The Notscars 2011

Well, I hate to say it, but 2011 was a rather crappy year for movies. 2010 was one of the best in a while, but I guess they just couldn't keep up the good work. Obviously, I don't watch the movies that I believe look dumb, so it is hard for me to give an accurate list of the worst of 2011, but this is my attempt. You can consider this more of a "most surprisingly bad" movies list, considering I wouldn't have watched if I didn't expect a little something good. Nevertheless, here is the worst in 2011 movies. They are listed from pretty bad to awful (#1 being the worst).

Worst Actress in a Drama or Comedy


#5 - Kristen Stewart (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part I)

I know there are some Twilight fans that read my blog, and I'm sorry if this upsets you. Kristen Stewart is not a good actor. I firmly believe that Robert Pattinson has a very bright future, but Stewart is an awkward person in an awkward role. She fits, but she doesn't shine. In this movie even more so than the first three, she just didn't impress me. She probably doesn't make a worst list for any of the other Twilight movies, but this one was bad for her.



#4 - Blake Lively (Green Lantern)

Firstly, Blake Lively shouldn't have brown hair. Secondly, she should stick to her ditsy Gossip Girl roles. She can't even act like she has a good amount of intelligence. Thirdly, she isn't at all to blame for Green Lantern sucking. She just sucked alongside a sucky movie.





#3 - Leighton Meester (The Roommate)

Meester is certainly a young, annoying actress that really needs some coaching, but this was just rediculous. I'm not a huge fan of scary movies, but I have seen at least 100 that were better than this film. Meester was just the icing on a rotten cake. It probably wasn't all her fault, but she is getting the blame from me.



#2 - Lucy Punch (Bad Teacher)

You might think that Cameron Diaz deserves the blame for Bad Teacher sucking so bad, and you would be right. But we can't forget about Lucy Punch, who was probably just as awful as Diaz. Punch was hilarious in Dinner for Schmucks in 2010, but she just couldn't quite pull this role off. I don't know what the problem was, but there certainly was a problem.

#1 - Cameron Diaz (Bad Teacher)

Wow! This movie was awful. And who better to pin it on than the lead actress herself. I must admit that I'm not a huge Cameron Diaz fan in the first place, but I really thought this movie was going to be good. Unfortunately, it was absolutely horrible. Earning Diaz the award of worst actress in 2011!






Worst Actor in a Drama or Comedy


#6 - Phillip Seymour Hoffman (Moneyball)

Phillip Seymour Hoffman has the ability to play one of the widest ranges of characters, from Capote to the crazy guy in Twister. Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to play a Major League Baseball manager. This has to be one of his worst roles ever. He was just an awkward and unnecessary part of a great movie.




#5 - Ken Jeong (Transformers: Dark of the Moon)

What a funny man, and what a waste! I absolutely love all things Transformers, even through critics hate the movies. Unfortunately, Jeong's character was rediculously unnecessary and hopelessly stupid. Made me want to make a face like Mr. Wittwicky's here. Just go watch The Hangover if you want to feel better about him.






#4 - Hank Azaria (The Smurfs)

I am certainly not a kid, so maybe I missed the punchline with Azaria, but I doubt it. He wasn't funny. He was annoying. Kids go to movies to laugh, and I heard very little laughter when Azaria was on screen. Oh well.






#3 - Ian McShane (Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides)

Ian McShane is one of the scariest men to look at in the entire world!!! I have nightmares of getting into a staring match with him. Add to that, Blackbeard is just a scary pirate name, regardless of who plays him. However, Blackbeard was very very very not frightening, and there is no one to blame but McShane himself. It's just unfortunate. That's all.




#2 - Taylor Lautner (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part I)

Sorry girls, but it's just awful. I thought maybe he would get better as time passed, but I'm afraid there may be no hope for Lautner. I have provided a naked picture of him, in order to make you feel better about my harsh comments. At least he is only next to worst!






#1 - Patrick Dempsey (Transformers: Dark of the Moon)

Once again, Mr. Wittwicky's face perfectly describes my emotions: "Why is he even here????". Transformers would have been twenty times better if McDreamy would have stayed at home. Nobody understands Michael Bay, but this move was ridiculous. Unfortunately for Dempsey, this role will grab him my award for Worst Actor of 2011!



Worst Picture


#6
The Tree of Life

I truly and honestly HATE! to admit that I am at any fault in basically any situation. I will argue with anybody until they realize that I am right (usually they just get sick of arguing and walk away). With that being said, The Tree of Life blew my freakin mind. I didn't understand anything that was going on. The movie has gotten great reviews and has a chance for a best picture nomination, so I figured I didn't need to miss out. I tried so hard to comprehend the stupid thing, but it just wasn't happening. While I am an average guy, I usually don't mind the "critic's choice" type movies. Sure The Social Network should have won best picture last year, but The King's Speech was fantastic, regardless of what you think. Even with my patience and brains and appreciation for good movies, I had zero clue what was going on in this stupid stupid film.


