Most disappointing movies I watched in 2015

It would be hard for me to narrow down an "objective" list of worst movies for 2015, since I watched -a lot- of low-budget, badly rated movies this year, but at the same time, I'm not sure I'd want to put them on such a list. See, while I'm not drawn to actors or characters like many movie viewers, I'm a sucker for world-building, unique story elements and a strong visual style - leading me to love several "objectively not very good" movies like; Demolition Man (amazing world building), The Postman (some very interesting ideas about an image overpowering the person), Wanted (love the stylistic choices, wish it'd done less story), The Grinch (world-building, visual style), the Matrix sequels (there's so much depth hidden between the overly-long fighting scenes) and Hellboy 2 (visual world-building, creature design).
But most of all I'm a story-oriented viewer.
Show me something, anything unique, creative and/or complex and I'll forgive most other technical faults because I can see the original intent of the writer/director, and can appreciate the ideas that were lost during production.
This year was for me filled with flawed products featuring interesting, unique and creative story-elements I didn't expect to find in cheap made-for-tv movies.

No, what really gets me going are movies that failed to do anything with their set-up, movies where I went in with low expectations and still ended up disappointed, movies where I turn off and sit there seething with frustration and anger over what I just watched. Most of the movies on this list stuck with me for days after as negative emotions, and the top three managed the impressive feat of making me both exceptionally bored and incredibly angry at the same time.

Presenting; the most frustrating, irritating, disappointing things I watched this year

9. Man of Steel (2013)

I really, really disliked Superman Returns, and wasn't especially intrigued by the Man of Steel trailers, so I went into this movie with a sort of "I guess I have to see it some day" attitude. And I was still disappointed. I found most of the movie boring, Zod's characterization two-dimensional and underdeveloped, but the final peg in the coffin for me was that it just wasn't a Superman movie. That ending both rewrote everything Superman has been - and removed any chance of a sequel.
How do you one-up the villain that broke Superman?

8. Equilibrium (2002)
Equilibrium was well-received (by audiences, critics hated it) when it released in 2002, and maybe I'd have given it more leeway at a time when Matrix-rip-offs weren't such a dime a dozen as they became in the following years, but I just had no patience for this "trying to be more poignant that it really is" visual slog of a movie. Everything is symbolic in an incredibly obvious, in your face way, the "twist" was much better realized in Half-life 2, and most of all; ANGER IS AN EMOTION!!

7.Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

You could have been good Terminator 3!! I didn't like the "happy every after" ending of Terminator 2, so I was all up for the "Rise of the Machines" plot-line, and the script had quite a few interesting elements in it, it's just.. The action is boring, the acting is meh, there's several lines of dialogue that directly contradicts both the movie's plot and the character's personality, and I do not understand the weird, sexy female Terminator!
I wouldn't have minded a female Terminator who played on her sex-appeal if she was a Terminator built for infiltration and blending in, but she's not, she's a Terminator-killer, and while she has a scene where she "fixes" her breasts to look more appealing, she doesn't actually use her new "attributes" when dealing with the cop, she just shoots him. I'd also accepted a Terminator-killer that's a sadist, that I could see Skynet programming, but I do not accept a computer programming a Terminator to almost get an orgasm when she DNA-tests blood!
There's no in-movie reason for her behaviour, just as there's no plot reason for her to drop the "boyfriend-disguise" she puts on to trick Kate Brewster when she does, besides the production requiring its actress to be on screen for most of the movie.

The biggest disappointment is the ending. The ending is so good at first - the slow reveal when we figure out what's happened together with the protagonists, and watch them slowly accept their predetermined future and that everything they did was in vain - and then it's totally undermined by the insulting narration explaining everything like we're a 9-year old watching a sci-fi movie for the first time.

Stop insulting your audience!!

Also, where is my scene where Arnold pulls of his stripper pants? You had fun with the silly sunglasses, why not use the stripper clothes you had him wear the entire movie?!?

Such a wasted opportunity.

