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Year in Tiers 2021 - Big Ol' Motha Fucking Duffle Bag of Shit

Season 2 of COVID-19 had me watching a shit load of movies. More than I ever have in any one year. I'll say it, TOO many. And yet there were so many I didn't even bother with. Jungle Cruise, Red Notice, F9, other movies that don't star the Rock...but these were the worst movies I actually took the time to finish. Unlike Venom 2. I turned that shit off right away. Anyways, this is the bottom tier - the Big Ol' Motha Fucking Duffle Bags of Shit.

#100. Malignant

I'm not a huge James Wan fan but when the writer/director of Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring returns to his roots with a new original horror concept shrouded in secrecy, you take notice. However, this was one of the absolute worst films I've ever seen. Ridiculously over the top, with an overdose of quick zoom camera work along with a nu-metal infused score that will transport you back to the embarrassing horror landscape of 2005. And as mediocre as the opening is, right around the 90 minute mark we get the huge reveal that cements this film as one of the most unintentionally funny horror films of all time - specifically the jail cell scene. Absolute insanity (and not in a good way).


#99. Annette

Part one-man stage show, part pretentious low theater indie opera - Annette is one of the most confounding movie going experiences you can stumble upon this year. From the overly repetitive and simplistic songs to the laughably self-serious narrative about a desperate comedian living vicariously through his literal puppet of a daughter turned child celebrity - this thing is a cluster fuck. The obvious statements on fame are clear but the packaging is absolutely absurd. Adam Driver is a phenomenal actor but being tasked with singing lines like "We love each other so much!" while eating out his wife or "This is my baby. This is my baby." while staring at a grotesque animatronic puppet is just ridiculous. Laugh out loud terrible.


#98. Old

After his meteoric rise to fame and subsequent revival with the sequel in disguise Split, M. Night Shyamalan seems to be back in a slump. The incredibly blunt, inhuman dialogue of Old sounds like it's written by someone who hasn't had to talk to a real person in over a year and even Shyamalan's work behind the camera is uncharacteristically sloppy here. The whole thing feels like a bad impersonation of an M. Night film from the early 00's. And it's kind of ironic that a film about time moving at a faster rate feels ungodly slow. This seems like it could have been a throwaway episode of the Twilight Zone reboot.


#97. Naked Singularity

How does a film with a cast this fucking stacked suck this fucking bad? Honestly, I don't remember hardly anything about this movie. I think I might have even stopped watching with 10 minutes to go. Tim Blake Nelson shows up to try and toss in some kind of Chris Nolan-esque parallel universe bullshit but I had already stopped caring at that point. It's that fucking boring. Awful character development, an abysmal plot, and a total waste of John Boyega, Olivia Cooke, and Bill Skarsgard. Just how?


#96. Demonic

As much as it pains me to see Neil Blomkamp bow out of working on his proposed Alien and Robocop sequels, I respect the dude for wanting to continue telling original stories. But goddamn, he really pisses through any benefit of the doubt he may have had left with this train-wreck of a film. Half tech-horror, half possession thriller (call it the tech-xorcist?) the two stories never really mesh together. And weird ass glitches from The Sims aren't scary. A massive disappointment from a once promising director seemingly on his last leg.


#95. Stowaway

What starts out as an interesting dilemma, where 3 astronauts have to decide how to ration their onboard supplies (most importantly oxygen) to account for an unexpected stowaway passenger, eventually fizzles out into an utterly boring and unbelievably uneventful tale of perseverance. But there's no details filled in for the mission's purpose, the crew's backstory, or why the stowaway ended up on the ship in the first place. It all just kind of happens. Anna Kendrick delivers a speech about hope in the face of uncertainty but outside of that, the cast is completely devoid of character and is entirely wasted on this bland crew of nobodys doing nothing.


#94. The Last Duel

While the titular duel itself does somewhat harken back to Ridley Scott's Gladiator (complete with a creep in the crowd whisper yelling "yaaaaas" at the sight of blood), in order to get there you have to sit through a literal "he said, she said" retelling of the same rape accusation rehashed 3 fucking times in a row with only some minor ancillary details altered in the process. It's a fucking chore. It doesn't offer any insight or perspective to the proceedings outside of illuminating how ridiculous the eventual trial is, which focuses on whether or not Matt Damon can make his wife cum. Also, the lone highlight may be the scene where Matt Damon has to break up two horses fucking by punching them. How's that for an encapsulation for how this film tackles sexual assault?


