De Vijf Slechtste Films van 2016...

Tussen al het fraais dat de Nederlandse bioscopen haalde zaten helaas ook een aantal titels die beter niet uitgebracht hadden kunnen worden, maar helaas door snode geesten in de distributiebranche toch een bioscooprelease gegund werd. Mij viel de twijfelachtige eer ten deel om het vijftal cinematische drollen hieronder aan te zien, hetzij omdat ik er een recensie over moest schrijven (altijd leuk, gif spuien over een waardeloos gedrocht), hetzij omdat ik in een sadomasochistische of domweg onwetende bui verkeerde. Mensen met ook maar een greintje smaak kunnen deze beschouwing voor hun eigen gemoedsrust beter in zijn geheel overslaan, maar diegenen die zich interesseren voor mijn eigen bescheiden mening treffen hieronder de vijf grootste zeperds van het jaar 2016 aan. Links laten liggen is het devies.

5: Ben-Hur (Timur Bekmambetov, VS)

'Die onsterfelijke klassieker uit 1959 is nodig toe aan een remake, teneinde de blijde boodschap van het gospel wederom onder de massa te verspreiden', dacht de Evangelische producent LightWorks. Oei, dachten ze dat fout! Deze herbewerking van het elf Oscars winnende epos van weleer voegt absoluut niets toe aan het origineel en deed niets dat de vorige film niet beter deed. Hoewel de Here Christus meer schermtijd heeft gekregen (en dit keer bovendien Zijn gezicht herkenbaar in beeld wordt gebracht, zodat we kunnen zien dat het dezelfde acteur is als die kwade keizer vol bling-bling uit 300) is de speelduur vergeleken met de superieure versie amper half zo lang. Beknibbeld is er niet op de zeeslag en de wagenrennen, die er nog acceptabel uitzien ondanks het te hoge digitale gehalte. Wel is er opmerkelijk minder geld gestoken in het scenario en de personages, die plompverloren door de Antieke Wereld slenteren en een steevast fletse indruk maken. Zelfs Morgan Freeman tilt de film niet naar een hoger plan, en dat is beangstigend (hij speelde weliswaar God in Bruce Almighty, maar Gods zegen rust geenszins op dit wanproduct). Niet verrassend vloog deze peperdure productie aan de box-office net zo hard uit de bocht als de bad guy tijdens de wagenrennen.

4: The Sea of Trees (Gus van Sant, VS)

Maar liefst twee films over het intrigerende Japanse 'zelfmoordbos' Aokigahara bereikten ons dit jaar. De ene, The Forest, was een matige thriller met die rondborstige chick uit Game of Thrones. De andere, The Sea of Trees, was zo mogelijk nog slechter. Het betreft een serieus drama van een gerespecteerd regisseur, maar dat is de film nergens aan te zien. Het plot is zowel magertjes als voorspelbaar en blijkt een onsamenhangende mix van Oosterse mystiek, Westerse religie, schaamteloos melodrama en weinig enerverende thriller. Matthew McConaughey kijkt constant verveeld om zich heen op zoek naar een niet te vinden uitdaging voor zijn talent, terwijl Ken Watanabe eens te meer zijn status bevestigt ziet als de enige Japanner die Hollywood kent. Erg jammer, want uit het gegeven van een daadwerkelijk bestaand bos waar men massaal zelfmoord pleegt moet toch een fascinerender film dan dit te distilleren zijn?

3: The 9th Life of Louis Drax (Alexandre Aja, VS/Canada)

Met Horns leverde Aja een geinig en bizar allegaartje op. Met The 9th Life of Louis Drax probeert hij dat kunstje te herhalen, maar het wil niet lukken. De film is een tenenkrommend rommeltje. Absurdistische humor wordt geforceerd gepaard met weinig indrukwekkende spanning rond een zeemonster, overgoten met een ridicuul verpleegsterromannetjesplot waarin de onrealistisch sexy dokter (die vieze zweepjesman uit Fifty Shades of Grey) er met de fraaie moeder van het in coma liggende jonge slachtoffer uit de titel vandoor gaat. Plotwendingen in overvloed, maar ofwel komen ze niet als verrassing of ze zijn te belachelijk voor woorden. Dat de film tegen het einde toe opeens een opvallend serieuze lading omtrent een controversieel maatschappelijk thema krijgt, maakt de kijker vooral boos. De film is te veel in conflict met zichzelf en zwiept alle kanten uit, maar geen enkele richting blijkt de juiste.

