Nightman’s Least Favourite Movies Of 1985!

Ewoks: Battle For Endor

I quite enjoyed this one when I was young – Jedi was always my favourite Star Wars movie and this was another furry adventure. Watching it as an adult now, it’s pretty bad.

Friday The 13th: A New Beginning

The Friday The 13th series was never my thing growing up – I was more into Elm Street and Halloween. As part of an October marathon a few years ago, I finally went back to watch all the sequels and none of them are especially good. There’s barely a unique idea between them and each boils down to knifey knifey stab time. At least a few of the sequels went for some continuity, including this one which continues the Tommy Jarvis story – the survivor of a previous massacre now in an asylum of some sort. It’s not bad, it’s just by the numbers, cheap slasher fun – worth seeing once and instantly forgetting.

Legend

This is a bit of a cult favourite for many, presumably due to Tim Curry and that crazy make-up. But it doesn’t make a lick of sense, most of the performances are bad, and it seems to be Ridley Scott channelling Michael Mann via Michael Bay. A genuinely poor film all around.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

The weakest of the original trilogy, and of the entire series, Thunderdome feels at once too commercial and too empty. It has that same sense of barrenness as the first film, but there’s no emotional core of genuine weirdness. It’s more like a glossy approximation of weirdness. Still, it has some swinging about inside a big dome, but it’s a huge step down from The Road Warrior. 

A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge

A strange one because it’s both one of the more interesting sequels in the franchise, but also one of the worst. I like what the story tries to do, but it’s very cheap, the acting isn’t of the highest calibre, and it’s as camp as a charred sausage on a five dollar portable bbq. No scares and some of the most unintentionally hilarious scenes ever witnessed in horror.

Pee Wee’s Big Adventure

I get that this is some sort of American export or hero or whatever, but for those of us who were not weened on such shite, this is barely more than an abomination of Babylon standards. An embarrassment for all involved.

Prizzi’s Honour

A hugely talented director and an impressive cast at the top of their game – somehow come together to make one of the more dull mafia/comedy movies of the era. I’ll be in the minority on this one, but I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

Red Sonja

It’s Conan, but not really. It seems, sort of, like a brave move to make a female led sword and fantasy movie in a time when all action movies were highly masculine and muscle-bound affairs. So it’s got that going for it. Sadly, the execution is a failure and the result is on par with Conan The Destroyer as a forgettable slice of sword-swinging nonsense. Arnie and Sandahl Bergman are reunited, but they’re secondary to Brigitte Nielsen in a case of amateur acting and attempts use the English language. That’s fine – what isn’t is the lack of action and mayhem, a very watered down vision of a world where magic and might are supposed to be master.

A Room With A View

I can’t stand any of these Merchant Ivory movies – they’re all equally dreary and overwrought, with the same kinds of stories played out with the same dull tone by the same kinds of actors. Stick with the source material any time you see Merchant or Ivory attached to a film, and avoid at all costs unless you’re a fan of slowly observing your life ebbing away.

Let us know in the comments what your least favourite movies of 1985 are!

Nightman’s Least Favourite Movies Of 1986!

Flight Of The Navigator

It’s not that I don’t like Flight Of The Navigator – I do. But as a child it was on so much that I grew sick of it, and for most of my life have had negative associations with it. It’s a perfectly fun movie but any time I watch or think about it now, those old associations come back. It’s a testament to the strength of 1986 that this movie is listed.

Jumping Jack Flash

I don’t think I’ve seen this one since I was young and I imagine I’d enjoy it more now, but back then none of it worked for me.

Little Shop Of Horrors

For some reason this never worked for me either. Maybe it was the casting of Moranis in the lead when I always preferred him as a support, or maybe it’s the fact it’s a musical. It has all the right pieces to make a puzzle I’d enjoy, but something never clicked.

Maximum Overdrive

I’ve never been a proponent of ‘so bad it’s good’, or ‘so camp it’s watchable’, or ‘it’s Stephen King so it must at least be entertaining on same base level’. Maximum Overdrive is unbearably awful, so bad it’s BAD, and not even the one-liners or King’s appearance can save it. AC/DC are shit too.