6. Robocop (2014)
See Robocop, I could have been one of your biggest fans. I'm not a big fan of the original movie (having barely seen it at the time and not liking hyper-violence) but I am a big fan of exploring what it means to be human, AI and robots. I came into it with low expectations and no baggage, and you still pissed me off!
Robocop is one of the new crop of "sci-fi" movies that doesn't like exploring its own sci-fi elements. It introduces a lot of concepts and questions (some of them being "why is he in such a cumbersome, heavy suit when you -just- showed us advanced prostheses and much slimmer, sleeker robots" and "why did you show him having most of his body just to remove it for no reason, also what happened to his eye??") but never bothers to show us enough to even try to answer any of them.
We're never shown both sides, we're never shown what could be problematic about robot soldiers (the first scene does not count! Just increase their threat-level detection a bit! "Don't kill people with knives" - fixed. Also "they won't feel bad after killing someone" is not a good argument! What, the most important part of using humans in combat is that they'll get PTSD and mental problems afterwards? How is that good for anyone? Besides, you seem completely naive about how humans manage to kill other humans) and we're never shown the "bad guys" motivations or goals.

Android Cop, Hammond and Helen from Android Cop

What's worse, Robocop is a character-driven movie without any character-development. Alex Murphy is a robot before he's put in the suit, and he's a robot after he's in the suit. I couldn't care less about him as a person, and I'm never given enough time with his family to care about them.
I'm also never given enough information or characterization on any of the other characters to even understand what they're trying to achieve or what their jobs are.
I love Jackie Earle Haley and while I thought he had the only interesting character in the movie, he's not given enough time to develop his character or the plot surrounding him, leading to him just portraying a 2-dimensional specieist(?) baddie.

And WHY do the scientists keep getting confused and surprised by their own deliberate research???

"I changed his serotonin levels. Huh, he's acting like a robot now, I don't understand!"
"This serotonin gauge which is the main part of the screen I've been watching this whole time is increasing at the same time as Robocop is behaving erratically, I don't understand!"

Having just watched the Asylum-mockbuster "Android Cop" I can confidently say that Robocop (2014) was outclassed completely by its low-budget, shot-in-2-months counter-part.

Android Cop (2014)

5. Gåten Ragnarok (2013)
I was so happy when this was announced, I love low-budget, not-very-good adventure movies, so I was really excited to get a Norwegian one. I wasn't expecting much, I know from experience that when we stray into a genre Norwegian cinema isn't known for we end up with a regurgitation of common genre tropes, but I was expecting something like The Librarian, Macgyver: Lost Treasure of Atlantis or Voyage of the Unicorn (a Hallmark mini-series I watched when I was young).
The Bluray was purchased not long after release, but when I sat down and watched it this year I was so disappointed. This isn't an adventure movie!
Gåten Ragnarok is a generic low-budget monster movie, that seemed like it didn't have the money to feature its monster in all the scenes it had planned to.
If you've seen films like Jurassic Park: the Lost World, the direction of the plot loses all semblance of suspense and mystery. You know exactly what's going on, why it's happening and how it will end, complete with "monster doesn't kill the kids immediately, just stares at them" trope.
Most of the actual adventure and lore elements are delivered through exposition and dialogue (show, don't tell movie!), and the movie keeps changing locations without ever explaining or justifying the scene/time-jump.
Did the movie mean to have them arrive at Bodø airport or was it using it as a generic air-port stand-in, hoping we wouldn't recognize it? If it is Bodø, do they really think you can drive from Bodø to Finnmark in a few hours? There's no good way to tell because someone thought a sense of time and explaining scene-transitions was unnecessary.
How did he get down again into the cave after the rope broke? How are they suddenly on a raft in the middle of the river? We don't need these in-between scenes, that would be -boring-. ...

Replicant and happy endings - a rant

First of all, this movie should've been called "Stockholm Syndrome the movie" or "How to be an abuser - a visual guide"...

Replicant is the story about Jake Riley, favourite detective of serial killer "Torch" (Van Damme), known for murdering single mothers and torching their bodies with the child still in the house. After failing to capture him one last time, Jake goes into retirement, but is picked up by a clandestine government agency who are planning to clone terrorists, and have cloned "Torch" to use him as a test subject.
The Replicant (he's never given a name) is telepathically connected with his murderous source, and Jake is tasked with activating the latent killer in the Replicant, any way possible.

