5. “Sausage Party”
This “raunchy” “no-holds-barred” animation hit is featured on several Best of 2016 lists — including that of the venerable A.O. Scott of the New York Times — and currently resides at an exceptional 83% “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes. This can only mean one thing: Everyone at that original press screening was completely stoned — almost as much as Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Jonah Hill when they dreamed up the concept together. Obviously, we’re sad not to have been invited to do blowbacks on the fire escape with Manohla Dargis or whoever, because we’re really talking primo blazed here: It had to be the kind of sweet toke that can persuade you that fugly juvenile cartoon food orgies are delightful and hilarious, and the dead-end, doesn’t-actually-say-anything religious allegory is clever and insightful. It’s ambitious in a way few animations are, we grant you, but it squanders whatever goodwill earned by its ridiculous high concept (supermarket foodstuffs are sentient and believe that humans are Gods who will bring them to everlasting life as opposed to eating them) by going at every juncture for the crudest, dullest sex gag possible. Featuring an impressive voice cast (with Edward Norton in particular doing an uncanny Woody Allen impersonation as Sammy the Bagel) lumbered with unpleasant ethnic stereotypes (an oversexed latina “taco,” a resentful “box of grits” who ends up apparently revenge-screwing some “crackers,” a sneering Arab “lavash” flatbread and so on), the philosophy seems to be that “it’s not racist if everybody fucks in the end.” There’s only one way to get through a film this half-baked: baked.
4. “Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice”
The film that coined “Martha” as the hip 2016 safeword of choice for dangerous sex play, there is some degree of internal debate surrounding Zack Snyder‘s clanking, clunking, gruntingly dunderheaded superhero mash-up. Not about whether it’s any good, obviously, just whether it’s better or worse than its Juggalo younger brother in the WB clan, “Suicide Squad.” One point of view has Ayer’s film as more obnoxious because it’s so skeezily nihilist, whereas ‘BvS’ actually tries to be about something. But the flip side to that is exactly the same reasoning — at least “Suicide Squad” is aware, somewhere in its Ritalin OD-ing pea brain, that it’s incredibly stupid. ‘BvS,’ by contrast, is so choked up with a sense of messianic self-importance that it’s clear we’re supposed to treat this movie, about an unkillable alien’s spat with a billionaire in a bat costume, with semi-religious reverence, and I’m sorry, but we’re trying to save that up for Martin Scorsese‘s “Silence.” Its disjointed storytelling, incoherent characterization, gobsmackingly stupid plot twists and awful performances amount to a thundering disdain for the audience, many of whom will nonetheless continue to defend it, or rather attack its detractors. So yeah, you can come at us again all you like, brahs; we’re going to continue to argue that everyone — the general audience, the cast, the characters, the VFX team, even the endlessly deep-pocketed execs who apparently just kept throwing money at it, and especially you, the fans — deserve better than Zack Snyder’s God Complex: The Movie.
3. “Nine Lives”
If this overlit Barry Sonnenfeld waking nightmare were just another “it takes supernatural intervention to make a rich white guy pay attention to his family” film, it would be a graceless, garishly CG one. But “Nine Lives” is worse: It’s a car-crash of the inane movie moralism of the genre’s heyday — the mid-’90s — with the ethical apocalypse represented by 2016. Which is almost impressive for a Kevin Spacey/talking cat picture. You see, Spacey doesn’t just play any billionaire more focused on ego and dollar than wife and children — he plays a Trump simulacrum, right down to the skyscraper and name-brand obsession, here signaled by his name actually being “Brand.” Tom Brand (Spacey) is your basic bastard, unmoved by the patient sweetness of current wife (weep for Jennifer Garner), the cliched bitchiness of his alcoholic ex (Cheryl Hines), the desperate corporate striving of his adult son (including a fake-out suicide attempt, ha ha ha) or the devotion of his constantly disappointed 11-year-old daughter, who does nothing with her spare time except look at Daddy-related memorabilia. But then he gets bodyswapped with a cat he bought at a mystical shop owned by Christopher Walken on full “Click” duty… Here’s a representative “joke”: The cat dangles from a pole à la the “Hang in there, baby!” poster. Except, perhaps aware this is a niche-y oldster gag in a 21st-century family film, it’s explained three or four times over, with a pull-back-to-reveal the actual poster (inexplicably pinned up in the sleek corporate HQ), a lingering close-up, and a character walking right past saying “Hang in there!” Our only advice with “Nine Lives” is: Don’t hang in there, baby — it’s narcotizing, badly made bullshit, and in suggesting that Every Heartless Oligarch Has A Soul Worth Redeeming, Corporations Should Be Run By Dynasties and Rich White Guys Will Come Around If Everyone Around Them Pipes The Fuck Down And Waits For Divine Intervention, it’s part of the problem.