#5
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part I

For one of her Christmas presents, I agreed to watch Breaking Dawn with my girlfriend, who had been begging me to go. As a kind gesture, I didn't write a review on the movie, in order to avoid upsetting the fans of the Twilight movies. However, when I sat down and compared all of the movies I have seen this year, it was necessary to include this film on my list of worsts. While I have previously dogged the acting a bit, the real issue can be boiled down to one single problem: they should have made just one movie for the last book. As I sat there watching, I just couldn't believe how drawn out the entire thing was. I mean, COME ON! It was like 30 minutes of wedding, then 30 minutes of honeymoon, then an hour of pregnancy! If you cut those times in half, you come up with one hour, which gives you plenty of time to add the rest of the info from the last book. If they had made one movie for the last book, it probably (more like possibly) wouldn't find itself on this list.



#4
The Smurfs

As I said in my review of this film, I am a huge fan of the classic Smurf cartoons, so I felt obligated to go watch this movie. As I sat in the theater, I quickly realized how obligations often suck. This movie was so very far from funny! It was just plain awful. I can't remember a single good thing about it. Maybe the little kids loved it, but I just highly doubt anybody in their right mind could have enjoyed any portion of this movie. I didn't hear much laughter from the kids, and laughter is traditionally how you measure whether a kid enjoys a movie. They don't care about plot structure! I just hope these kids are given a chance to watch the old cartoons, so they can really know what The Smurfs are all about.




#3
Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides

When I heard they were making a fourth Pirates movie, I immediately knew it was gonna suck. The Curse of the Black Pearl is my favorite movie of all time. There is no telling how many times I have watched it. When you watch the first three movies, you long for more and more Jack Sparrow, because he is obviously what makes the movies. So you would think he would be ok without Elizabeth and Will to balance his idiocy. Unfortunately, he was not. There was too much Jack Sparrow, and none of the additional cast was good enough to correct the issues. As you saw already, i was not impressed with Ian McShane in the villain role, and they made Barbosa a good guy? What is wrong with these people???? While I'm sure they will continue to ruin the franchise, this guy knew ahead of time that they should have stopped while they were ahead.



#2
Bad Teacher

So you would expect that an R-rated comedy with the word BAD in it would be rather vulgar, perhaps just downright ridiculous. You would think that kids would be cursing left and right and the whole movie would consist of Cameron Diaz washing her car in that skimpy outfit. Well, if you expected these things, you would not win the prize with Bad Teacher. I just don't understand how this movie could be soooooo bad. It seems like such a great idea, and the cast was fantastic! Ahhh! I hate it when good ideas are wasted, and Bad Teacher is one great idea that went right down the crapper. They should have really just called the movie BAD, because that's all it was.


#1 (Worst of the Worst)
Green Lantern

In brightest day...... Green Lantern sucks. In darkest night...... Green Lantern sucks. In the in between of dusk and dawn....... Green Lantern continues to massively, perpetually SUCK. If you haven't seen this movie, I almost have to hold back the urge to tell you to watch it. If I had to suffer through it, then so should you. Originally, I was so so very excited about this movie. The costume looked cool. Ryan Reynolds is funny yet manly enough to be a superhero. Peter Sarsgaard is as scary as a bad guy can be. Plus, Blake Lively is smoking hot. I mean, this movie had so much going for it! Then I saw the trailer, and my expectations dropped from high to hopeful. Maybe they are just holding back on the good stuff, I thought to myself. Unfortunately, they held back on the good stuff for the entire length of the film. Let me give you three reasons why Green Lantern is the worst movie of 2011. #1- Too much CGI. The suit was never actually a suit. It was always digital. Reynolds probably wandered around the set naked through the entire filming process. Also, the secondary characters were as real as the smurfs. Actually, the smurfs probably would have done a better job. #2- The storyline was awful. Nobody could have possibly given a crap about Ryan Reynolds in the amount of time they used to introduce him. He was supposed to be getting this sort of "second chance," yet we never knew he had a first chance. #3- (This is the big one) The movie was WAAAAAY too short. They spent almost an hour and a half setting up the story by explaining who Hal Jordan was and who the green lanterns were. Then there was like two seconds of action where the Green Lantern was struggling to defeat the evil bad guy. Then, as a "great finale," he does what he should have done at the beginning of the two seconds in order to defeat evil bad guy. That's pretty much it. I can only hope that next year doesn't feature as many just plain awful films. At least none that are as bad as Green Lantern.