The tag line on my Bluray "Think twice before you clone a killer" is just blatantly lying about where the story goes. Actually, cloning a killer works pretty well, though making it a much darker and more uncomfortable movie than I expected.

The intro is ludicrous; exposition, extremely fast cutting and jumping to our main plot after 5 minutes, never even -trying- to defend its idiotic set-up, while the end is even stupider than anticipated, ending on the most unrealistic happy ending you would never guess.

Everything in between features naive, newborn replicant Van Damme being abused, manipulated and scared by his "daddy" - the supposed hero of our story, and struggling family man (maybe. We could never figure out if he was related to the fellow police officer/mother he keeps visiting. The kid called him "uncle", he sends his mother to stay with her, and yet, in a deleted scene, they were making out. O.o)
Jake might not be doing it on purpose (we weren't sure), but the way he treats the Replicant is basically a blueprint for creating a dependent - he ignores the Replicant, is overly violent, blames him for any tiny mistake, and just when he's ripped all the footing out from under his feet, he shows him just a little bit of kindness. (Rinse and repeat)
It's depressing, uncomfortable and sad, but not bad. Van Damme absolutely shines in this role, and every time his "daddy" gets angry with him it is heart-breaking to watch.

It's just that nothing else supports the amazing performance and moral lesson presented by Van Damme's Replicant. His serial-murder version is not especially fleshed out or interestingly played, Michael Rooker as Jake just phones in his role, the dialogue is incredibly ham-fisted and likes hammering its points home (while not following up on them. At all) the one-liners are weak and the Van Damme/Van Damme fight scenes are not on the quality level they should have been.

There's a scene in the deleted scenes showing Jake going back to his whatever-their-relationship partner's house and receiving a drawing from her son - illustrating him standing over the beaten up replicant (he brought the replicant to her house, because of course he did, handcuffed him in the basement, son found him, offered him a snack, came running out from the basement, mouth bleeding. Jake went ballistic and savagely beat the replicant - turned out the kid had knocked heads with the dog) which I understand why they cut (it was part of a larger scene with family drama), but really wish they hadn't, because it would have been the -only- indication in the movie that Jake's behavior isn't okey.

I was assuming the movie would be either funny-bad or forgettable, but it's neither, solely because of that replicant performance. It is sad, touching, heart-breaking, infuriating and meaningful, and the movie insults everything it is, it could have been, and its viewers with a bullshit ending that ignores everything that's happened to give replicant Van Damme a girl friend.

About halfway through the movie serial killer Van Damme finds out about his clone and starts manipulating him to turn against Jake because they're "brothers", so I was expecting the movie to end with replicant Van Damme having to choose between his "daddy" and his "brother", killing serial killer Van Damme to save Jake.

It doesn't.

What I wanted to happen was after we'd dealt with serial killer Van Damme and everything is over we enter Jake's house at night, Jake is on the floor, dead, while replicant Van Damme is sitting in a corner, crying, covered in blood.

That definitely doesn't happen.

What happened to bad endings? When did we decide that all movies, no matter what age rating, how dark the story is or what the movie is about shall end on a happy note, ham-fistedly inserted or not?
Some times a dark ending is more meaningful, more poignant, more likely to make an impact, and yet I feel I haven't seen a bad ending in.. 15 years?
Give me my unhappy, terrifying, heart-breaking periods back!

This was a story about a new-born clone given the genetic make-up of a killer, reliving every bad thing that'd happened to the original, every murder he'd done and even being telepathically linked to the guy while he does his deeds - all the while being abused and hated by the first, and only human he's connected with, and we still felt this was the perfect set-up for a nurture over nature ending?

Osmosis Jones ramblings

(Small note: I'm trying to actually post everything I write, so this is my draft of a review on Osmosis Jones which I wrote the day before Nostalgia Critic posted his review. See that for a more coherent take on this stupid thing)

Osmosis Jones..  OMG. Just why?