2. “Nina”
Cynthia Mort‘s biopic of the legendary Nina Simone had the distinction of being infamous before a frame was even shot — as soon as it was announced that Zoe Saldana had been cast in the central role. In a different, more interesting world, the film that slunk out of perdition into release four years later would have been a vindication — after all, complaining that Saldana was “too pretty” and “too lightskinned” a black woman to play Simone sets a fairly dubious precedent that was, in its way, more racist than the issue being protested. In this alternate universe, Mort and Saldana would have silenced critics with a powerhouse biopic which channelled Simone’s immense, burning, furious talent despite the differences in physical appearance and ethnic background. But it is not a more interesting world, and “Nina” is thoroughly, spectacularly ill-conceived — misbegotten in ways that seem like they just have to be the result of special “no, let’s really fuck this up” effort. Wearing a prosthetic nose, her skin darkened and mottled to a kind of corpselike lividity, Saldana succeeds in looking nothing like herself, but she also looks nothing like Nina Simone, only now she’s in blackface. And she also sounds nothing like Nina Simone, so the baffling decision that Saldana should sing the songs herself, means her perfectly pleasant voice essentially renders Simone’s earthquake blockbuster hits (“Feeling Good,” “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” “Young Gifted and Black,” “Sinnerman,” etc.) into polite soundalike versions you might hear at the supermarket. David Oyelowo tries to dignify proceedings with his ever-soulful presence, but even he is sold out by a script that has no idea what story it’s telling and a group of filmmakers with zero understanding of what made the incandescent Simone great in the first place. Wretched.
1. “Mother’s Day”
If there’s one element that has kept “Mother’s Day,” out of all the year’s stinkers, at the deeply uncoveted no. 1 spot on this list (it was also our Worst of the Year at the midway point), it’s the fact that, unlike many of these other titles, it’s just not going to go away. At least, not as long as it shares its name with the second Sunday in May. Like “Valentine’s Day” and “New Year’s Eve” before it (only considerably worse than both), “Mother’s Day” is destined for at least an annual dusting-off, simply because there’s a pre-ordained programming slot for it every year, and its self-explanatory title and fizzy ensemble cast — stacked with Mom’s favorites like Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Garner and Kate Hudson all valiantly flailing — make it a no-brainer pick for weary schedulers. And so Jason Sudeikis‘ mortifying karaoke routine, in which he raps in memory of his tragically deceased soldier wife so that his moppet daughter can see that he is Healing and Moving On, is destined to become as much a part of the occasion as gas-station flowers and reminder texts from your more-together siblings. An unfortunate swan song for director Garry Marshall, who passed away this year, it’s the merest shadow of the polished rom-com work for which he’ll actually be remembered, something clearly signaled by the fact that the funny moments — both of them — come in the blooper outtakes at the end. And one of them is simply one actress calling another by her real name rather than her character’s. The thinness of the “ensemble comedy” conceit, the lameness of the jokes and the general air of “I’m only on set for two days, let’s get this over with” could all be more or less forgiven, though, if the film were only inoffensive. But it’s actively horrible, crushingly regressive and nauseatingly twee about motherhood — the very institution it’s supposed to celebrate. The best way to show your mom you care this and any Mother’s Day is to keep her as far as possible away from “Mother’s Day.”
