2009 has turned out to be a very good year for film. It was the year that Heath Ledger got a little help with his friends and was able to see his final performance brought to screen in the Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus. It was the year audiences were scared shitless by a small indie ghost story about a woman tormented by a mischievous demon in Paranormal Activity. It also saw the rebirth of Star Trek and The Terminator, the former being far better than the latter and also saw Mickey Rourke return to fighting form (bad pun intended) in The Wrestler. Critics obviously forgot his fairly major role in Sin City. Brad Pitt aged backwards, Michael Bay lost the plot completely (figuratively and literally), Sam Rockwell acted with himself, Wolverine came along and no-one cared, Tom Hanks bored us all as Robert Langdon and the team behind Watchmen just bored us albiet in a visually impressive way. James Cameron returned with a film that was brilliantly mediocre and Stephen Sommers returned in spectacularly retarded form with GI: Joe. Pixar remained the undisputed heavyweight champions of animation, the European market showed us they can do horror too (Martyrs, Let The Right One In), and the Saw franchise managed to get back on track with its surprisingly good 6th entry.
Whilst there has been a lot to marvel at this year there has also been some unadulterated garbage. Whilst I personally think there hasn't been as much trash as in previous years, when cinema was bad, it was really bad. As with every year, there were some that went unseen. Dance Flick for one, The Final Destination for another. I also never saw Knowing (at least all the way though), but what follows is my bottom 5 of 2009 as I saw them. They are:
5) Watchmen:
This is here primarily down to the sheer disappointment I felt after dwelling on the film for a couple of days. The film is stunning visually but by after the first hour I really was horribly bored. Visuals aside, the film is a flat carbon copy of its source material and whilst this works for less cerebral efforts like Sin City and 300, Watchmen is so dense, so laden with ideas and subtext, that it is all but impossible to convey that effectively on film. I also dislike Snyder as a director. Some of the choices he makes here are baffling. His use of slo-mo is more irritating than it is cool and the level of violence is unnecessarily bloody (in the case of Night Owl and Silk Spectre, it goes completely against the grain of the characters).
For me, Watchmen was like a good looking house of cards. Pretty to look at but ultimately gets violently knocked down by a grinning Zach Snyder. No movie missed the mark as much for me as this. The graphic novel is a masterpiece. This isn't.
4) The Taking of Pelham 123:
I actually enjoyed this film more than I did Watchmen but the reason it features higher is that at least Watchmen tried something different. I may have felt it didn't work but it did try. Pelham 123 goes lazily through the motions and produces a needless remake that's bogged down by John Travolta's overacting and Tony Scott's spastic direction. The formula is so brilliantly simple (group takes train hostage, group will kill one hostage a minute until demands are met) yet everyone involved manages to fuck it up.
The interaction between Travolta and Washington is at least a relatively entertaining but as soon as the focus is drawn away from them the film crumbles. There are needless sub-plots (one involving a hostage communicating with his girlfriend via web-cam never goes anywhere) and back-story and the third act is particularly dire. No one involved seems to even be trying.
3) X-Men Origins: Wolverine:
This is a film that suffered from what I like to call "Alien 3 syndrome" in that it was beset by studio interference, multiple re-writes and last minute re-shoots. There is just too much thrown in, a lot of it completely needless. Do we really need to know where Wolverine got his leather jacket from? What is the point in casting someone as recognisable as Ryan Reynolds when the character of Deadpool rocks up for all of ten seconds? What the fuck is the purpose of Gambit other than to appease the fans? In fact what the fuck was the purpose of the movie at all?
It's all very messy. The accomplished cast try to make the best of it (Jackman's dedication is such that he also has a producing credit) but they're all futilely trying to polish a massive turd. They failed.
2) Friday the 13th:
Ok, so I've never liked a Friday the 13th movie (unless you count Freddy vs. Jason which I enjoyed immensely) and alarm bells should've been ringing when it was announced Marcus Nispel would be directing (the man behind the risible Texas Chainsaw remake) but I was honestly shocked at just how badly he fucked up the generic teenage stalk 'n' slash formula. Even something as fundamentally bad as My Bloody Valentine 3D managed to play it so tongue in cheek (helped by some unashamedly exploitative 3D effects) that it managed at least to be fun. Fun doesn't even come into the equation here.
In typical Friday the 13th style the deaths are grisly yet unimaginative, it's paced to the point of tedious boredom and it lacks any sense of tension and is, therefore, not remotely scary or shocking. It's been done many times before and has frequently been done better. On the back of this, the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street is looking far less promising.
1) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen:
I find it very funny that Michael Bay's name is attached to my two least favourite films of the year. I wont rant too much here as those who know me are perfectly aware of my dislike for this film but, in pure and simple terms, I hated this film. Whilst the dialogue and acting and such are no better or worse than the first movie, it's Bay's lack of restraint that is the film's ultimate undoing. If this is a glimpse of the world in which Michael Bay lives out his fantasies I don't want to ever see it again. It's a terrifying place where robots can be unintentionally racist, all women are impossibly beautiful (and constantly filmed in slow motion), millions of dollars of damage is the norm and if you happen to be an innocent bystander you are probably going to die. It's all so lovingly shot that I wouldn't put it passed Bay to have had an erection during filming.
Question: If the robots can now look like humans why are they still running around pretending to be vehicles?
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is, without a doubt, the worst film of the year. It is a hateful thing with few redeemable features, if any. As my friend Mr David Camp said upon viewing it: "it's more of a £200 million ego trip than a move". Bay's next film is Transformers III. Then Bad Boy 3… (puts gun to head. Pulls trigger)
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