Isaac Feldberg’s 10 Worst Movies Of 2015

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. 10) San Andreas Why, Dwayne, why? No other athlete-turned-actor in Hollywood today has accrued such a dedicated fan base, and those devoted moviegoers, who've watched "The Rock" Johnson in everything from Hercules to Furious 7, deserve far better than this soulless, slack excuse for a disaster movie. San Andreas, directed by Brad Peyton as a two-hours-too-long compilation of impressively rendered destructo-porn sequences, is one of the worst summer blockbusters in years, existing solely as an excuse to let technical artists do their work and let Johnson flex his physical (but never dramatic) muscles. The actor stars as a rescue pilot attempting to reunite with his wife (Carla Gugino) and daughter (Alexandra Daddario) as a massive earthquake devastates California, but San Andreas' tension-free script simultaneously fails to build any of its protagonists into likable characters and, even worse, forgets to acknowledge the thousands of people perishing in its central catastrophe as anything more than pixels mushing together against thousands of other pixels. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow this whole movie. 9) Joy Talk about misleading titles - David O. Russell's latest is unquestionably his worst (yes, this beats out Accidental Love in a heartbeat), an overlong slog of a movie that takes wild swings at fairy-tale fantasy, satirical comedy and underdog drama without connecting on any level. It's actually painful to see actors like Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper drown under such an overload of hackneyed, awkward dialogue and strangely weightless storytelling. Joy feels like it unfolds in a fugue state, and not in a good way, drifting through decades of its subject's life without ever bringing audiences one inch closer to understanding what goes on inside her head. There's absolutely no joy in this picture, but that there's barely even any clarity in it either is indicative of what a failed experiment it is for its Oscar-tipped writer-director and cast. Joy earns particular dishonor for its final stretch, a dopey and scatter-brained attempt to honor Joy Mangano that instead sanitizes, sanctifies and simplifies her until she no longer feels human. 8) Child 44 It pains me to put a movie starring Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman and Noomi Rapace on this list, but boy does Child 44 deserve it. As unappealing and flavorless as a cold bowl of Borscht, this is a thriller stunningly devoid of thrills from first frame to last. The story, ineptly handled by screenwriter Richard Price (his work here is career-worst), centers on a Soviet security officer in Stalin's Russia hunting for a state-protected serial killer, but good luck making heads or tails of it - no other plot seen on screen this year was as tangled or tedious. Adding to the confusion are a glut of accents ranging from passable (Hardy) to laughable (Oldman), all delivered with the same dour severity, and a shockingly slack, criminally overlong narrative less inviting than a Russian winter. Don't feel too bad for Hardy - he did wind up toplining one of the year's very best movies with Mad Max: Fury Road - but it's still a damn shame that no one can seem to figure out what to do with Noomi Rapace post-Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. 7) Taken 3 I greatly enjoyed the first Taken, which kicked off Liam Neeson's second career wind as an action star while delivering some terrific action sequences within a wonderfully tight script. But this incompetently made, atrociously written trilogy topper is an affront to everything that was good about the original. As "directed" by Olivier Megaton (and I use the term "directed" loosely, because an overly energetic puppy with a camera taped on top of its head could have done a better job), Taken 3 is a mind-boggling failure, devoid of even midway-decent performances, borderline-comprehensible action scenes or mildly interesting story beats. Neeson has done some very solid actioners over the past few years, but this is without question his lowest point as an actor, and none of the people who worked on its appearance or script should ever be allowed near a film set again. 6) Return to Sender You've probably never heard of this movie. Lucky you. A trashy, consummately icky rape-and-revenge thriller that represents one of the most humiliating post-Oscar releases ever (for lead actress Rosamund Pike, so brilliant in Gone Girl), Return to Sender plays like a bad Lifetime original. As directed by Fouad Mikati, it's devoid of artistic merit, tension or just about anything else that could entice thriller junkies. Even more discouraging - the movie's fixation on the rape and assault endured by its protagonist undercuts its claims of being a female-empowerment fantasy by taking the story into grossly insensitive territory. And the problematic, ineptly handled ending leaves such a sour taste in the mouth that you'll wish you'd never bothered. There's no bargain bin deep enough to properly bury this kind of movie - try the actual bin instead. 5) Fifty Shades of Grey About as erotic as Gilbert Gottfried's audiobook recording of the source material, this toothless and tactless "BDSM romance" is a turn-off in every sense of the word. Dousing any romantic sparks between its two leads (Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, who are somehow expected to survive making at least two more of these) with overbearing pop music and insipid dialogue ("Laters, baby," anyone?), it's the result of a tormented production between director Sam Taylor-Johnson and original author EL James (who reportedly dominated the production at every possible opportunity, and not in a sexy way), each of whom set out to make drastically different movies. Unfortunately, neither works. What’s left is a limp, lifeless Skinemax entry that would irk even that softcore premium network's hardcore fanbase. Besides, there’s just no escaping how sinister the unhealthy, abusive relationship between Christian Grey (Dornan) and Anastasia Steele (Johnson) really is. Remove Christian’s expensive suits, and he’s just a manipulative creep preying on an innocent, malleable romantic. Almost as disturbing: that this, the first mainstream Hollywood porno (because pretensions aside, that’s what Fifty Shades is) isn’t even remotely stimulating. 