2: Shut In (Farren Blackburn, Canada/Frankrijk)

In contrast met de vorige prutfilm, die te veel surprises behelst staat deze irritant conservatieve horrorfilm, die bovenal geen verrassingen lijkt te willen omvatten. Het plot is van begin tot einde een oefening in voorspelbaarheid, waardoor ook de schrikmomenten één voor één doodvallen. En daaraan wordt een topactrice als Naomi Watts schaamteloos verspild. Erg jammer, en bovendien is Shut In exemplarisch voor de staat van het horrorgenre in 2016, waarbij vooral de saaie, 'been there, done that' titels een release kregen en vernieuwende verrassingen als The Witch en Bone Tomahawk direct naar VOD-kanalen verbannen werden.

1: Dirty Grandpa (Dan Mazer, VS)

Het dieptepunt van 2016 is gelijk ook het dieptepunt in de lange loopbaan van de haast legendarische Robert de Niro. In deze pijnlijk onleuke poging tot hilariteit speelt hij de titelfiguur, een oude gluiperd die eigenlijk alleen maar seks met veel jongere meisjes wil hebben en daarvoor zijn relatie met zijn kleinzoon misbruikt. Vervolgens worden we onderworpen aan een eindeloze reeks grappen over ofwel drugs of seks, of allebei tegelijk. Kan iemand mij uitleggen wat er grappig is aan Zac Efron (zijn aanwezigheid is sowieso altijd al een indicatie dat we beter een andere komedie kunnen opzoeken) die De Niro's geslachtsorgaan in zijn gezicht geduwd krijgt? De Niro had waarschijnlijk een welkome afwisseling van de diverse zware drama's die zijn carrière rijk is voor ogen, maar zet zichzelf compleet voor schut en sleept anderen, zoals de ontegenzeggelijk komisch talentvolle Aubrey Plaza, mee in deze beerput van slechte smaak en Amerikaanse seksuele onzekerheden. Plaatsvervangende schaamte regeert tijdens de hele speelduur van dit abominabele misbaksel. Ik zie een hele hoop Razzies in het verschiet van dit verwerpelijke gedrocht...

Today's Review: Dirty Grandpa

Another review up for FilmTotaal:

Dirty Grandpa - recensie

I had a tough time sitting this one out in the press screening, for the simplest of reasons: it was bad. Real bad. Mind you, with a title like 'Dirty Grandpa', one would not have expected it to be much good to begin with, but this is a whole new level of badness. There simply are no redeeming features present.

First things first, there are hardly any sympathetic characters. The titular old man is a horny pervert obsessed with getting laid and leading his son astray in a whirlwind of sex, drugs and general illicit behavior. The grandson is a wimpy control freak, set to marry a total bitch. On the way to Spring Break in Florida, they meet a bunch of co-eds, including a seemingly nice girl who we know the grandson ought to hook up with immediately, but who ends up stealing his money in her first scene. Her best friend is a total slut. Not to belittle female sexuality by using this word, but there simply are no other denominations as apt as this one. Add some drug dealers, corrupt police officers and loads of partying college kids who only want to get wasted and laid, and there you have the cast of Dirty Grandpa. You'll find it a real challenge to care about any of these people.

What movie buffs would care about, is veteran actor Robert de Niro's career. Sure, he's done plenty of dramatic roles so he's entitled to have a little fun every now and then. But his audience, save for people who truly are cursed with a total lack of a sense of humor, simply won't enjoy Dirty Grandpa with him. This is just not a funny, well written or empathetic character. This old horndog has just lost his dear wife of 40 years and his first reaction is to go out and screw nubile young women. In the process, he wrecks his grandson's impending marriage (bad match though it may have been) and constantly humiliates his sexuality and belittles his character during their little road trip. This is nothing to laugh at, it's morally reprehensible. And even if this set-up would allow for some comedic potential, it's utterly wasted on an uninterrupted stream of genital jokes. There's not a single conversation between any two characters in this flick that doesn't involve 'cocks', 'asses' or other rampant assorted swearing just for the sake of swearing. Needless to say, it grows tiresome swiftly. Not to mention it's all talk and no action, save for a gratuitous shot of Efron being facially confronted with his grandfather's penis (obviously a rubber item). But when it gets down to it, the sex is tame and prudish. Or are you telling me American women really do keep their underwear on during intercourse?

Question remains, why did Robert de Niro - or any of the actors and actresses involved for that matter, since they're all making total fools of themselves, and of us for watching their disgusting antics - opt to play this part? The script was obviously terrible from the get-go. Sure, there probably was some monetary compensation involved, but I do like to think an actor of his stature isn't so down on his luck he has no choice but to accept any and all projects, no matter hoe feeble, that come his way? Maybe he's just telling his fans to go screw themselves, tired of his fabled reputation and the pressure that comes with it. I don't know what his motivation was, but the result surely won't bring happiness to many audiences. Dirty Grandpa truly has nothing to enjoy. Okay, maybe Zac Efron's bare body for his fan base. But nothing else for sure.

Today's Review: Vacation

Another review up!

