Oscars 2015: The Nominees’ Worst Films
The second half of the 2000s were a good time for Steve Carell. Following his dual successes in The 40-Year Old Virgin and Little Miss Sunshine, he made the step up from “Former Daily Show Correspondent” to comedic actor with dramatic chops. He had his run on the American version of The Office, Date Night, and the first Despicable Me to his credit before this flop was released.
On paper, the cast was full of some of the hippest comedy stars of the day and it was a remake of well-regarded French dark comedy, but everything about the tone of the American version was off. By sawing the rough edges off its characters, it actually made them seem like worse people. The film came and went without much thought. Carell has obviously done fine despite it
2010, Paramount
Since Cooper is celebrating his third consecutive nomination, a feat that puts him in rare company, there’s no real reason to change the answer from previous years. In a year in which he gave one of his best performances as a talking raccoon, it’s hard to fault his script selection if nothing else.
It’s tempting to put the disaster that is the Hangover 3 here, but it’s hard to fault the man for taking a paycheck. So, we’ll stick with this half-baked thriller in which Cooper plays a novelist who has plagiarized his most successful work.
2012, Warner Bros.
These days, Cumberbatch is less of an actual person and more of an avatar for a certain sort of imagined posh “Britishness.” His choices, even when they have not been in great movies, have generally avoided true disasters. One can hardly blame him for this one.
While he’s pretty entertaining as Smaug, and uneventful as Sauron, there’s no getting around the fact that the third film was mostly just the climax of a story stretched to its limit. A non-stop battle scene, despite some cool moments and some good work by Martin Freeman, ultimately has the feel of watching someone else play a video game.
It’s hard to think this mawkish and miscalculated family film wasn’t at least part of the reason for Keaton’s absence from leading roles over the past decade or two. Keaton plays a traveling jazz musician who has never been able to be a real part of his son’s life. When he is killed in an accident, he is brought back to life as a snowman so he can hang out with his kid and make things right. Yeah. That’s the plot.
The two most memorable things about this were that 1. Somehow George Clooney was originally attached to the movie, with Sam Raimi slated to direct and 2. It was often confused for a raunchy horror movie of the same name by inattentive parents at Blockbuster video.
1998, Warner Bros.
If, as expected, Eddie Redmayne wins the Oscar for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking, he may also beat Cuba Gooding Jr.’s record for quickest transition between award-winning performance and total crapfest. Already, Jupiter Ascending is being picked as the worst movie of the year, and Redmayne’s performance in particular is singled out as one of the most egregious flaws within a film full of them.
Whether Redmayne recovers, or whether his Oscar-worthy performance will be regarded as a onetime fluke remains to be seen.
2015, Warner Bros.
Like Cumberbatch, Cotillard has been very smart with the roles she has chosen, and there aren’t quite as many stinkers to choose from. Still, this misfiring musical by Chicago director Rob Marshall falls firmly under the category of “Ambitious Disaster.” Casting Daniel Day-Lewis in a musical comedy remake of an Italian New Wave classic certainly qualifies as ambitious, and the result was (through no fault of Cotillard’s) a total disaster.
2009, Weinstein Company
If no other good came from this movie, at the very least it pushed Sony to allow Spider-Man to rejoin the Marvel fold over at Disney. Driven by a contractual obligation to continue producing films starring the superhero, lest they lose the rights, Sony rebooted the franchise a mere decade after Tobey Maguire first donned the mask.
The first film was considered a decent, if still unnecessary, retelling of the Spider-Man origin story. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 on the other hand showed none of the light touch that director Marc Webb had demonstrated with 500 Days of Summer. Instead, it presented a bizarre series of dubstep fight scenes that seemed to be vaguely Spider-Man themed. Jones and fellow nominee Emma Stone will both be happy to see the back of this franchise.
2014, Columbia Pictures
Moore had been a working actress for more than a half-decade before Hollywood began to take notice. But eye-catching supporting roles in crowd pleasers such as The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Benny & Joon and The Fugitive, along with her critically acclaimed work in Short Cuts and Safe in the early- to mid-‘90s allowed her to step up to the big leagues.
Paired with Hugh Grant (fresh off Four Weddings and a Funeral, and before he realized he was better suited to playing cads), crowd-pleasing director Chris Columbus and a supporting cast of reliably friendly faces, Nine Months seemed like a safe bet. A remake of a French comedy about a couple expecting their first child, what was expected to be a giant hit for everyone actually turned into a film in which there is not one single likeable character.
1995, 20th Century Fox
Clash of the Titans from 1981 was never a particularly good film to begin with, but it is beloved by people of a certain age and fans of Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects work. The decision to remake it in 2010 wasn’t totally crazy — a fun remake could have been made from the material. Instead, what audiences got was dreary, dark and boring. Which makes the decision to make Wrath of the Titans in 2012 even more insane.
2012, Warner Bros.
Witherspoon came out of the late ‘90s on a wicked hot streak. Following a string of performances that included career-defining roles in Election and Legally Blonde, it was a bit disappointing to see her sign on to the Adam Sandler money train at the exact moment the wheels started to come off. In case you are having trouble keeping Sandler’s bombs straight, Little Nicky is the one where he plays Satan’s son. Patricia Arquette, nominated for an Oscar this year for her role in Boyhood, was also in this, but she’s got an even worse movie on our list.
2000, New Line
Look, Duvall was, is and always will be Tom Hagen. And if he’s not Tom Hagen, he’s Col. Kilgore. Either way, it pains me to have point out his missteps, but wow…this thing has to be seen be believed, not just for what a bad adaptation of the Hawthorne classic it is, but for how absolutely insane Duvall was allowed to be in this thing.
