I've written out my predictions for movies that will likely get nominated for the upcoming Best Picture Oscar set to be handed out on the third Sunday of February.
I'm also going to call out a few movies that I feel are ripe for the picking at the 2015 Golden Raspberry Awards (a.k.a. The Razzies), which will be announced the day before the Academy takes the stage.
There are so many movies that come out and so many of them are stinkers. One of the most important elements of my position as film critic is to warn people ahead of time so that they don't have to waste time and money on them.
That's why the Raspberries were created: to counter the hype and to call out all of the sniggering buffoons who play with hundreds of millions of dollars to create piles of wasteful entertainment. Like The Monuments Men, an atrocity if ever there was one.
Some of these are single nominations while others are grouped together for reasons of consistency.
The 35th ceremony will be held on Feb. 21. Here are my choices for Worst Film of 2014.
The Monuments Men
It sounds like a winning a group of non-soldiers going to the front lines of the Second World War to save cultural artifacts before the Nazis destroy them. This could have been Oscar material, except that this passion project was more of a George Clooney lovefest to himself. He signed up all of his buddies (like Matt Damon, Bill Murray and John Goodman) and they all just schmoozed their ways through a self-aggrandizing piece of American nationalist garbage that did more to highlight its stars' smiles than it did the timeless works of art it purported to idealize. Bah!
The Legend of Hercules, or Hercules, or both
It's hard to tell which one was which, so I'll just call out both Hercules movies from last year, one of which starred The Rock. The other one didn't. One was directed by Brett Ratner, one of the co-directors behind Movie 43, last year's big Razzie winner. The other was directed by Renny Harlin, who has five Razzie nominations to his discredit. Both featured needless special effects in place of necessary storyline and character development. Neither featured anything even remotely inspiring or epically heroic.
Left Behind, Saving Christmas, Heaven is for Real
This is a new trend in moviemaking: catering scripts specifically to satisfy the fundamentalist Christian audience. That's all fine and good but none of these have the gravitas necessary to pull off anything with religious weight because neither Nicolas Cage, Kirk Cameron or Greg Kinnear have the kind of dramatic persona that carried Charlton Heston or Laurence Olivier to the heights during their careers. Make one of these movies with Russell Crowe or Mel Gibson and then we'll start to see something good.
300: Rise of an Empire, or Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
Poor Eva Green. She was box office poison last year, as she appeared in two similar films that both stank up theatres like a carton of old milk left under the back row seats.
The long-awaited sequels to Frank Miller graphic novel adaptations 300 and Sin City both missed their marks by about five or six years. Major characters didn't return or were played by different actors. Stories needed a few other drafts to tighten things up and improve their pacing. Also, there probably should have been a level of campiness to help everyone understand that they were meant to be fun. Instead, they were utterly, totally and completely dreadful.
Transformers: Age of Extinction
Any year that sees a new Transformers movie released is a year where an automatic Raspberry is awarded. These movies are so bad that they not only assault viewers' senses but they also injure the very state of cinema. Director Michael Bay should be convicted of art crimes for these abominations. He already has one Razzie for a previous Transformers movie, the same one that also won him a Sexist Pig Award (yes, that's an actual award). Perhaps he should just get a lifetime Razzie followed by a court-ordered ban from ever stepping behind the camera again.
This was the fourth in the series and the first to introduce dinosaur transformers, digitally animated robotic creatures that somehow have more character and charisma than Mark Wahlberg. Yes, there were lots of explosions and special effects. No, there wasn't anything special about any of it.
The Lego Movie
First of all, this is one big lie. There wasn't one single piece of European construction toy plastic on screen. What there was, however, was a frenetic, nauseating and stupefying story all set with limitless toy marketing potential. You've seen toys based on movies (like Star Wars figurines) and movies based on toys (like Battleship)? Just wait till you see toys based on movies based on toys. Almost certainly there will be an expanding cinematic universe that will result in even more toy lines: think Batman in a Star Wars ship. Just think of all of the little blocks that you're going to step on in bare feet in the middle of the night! This is my choice for Worst Film Razzie of 2014 hands down.