Here is a list of movies that I deemed too dumb to watch in 2011. These movies would probably be joining the worst list if I had watched them:

• Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star
• Shark Night
• Real Steel
• Cowboys & Aliens
• Justin Bieber: Never Say Never
• Sucker Punch
• Larry Crowne
• Conan the Barbarian
• Change-Up
• Abduction
• Footloose
• Happy Feet Two
• Jack & Jill
• The Darkest Hour

***To everyone who has been discouraged by the results of The Notscars, please do not be sad. In a few weeks, I will give you a list of the best in movies from 2011. Keep checking in over the next month for that list plus new reviews!

Summer Recap

In my opinion, last Friday was the final big release date of summer 2011 with The Smurfs and Comboys & Aliens tying atop the box office. I am not a big fan of the Planet of the Apes series and The Change-Up just looked dumb, so I chose to write this rather than wasting my time at the movies this weekend, but don't worry, next week I will have a review of 30 Minutes or Less.

The past three summers have brought some of my favorite movies of all time. There was The Dark Knight and Iron Man in 2008. There was Star Trek, District 9, and The Hangover in 2009. And everybody loved Inception and Toy Story 3 in 2010. With those films in mind, the summer of 2011 seems very very weak. Maybe it's not fair to compare these, but the truth is that this was just a bad summer for movies. Many people whined about the abundance of super hero movies, but I don't think this was the problem. Sure, Green Lantern really sucked, and Thor was just ok, but X-Men and Captain America were each high points in a low summer. Many people whined about the abundance of sequels. Once again there were lows such as Pirates 4, but there were many sequels loved by many. I personally loved The Hangover Part II, Transformers 3, and once again X-Men. Harry Potter, Fast Five, Kung Fu Panda 2, and Cars 2 are other sequels that many people loved. So what do we blame the aweful summer of 2011 on?

The problem with the summer of 2011 is the lack of big, original movies. Every movie that I mentioned from previous summers, except Toy Story 3, was a movie that really made itself or its series famous. The two biggest money making movies of 2011 will undoubtedly be Transformers 3 and the final Harry Potter film, but both of these were sold by the success of their previous films. A lot of critics don't care for summer movies because they aren't very Oscar worthy, but, in my opinion, the problem is the lack of original storytelling ability in the film industry these days. My favorite movie of the summer was Super 8, a movie that did a great job of being itself. The biggest surprise of the summer was definitely Horrible Bosses. It may not have been as good as The Hangover, but the storyline really made for many many laughs. Each of these films were certainly original stories, furthering my point.

If you are one that hated the super hero movies or the sequels, you will also be hating the summer of 2012. The biggest films of 2012 will be The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers, and The Amazing Spiderman, all of which fall into those two categories. But, there is still hope for next summer to be a good summer for movies. The best thing it has going for it? It will be compared to the summer of 2011.

This has been a great couple of months of blogging for me, and I have really enjoyed letting people know how I feel about each film. If there is ever anything that you think would better the blog, just let me know. I am very open to suggestions. I want to thank each of you for listening to what I say, and I ask you to please continue reading.

Movie News for the Week of July 12, 2011

1. The Star Wars news continues to roll in. Now a LEGO Star Wars TV special is being developed by George Lucas. The series will complement the Clone Wars series as Lucas promises a "new and fun" take on the classic.

2. An Angry Birds feature film is becoming more of a reality each day. I don't understand how this will be interesting, but I thought many people might be excited about it.

3. Javier Bardem has signed on to play in the new, untitled James Bond film. Most believe he will play a villain, but this has not been confirmed. The movie has taken a while to get started, due to the financial woes at the production company, but everything seems to be coming together.

4. FOX has ordered more scripts for a Napoleon Dynamite animated series. The series, based on the film, will premiere in the fall.

5. It has been rumored that Adam West will make an appearance in The Dark Knight Rises. West was the star of the original Batman TV series and would be a great surprise in the film, however big the role.

6. Paramount Pictures will replace the well known Dream Works name with a new animated division. The title of the new division is Paramount Animation (very original). Paramount will be working on a more limited budget, which could spell disaster for the films being made by the new division of the well-known company. Dream Works has yet to find a new home, but will likely be picked up by a new company in the future, sooner or later.

7. Not much of a surprise but certainly a big piece of movie news began this week. Johnny Depp is very very close to signing on for a fifth Pirates film. As a huge fan of the series who had mixed emotions about the fourth film, this news depresses me. I don't want one of the best film series ever to be ruined by Disney's quest for cash, but they never ask me.