Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Worst Films of 2021


Imagine thinking 2021 would put the horridness of 2020 behind us. It turned out to be another year of lockdowns, furloughs and isolation for most of us. This humble blogger naively expected the entertainment industry to step up with some quality escapism; a mental release of sorts. Leave it to Tinsle Town to add salt to the wound with some utterly horrendous atrocities to cheer us up.

It goes without saying, many movie theatres remained shut during the lockdowns, so studios really took advantage of the lack of a middle-man and released their brand spanking new turds via a huge premium to rent out. What did we get in return? We were served up with more played-out deconstructionist hero nonsense; horror movies that fancied themselves as musicals or soap operas; and bait and switch 'memberberries, for anyone yearning for a more happier time.

Worst 2021 Films I Watched:

Zeros and Ones (Abel Ferrara)

Karen (Coke Daniels)

The Last Rite (Leroy Kincaide)

Fear Street: 1994 (Leigh Janiak)

Mortal Kombat (Simon McQuoid)

Coming 2 America (Craig Brewer)

The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It (Michael Chaves)

Those Who Wish Me Dead (Taylor Sheridan)

Candyman (Nia DaCosta)

Halloween Kills (David Gordon Green)

No Time To Die (Cary Joji Fukunaga)

Demonic (Neill Blomkamp)

Silent Night (Camille Griffin)

Wrong Turn (Mike P. Nelson)

Drive My Car (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)

Matrix Resurrections (Lana Wachowski)

Guerilla filmmaking might have been on Abel Ferrara's agenda for his turgid, sixth-form student looking Zeros And Ones, but I was left way more conviced that it might have been shot by an actual gorilla than a human being; based upon the way the camera was held. So shite, there's an awkwardly appended Ethan Hawke facetime convo during the credits, that felt like regret to me rather than praise for Ferrara's feature.

Films Of 2021 That Let Me Down

Prisoners Of The Ghostland (Sion Sono)

Army Of The Dead (Zac Snyder)

Titane (Julia Ducournau)

Copshop (Joe Carnahan)

The Night House (David Bruckner)

The Many Saints Of Newark (Alan Taylor)

Goes without saying there were plenty of other duds released on Prime, Netflix and Hulu that came and went during their respective release hype stage. Fortunately, my complete apathy and spidey senses let me steer clear of them.

"Yo, baby, you got to cut that garbage off"

EDIT: Added the latest Matrix movie to the list.

No comments: