The Worst Films of 2014

Let’s talk films in 2014. 

In many ways, 2014 has felt like a trailer for the far more exciting year of movies that is 2015, which has really stopped 2014 from having many brilliant or terrible movies. Tradition states, however, that rankings must be made. Seeing as that most movies this year were either passable enough not to be terrible, or uninteresting enough not to be brilliant, I've really had to dig about for movies I had a strong opinion of. 

Luckily, there are five films for both sides of the coin. After the jump, we rank...

5. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Or; Spider-Man 3-2: The ReVillaining

God bless Sony, they tried but ended up repeating the sins of Spider Movies past. The movie deserves some praise for the best Spider-Man costume put on film to date, the solid performances of both Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone as Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy respectively, as well as Dane DeHaan overcoming the odds and making Harry Osborne interesting. But it lacks everywhere else. Electro is a dubstep producing mess of a villain, Rhino makes no impact whatsoever, Norman Osborne equates to a cameo and a lot of the film is stuffed with so much unnecessary fluff about Peter’s largely uninteresting parents. Certainly not the worst, but it seemingly underperformed so badly, Sony is re-evaluating the franchise’s worth in the post-Avengers movie landscape.

4. RoboCop

Or; RoboCrap

I didn't know it was possible to make RoboCop boring, but it happened. The great thing about the original RoboCop is the visceral tone and the fine line it treads between gritty and deliciously goofy. It rode through its run time on wave of suspended disbelief in order to deliver some of the best adult themes sci-fi action of its time. The new RoboCop, however, is severely neutered in comparison. Save for one scene which shows the true extent of Alex Murphy’s damage, it feels hollow throughout. Even Sam Jackson couldn't save this reboot from being a complete snooze-fest.

3. A Million Ways To Die In The West

Or; A Million Ways To Ruin Your Credibility As A Screenwriter

I’ll concede that I haven’t found Family Guy, director Seth MacFarlane’s big hit cartoon, funny in years. Genuinely, this year has been a comeback for The Simpsons and the rise of Archer when it comes to comedy. But MacFarlane pulled a blinder with Ted. I had no hope for that movie being funny, but it was just good enough to make me have just a bit of hope in MacFarlane and give his next movie a chance. Turns out that even him and Neil Patrick Harris couldn't save this uninteresting mess. The problem isn't the performances, most of which are serviceable, or the premise, or the plot. The big thing is that it just never lands a joke satisfyingly. Even the trailers weren't laugh out loud material, which should have been an early warning sign. If this is the state that newer Family Guy is also in, cancel it. Again.

2. Interstellar

Or; LessThanStellar

Whatever happened to Christopher Nolan? He was riding high after making Inception, a film I still rank as one of the best ever made, but his fall from grace came hard. Very hard. Not content with ruining what could have been a perfect Batman trilogy, his grubby hands of influence can be felt all over the far too moody Man Of Steel. All of this seemingly comes to a head in Interstellar. Whilst managing to engage right up until the final half an hour, a mixture of mismatch between director and story and delusions of artistic grandeur seems to have shown us what happens when you don’t put a filter on Nolan. If Matthew McConaughey’s raspy delivery, Anne Hathaway’s intensely stupid characterisation and Matt Damon’s so-bad-it’s-good-and-then-bad-again cameo fistfight on Hoth that gets you riled up, it’ll be the ending. It’s too stupid to go into here, and we have a podcast that goes into more detail here, but to quote Darren Gutteridge in our podcast, Interstellar has what can only be described as a “bullshit fucking ending”. A waste of three hours no matter which way you look at it.

1. Divergent

Or; PURE. FUCKING. EVIL.

Oh boy, this is going to get personal.

I haven’t read any of the books this travesty is based on, and I really don’t want to. The utter blandness of this movie renders that possibility null and void. Basically, if you were to take the Hunger Games movies and rip all the life and soul out of them, you would still end up with a better teen action movie than Divergent.

And another thing about these teen action movies: Just stop making them. Right now. Because we’re going to make a bloody franchise out of this; the most tedious movie I have seen this year. I want to make it clear that I have no problem with the insecure teen focused, right-on-sister style of movies IF, and only IF, they’re done well (See The Hunger Games), but these stupid, empty, innocuous cash-in movies are just the worst. Everything is fucking phoned in so that it maximises its appeal to insecure teen girls, and it’s frankly appalling to see. The movie industry could give the pop music industry a run for its money of late. And like I said, they're franchising this piece of shit!

LOOK AT IT. LOOK AT THE ABJECT HORROR. LOOK AT THE POOR PERFORMANCES. THIS IS DESIGNED TO MAKE YOU WANT TO SEE THE MOVIE. ALL THIS IS MAKING ME WANT TO DO IS TAKE AN ICE CREAM SCOOP TO MY RETINAS.

Sorry, back to the movie at hand. The cast. The goddamn cast. Imagine, if you will, that there was an Avengers of infuriating actors. This movie is one Shia LaBeouf down of being the most infuriatingly awful collection of actors imaginable. We have the man soon to ruin Mister Fantastic (Which is hard to believe is possible), Miles Teller. We’ve got charisma vacuum Jai Courtney, the man responsible for ruining a Die Hard movie (Which is even harder to believe is possible). Kate Winslet amazingly puts in the worst performance of her career, in what can only be described as talent going supernova; the force of the this awful movie is ingesting all the good potential you have from performers of a high calibre, like Winslet.

The story is also complete garbage from minute one. It amazingly shits all over itself in the first few minutes whilst hastily trying to establish the basic story Marry into that the fact that if the actors lost their balance on set, they’d fall through one of the many gaping plot holes this movie has going, it’s a testing experience to watch.

But the big kahuna of them all is our main star, my arch nemesis, Shailene Woodley.

Pictured: The same person.

Not only does Microsoft Word not recognise her name as a real word, which is infuriating when it comes to writing about her, but she’s perhaps the most maddeningly dull actress to come out of Hollywood in recent years. Words cannot describe how badly I detest Woodley and her so called ‘movies’, a woman who managed to mess up playing Mary Jane Watson so badly, the had to cut her out of an already bad movie. And giving her a leading role in one of these unnecessary cash-in films does not help matters. Woodley is also the entire reason I refuse to watch The Fault In Our Stars, which is based on a book by John Green, a YouTuber I still have great respect for.

Combine all this and you’re left with a movie that set out to achieve mediocrity and somehow became much, much worse. It should be considered a stain on the career on anyone who was involved with it.

I'm sorry, Patrick, I told you it would get personal.

Join us next time for reverse of this coin, where we praise the best five movies of the year.