Not gonna lie, there were a whole load of other films we really hated this year even in addition to “Gods Of Egypt,” “Warcraft,” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows,” which we mention above. Some we couldn’t entice anyone to write about, some we had obviously blocked from our memories and some that hadn’t been seen by enough of us to crest the tide of loathing enough to make it onto the main list. Aside from those that made the mid-year list like “Precious Cargo,” “Hardcore Henry,” “The Forest,” “Search Party,” “50 Shades of Black” and Adam Sandler‘s typically dire “The Do-Over” (which only doesn’t appear here because we decided to exclude films without a theatrical release, which got “Special Correspondents” off the hook, too), other films we intensely disliked include: “God’s Not Dead 2,” “Ride Along 2,” “Demolition,” “Mr. Right,” “American Pastoral,” “Kill Your Friends,””Trolls,” “Keeping Up With The Joneses,” “Misconduct,” “The 5th Wave,” “The Brothers Grimsby,” “Norm of the North,” “The Boss,” “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” (huh, remember that? that was this year!), “Pride And Prejudice And Zombies,” “Mojave,” “Go With Me,” “The Adderall Diaries,” “The Choice” and “The Disappointments Room.” And as ever, a special circle of hell is reserved for this year’s Dinesh D’Souza crime against intelligence, “Hillary’s America: The Secret History Of The Democratic Party.”
Worst Television
We probably could have devoted an entire feature to Worst TV this year, but we’re already doing 20+ features this December, so give us a break. First and foremost is Martin Scorsese’s faceplant with “Vinyl.” Incredibly expensive, overwrought and extremely over-the-top, “Vinyl” was pretty much dead in the water from episode one — yep, believe it or not, but the Scorsese-directed pilot was terrible, though no one wants to really admit it (spoiler: to be fair, most of the other ones were bad, too). The murder subplot that began in episode 1 was ill-conceived, and “Vinyl” was such a mess that its showrunner Terence Winter — the “Boardwalk Empire” showrunner that HBO previously loved — was kicked to the curb. Frequent Steven Soderbergh collaborator and script fixer Scott Z. Burns was brought on to save season 2, but HBO put the show out its misery before the new team got even close to trying again.
Diversity onscreen is much-needed and we should all applaud any efforts in that direction, but whoo boy, was Marvel and Netflix’s “Luke Cage” baaad. The writing was half-baked, the dialogue corny, and its lead actor Mike Colter wooden as all get-out. Also, the tone was all over the map and too cartoonish. More “Jessica Jones” and less “Luke Cage” in the future, please.
Baz Luhrmann made a lot of buzz with his boogie-down Bronx-set show, “The Get Down,” which centers on late-’70s New York during the birth of hip-hop and the burgeoning domination of disco. Talk about tone-deaf and goofy, “The Get Down” was all over the place and a mess. Perhaps more importantly, it was Netflix’s most expensive show by a mile. Only a half-season aired, a second batch of episodes are coming in 2017, but don’t be surprised if Netflix sacks it after that.
Cameron Crowe‘s “Roadies” was canceled quick, which makes the argument that some filmmakers are just not suited to TV. “The X-Files” reunion was terrible, Woody Allen‘s “Crisis In Six Scenes” was a disaster, and “The Walking Dead” is just getting worse and worse.
Back to movies….there are even more the team didn’t like, and if you’re jonesing for more bile, some of them may turn up on our upcoming Overrated/Underrated feature, so keep your eyes peeled for that. In the meantime, cleanse your aura of all this negativity, man, by hearing us sing the praises of the year’s greatest movies in our ever-expanding Best of 2016 coverage, or by venting in the comments about how mean we are to poor, defenseless jillion-dollar ‘Batman v Superman’ until we cry “Martha!!!”