Mosquito Coast

Possibly the most dull movie I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen Zack Snyder’s Army Of The Dead.

That’s it, not much to rant about, hmm? Rant away in the comments!

Nightman’s Least Favourite Movies Of 1987!

Greetings, Glancers! You may know that 1987 is my favourite year for movies. If you look at my favourite movies of that year list, you’ll see how much love I have for the year. Like any year, there are still duds, movies I didn’t enjoy, and movies I actively hate.

Baby Boom

Most of the films I’ve chosen for this list are not bad films – they are simply the films which always seemed to be on every Sunday evening of afternoon when I was hoping for an Indiana Jones or 007 movie, and as such they come with negative associations. Baby Boom however, is one of those random movies which was forced on me and seemed to have no redeeming features to a young boy who wanted guns, monsters, and action, and watching again as an adult it’s simply another in the long line of vapid Diane Keaton vehicles – worse, it was one of the precursors to what is now an unfortunate sub-genre of its own, the ‘high-powered career woman’ realises that babies are cute/men are cute/other things are more important’. It’s an idea which is still saturated in media today, and one which has neither matured or progressed a single degree in the last few decades.

Batteries Not Included

When I wanted Goonies, I would get this. It’s fine, but doesn’t have the action, the humour, the thrills of what I look for in a Sci Fi movie

Fatal Attraction

A soft-core porn movie with no sex, a thriller with no thrills, and just a scorned lady with a thing against lupines. Doubling down on the populace’s need for salacious scandal and titillation, Fatal Attraction is a well-acted but failure of a thriller which Basic Instinct would later surpass.

Harry And The Hendersons

This was one of those movies that I always wanted to be more. It’s too light and fuzzy – the laughs are neither frequent nor funny enough, the action is uneventful, and the heart is sub-Hallmark. Good costume, good Lithgow, but I prefer my Lithgow completely off the rails.

Jaws The Revenge

The only truly bad movie on the list, this is such a departure from the first two movies that it’s ultimately disrespectful that it carries the same name. As awful as the third movie is, at least it as some shark action. This is nothing, and even the memes and the so bad it’s good moments are not enough to save it – one of the worst movies of all time.

Mannequin

A Rom-com, so I’m halfway out the door before it begins, but it does have a good central premise. The 80s at least were good for doing something different with the genre every so often – though this is a slighter twist on Splash. It’s fine, but again it was on when I wanted Back To The Future. 

Masters Of The Universe

I was a huge fan of the He-Man cartoon in the 80s – it was essential viewing. When we learned there was a movie, my brother and I quickly demanded a trip to the video shop to see what was sure to be the most important Cinematic moment of the century. What we got was a pre-Skeletor Courtney Cox teaming up with a monotone Dolph Lundgren to save earth from a variety of furries and baddies, with the help of other furries and goodies. It.. has some visual appeal, and Skeletor looks genuinely scary – Lundgren looks the part too, but when anyone opens their mouth or anything happens… it’s embarrassing when a children’s cartoon created to sell toys has a smarter script, more engaging action, and stronger ideas than a full blown Hollywood thing.

Roxanne

It’s Steve Martin with a funny nose.

Let us know in the comments what your least favourite movies of 1987 are!

Nightman’s Least Favourite Movies Of 1988!

Greetings, Glancers! Like a Manchester Utd fan/player, we’re back once again to wallow in a hovel of mediocrity and shit. Actually, there are not too many films this year I didn’t enjoy – those listed below each have their moments but I wouldn’t be keen to see any of them again. They’re either movies that were on a lot when I was young and therefore pissed me off, or were disappointing after I was hyped for them.

Buster

This is a movie which a family member had on VHS, and any time I was taken to their house for some sort of party and the kids were stuck in a room with a TV, this was the tape we were given. Luckily, they also had a VHS of The Running Man/Pumping Iron, so we would watch that instead if we could find it. If not, we were subjected to Phil Collins prancing about in a twee retelling of The Great Train Robbery.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

This felt like such an old man’s Comedy when I was young, I’ve never been a fan of Caine doing comedy, and I’ve never been a fan of Martin at all. It has…. some swimming pools.

