The Next Tier finds us with the bad but not entirely terrible films of 2021. If you're desperate enough, you can find some redeemable qualities in these titles - not unlike the music of Limp Bizkit. It's not perfect by any means but be honest, they've got a few songs that can get your head nodding here and there.
#78. Coming 2 America
After his long overdue return to the SNL stage, I was so ready for the Eddie Murphy revival. But Coming 2 America is a flaccid PG-13 follow up that offers little more than a forced collection of nostalgic "where are they now" moments. It's hard to remember a film wasting as many talented people in one movie as Coming 2 America does. Just when you thought Murphy had outgrown the empty cash grab family films that drove him out of the industry, he's returned to tarnish his legacy once again by watering down the best film in his catalogue with a family friendly spin. What a fucking drag.
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#77. Being the Ricardos
Aside from the atrocious casting decisions which finds an altogether humorless Nicole Kidman trying to play one of the most notoriously funny women of all time and the stiff as a board Javier Bardem cast as a larger than life Cuban band leader - this film is just not entertaining. Seriously, if Bardem were to play any sitcom actor he'd be better suited for Brad Garrett than Desi Arnaz. But the whole movie is stiff. It feels like a research paper adapted for the big screen. Which is an insane thing to say about a movie centered on a generation's most entertaining couple.
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#76. The Woman in the Window
Poor Amy Adams. Trapped in yet another failed piece of Oscar bait, she plays a mentally unstable agoraphobic woman who seems to have witnessed her neighbor's murder. Think Rear Window remade by the creators of The Girl on the Train. Director Joe Wright does his best to make a compelling story here but Adams' over the top performance hinders any emotional connection almost entirely. And once the source of Adams' trauma is finally revealed, it's way too late. A lazy afternoon Lifetime movie parading as an award contender. Can we just retroactively give her an Oscar for The Master?
#75. House of Gucci
You can sum up the puzzling tone of House of Gucci in two scenes. First you have an unnecessarily long and clunky sex scene between fully clothed Adam Driver and Lady Gaga in a construction trailer, trying to wring out any intimacy they can muster in their otherwise underdeveloped relationship. And then you have Al Pacino and Jared Leto in cartoonish Italian caricatures trying to find their car in a parking garage like it's a fucking episode of Seinfeld. The whole thing plays like a cheap Succession knock off with none of the character development or intricately entangled relationships that make the HBO show so great.
#74. Hard Luck Love Song
As a huge fan of Michael Dorman's work in The Invisible Man and the criminally short-lived series Patriot, I was intrigued to see what Dorman could bring as a leading man in this born to lose indie drama about a hustler taking life one cheap hotel room at a time. Unfortunately though, like his character, Dorman's charm can only carry the film so far as it's meandering pace and abruptly convenient tying of loose ends in the final 20 minutes just never really gels. Biff Wiff steals every scene he's in though, dude is a GOD. ;)
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#73. Nightmare Alley
One of the biggest disappointments of the year, visual mastermind Guillermo Del Toro follows up The Shape of Water with a needlessly ugly remake. But not only does it look like an artificially colorized version of a black and white film - his lack of wonder and sly sense of humor have been replaced with a brooding and callous sense of cynicism in a script that vaguely wanders near some interesting paths, but never fully explores any of them. And Nathan Johnson's score is so unbearably empty that the entire picture just lacks personality in every possible facet. Well, outside of Bradley Cooper's performance in the film's final 3 minutes. What a bummer.
#72. Voyagers
You know that asinine conspiracy theory that the government is putting fluoride in our tap-water to make us all more docile? Well imagine somebody took that and turned it into a young adult, sci-fi, teen sex parable set in outer space. Pretty awful, huh? Neil Burger's a pretty gifted director but this story is painful to get through. Especially once it devolves into a hormone induced Lord of the Flies on a space ship.
#71. The French Dispatch
Aside from assembling a ridiculously stacked cast, the only other thing The French Dispatch really does well is eliminate the discussion around which of Wes Anderson's films is his worst. This is it. The ever meticulously detailed director does a fine job framing the film (per usual) but the episodic structure and mundane narration throughout, stretch the unbelievably dry material far past any intrigue whatsoever. Which is unfortunate because the premise of a New Yorker style travel journal set to film isn't terrible, but somehow Anderson's painfully forced execution is.
#70. Ghostbusters: Afterlife
As the scramble to resurrect any and all alluring IP continues, Sony finds themselves churning out their second attempt at a Ghostbusters reboot in the last 5 years. And while the 2016 female fronted re-quel was far from perfect, it didn't feel nearly as humorless or pandering as this does. I hoped Jason Reitman, son of the original Ghostbuster's director Ivan Reitman, could tap into the phenomenal balance of horror and comedy his father found but Afterlife is neither scary nor funny. It's almost an hour into the movie before you even see a fucking ghost. It's a hollow nostalgia play that leans way too heavily on the source material, wringing out easy fan service applause in what doesn't amount to much more than a Wal-Mart commercial and an ill-conceived in-memoriam sequence.
