I have absolutely no qualms about calling 2015 a pretty great year for cinema. Across the board, Hollywood brought its A-game. Indie-circuit auteurs like David Robert Mitchell (It Follows) and Miroslav Slaboshpitsky (The Tribe) upended genres and created some new ones; big-studio blockbusters like Magic Mike XXL and Star Wars: The Force Awakens betrayed real heart and heft, Pixar returned with a vengeance, most of the requisite remakes were actually good (and some of them – *cough* *cough* Creed *cough* – were downright great), and action cinema in particular flourished like it has during only a few years before, delivering some legendary characters and instantly iconic sequences (and not just in Mad Max: Fury Road).
But (surprise, surprise – there’s a but) that’s not to say that the past 12 months at the multiplex have been devoid of clutter. On the contrary, there were a lot of bottom-of-the-barrel wastes of celluloid, movies both ugly and insipid, regressive and repugnant, abysmal and absurd. This is the time of year when the cream starts rising to the top – and though I’ll be bringing you my favorite films from the year soon enough, it just wouldn’t do to forget about all the crud still caked on the soles of every critic’s well-worn shoes.
I should mention that I was fortunate enough to avoid a few of the titles my co-workers at We Got This Covered assure me are worthy of places on this list – so before you get outraged about the omission of such reviled films as The Cobbler, Pixels, Fantastic Four, Vacation and Mortdecai, know that their absence is in no way an endorsement.
I simply got lucky this year – but even though I was able to duck and cover when those aforementioned films reared their very ugly heads at the box office, that’s not to say I didn’t endure some real duds this year. And so without further ado, here we are with the worst that 2015 had to offer this critic.
