Wait! Just hold on a second… Before you rush off to the list and then the comments to get mad at me for the placement of these movies and “How dare you!” etc, etc… Remember, these are movies I consider disappointments for one reason or another, reasoning I set out to explain with each entry. Most often this has to do with expectations, whether it be because of the director, screenwriters, star, subject matter, what have you… This is never a fair position for a movie to be placed in, but it’s the fact of the matter and I think this is a list far more interesting than the “Top Ten Movies of 2014“.
With that out of the way, let’s scroll through the ten films I consider to be the most disappointing of the year, six of which were on my list of “Most Anticipated Movies of 2014” and their placements on that list are included with a snippet from my reviews as well as a few words on why they made this list.
Let’s go…
#10
A Most Violent Year
DIR. J.C. Chandor
SPOT ON MOST ANTICIPATED OF 2014 LIST: N/A
To be entirely upfront and honest, I had a hard time coming up with ten films and one that didn’t make the cut (but just as easily could have been listed right here) was Mike Leigh‘s Mr. Turner, largely because Leigh, and A Most Violent Year writer/director J.C. Chandor, are directors I expect a lot from and was largely let down with their films this year. Chandor proved to me with Margin Call and All is Lost he is no fluke and Leigh’s career is hardly a career a young director could imagine aspiring to it’s so amazing. However, both A Most Violent Year and Mr. Turner seemed a little empty to me, missing something, an edge you might say. Neither film I necessarily disliked, but given my expectations they were both well below what I hoped for.
REVIEW SNIPPET:
[I]t’s easy to recognize Chandor as one of today’s best young filmmakers and a filmmaker unafraid to take risk. His debut feature tackled Wall Street with a bunch of talking heads led by an all-star cast and he knocked it out of the park. He dialed it all the way back with his next feature starring Robert Redford alone at sea and now he takes a stab at a period drama that, at the very least, has a whole new generation learning and hopefully exploring some of the great cinema of the ’70s. He’s a director interested in telling stories, not so much interested in box office and for that I respect the hell out of him even if this latest film is a bit of a miss.
Read my full review here.
#9
Revenge of the Green Dragons
DIR. Andy Lau Tak Wah & Andrew Loo
SPOT ON MOST ANTICIPATED OF 2014 LIST: N/A
I don’t want to beat a dead horse, Revenge of the Green Dragons topped my Worst of 2014 list and as much as it was a bad film it was a truly disappointing one at that, largely because of the name attached. Martin Scorsese allowed his name to be used in the marketing for this movie with a “presented by” credit and what he was thinking I will never know. Is there another cut of the film he saw? Did he even see the film? An explanation is needed because it doesn’t make sense.
REVIEW SNIPPET:
[T]here isn’t a single redeeming quality when it comes to this movie and outside of doing Lau a favor, I can’t imagine why Scorsese would choose to have his name associated with it.
Read my full review here.
#8
Exodus: Gods and Kings
DIR. Ridley Scott
SPOT ON MOST ANTICIPATED OF 2014 LIST: #32
In the review snippet below I feel I may have let Ridley Scott off the hook. We could go back and forth on the quality of Prometheus forever, but put Exodus: Gods and Kings, The Counselor and Robin Hood in a group and the kinds of films Scott has delivered over the last few years are lacking to say the least and at this point just how excited can we really be for The Martian if Scott is working with, what seems to be, a “churn and burn” mentality?
REVIEW SNIPPET:
The white-washing of the cast of Exodus: Gods and Kings has been part of the conversation ever since Christian Bale was cast as Moses, Joel Edgerton was cast as the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses and it was announced white actors would largely make up the cast of Egyptian and Hebrew characters in Ridley Scott‘s retelling of the Biblical story. Even Scott weighed in saying, “I can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such,” leaving very little else to discuss when it comes to the lack of imagination shown in the casting. So I’ll leave it at that and attempt to look at the movie despite this aspect, though I guess the racial ignorance is the most compelling aspect of this 2.5 hour monstrosity, which is yet another example of Hollywood’s inability to do anything more than create giant digital effects and hope the audience is wowed into acceptance.
Read my full review here.
