A year of dopes and blunders

The very worst movies of 2018

Being a film critic is more fun than a barrel of monkeys, but every barrel has a bottom. When people tell me I have the greatest job in the world, I remind them that I had to see — well, these films.

HONOURABLE MENTION Death Wish

This list goes to 11 so we can include Eli Roth’s gruesome, unnecessary remake of the 1974 original. Bruce Willis plays an ER doctor turned vigilante. So on the one hand he removes bullets from people, and on the other he learns to put them back in, only much faster. Pro-gun, anti-thought.

10. Tomb Raider

Alicia Vikander stars as Lara Croft 2.0, some 15 years since the last franchise sputtered out after two movies. Cribbing heavily from that film as well as Raiders, Bond, Bourne, Batman, etc., nothing about this reboot feels remotely fresh. Vikander’s the best thing in it, and even she looks pained to be there.

9. Selfie from Hell

The 90-second Youtube video Selfie From Hell has millions of views and features a woman whose selfies show an evil-looking figure in the background, getting closer with each photo. The movie stretches it to 50 times that length. I tried that with a Slinky once. It wasn’t pretty.

8. Mortal Engines

A thousand years in the future, cities on tank treads rampage through Europe in this Peter Jackson production, based on a 2001 novel. Equal parts steampunk, Mad Max and especially Star Wars, it’s gorgeous to look at, but hampered by bad writing and a style of shooting I’m calling cinematobvious.

7. Aquaman

Jason Momoa and Amber Heard have about as much chemistry as oil and water in DC’S latest superhero extravaganza, which even at two and a quarter hours goes down faster than the Titanic. The plot is a plodding one-two of conversations interrupted by marauding aqua-troops, as Aquaman goes looking for a magic trident.

6. Gauguin

Was Paul Gauguin an artistic genius or a syphilitic pedophile? History says both, thanks to his Polynesian paintings and the 13-yearold he married while there. But this French film says little about the first trait, and seems to celebrate the second. Dull and distasteful, particularly in the #Metoo era, but really any time.

5. Pacific Rim: Uprising

The 2013 original from Guillermo del Toro looks like The Shape of Water next to this appalling monsters-vs.robots sequel, which features few returning cast members and one winsome newcomer named Cailee Spaeny. This is her first film. Uprising suggests the direction her career will take next.

4. The Happytime Murders

Very adult but not very funny, this is the story of a Los Angeles cop-turned-private detective trying to solve the mounting homicides of the cast of a ‘90s sitcom called The Happytime Gang. Save Melissa Mccarthy, most of the performers are puppets, but that’s neither here nor there when the jokes fall as flat as these do.

3. Henchmen

Boldly going where the Minions already went, Henchmen is the animated story of a 16-year-old orphan named Lester (Thomas Middleditch) who longs to be a supervillain — and yet we’re supposed to root for him? One-dimensional, poorly drawn and full of poo jokes, it certainly knows how to be bad.

2. Robin Hood

Be warned; director Otto Bathurst and his cast of merry men (and a few women) will demand two hours of your life to take in this ill-written, miscast, miserably performed, historically inaccurate story that cost an estimated $90-million to make. In other words, Robin Hood steals from the poor and gives to the rich. Taron Egerton and Jamie Foxx star. Merry? Not very.

1. Little Italy

Like STDS, this film wasn’t much talked about and is best avoided. Hayden Christensen and Emma Roberts are the unlucky, not-very-italian actors saddled with performing in this cliché-ridden, modernday Romeo and Juliet, set in Toronto’s Little Italy and scrubbed clean of any poisonings, sword fights or deadly misunderstandings. On the plus side, no gnomes!