2019: The Deplorables

There were some genuine cinematic wonders in 2019 -- and some real big-screen blunders. When things got bad this year, they got really, really bad.

How bad?  Read on for my list of the five worst movie experiences I had in 2019:

 5:  The Wandering Earth  

One of China's biggest movies in history was also one of the year's highest-grossing films worldwide -- but in America, it was all but non-existent. (Netflix bought the title, proving that Netflix is, if nothing else, a black hole for most content that appears on its platform.) Compared with other films on this list, it's at least inoffensive, except perhaps in its godawful subtitles, which (at least in the theatrical version I saw) were hilariously filled with malapropisms and misspellings, and had all male characters refer to each other as "bros" with alarming frequency. The story is completely non-sensical – the sun is exploding, so the Earth has been converted into a moving spaceship destined to wander the galaxy until it can find a new home – and the digital effects are largely atrocious. The Wandering Earth proves that Americans have no lock on bad filmmaking, and this one is bad alrigh; it's terrible, in fact, but at the very, very least, it's inoffensively so.

 4:  Bird Box  

The only saving grace on this stinker is that it wasn't in movie theaters, relegated instead to Netflix, which made big noise about how many people watched it. But people can be fools, as anyone who saw this dreck can attest. Somehow, it stars Sandra Bullock and lots of other recognizable actors in a craptacular story about people who do a very, very stupid thing to react to a situation that has dozens of other more probable solutions. Stupid in concept, cheap in execution, and unbearable to watch. My original rating was 2½ stars. My New Year's resolution is to be more honest about ratings. It's a terrible film. Shut your eyes, indeed.

 3:  Ma  

I was likewise stupidly lenient about Ma, which did get a theatrical release, which only proves that there is no accounting for taste. Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, who is generally an intelligent and interesting actor, stars along with Oscar winner Allison Janney and Oscar nominee Juliette Lewis, and Ma is the sort of movie that makes you wonder if these successful, acclaimed performers actually read the script first. These fine actresses appear in a movie that presents women in such a vile light it's shocking. In Ma's world, women over 40 are shrewish, sexually repressed and ugly, existing only to torture others and harbor jealousy over their past lives. Ma is divertingly entertaining in the moment, and squalid and depressing in hindsight.

 2:  The Lion King  

What a sad, sad state of affairs this is. What have we come to when Disney, a company built on the promise of imagination can't think of anything new?  When the only thing it cares about is box-office dominance? Disney's The Lion King and Aladdin were both remarkably crass commentaries on the state of the film industry and current Disney management, though they were each extraordinarily successful. Aladdin managed to find a few moments of lightness and invention, and was eye-popping to look at, none of which could be said for the despairing dullness and duplication of The Lion King. It made sixteen bazillion dollars, which is a bleak assessment of the state of American consumerism. That aside, it's a terrible concept for a film, and it's terribly executed. It's a shot-for-shot -- sometimes frame-for-frame -- CGI remake of the original animated film that doesn't have an ounce of the original's heart or creativity. While the 1994 Lion King was never among my favorites, this film captures absolutely nothing of that film's liveliness. It's an animated version of Gus Van Sant's Psycho, which was at least bonkers in its audacity; this has no edge to it at all. It's flat, ugly, boring and laborious.

 1:  Joker  

It's a cheat. It's a scam. It's a fraud. Joker has absolutely nothing to say about societal ills or mental illness or the plight of the inner city – it exists only to wallow in its bleak, misanthropic, nihilistic world view and then try to pass it off as some form of entertainment. It can't even find its own cinematic vision. Director Todd Phillips thinks mimicking Scorsese is the same as being Scorsese, and rips off a '70s cinematic vibe without ever creating its own look, feel or perspectives. It's empty. It's soulless. There's not one redeeming element to it, particularly not Joaquin Phoenix's performance, which has nothing to it except show. There's no character here, no reason for this film to exist. It is, perhaps, the blockbuster for the our current political era: blustery, angry, mean-spirited, hostile, ill-tempered, loud, violent and ultimately entirely empty. Painfully, distressingly, sorrowfully devoid of anything at all.