Hey, it's 2014! Hooray! One year is over, another one has just started. That means it's time for the obligatory end of the year lists! Let's start off with the one I'll probably get the most flak for, my list of the greatest disappointments. Behold, disappointment doesn't equal bad (well, it could, but it doesn't have to), so if you find a movie on this list that you actually like, yada yada yada, you get the spiel, my list, my opinion, if you want to troll, then troll away. But enough said, have a look at these 7 disappointments:
Frances Ha
One of the most astounding things to me this year was the the unmitigated love this little film received. They called it an absolute delight peppered with the best bits of the 70s Woody Allen movies anchored by the adorable Great Gerwig in the title role. I was intrigued by the hype. Then I watched the movie. Then I started questioning everybody's sanity. Frances Ha tells the story of Frances, a young woman in New York who tries to get her life together. My first and foremost problem with that is that Frances is a pathetic character. She's not lovable, she's not smart, she's simply a delusional klutz, behaving like a 5 year old trying to survive in a world of grown ups by waving her arms and crying out loudly to be taken seriously. This means that spending the entire runtime with her becomes grating after a couple of minutes. Greta Gerwig's performance in the role of Frances is incredibly one-note, her monotone voice just exemplifying her unsympathetic screen creation. It's the poor man's copy of the HBO series Girls but duly lacking charm. I saw another Greta Gerwig vehicle recently, Lola Versus, a film that very closely resembles Frances Ha. The only difference is that that one was hated by critics while Frances Ha was praised almost as much as the Second Coming. Are these people blinded by the presence of Noah Baumbach in the director's chair? Baumbach has made one outstanding film, The Squid and the Whale, and has written a couple of decent scripts but here he can't get it together. I guess the only saving grace is the beautiful black and white cinematography, but who cares about that when the stuff happening on screen is so unbelievably pretentious? Frances Ha? More like Frances Bla!
Man of Steel
In terms of pure spectacle this film delivers the goods, that much is a given. It's epic, loud, full of grandiose special effects but what it duly lacks is a heart at its center. The decision to make Superman all dark and gritty by simply aping the style and tone of the Dark Knight trilogy wasn't so wise after all, it's at odds with the simplistic nature of the Superman origin story. Whereas Batman has more oomph as a character, Superman is simply the archetype of the superhero: strong, wise and without much complexity, the most basic and therefore most simplistic of the whole bunch. Thus, although director Zack Snyder and producer Christopher Nolan desperately try to give Superman some depth and grit, it comes off as overblown and ridiculous. Add to that the most tacked on love story of the year, penis shaped spacecrafts straight out of Austin Powers, logic holes at every corner, the most idiotic unnecessary screen death of the year in the form of Kevin Costner being blown away by a tornado (oops, spoilers!) and the worst product placement I have ever encountered in a movie, and you have a big crushing multi million dollar disappointment.
12 Years a Slave
Here we have a classic case of overhype. 12 Years a Slave has been called the most important and groundbreaking film of the past year, a surefire awards juggernaut, something so profound it has to be seen to be believed. Well, let me tell you, it is a fine movie but it is definitely not the milestone that was promised. The most glaring shortcoming of the film is that it doesn't bring anything new to the table, I had a constant deja vu watching the film. That could be made up for if 12 Years a Slave was innovative in cinematic terms but even there it evokes a feeling of "Been there, done that". On top of that, the film seems to be on autopilot for long stretches, characters pop up for 2 minutes at a time, never to be seen again and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the main character Solomon Northup becomes a side character in his own tale. The film is strongest when it simply focuses on him which it just doesn't do enough. Of course, that doesn't mean it's a bad film, quite the contrary. Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender are excellent, some of the cinematography is done quite well and the film features a handful of truly gut-wrenching and heartbreaking moments. But at the end of the day 12 Years a Slave is "only" an honorable effort but by no means a great movie (and also doesn't reach the highs of Steve McQueen's previous films Shame and Hunger).
World War Z
Zombies! Brad Pitt! And the director who screwed up Quantum of Solace! What could have been an ingenious adaptation of Max Brooks' source novel becomes a toothless big budget monstrosity on the silver screen that doesn't know if it wants to tackle the zombie apocalypse on a large or a small scale and ends up failing on both levels. The story consists of Brad Pitt jetting around the world, occasionally getting attacked by zombies while trying to figure out why there's not a single drop of blood in the entire film. The film jumps from A to B without much rhyme or reason, fails to create any suspense in the quieter scenes and just coasts by without leaving much of an impact. Let's hope they won't mess up the sequels as much as they did this one.
Only God Forgives
How could Nicolas Winding Refn go from the excellent Drive to this pretentious crap? Trying to get anything out of this film is like squeezing water from a stone, good luck with that. If you really want to know more, check out my review of the film here.
Kick-Ass 2
I consider myself a fan of the original Kick-Ass from 2010. It put a nice spin on the worn out superhero genre while taking itself not too seriously and providing lots of laughs all the way and handling the darker moments of the film surprisingly well. Kick-Ass 2 however, doesn't reach the highs of the original in any category.
It's a frantic mess with badly written and poorly delivered jokes. The film entirely misunderstands the satire of the first Kick-Ass and simply throws tired cliches and overused action cues at us. Pointless side characters, plot threads that go nowhere and uninspired performances are just the icing on the cake. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is phoning it in in the title role and Jim Carrey doesn't even come close to filling the shoes of Nicolas Cage and Mark Strong from the original. The only person on screen who seems to give a shit is Chloë Grace Moretz but even she can't save the film.
A Good Day to Die Hard
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Last year I was praising Bruce Willis for his roles in Looper and Moonrise Kingdom, this year he seems more than overdue for retirement. Nowhere is that more apparent than in A Good Day to Die Hard, or for simplicity's sake just call it Die Hard 5 aka The One We Could Have Easily Lived Without. Willis again plays the role that made him an action icon in the first place, John McClane, but instead of a joyful "Yippee Ki Yay Motherf***er!" to welcome him back, you'd rather yell "Get the f*** off my screen!". This time McClane finds himself in Moscow where he buddies up with his son, played by Jai Courtney. There's the typical cliche of the estranged father-son-duo thrown in for good measure and Willis comes off more as a dick than as a hero we care for. Together they stomp through the convoluted mess that's supposed to resemble a plot, lots of stuff gets blown up and the audience is slowly dozing off while the noise level rises and rises. It's loud, it's joyless and utterly unengaging, Die Hard 5 simply is wasted time. Still, I'm happy that this was the only Willis movie I've seen this year, from what I've heard it seems that his other sequels this year, Red 2 and G.I. Joe: Retaliation, weren't much better.
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