A Fish Called Wanda

One I should enjoy, but outside of a couple of scenes it’s a chore for me to get through this. I put that down to not being a fan of Kevin Kline, it being British, and it not being the Python spin-off I hoped it would be. Has none of the anarchy I wanted, and precious few laughs.

Rambo III

I loved the poster for Rambo III when I was young, and there was an arcade machine of the movie permanently placed where I spent my summer holidays. It wasn’t until years later that I actually saw a Rambo movie, having grown up with more access to Arnie movies than Stallone. Rambo III was always the movie I was most hyped for – it seemed to have the biggest guns, the most bad guys, the best action – but sadly I’d imagined most of that. I loved the first two movies and by the time I got to part 3, my hype levels were off the charts. Part 3 ends up being bland and uneventful, even with it somehow being rated as ‘the most violent movie ever’ for a while. You wouldn’t guess it. It lacks the intensity of the first two parts, and dare I say it, the smarts. Plus there’s the whole working with The Taliban thing, but sure. I think I need to go back and watch it again and see if the action feels better in today’s CG world.

Working Girl

This year’s Rom Com – though most of the movies on my list are Rom Com-ish. At least this one has Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver which makes it tolerable, and it has more of a cynical edge than most. However, it also has Melanie Griffith and Joan Cusack who negate the qualities of the others. I’ve no idea how this was so successful or so well received by critics and Awards types, but it’s worth a one off watch.

That’s it, short list today. Do you enjoy any of these? Which films of 1988 would you class as your least favourites? Let us know in the comments!

Nightman’s Least Favourite Movies Of 1989!

Greetings, Glancers! I’m back again to present another click-bait list sure to cause fits of rage in the weak. In other words, a list some films released in 1989 that I either didn’t like, was disappointed by, or which I actively hate. Here they are.

Cyborg

Van Damme was still hitting his stride and trying to branch out into the territory which had brought Arnie and others more success. So he jumps into this utterly bizarre, nonsensical thing. I don’t know how many times I’ve watched this now, hoping it will make sense, but it never does. It’s one of the finest examples of a film’s history and context being more interesting than the film itself – a film about Cyborg would be better than Cyborg itself. I can’t even describe the plot beyond something about Van Damme killing bad guys in a post apocalyptic wasteland, because those bad guys killed his family and have currently kidnapped some people on a quest for a computer cure to a virus? It looks like it was made for less money than I have currently in my pockets (in my pockets I currently only have a face mask resting snuggly against my nuts), but it’s the surrounding stuff that keeps me coming back. Why is everyone named after a guitar or guitar part/accessory? Why are there two separate, unrelated sequel series to this single film (Cyborg 2 and 3 both have almost nothing to do with Cyborg or each other, and Knights and Omega Doom both made by Cyborg’s writer and director but again bearing no relation to each other, or the original, or the other sequels)? How was Cyborg almost a Masters Of The Universe sequel and almost a Spiderman movie? How do these things happen?

Driving Miss Daisy

Not my cop of tea; I don’t even like tea. Hits a lot of the no-nos – Oscar bait, period piece in a period I’m not interested in, but it’s fine. I don’t understand its success, but I can see why people liked it at the time. Watch it because of the cast and the success and the awards, yeah, but not for me.

Meet The Feebles

I could also have had this on my Favourites Of 1989 list. I still enjoy it, as much as one can enjoy a gross-out movie about puppets into porn and drugs and… other stuff. It’s incredibly inventive and funny if you’re in the right mood… but ultimately I put it here because it was a disappointment for me after falling head over heels for Jackson’s other early movies.

My Left Foot

Jim Sheridan might hold a record for having every single one of his movies appearing in my Least Favourite movies lists. That’s probably not true, and I don’t care enough to check, but it seems plausible. He makes decent movies but there’s such a TV movie of the week feel about them that I can’t take them seriously. I doubt anyone would take them, or this, seriously if it weren’t for Daniel Day Lewis. No doubt he gives a great performance, but I just can’t care about any of it when the subject matter is absolutely something I should easily be emotionally invested in.

Shirley Valentine

You know the score by now, right? English? Romantic Comedy? Quirky? Fuck off? Correct. This was consistently a movie watched and referenced by mums and aunts and the mums and aunts of my mates when I was young. It’s expectedly terrible.