#69. The Eyes of Tammy Faye
While the real life story of Tammy Faye is pretty fascinating in itself, director Michael Showalter's attempt to dramatize the tale feels tonally lost. Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain are phenomenal in the lead roles but while the story attempts to humanize the cartoonish characters, we never really learn much about either of them other than their young lustful infatuation with one another. Outside of that, this kind of just retells the bullet point order of events in a series of montages. And while I understand showing the subject matter some respect by keeping the proceedings from turning into a full blown comedy (ala I, Tonya) there's not nearly enough depth here to really flesh out a drama either.
#68. Nobody
Can we really not produce an action star under 40? I love Bob Odenkirk but Jesus...Anyways, John Wick screenwriter Derek Kolstad delivers this lame John Wick clone without the charm of Keanu Reeves or the impressive stunt choreography of Chad Stahelski & David Leitch. Instead we get an ultra violent midlife crisis comedy that essentially only serves as an outdated boomer fantasy; complete with stealing your neighbor's hot rod, buying the company you work for out from under the idiot boss' son and defending your daughter's honor at the cost of who cares how many lives.
#67. VHS 94
The VHS series isn't a top tier horror anthology by any means, but it's usually good for a couple solid segments. Well, except Viral. But this fourth entry in the series is just as bad as the previous; with the lone highlights being the opening segment "Storm Drain", a nifty cyborg killing spree (even if the setup is way too drawn out), and a SWAT team meathead screaming "we need a graaaaaaaaaavedigger" in the atrocious wrap around story. Other than that, this isn't anything you'd be missing out on by pretending it never existed in the first place.
#66. No Sudden Move
Steven Soderbergh has been cranking out content non-stop since returning from "retirement" in 2017 but while the quantity is impressive, the quality has been a bit sporadic. No Sudden Move is a heist gone wrong film with a great message, it's just a shame the movie chugs along at a snail's pace until Matt Damon inexplicably shows up to conveniently dump all the answers in our laps with about 20 minutes left in the picture. The ensemble of Don Cheadle, Benicio del Toro, Ray Liotta and Brendan Fraser is remarkable but the events unfold far too slowly to keep you engaged until the finale.
#65. Spiral
I lost interest in the Saw series after the third entry but seeing Chris Rock involved in this latest attempt to revitalize the franchise was enough to pique my interest. However when watching Spiral unwind, you can see the outline of a great film that was lazily filled in with obligatory torture scenes and Chris Rock himself riffing through unused stand-up material to try and fill the gaps between the set-up and the pay-off. Which is a shame, because the final destination this story leads you to is pretty incredible. But the journey there is undeniably subpar - especially due to Rock's continued limited ability as an actor.
#64. Titane
Easily one of the strangest movies you will see this year (or maybe ever), Titane is a brutally uncompromised examination of non-traditional relationship roles and a subversion of sexual identity. And while these are definitely themes worth exploring, I'm not sure this bizarre narrative does the best job doing so. Scenes of our lead character fucking a car, milking motor oil from her own breast and dance fighting with a roided out fire fighter who wants to believe that she is his long lost son - just drag the viewer into unnecessarily extreme sequences that distract more than enlighten.
#63. Cherry
The Russo brothers' first film following in the wake of Avengers: Endgame is an ambitious one to say the least. Chronicling the title character's 15 year journey from army medic to drug addict to bank robber - Tom Holland carries the film brilliantly in the best performance of his young career. Unfortunately the uneven script and scattered tone of the picture make his performance the lone highlight. The Russos have explained that the six chapters of Cherry were intentionally given distinct production designs to make the film feel like multiple movies in one but their experiment results in an incohesive Frankenstein monster of a viewing experience.
#62. Godzilla v.s. Kong
The path to Godzilla v.s. Kong was a little bumpier than I'm sure Warner Brothers would have liked but now that we've arrived at the inevitable crossover spectacle, you'd think there'd be a little more involved than a bizarre journey to the center of the Earth and Brian Tyree Henry driving the narrative as a paranoid, podcasting Godzilla truther. And even if you suffer through the 90 minutes of atrocious dialogue and awful human characters that proceed Godzilla & Kong's confrontation, their battle is incredibly short lived as they decide to join forces against a common enemy in Mecha-Godzilla. About 20 minutes worth of solid popcorn chaos for 2 hours of lame exposition.
#61. Without Remorse
Everything about Without Remorse feels like it probably would have worked better in the 90's. Watching a traumatized Navy SEAL set a car on fire only to climb in the back seat with his target of revenge doesn't feel like a badass move in 2021. Instead I wanted to hug Michael B. Jordan. Poor guy's lost everything. He's damaged goods. Then tack on some stale cold-war Russian covert ops and some oddly placed racial injustice and you've got a very peculiar end product. But at face value, I can't deny Michael B. Jordan's ass whooping ability to carry a film. I've definitely seen worse attempts at launching an action franchise.
#60. The Forever Purge
I had a lot of hope going into what was promised to be the final Purge film (which series creator James DeMonaco has already walked back, of course). Especially after the upward trajectory the series had been on with the previous two films, Election Year and The First Purge. But unfortunately that momentum doesn't quite carry over into this latest entry. The Forever Purge has a fairly intriguing concept but the execution is definitely lacking. Which is kind of an ongoing motif with this series as a whole. It's not as bland as Purge: Anarchy but the flat characters, cheap jump scares and overtly heavy handed political themes make this the second worst Purge film to date. Though I'm sure we'll have many more to choose from...
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View the Rest of the 2021 Year in Tiers Here:
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