This 2001 movie with Chris Rock in the main role featuring obscure buddy-cop movie humour, references to 80s and early 90s movies like Blade Runner and Titanic, a surprisingly good performance by Shatner channeling Nixon, and the worst performance by Bill Murray I've ever seen.

Horrible 90s rap music and an extremely invasive orchestral score make this one of the worst musical film scores I've heard.
Bill Murray muddles through a character who seem to simultaneously be trying to get both the "worst father of the year" award and a razzie award, with just gross-out humour after gross-out humour and nothing else, while the animated sequences (inside Murray's body) are playing out a buddy-cop setting, that unfortunately never manages to push past the established cliches.

The majority of the movie (the animated part) has some good ideas, and features some good performances, notably Drix and the major's aide, but is marred by its lack of focus and too-adult humour.

By the end of the movie we've totally lost track of our target audience, featuring a scene where the villain strangles the protagonist, and then threatens to kill the 9-year old girl.

On Adam Sandler and his type of comedy

I’m one of those who hate Adam Sandler with a passion because (yes, I will elaborate), because he perpetuates a type of comedy that bases itself on being stupid and demeaning. The main character is an arrogant, selfish, stuck in his own head stupid asshole who inadvertently and on purpose is mean to people and animals around him, but go through some sort of redemption arch so that we’ll sympathize with him in the end, forgetting all the lives he ruined to get there (see Nostalgia Critic’s review of Eight Crazy Nights for a good example). 
During the first part of this video they mention a list of things one expects to see in an Adam Sandler movie, which also perfectly lists why I hate them, as well as talk about how these movies are really just a big scam to advertise and earn their actors money. 

There’s a reason the Mr. Bean movies didn’t work, there’s a reason the Pink Panther remake didn’t work, you cannot do a movie based solely around the concept that your character is an inadvertent asshole that hurts other people, and yet, this is the only thing Adam Sandler does, and he gets away with it! 

To be fair, I’ve seen very few Sandler movies, I didn’t like the two I’ve seen (Hotel Transylvania doesn’t count!), so most of my impressions of his work comes from the horrible trailers, like Click, where they showed me Sandler slowing down a woman to look at her boobs, which, to be fair, was a great way to tell me never to see it, not a good way to make me watch his stuff, but even just from the trailers I feel I’m justified in giving these movies flack for keeping alive the dickish, childish humor, where we laugh at others getting in trouble, and creates an audience for things like this: https://youtu.be/ScMOyURq9os where straight up murdering a cow is played for laughs in the trailer. 

(And yes, I do not like the original National Lampoon movies for the same reason I don’t like this new remake trailer. I can’t stand when animal cruelty is played for laughs. It’s one of the best ways to get me to stop being entertained and instead feel just sad and frustrated. Killing sentient beings shouldn’t be amusing!)

AG Sins - Syberia: Kate Walker is an asshole

I love Syberia, it’s still one of my top 10 games, and the journey you and Kate take throughout the 2 games is both fulfilling and emotional, but it’s also home to one of the worst examples of “I can’t touch that” puzzles in video game history. 
Not only does she refuse to pick up the oar because it’s “dirty and wet”, not only does she treat the poor kid as a grunt, having him do everything for her after asking for “help”, but she could have just walked over the stupid river, it’s what, 2 feet of tranquil water?! 
Is this how you treat other people Kate? 

Syberia is a 2002 point and click adventure designed by Benoît Sokal and developed by Microïds. It was released on Steam by Anuman, who’s supposedly developing Syberia III.

Motive series "review"

I’m wishy-washy about Motive. I didn’t really like the first season, I thought it just repeated all the common crime series plots with an abrasive female as the main, but I loved the second season, when the stories became grey-toned and the murderers all had reasons (often quite good ones) for what happened (and they fleshed out the main cast). But this season seems more interested in show-casing their guest actors than telling interesting stories (it seems to be trying a “victim wasn’t killed for the obvious motive” red thread this season as well).