4) Insurgent No YA-targeted, post-apocalyptic franchise has ever made me detest the existence of the entire subgenre so much as The Divergent Series. The first was the definition of passable, cribbing the best elements of its predecessors while only offering one or two truly interesting moments. And this sequel continues the not-so-thrilling saga in the worst ways possible, sidelining the movie's main star (Shailene Woodley, sleepwalking through the role of heroine Tris Prior) in order to prioritize her buff Abercrombie model boyfriend (Theo James, potentially a cardboard cutout here). I've written about the problems with Insurgent at length, so I won't do it again here, but suffice to say, it's an embarrassment for all involved, a stale and stagnant sequel that cares more about junky special effects and setup for a (get your groans ready) two-film finale than holding together as its own product. 3) The Ridiculous 6 One of the most vile, pathetic lumps of celluloid dumped in front of me this year never even made it to theaters. The Ridiculous Six, the latest and undeniably most atrocious offering yet from so-called comedian Adam Sandler, had a direct-to-Netflix debut as part of a four-picture deal the company was somehow tricked into signing with him. If that means the company is going to pay for three other affronts to good taste as unsavory as this one, someone's getting fired. How bad is The Ridiculous Six? Its best actor is a burro suffering from explosive diarrhea. Its only good scene comes when the credits roll. And the rest of it is damn near unwatchable, a collection of lazily offensive sketches connected by a supremely flimsy, boring story arc. It’s an homage to the Western genre seemingly acted, written and directed by a group of people who have never seen one in their lives. This travesty makes A Million Ways to Die in the West look like High Noon. 2) Get Hard It’s hard to think of a more abhorrent comedy in recent years than this noxious, ugly, outdated piece of trash, which follows a racist businessman (Will Ferrell) who recruits the only black guy (Kevin Hart) he knows to give him ‘prison lessons’ so that he can avoid being raped while on the inside serving time for embezzlement. It’s also hard to know where to start criticizing it, because absolutely everything in Get Hard is mind-bogglingly awful, from the gay-panic humor to the bland and lazy direction (by Etan Cohen, who thankfully hasn’t found another helming gig since). Ferrell and Hart never conjure any sort of chemistry on screen, simply inhabiting poorly staged scenes and sleepwalking through lines so unfunny that the film almost works better as a self-satire. They’re victims here, trapped by a thoroughly horrible film, but they’re also guilty of not looking at the script they were given. Had they done so, they would have realized the entire flick is built on a nauseating foundation of racism and homophobia, poisoning the movie from first frame to last. In 2015, it’s downright shocking that a movie as despicable as Get Hard got made. It lands with a splat in a country more attuned to the horrors of racial inequality and sexual discrimination than ever, like that hateful old relative who sits in the corner at family gatherings, the only one still laughing at the denigration of others. This is the worst thing either lead actor has ever done, and I'm tempted to boycott all their future endeavors until they go on record to apologize for ever having appeared in it to begin with. 1) Stonewall Boy does Roland Emmerich know how to make a disaster movie - and this one is unquestionably his most disastrous, a grotesquely offensive subversion of the Stonewall riots that has no interest in acknowledging anything about that pivotal LGBTQ+ moment's queer rage and diversity. How fucked up is this movie? It pulls a white, cisgender, gay male character named Danny (Jeremy Irvine) out of the ether and goes so far as to posit that he incited the riots, unapologetically erasing and whitewashing the trans, lesbian, black, brown and female heroes actually responsible. In essence, Stonewall is the equivalent of making a movie about the Civil Rights Movement in which Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks and Malcolm X are all relegated to the background and played by white actors while a handsome white guy finds his calling in "leading" their struggle. It's a stunning slap in the face of the actual rioters, who fought hard and sacrificed much in a fearless, inspiring pursuit of equality and freedom from systematic oppression. Out of some wrongheaded attempt to appeal to mainstream audiences (wrongheaded because this year has already brought us Tangerine, Transparent and Straight Outta Compton, all fantastic stories about minorities that refuse to bow to conformity and succeed in part because of that), the movie decides to puke up a cis/white-savior narrative all over an inherently non-cis/non-white chapter of American history. This, along with a script that's as inept as it is insensitive, causes it to make an execrable mess of history in the process. "We're all in this together," it seems to be saying through its stereotypically handsome, All-American protagonist, flat-out ignoring that the queer and trans people of color (particularly women) faced far greater risk and lived with far less privilege or safety than guys like Danny. Stonewall reduces a fiery, desperate and real QTPOC movement to the insipid tale of a white gay guy just trying to belong, then has the stones to turn around and claim that it's not his story but everyone's story. But it's not, at all. Trans and non-gender-conforming activists were not at Stonewall to be the supportive sidekicks and comic relief to more socially "acceptable" gays like Danny. Heroes like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera deserve to be honored - and they deserve to be the heroes of their own fight to be treated like human beings. There have been some well and truly shitty movies this year, but none of them are as baldly offensive and deleterious as Emmerich's feature-length perpetuation of the insidious stereotype that the LGBTQ+ rights movement was and is one fought by white, cis, gay men. The movie is indicative of shadowy attempts by some mainstream factions of the movement to erase trans, non-white people of color, especially women, from historical accounts of their own struggle. But in actuality, those same minorities are some of those who have fought the hardest, suffered the most and gained the least. They deserve recognition. And they sure as hell deserve better than Emmerich's whitewashing, transphobic, insultingly pasteurized middle finger to a monumental moment in history, the worst movie of 2015.