite Aid for $5. You can get a nice meal with that money, though. 

4) Masterminds - Not one laugh. Not one chuckle. Not one smile. For 90 minutes I sat in a theater tired, angry, and in desperate need of an Advil because for a comedy called Masterminds this gave me nothing but a master migraine. I’m not going to blame my experience from the terrible improv group that did a skit before the movie to the woman three seats down from me that was obnoxiously laughing at every line, but I’m going to blame Relativity Studios who released it so recent when it was scheduled for release over a year and a half ago. I would rather accept the pain then than the pain now.

3) Suicide Squad - I went to the world premiere of this movie. ONE OF THE FIRST PEOPLE TO WATCH THE MOVIE. I was hype. I met plenty of people (yes including Kevin Smith). I was ready. As I sat in my seat, David Ayers came out to introduce the movie. That was when someone sitting right behind me screamed “fuck Marvel,” this got Ayers so riled up he repeated it. As the entire crowd cheered, I looked around and said: “guys this is your what third DCEU movie, you don’t the right to say that.” After it was all said and done, I left thinking meh. When I was on my train ride home I thought about the film and got pissed off. I abandoned any good judgment for every upcoming DCEU film faster than I abandoned my belief in God. This led to the majority of my friends arguing with me claiming this film is any good and this argument went on for weeks with various people. 

It’s insulting more than BVS because it boasted how much it was going to be different from every DCEU film which in retrospect it did for it is the worst film for being more of the same. It shamelessly follows every cliche in the blockbuster genre, the superhero genre, and action movie genre. It’s just the fact that this was one of everyone’s list of films to look forward to in 2016, because of the cast and the characters. It had the cast but didn’t have any character. Will Smith is Will Smith and Margot Robbie does a great job portraying Quinn that’s it. Every word of dialogue is the equivalent of regurgitated cheese, the story is as thin as a sheet of paper, the action is dull and directed so poorly that you don’t care for the fate for anyone, the motivations make little to no sense, Jared Leto is so bad that it adds a reason to my excitement for seeing Zach Galifianakis Joker in The Lego Batman Movie This was DC’s last chance and they ultimately fucked it up. Big time.

Just watch this video review from IHE or this from Ralphthemusicmaker both of them summarizes all of my thoughts and issues of this film in a nutshell.

2) Shut In - Have you ever wanted to see Naomi Watts in a shitty movie where you can make the joke, Naomi Watt are you doing in this movie? Well, Shut In is the perfect film for you. This movie lacks any thrills or intensity or cinematic value to make you consider it as a worthy viewing  The only good use I can think of for this movie is presenting it to a film class for a lesson titled “How to NOT make a Thriller film.” The only good thing out of seeing this movie was getting to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2 weeks before release. Other than that this is a bottom bargain bin thriller that manages to take the genre back 20 steps.

On the day of January 29th, I went to the theater after a long month of not sitting in a theater. Mainly due to the blizzard in NYC the week beforehand. I went to the theater to see the only four films I would actually bring myself to watch, because JANUARY movies. Of those four films three are on the list. The first film I saw was Ride Along 2 then Kung Fu Panda 3 and the last was Dirty Grandpa. But the third was the most angering and offensive films I sat through in my entire life

1) Fifty Shades of Black - Another Marlon Wayans spoof that spoofs a film which was based on a fanfiction of Twilight. As an African-American male who wants to pursue a career in screenwriting, this movie gave me the inspiration to write many stories to not only create wholesome entertainment but, to now run Wayans out of a job because this is the most offensive film he’s created to date. It does nothing but whore out stereotypical black humor, cut to lazy cutaway gags that lead up to a sex joke that parody an entirely different movie only to make another offensive black joke that’s twice as offensive as the previous one. It’s annoying, angering, and offensive to every African-American male or female. It crosses the border from Marlon Wayans being a talentless hack into Marlon Wayans into a self-hating African-American that needs to have a restraining order from Hollywood, a typewriter, and most of all a camera, I hate this movie so much. It’s more racist than the early Warner Bros cartoons that portray black people as monkeys. What makes it even worse is that Wayans had the audacity to:

• Call out Kevin Hart for getting more roles than him in every black comedy (primarily because he’s funny)
• Speak for African-American actors in Hollywood on why they don’t get nominated for Oscars when actors like him are making movies that set African-Americans back 20 steps.
• And most of all insulting people on Twitter for not liking his movie. At least with Kevin Smith, he respects everyone’s opinions about his films, but Marlon Wayans is a childish and cruel motherfucker.

I still can’t believe since January this film stuck with me as the worst film and I regret nothing putting this as number one.

Fuck Marlon Wayans.

SO There you have it that was my top 25 worst films of 2016. 

What were your worst films? 

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