Vacation - recensie

Well, that was positively awful. Of course, the current trend of making a comedy as raunchy as possible by cramming it full of dirty jokes involving excrements and unusual sexual positions has been going for quite a while now, so you can hardly blame this Vacation for that. It's not like the original movie refrained from such shenanigans. But the level of said gags is just abominably low here, making it painfully unfunny for the most part. Too bad, because I know the lead Ed Helms, of Hangover fame, is capable of funnier routines. But even he is hopelessly lost somewhere between the rim jobs and Chris Hemsworth's erection. You got a bad thing going when the holiday car is funnier that the characters driving it. But at least the car doesn't make poop jokes galore. This vehicle of Albanian make is just loaded with silly gadgets and awkward options. Not all of them a guarantee for success, but at least I chuckled over the navigation system's sultry female American voice accidentally being replaced by a seemingly outraged Korean counterpart. If translated however, it would no doubt be revealed to get in line with the rest of the ample obscenities the script contains.

As with most remakes these days, this one wouldn't have been missed if it wasn't produced at all. However, recycling the original film's plot and adding Horrible Bosses or We're the Millers type jokes to it likely saved the studio a few bucks. The story is mostly the same as its predecessor's, while some of the situations are even lifted verbatim from some of the other Vacation movies from the Eighties. It's not like this is that well known a franchise these days, so who would know, right? But if you acknowledge the status of this film as a remake by making jokes about that very fact in the actual film, you sure run the risk of people checking out the previous installments and finding out just how lazy the writing is this time around. Even such references to the original are hardly an inspired move. Remember 21 Jump Street addressing its status as a reboot by literally saying nobody at the top has any better ideas than just regurgitating old notions ad nauseam? It's a funny line, until you understand just how poignantly true it is. We don't need to hear the same argument here to hammer the point home. The movie is unhilarious enough without reminding us a better film with the same name and the same plot was produced thirty years ago. Or that we're likely to see another movie with said name and plot in a few more decades. The kids in this feature definitely appear stupid enough to make the same mistakes all over when they grow up.

Luckily, this Vacation will be swiftly forgotten. It'll prove a lot harder to get that obnoxiously catchy song Holiday Road out of our heads.

Today's Double News: this year's Razzies and some potential future candidates

Again, two bits of older news I didn't have time to post until today. You can blame the Oscars for that, just intervening with my regular routine like they own this blog.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/154145/movie_43_en_after_earth_grote_winnaars_razzies

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/154137/_wachowskis_maken_mogelijk_nieuwe_matrix

You may not have been aware of it with all the Oscar festivities going on, as is the case every year, but there were some other movies around this weekend that got to win some awards. Not the ones they hoped for no doubt, but in both major winners' cases, I really like to think the makers of these films were self-aware enough to realize they would never win Oscars with these crappy products they were unleashing on an unsuspecting audience. If not, the Razzies should have unwarped their sense of reality. The only movie I felt won undeservedly was The Lone Ranger: it was far from perfect, but definitely not in the same league of shittiness as Grown Ups 2. No wins for Adam Sandler this time though, but let's face it, both After Earth and Movie 43 proved at least as abysmal as anything Mr. Sandler ever did, if not more so. Plus, maybe there was a little too much Sandler ripping going on at the Razzies and it was simply time for a change. Sandler must make do with the various nominations this time, and I'm sure that'll agree with him. I was unlucky enough to see After Earth and witness the devastating effect it had on appreciating humanity first hand. Since I too voted it my worst film of 2013 (so did the rest of the gang at MovieScene, and most everybody else), I wholeheartedly agree with these wins, and I hope those sequel plans will now go down the drain for good. On the other hand, I am fortunate enough not to have seen all of Movie 43: a friend of mine semi-forced me to watch a single scene - he had to share his trauma with others to beter cope with it, and who am I to turn down a pal in need? Though afterwards I decided to strongly reconsider my eagerness to help out needful buddies to spare myself future grief - and it was so painfully, embarrassingly and grotesquely unfunny I have yet to mentally get over it. It wasn't even so much the pure non-existence of humour, it was the fact that top actors like Kate Winslet and Hugh Jackman would debase themselves like this for all the world to behold. I don't buy for a moment the consideration that these folks thought they were shooting a scene of singular hilarity for a second. I know that actors who often star in heavy dramatic presentations feel the need to occasionally indulge in more lighthearted fare to stay sane, but there must definitely be limits. This excuse for a movie should be the type of film that breaks careers, and in Movie 43's film, there's a lot of excellent careers to shatter. I guess humanity just collectively decided to ignore the matter as best it could in the hope this film would vanish from memory, but that one single scene unfortunately has not exited mine. Thankfully there's other terribly lousy films to try and unremember too, hopefully rendering Movie 43 the stuff of grey memory matter, and there will definitely be more bad flicks in the future.