Shocker

Even my favourite filmmakers can make duds. As much as I love Wes, he made his fair share of not very good films. Shocker isn’t great and it another case of a potentially much better film being buried under budget constraints and poor quality control. It’s not that it’s bad, but that it’s disappointing. It starts well and gets sillier as it goes on – Pileggi makes for an interesting villain and the setup is cool; a serial killer targets the family of the cop trying to bring him down, seems to have a weird physic connection to one of the cop’s sons, and when he is executed he returns as, wait for it, electricity. The effects are ropey now, and they could easily have just stretched the first half into a movie without all of the electricity stuff. It’s a fun party movie… but so is Elm Street and I’d much rather watch it for the hundredth time again.

A short list this year – there were a bunch of other films I could have added – Steel Magnolias, Wilt, When Harry Met Sally, but I don’t care about those enough to talk about them. Let us know your least favourite movies of 1989 in the comments!

Nightman’s Least Favourite Movies Of 1991!

Greeting, Glancers! 1991 is great. Terminator 2? Beauty And The Beast? Those two alone made an indelible impact on my life. As with any other year, there’s a bunch of stinkers stanking up the place. Here are some of those.

The Addams Family

I’ve always sorely wanted to enjoy this film. It looks great, if a little cheap, features some of my favourite performers, and from a story and character perspective it’s right up my street. But… it’s a bit shit, right? It also features some of my least favourite performances, the story is not what I would place these characters in, and most of the humour falls flat. It’s also incredibly dull. I’ve seen this as a child, a teenager, and now I’ve watched it with my kids but it’s the same result every time – I just stare through the screen and try to put my finger on why it’s so naff.

The Commitments

I’ve never really grown out of my dislike for Irish movies and my dislike for movies which revolve around crap music. I mean, it could have been worse; it could have been about Irish music which… well I never would have watched it then. Not my thing.

Doc Hollywood

Lets me honest – Michael J Fox should have been huge. He went on and became a TV star, but outside of Back To The Future he didn’t make anything I’d want to see more than once. Yes, I’m including The Frighteners in there. Doc Hollywood is a 1984 movie which somehow ended up in 1991. It didn’t work then, it doesn’t work now, and my only thought while watching it is ‘why didn’t they just keep making Back To The Future movies’.

Father Of The Bride

There has to be at least one Diane Keaton movie on my list every year. It’s a romantic comedy. It’s neither romantic nor funny. It has Steve Martin as a dad who grimaces at things deemed unsavoury. It somehow made more money than double the combined box office of The Thing, Escape From New York, and Big Trouble In Little China. It’s…..no.

For The Boys

I have to have a musical in there too. Musical biopics – we had The Doors this year – but almost without exception I don’t enjoy these movies, whether they are based on a fictional nobody, or an actual real life nobody. Bette Middler is loud… that’s about it.

Freddy’s Dead

It was between this and Fried Green Tomatoes. You already probably assume (correctly) that I don’t like FGT, so I’ll go with the more interesting choice. I don’t hate Freddy’s Dead. I have a soft spot for it given it was the first Elm Street movie I ever saw in full. It’s the weakest in the series (at least on par with part 2), and is basically a Loony Toons cartoon with a 3D sequence. Interesting cast and some cool ideas, and I enjoy it more than anything else on this list, but the series was a literal joke by this point.

Hudson Hawk

You know how Bruce Willis only makes straight to streaming crap now? Those films which probably have names like Deadly Vengeance, or Gunshot, or I Am Bruce Willis Give me Money While I Show Up For A Single Day’s Filming And Stand On An Empty Set To Read Lines Into The Camera (Part 2). Hudson Hawk is the equivalent of those movies, except it was released at the height of his powers and I think he’s actually trying. Good cast, it’s him leaning more into comedy than his more straight action roles – he did come from a comedy background after all, but seriously, what the hell is this?