Demi Moore was at the peak of her star powers and is an entirely too modern Hester Prynne, director Roland Joffe appeared to think he was making an erotic thriller and a still relatively unknown Gary Oldman was in full method mode. But it is Duval, as Hester’s estranged husband, who basically stole the show. After spending years living with the Native Americans, Duval’s Chillingworth appears to have comeback crazy, with a penchant for dancing around in animal skins. Seriously, it’s so bad it’s almost worth watching.
1995, Allied Stars Ltd
Following his roles in Dead Poets Society, Reality Bites and Before Sunrise, Ethan Hawke was poised to take on the mantle of Gen X heartthrob that Leo DiCaprio would eventually assume. A combination of bad choices and a notoriously prickly attitude sapped much of Hawke’s promise, and it is really only his relationship with fellow Austin native Richard Linklater that has kept him from a career full of B movies (Training Day aside).
For the absolute worst though, you really need to go to his pre-fame leading role in Mystery Date. Part of a spate of largely interchangeable late ‘80s/early 90’s raunchy teen sex comedies, Mystery Date has the distinction of being actually worse than the nearly identical License to Drive, which starred ‘80s punch lines Corey Haim and Corey Feldman.
1991, Warner Bros
Since Norton’s first real role, in Primal Fear, resulted in an Oscar nomination, he basically entered the game with the weight of expectation already upon him. Not unlike Hawke, he has never quite fulfilled his initial promise, but his failures typically are of the “prestigious but dull” variety.
Death to Smoochy was neither of those things. In fairness, the Danny DeVito film is not actually that bad — it’s more of a failed attempt than a complete disaster, and it has moments of legitimate gut-busting comedy. It’s just tonally and structurally very, very messy.
2002, Warner Bros
Despite being only six years younger than his co-star, Mark Ruffalo’s and Meg Ryan’s careers were at opposite places in 2003. Ryan had spent years as “America’s Sweetheart” when she found herself on the wrong side of 40 and with limited success transitioning to older, less cutesy roles. Ruffalo had been working in the lower recesses of the industry for a while and had just had a breakthrough with his role in You Can Count on Me. He was the hot new leading man.
Art House Director Jane Campion was brought in to bring some respectability and a feminist slant to what was essentially a ‘90s-style erotic thriller. For many, many reasons, the final product is simply ugly and borderline incomprehensible. Ruffalo’s star continued to rise, while Ryan has largely been absent from film since then.
2003, Pathe Productions
The usually brilliant Coen Brothers hit a rough patch in the early 2000s and The Ladykillers is easily their worst movie. It may be the worst movie I’ve seen in a theater. If it is any consolation, Simmons is the best thing in the movie (often the case), but even his charm can’t save this mess. His character is named “Garth Pancake” and his wife, who goes only by “Mountain Girl,” met him at their IBS support group…and that’s basically it. I’m upset just thinking about it.
2004, Universal Studios
It’s fairly common for people to freak out en masse at the turn of a century, and even more so at the turn of the millennium. The years before and after 2000 were no different, with everything from Y2K to the ever-impending rapture threatening to bring our world to an end. No surprise that filmmakers tapped into that frenzy, releasing a whole lot of movies about the end times, including ones that attempted to take the Christian Apocalypse literally.
While not quite as absurd as The Seventh Sign or the action oriented, Schwarzenegger-starring End of Days, Stigmata also lacks the taste and sophistication applied to the subject by Michael Tolkin in The Rapture. Arquette plays an ordinary woman, who inexplicably develops stigmata. A priest (played by poor Gabriel Byrne, who ironically was the devil in End of Days) is sent to investigate whether this is a sign of the impending end. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was one of Arquette’s last leading roles.
Stigmata (1999, MGM)
Even the most blinded of David Lynch fans (and I count myself in that category) has trouble defending this one. As with any Lynch work, his strength here is in setting a mood. There are many, many wonderfully moody moments in this film. The problem is none of them make a damn bit of sense.
The story of an actress (Dern) whose grip on reality slips further and further, the film simply fails to give us enough to hang onto. The audience never knows exactly what’s going on, and while a little of that can be awesome, the result here is mostly a fascinating mess.
2006, Studio Canal
It’s tempting to pick one of the later Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but it’s hard to pin those failures on Knightley. King Arthur wasn’t really her fault either. It was simply a good idea horribly executed. The concept was to take the Arthurian legends and strip them of their typical High Middle Ages trappings and place them in the more likely historical context at the beginning of The Dark Ages, after the Roman Empire lost its foothold on England. It’s an approach that could work, but in this case mostly didn’t due to silly costumes, bad writing and a questionable grasp of history.
2004, Touchstone Pictures
Like Edward Norton, Stone’s first real role in a major motion picture made her a star, and as such she doesn’t have the back catalog of bad decisions that haunt some of her more veteran companions among this year’s nominees.
While we could easily jump on The Amazing Spiderman 2 again, Stone also featured in this disastrous 2013 ensemble comedy. On paper it didn’t seem like such a bad idea: a series of vignettes in the Farrelly Brothers style of gross-out sex comedy. She had proven she could work wonderfully blue with Superbad, and was hardly alone as an otherwise “respectable actor” who should not have been in this movie, but it still stands out as a sore point on an otherwise solid resume.
2013, Relativity Media
Same as last year…she still hasn’t made a movie worse than this.
Orion Pictures