Like new Matrix sequels/prequels. Like anybody is actually wanting those. The Matrix trilogy ended over ten years ago and mankind has let it go since then. As it should, considering it was an exercise in how not to follow-up an instant classic, groundbreaking film. Okay, so Reloaded and Revolutions get bashed harder than they deserve on their own merits, but they're still not exactly good movies and showed there's little more worthwile novel stuff to mine from that fantastic first film. Of course, as this is a major franchise - or was, back then - there's always the opportunity for more cash to be milked out of its recognizable name, which is what the big Hollywood studios especialize in nowadays. And the prospect of precious money is undoubtedly the only reason the Wachoskis are on board this project. You can't tell me they honestly think more Matrix movies is a good idea themselves. Just look at that story proposal alone. It offers little new stuff. The emergence of the Matrix has already been explored in some detail in The Animatrix, while the rest of the concept is just a blatant rehash of the events of the first trilogy. Then again, maybe these rumours are indeed just that, and the story will focus on something else entirely. Nevertheless, you'll understand if I remain extremely skeptical about all of this.

Today's Column: why I like the Razzies better than the Oscars

Here's another column I wrote for MovieScene this weekend:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/153493/column_de_rustgevende_razzies

I must admit inspiration came to me rather late in the game for this one. As a result it's certainly not my best piece, though when I did find a subject it was penned a lot faster than most other columns so far. I firmly believe in the Razzies as a rather stable, quiet ritual that is a welcome diversion from all the other Award fests plaguing the early months of each new year. Because it is solely about bad movies - the definition of which admittedly leaves a little to be desired occasionally, as in the case of The Lone Ranger this year - nobody cares so vigorously as when good movies are concerned. Amidst all the politics, anger and frustration surrounding the Academy Awards and the general discord which ensues when their winners are revealed, there's no such conflict over the Razzies. There's no need to account for bad taste after all: truly bad movies (though often still enjoyable on purpose) are generally considered just that, while defending or debunking the good qualities of a film, especially compared to other good films, causes much more consternation and lack of consensus. Few people will claim they thought Gravity was a bad film, but the level of its 'goodness' is open to questioning when comparing it with other movies that are considered good. Is Her a better movie than 12 Years a Slave? Who's to tell? Is Grown Ups 2 a horrendous picture? Yes, definitely! You have none of the tiresome hype you witness for two months around the Oscars at the Razzies. Plus, the Razzies don't take themselves seriously, while the Oscars do too strongly and not always deservedly so. The Razzies simply are a much more honest ritual, without agressively demanding as much attention from a movie lover as the Oscars sometimes so irritatingly do. So I'm all for Adam Sandler making more movies, just to keep the Razzies going. As long as I don't have to watch them.

Big Tits Zombie

Rating: */*****, or 1/10

Absolutely dismal attempt to make something resembling a horror comedy, like only the Japanese in their sick psycho minds could produce (any Japanese people that have seen this thing would undubitably concur with me in that last bigotry ridden statement). Easily one of the worst films I've ever seen, which unfortunately even ended up in my movie collection (I never knew my friends disliked me so much they would give me this monstrosity for my birthday... but at least I didn't pay for it, except for the ten years it took away from my life by giving me brain rot). Except for a few nice naked breasts sparsely displayed throughout, there's just nothing redeemable about this audiovisual piece of poo that by rights shouldn't even be allowed to be called a movie, since that would insult anyone who's ever worked on proper films. The plot, if there is such a thing here, revolves around a few exotic dancers (a bunch of girls with hardly any acting experience, which is clearly revealed) who find themselves under siege by completely unconvincing looking zombies (my cat's fleas could have provided better make-up effects!) after discovering some old book containing incantations capable of resurrecting the dead. Every supposed joke the brainless mutants called 'writers' make misses its mark completely, making this movie so painfully cringeworthy this flick is very hard to sit through, even though it's running for only 74 minutes. To make matters worse – yes, that is actually possible – the movie boasts 3D effects: every time an icon pops up in the corner of the screen, you can put on your 3D glasses, but what is seen when wearing these is not 3D, it's just jumbled, messed up imagery, inducing nasty headaches within seconds. Depth is obviously non-existent in every way here, it might as well be called a 0D movie. If there ever is such a thing as a public movie burning rally somewhere, this is the title you're most likely to see in agony on the bon fire; I'd be first in line to make sure no copies of this horrific pile of garbage survive the event. Original Japanese title: Kyonyȗ Doragon: Onsen zonbi vs sutorippȃ 5: if there's indeed a part 1 through 4 of this (I never bothered finding this out), watching the series in a marathon is nothing short of committing seppuku, the dishonourable version.

“Starring”: Sola Aoi, Risa Kasumi, Mari Sakurai

“Directed” by Takao Nakano

Japan: Big Tits Dragon Production Committee, 2010