#93. Infinite

If you watched Tenet and thought "man, I wish this had even more endless exposition but more meathead dialogue and caveman philosophy" then Infinite is right up your alley. For the rest of us, if you can live without seeing Chiwetel Ejiofor chew scenery as an over the top villain, you'll be fine skipping this corny ass wanabee tentpole movie. Mark Wahlberg is way too old to be making crap like this anymore. Also, am I the only one who finds Jason Mantzoukas unbearable in literally everything he's ever been in? He's especially awful here as the comic relief.


#92. Don't Breathe 2

I enjoyed the first Don't Breathe film quite a bit when it was released but it's also very easy to forget how starved for quality horror content we were just 5 years ago. Needless to say, the original doesn't quite hold up upon re-watching and the sequel does absolutely nothing to grow the Don't Breathe lore. In fact, it more than likely snuffs out any future potential the franchise has entirely. The Blind Man wasn't compelling enough of a villain to center a follow up around and the way the sequel turns him into the anti-hero centerpiece is quite a reach.


Check Out Our List of the Best Horror Sequels of All Time Here


#91. Gunpowder Milkshake

The two most overused fixtures of main stream Hollywood the last few years have been:

1.) hollow attempts to exploit female empowerment with films that say absolutely nothing about women or empower them (*cough* Ocean's 8 *cough*)

2.) underground networks of assassins (thank John Wick for that)

And wouldn't you know it, Gunpowder Milkshake deploys both of those tired ass clichés simultaneously in a confused neon noire gunslinger attempt at action/comedy with painfully stiff action sequences and even more painful attempts at humor.


#90. The Lost Daughter

I love Maggie Gyllenhaal but after watching her directorial debut, I think somebody really needs to check on her. Or more specifically, her kids. This is an incredibly depressing look at how taxing motherhood can be and while I'm all for realistic depictions of trying times - there's no payoff here. Jessie Buckley does a grand job in the flashback sequences depicting what lead to our protagonist's decision to leave her family but in Olivia Colman's present day incarnation of the character, she really doesn't have anything to add. She's just a sad, lonely, selfish woman day drinking on a beach vacation.


#89. Willy's Wonderland

Let me just preface this with the fact that I know nothing about Five Nights at Freddy's. But apparently Willy's Wonderland is the latest film to rush to production before a Five Nights film adaptation can get off the ground, using the same basic premise of killer animatronic robots. This one just happens to feature Nic Cage. He doesn't utter a single word but he's there. No seriously, he doesn't talk AT ALL. The rest of the cast however, is somehow even less believable and the animatronic villains look more like rejected minor league baseball mascots than the Chuck-E-Cheese style band they're meant to emulate. It's a dopey b-movie with no scares, bad CGI, and an abysmal cast.


#88. Boss Level

Once hailed as the second coming of action/comedy hybrid mixologist Shane Black, Joe Carnahan's consistent streak of inconsistency continues with this tired Groundhog Day time loop concept set in an action film - like Source Code and Edge of Tomorrow before it. But MUUUUUCH worse. Last year's Palm Springs took the same familiar formula and at least made it enjoyable thanks to the humor injected by it's charismatic leads but Boss Level packs some of the worst comedy bits of the year. I mean "shit's about to get steel" may be one of the corniest one-liners I've ever heard. Schwarzenegger himself couldn't have pulled that weak shit off.


#87. Best Sellers

Thank god this wont actually be Michael Caine's last movie. Lina Roessler feels completely in over her head directing her first feature film with irredeemably bad pacing and no chemistry whatsoever between her odd couple co-stars. Aubrey Plaza's absurdist brand of comedy doesn't mesh with this cheesy PG-13 premise that feels like it'd be better suited for Reese Witherspoon or Anne Hathaway back in 2006. Absolute shite.


#86. Four Good Days

A couple of years behind 2018's opiate Oscar bait addiction dramas like Beautiful Boy and Ben is Back, Four Good Days follows the familiar formula of an addict's strained relationship with their parent. But unlike Timothee Chalamet or Lucas Hedges, Mila Kunis surprisingly struggles in the lead role as a homeless heroin addict trying to get her life back on track. The story is laughably melodramatic, with each predictable plot point rung out for maximum emotional effect that comes off as layered and authentic as a "this is your brain on drugs" tv commercial. Really subpar material for such talented actresses.