The Rocketeer

What I usually refer to as a Sunday movie. For context, I hated Sundays when I was young and any TV shows and movies they typically showed on TV on Sundays. Ironic, because when I was old enough to go to the Cinema by myself I would choose to go on Sunday as there was nowt else to do and I was usually the only person there – perfect! But The Rocketeer is one of those movies – always seemed to be on when I was already in a mood, and all it did was further dampen my mood. It wasn’t want I wanted from a superhero movie – it’s too light and fluffy, there’s a crap villain, the hero doesn’t have any particular skills, and it’s set in 1930s USA – a time period which always seems to get on my tits. Plus it’s made by perennial Least Favourite Movies Appearance Maker Joe Johnston, whose excellent Jumanji seems like an incredible fluke.

Let us know your least favourite movies of 1991 in the comments!

Nightman’s Least Favourite Movies Of 1992!

1992 is interesting in that most of the movies I saw – even the bad ones – were still enjoyable. There are not too many movies this year I wouldn’t actively avoid and even the ones below have something (however small) I can appreciate.

Far And Away

It’s Tom & Nicole! They are married in real life! They are a HOLLYWOOD POWER COUPLE! Their movie is shit!

Howard’s End

Merchant Ivory – no. British Period Drama – no. Romance – no.

Strictly Ballroom

Why do I do it to myself? Dancing. Romance. ‘Comedy’. Three things I don’t enjoy, three things which almost never go well together. The result? Tripe.

Toys

Yikes.

Told you I didn’t have man strong negative feelings about this year. Let us know your least favourite movies of 1992 in the comments!

Nightman’s Least Favourite Movies Of 1993!

Greetings, Glancers! While 1993 ain’t no 1994 in terms of overall quality or quantity, it’s not far off. It was a great year for movies, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a steaming pile of unacceptable bum squirtings too. Squirtings like these:

Addams Family Values

I know there’s a lot of nostalgia over this and the first movie, but they’re junk. It’s perfectly cast like the first movie, but whatever slight humour to be found in part 1 is somehow even more reduced here. I know I’m saying this as an adult who had no affinity for the movies when they were release, but I watched both recently with my kids and they were bored stiff. I need more than good casting, costumes, and sets.

Dave

It’s the sort of campy comedy which Britain would begin pumping out later in the decade, albeit with a political, satirical slant. As much as I have enjoyed certain movies, I don’t think Kevin Kline has ever made a film I’ve loved, or made a film better by being in it. The Ice House would be the exception. Nothing against him, he’s a good actor, just does nothing for me and most of his movies don’t do much for me. It’s another version of, well, Kagemusha, where a lookalike in thrust into a position of power, and it plays with US politics but it floats by me with a story, characters, and arena I could never care for.

Heaven & Earth

First we had the exceptional Platoon, then the equally brilliant Born On The 4th Of July, but then we had this story of a woman’s experience before, during, and after The Vietnam War. It should work – looks stunning, good cast, Oliver Stone – but it’s dull. The emotion it strives for, the potency of the violence and how lives and families can be shattered by the after effects of violence, doesn’t come across very well while also being readily apparent.  While his two previous Vietnam movies are immediately unforgettable, Heaven & Earth dribbles from your memory minutes after watching.

Indecent Proposal

It’s another Basic Instinct so we’ll get to see more boobs! Lyne was hot off other salacious hits like Fatal Attraction and 9 1/2 Weeks, and the film made a tonne of money based on the premise and the promise of wife-borrowing boobs. However, we get no boobs, no violence, no interesting characters, and a plot straight out of a Soap Opera pilot which wasn’t picked up.

Matinee

I should love this. In fact, I should have loved this when I first saw it given the quartet of Joe Dante, John Goodman, Omri Katz, and Kellie Martin (each who I loved as a kid) and the fact that it’s about the love of Cinema. But when I did first see this it was another painfully dull, lifeless, and boring experience. In all honesty I haven’t seen it since and I’m curious that if I were to return to it now – decades later – if I would get more out of it, or maybe even love it. The memory of how much I didn’t like it has stopped me from ever revisiting.

The Piano

Boredom is a recurring theme this year. As much as I love Anna Paquin, I’m still not sure she needed an Oscar for this. A fairly good-looking film, at times, it’s another complete slog where I am given no encouragement to care about anything that is happening or anyone it’s happening to. And if I want to see Harvey Keitel’s sack, I’ll watch Bad Lieutenant. 

