For every gripping, well-crafted piece of cinema released in a given year, it seems
there must be at least one misguided, no-good slog of a film released to match it.
2019 is no exception and these are some of the worst movies of the bunch.
Overcomer is the latest effort from brothers Alex and Stephen Kendrick, purveyors of faith-based
flicks such as Fireproof, Courageous, and War Room.
While religious dramas haven't exactly earned a reputation for being critical darlings,
Overcomer still managed to fall well below expectations, owing to everything from its
clunky title to its stilted performances to its relentless proselytizing.
Mark Dujsik of RogerEbert.com channeled the site's namesake in dismantling the movie for
its steadfast refusal to be well, to be an actual movie.
He wrote:
"There's about half a movie in Overcomer.
The other half or so is a pretty half-hearted sermon.
Neither half is particularly worthwhile, and the whole is cheap, cheesy, and, to put it
charitably, churchy."
Variety's Nick Schager concurred, opining:
"[Overcomer is] a drama that affects sensitivity while nonetheless operating as a blunt instrument.
Its one-note sermonizing should help it appeal to its target audience, but those not already
in the fold will likely be left unmoved."
It's an aesthetic that has come to be expected from faith-based films, but the biggest critical
burn was levied by Movie Nation's Roger Moore, who was most offended by the Kendrick brothers'
failure to respect their craft.
He wrote:
"There's just nothing here...
Even as comfort food for true believers, Overcomer cannot overcome its myriad shortcomings."
Angel Has Fallen is the third in a series of films following the exploits of Secret
Service agent Mike Banning, preceded by 2013's Olympus Has Fallen and 2016's London Has Fallen.
How a third installment was warranted is anybody's guess, since neither film scored with critics
or cleaned up at the box office.
The series as a whole just seems to exist at this point to serve as a way to poke fun
at Gerard Butler.
"It’s funny ha?
It’s funny I know I get it."
Angel continued the films' tradition of lazily plotted, half-heartedly shot action and intrigue
and its paint-by-numbers aesthetic was judged by the vast majority of critics to be an insult
to any action fans who require at least a modicum of personal investment from filmmakers.
Flat characters and nonsensical plotting can often be forgiven if the action component
delivers, but director Ric Roman Waugh's uninspired staging and photography was the final nail
in the coffin.
But if one thing can be said for Angel Has Fallen, the movie at least brought out some
decent snark in virtually every critic who saw it including FilmWeek's Claudia Pugh,
who wrote:
"The franchise has fallen, and it can't get up."
Another year, another mess of a movie starring John Travolta, who at this point seems so
unbelievably far from his Pulp Fiction glory days that many fans are probably beginning
to wonder if he ever actually was in that movie.
The Fanatic stars Travolta in an autistic man who goes completely off the rails after
being rebuffed by his favorite actor.
But is this story handled with any sensitivity or nuance?
Well, for readers who were fans of popular music in the late '90s and early '00s, the
fact that this film was co-written and directed by Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst should tell you
everything you need to know about its sensibilities.
Robert Abele of The Wrap penned a particularly brutal takedown of the film, seeming to take
its very existence as a personal affront.
He wrote:
"[The Fanatic] is a brainless, exploitative folly which gives John Travolta free rein
to mine the history of cringe-worthy autism portrayals for an offensively garish Frankenstein
pantomime of unhinged obsession."
John J. Rambo might have been responsible for roughly as many box office dollars as
he was dead bad guys, but nobody has ever really seen his movies as anything other than
mindless, disposable action flicks… with the sole exception of First Blood.
The Rambo series has also been increasingly burdened by troublesome political overtones
over the years, and with Rambo: Last Blood, the series hit its nadir prompting the vast
majority of the critics who viewed it to savage it in their reviews.
Critics found the film's depiction of Mexico to be particularly ill-advised and that's
putting it kindly.
Salon's Matthew Rozsa wrote:
"[The movie] is less an escapist action movie and more a dramatized manifestation of the
most notorious sentences from Donald Trump's presidential campaign announcement speech...
When you take action film genre tropes and graft a political narrative onto them, people
often imbibe the ideology along with the spectacle.
That is when they become propaganda."
Rozsa's assessment wasn't even the most blunt or the most damning Matthew Turner of The
List wrote:
"The horrific finale makes Rambo himself seem like the real monster, making you briefly
wonder if Stallone is aware of the irony.
On balance, one suspects not."
It's never going to be easy adapting an acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel for the screen,
but Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch was always going to be trickier than most owing to its
hugely complex, thematically-dense narrative.
Unfortunately, the material proved to be too heavy for director John Crowley and screenwriter
Peter Straughan, who squandered the talents of a heavyweight cast in service of a flat
and inexcusably boring adaptation.
It wasn't that the filmmakers didn't follow the blueprint laid out in the novel; it was
just the lack of skill and finesse with which they did so.
The Atlantic's David Sims summed up the general consensus nicely, writing:
"Watching The Goldfinch is like having the plot of a novel read to you not the novel
itself, but merely its long and winding synopsis, a bitesize summary that still manages to feel
endless."
Most reviewers agreed that the flick's meandering pace, dearth of emotion, and assembly line
feel made it a challenging watch in all the wrong ways but perhaps the most painful zinger
was lobbed by Graeme Tuckett of Stuff, who wrote:
"[The Goldfinch] is a facsimile of a good film.
Or perhaps a parody of one."
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