I’m afraid it’s doing a “Body of Proof” (meh first season, great second season, series-ending third season. That series just went insane its last season).. :S

With the loss of Perception (which I really didn’t like in the beginning, it was too focused on his “special ability”/illness and he “just happened” to always give lectures on the episode’s plot, but grew into a intriguing procedural with a strong sub-plot (though I really wish they hadn’t done the whole ex-husband romance thing) and Forever (which I didn’t like until the reveal that he is his son, then I got interested at once), I’m losing most of the crime series I’m actively following.

I’ve only got Major Crimes (which I absolutely, totally adore) and Criminal Minds (which I’ve been meh about the last 2 seasons. Most of the stories are not working any more) left on my “crime series I watch when they air” list. Well, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine sort of (I don’t qualify NCIS: Los Angeles. I like it, I watch it, it is in no way crime-solving).

This is why I don't do poetry

On the last episode of Top Chef they had to make dishes based on famous New-England writers. One contestant chose Poe - the Raven and described it as a sad and mournful love story about a man who’d lost his beloved, and I seriously went “the Raven is a love story? Since when? I’ve got to reread the Raven”. 

I see the mentions of Lenore when rereading it, but it’s not what I would have focused on in an analysis. 
For me the Raven has always been about a lonely, old man’s decent into depression and paranoia/madness, being haunted by the very thing providing him a semblance of the companionship he seeks. 
The Raven both driving him further into paranoia and madness, while at the same time jolting him out of it by providing a constant presence, and taunting him with the idea that he’ll never have companionship again. (while the Raven in itself is a sign that he’s lost his grasp of reality) 

After all, Lenore is gone, it’s a love lost, it’s more a tragedy than a love story, and I’ve always thought the loneliness he’s experiencing is the focus, not the lost love in itself. 
Also, I seem to be reading the poem a bit more severely than other people. 

It’s just realizing again that I’ve been missing a huge, obvious part of the poem, which is part of the “standard” analysis of it, and would’ve caused me to score badly if I ever were to write about it on a test. 
Bah.

Late night randomness

Some evenings I get this huge urge for unspecified sweets. I do not know what I want, but I know we don't have it in house. So I resist as long as possible, but end up giving up and going to the nearby store, usually an hour/ half an hour before it closes.

There are several problems with this:

I do not like the dark, and get jumpy over strange shadows in my periferal vision. And footsteps freak me out. So after half running to the store, I walk around with a basket, having no clue what I want and just putting in randomness.

Feeling in no way up to shopping I don't manage to follow a shopping list or go to any great effort, but I can't just buy junk either, because then the shop assistant might think I'm only there to buy fatty things (which I am), so I end up picking up random things I can remember from the shopping list.

Not that I really have anything to worry about, as the Rema up the street is the chosen student shop, and really, everyone that was there shopping seemed to be doing the exact same thing I was doing, and picking up some "normal" items just for show, based on their shopping baskets.

So, though I pick up some random things we need, I can't muster to do anything else with them, like putting the bread in the cutting machine. For some reason I really did not want to do that with every fiber of my body.

Also, because I just have an unspecified urge for sweets, I end up buying many different things just to have options.

One last problem, I do not like being in stores when they're about to close. I feel like I'm in the way and causing them to not be able to go home, so when I hear/see things hinting to the store closing (like the shop assistants clearing away baskets) I get really stressed and feel like I have to finish as soon as possible and get out. Which makes going out late at night to shop a rather stressful experience, with really no good reason for doing it..

So tonight I came home with:

sour citrus lips (pick candy)

chocolate pudding

onions

a toothbrush

instant noodles with shrimp flavor (only store that has them in the vincinity, so I always stock up)

cherry tomatoes (offer)

foccaccia w/tomato

two ice creams

mozzarella

bread

chocolate and vanilla cream twist

garlic

Smoothie

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

I'm not sure what to think about this one. I think my one, general reaction is; I'm underwhelmed.
"Alice in Wonderland" is such a huge and quirky world, there's so much to work with, so much to build from, and this film just isn't creative.