#85. Eternals

Poor Chloe Zhao. How is this clusterfuck of a film what we reward the director of Nomadland with? This thing is an absolute mess. The story is so disjointed, needlessly skipping back and forth in time and doing a horrendous job of developing it's overly stuffed ensemble of bland characters that this is without a doubt - the worst MCU film to date. With all of the atrocious CGI you feel like you're watching a montage of video game cut scenes with unrelatable god-like characters that effortlessly fly through the air and fire non-descript laser beams out of their fingers and eyes. These all-powerful alien heroes just don't translate like the more human ones do and this convoluted introduction does them no favors establishing their place in the MCU. Let's just hope this is the product of a "uni-mind" collaborative effort between Marvel and Zhao and not a glimpse of what's to come going forward for the talented young director.


#84. Mainstream

Francis Ford Coppola's granddaughter, Gia, returns with her sophomore directing effort castigating the social media age and it's instant gratification obsession. And while the subject is ripe with material, the characters and their rise within the construct of shallow validation they initially reject, makes for a confounding narrative. Andrew Garfield's eccentric character, Link, inexplicably goes from being 100% off the grid to a Logan Paul-esque influencer almost instantaneously. Garfield revels in the role of the egomaniacal narcist but with how detached his character starts, the arch makes absolutely no sense. It's especially frustrating because after his character changes so drastically early on, he never grows passed that. Which stunts the development of the film altogether.


#83. Mortal Kombat

How do you make a Mortal Kombat movie without a Mortal Kombat tournament? It'd be like rebooting the Silent Hill franchise and never even getting to Silent Hill. This is a Mortal Kombat prequel. And with such a rich history of characters, introducing a bland ass fighter like Cole Young as the series lead was a massive mistake. Bad CGI, trash one-liners and a hollow origin story make this the worst Mortal Kombat film there is. But Josh Lawson's Kano really did everything he could to make this watchable. Like Lebron James carrying Anderson Verejao and the rest of the sad ass 2007 Cleveland Cavaliers to the NBA Finals only to be swept in a Flawless Victory by Tsang Poppavich.


View Our List of the Top 10 Video Game Adaptations


#82. Shiva Baby

Shiva Baby is an indie dramedy that may be a bit too effectively uncomfortable for it's own good; as a struggling college girl attempts to juggle the awkward interactions between her sugar daddy, her ex-girlfriend, and her overbearing family at a Jewish funeral service. The overly cutesy dialogue and painfully critical family are bad enough but the film's biggest failing is that there's no reason to really sympathize with the film's main character. You don't really care that she finds herself in this terribly awkward situation because she's done it to herself and doesn't seem to have any logical motives other than being ridiculously horny. Case in point, while all of this is going on, she still finds time to sneak away to the bathroom and take some topless selfies. What are you doing?


#81. The Space Between

Much like the reclusive Micky Adams at the center of The Space Between, there's something profound underneath this story that never quite breaches the surface. We get fleeting glances of something grander but the shallow preoccupation of a forced romance between our bland narrator (played by Jackson White) and Micky's daughter takes the focus from where it should reside. Micky. But instead we're saddled with two romantic arcs for Jackson White (neither of which are convincing in the slightest) and not nearly enough time delving into the tortured genius portrayed by Kelsey Grammer. And the music industry "insight" is trite, predictable and adds absolutely nothing to the story.


#80. Space Jam: A New Legacy

Make no mistake, the original Space Jam is no masterpiece by any means. In fact one of my biggest gripes with the 1996 original is that the whole thing feels like a giant commercial. For Nike, Jordan, the NBA, Looney Tunes - you name it. And yet somehow the sequel is even worse. This time mythologizing Lebron instead of MJ yet very little time with the Looney Tunes or NBA, but instead Warner Brothers decides to flex it's entire back catalogue of intellectual properties. It's like an HBO Max highlight reel. But are kids really supposed to pick up on the Matrix, Austin Powers, Casablanca, Training Day or Clockwork Orange references? Even if the premise and overall message of being true to yourself is more ambitious than it's predecessor - the final product was sloppy as hell. Like promising a city 7 rings and only delivering 2.


#79. The Tomorrow War

For as stale and predictable as the plot is here, I have to hand it to whoever in the effects team designed the evil aliens - they're actually pretty awesome looking. Which is a rarity these days. But outside of that, this is a pretty boring sci-fi action film with incredibly forced comedic elements courtesy of Chris Pratt and the most laughably-stupid alien punching scene since Will Smith spouted "Welcome to Earf" in Independence Day. But of course there's already sequel talks, so hopefully they'll iron out things like plot and humor next time around.



View the Rest of the 2021 Year in Tiers Here:


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