It seems to be targeting people that have some idea of what Alice in Wonderland is, having maybe seen the disney (animation) version many years ago, but not read the books or know the story.
It also tries, like so many films lately, to cater to both children and adults, but fails to find a middle ground. I would not take young children to see this film.
If you take away the wonder aspect and just look at the film, it's a very standard fantasy/action film with all the usual elements; growing up, finding themselves, moral (being special is what makes you great), great big monster to fight, tasks to overcome and a romantic interest.
Besides the "young girl making her mark in a time where women shut up and act pretty" theme, the film doesn't bring much new to the fantasy genre.
Looking at it from a wonder aspect, there's so much more that could have been done. I want surrealism, I want quirky, I want mad! I don't want a hatter that's practically normal and a queen that's just evil.

It's also sad because the (supporting) cast is a.m.a.z.i.n.g! Crispin Glover, Stephen Fry, Alan Rickman, Christopher Lee.. *swoons* I'm also fond of Mia. She's a good actor, and it's nice to see an actress that's normal pretty looking, instead of a model beauty. I also think Anne Hathaway does a good job with the role she's been given. she's obviously been told to play a queen that's over-acting. The "real" white queen shine through a few times, though not really enough to show us who she really is.

Johnny Depp on the other hand.. I love Depp, he's a master of quirky characters, but I have to agree with others; we've seen this one before. I would have liked less Jack Sparrow and more Willy Wonka.

I didn't hate the film, by no means, I'm just, disappointed. Again, I seem to be disappointed with the lack of imagination and surrealism. And I hated, hated, HATED the romantic sub-plot!

I'm also seeing a worrying trend with Tim Burton's later films. It's becoming more and more Burton, and less about the original material. I love you Burton, I love your vision, your art direction, but you're starting to put a bit too much of yourself into your films. I want to see a real Tim Burton original again, written, directed, even produced by you, where you can really go all out and show us who you are. Just don't do it with a source material a lot of us love.

Star Wars: the Clone Wars

The Clone wars is the newest production from Lucasfilm, a company known for beating dead horses. And they don't disappoint with this animated feature. Set between the second and the third film, this one tells the story of Anakins and Obi-Wans fight to save a little Hutt child together with Anakins new apprentice, the fiesty Ahsoka Tano.
Featuring already known characters in a different filmstyle is dangerous enough on its own, and the voice actors trying to sound like Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen manage to make the experience completely unreal. While the animation on its own is very good (though the characters look more like puppets than animated characters) the strange similarities and differences in the animated characters as opposed to their actors takes some time to get used to.

The biggest problem with this film isn't its voice actors or animation, it is its story. This film is a film made for children, through and through. There is no context, no conflict and no psychology. Set between the second and the third film, this film could have given us a strong storyline further describing Anakins path to the dark side, especially considering his trip back to Tatooine, or at least a bit more about the war. As it is it introduces a completely new character that has no impact on the story or the world (or Anakin for that matter) and tells us how the Jedi secured the flight routes through Hutt territory, which apparently gives them a big advantage and might even win the war for the Republic (have you ever heard about this before?).
Riddled with plot holes, the relationship between Anakin and Ahsoka develops hugely in what is shown as only a few days, with Ahsoka learning Anakin's character and actions by heart after their first fight, to such a degree that she can predict his moves and thoughts.
The war parts are also disappointing with extremely old tactics and with the whole droid army as comic relief. With all their faults, slow reactions and general stupidity (a droid not understanding coordinates?) you end up wondering why the clone army is loosing. Even when taking their low numbers into consideration, the enemy's uncanny ability to get themselves and others killed should give a low-numbered smart army the upper hand.

The story and the idea is on its own not a bad one, but it is badly executed. If the point of the film is to recruit new, young Star Wars fans, why put it in-between two films with a story line that requires some knowledge of the Star Wars universe to follow, but if the film is for the old fans, why make such a disconnected story that doesn't develop the world or the characters we know? I also question if the Clone wars are the right place for a children's story. Is watching one and a half hour with non-stop violence and war okay for children as long as we make the ones killed comical and stupid, and remove the blood?