The Remains Of The Day

See above, but without Keitel’s balls.

Robocop 3

Robocop is an all time Top Ten for me. Robocop 2 is a vastly inferior sequel which is still entertaining in its own way. Robocop 3 is an unwatchable abomination and one of the most disappointing movies ever made, replacing cast members, killing off others, with zero violence or satire, with terrible effects, and somehow making samurai sword wielding robots yawn inducing. Were they even robots? Who knows? Who cares?

Sommersby

I actually like the premise behind Sommersby, and the setting, but once again it’s a painfully slow burn. It would be dishonest of me to even use the word ‘burn’, it’s more like a slow breath of some tramp’s cigarette smoke into your eyes when you’re waiting for the last train home; Pointless, annoying, and if they do it again you’ll mruder them.

Super Mario Bros

You knew it was coming, right. I guess we’ll see what the Animated Mario movie will look like when it gets released next year, but it can’t be much worse than this. But seriously, how do you turn that game series into a live action movie? Decent cast – I like everyone involved and I like the Roxette song. That’s about where the enjoyment ends because they try to make it a semi-serious movie instead of an all out comedy or action movie, and they try to set it in the real world. It just doesn’t work, and it probably never could.

Let us know your least favourite movies of 1993 in the comments!

Nightman’s Least Favourite Movies Of 1994!

Greetings, Glancers! As you’ll have seen in my other 1994 post, this was one of my favourite years for Cinema with maybe more personal favourites than any other year. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a steaming pile of turds as well. Hold your nose, and dive in below.

Ashes Of Time

Wong Kar Wai is a director of phenomenal visual talent. Nevertheless, I do find his movies can be hit and miss in terms of character and storytelling – but sometimes his films use characters and story as a mere backdrop for metaphor and suggestion. Ashes Of Time is a mesmerising and bewildering affair – frequently gorgeous, but ultimately dull. The Redux version is a little more fluid, but the shorter running time still feels like a slog. It’s not surprising that Wong Kar Wai would make a Wuxia film with very little action, so if you’re coming to this expecting Crouching Tiger you’re likely to be disappointed and more than a little confused when instead you get Solaris with swords. The story follows a nomadic swordsman who interacts with various characters in separate yet intertwining chapters, as he works through love, loss, and longing. I think.

Baby’s Day Out

It is what it is. I’m sure kids at the time got a kick out of the antics of a baby being chased around New York by hapless criminals, and I’ve no doubt this would work well as an animation with a decent script, but as it stands it’s a bit of a mess.

Beverly Hills Cop III

I was never the biggest Beverly Hills Cop fan in the world, but the first two movies are classic 80s Action comedies. It’s rare that the third entry in a franchise is good, and it’s even more rare when there has been a significant gap between the second and third. It’s disappointing because there’s a good cast with (some) returning faces, it’s directed by John Landis, and it’s set in an amusement park – all things I approve of. Each of these normally positive attributes is spun into a negative – Murphy seems disinterested, Judge Reinhold is too old to be pulling the same shtick, Landis was on a major downturn in quality, and the setting isn’t used in any sort of interesting way. It’s simply not as funny or energetic as the others and the low stakes of the story mean we don’t care about any of it.

The Flintstones

I was never a huge fan of the show, but it was one of those ‘well there’s nothing else on TV on Sunday morning and I refuse to get out of bed yet’ cartoons so I still watched it. To the film’s credit, it kind of nails the look and the cast, but it also looks very cheap and some of the casting choices are miserable. I could see a bigger budget remake of this doing well now, just make sure the cast are all good fits rather than the 80% on show here. Obviously the story needs to be interesting and there needs to be jokes – both lacking in the 90s version.

Four Weddings And A Funeral

The bastard which started it all. After this the world was crying out for soppy British Rom Coms and Hugh Grants. It fares better than much of what followed in its wake and it does have a collection of British stars who deserve recognition for performances elsewhere. But it’s very dull, very foppish, hits all the quirky notes which nauseate my mind, body, and soul, and like all Rom Coms no matter how you dress it up they all end up in the same spot. I’d like just for once for the Rom Com to end in a shocking, completely random tragedy with no resolution or happy ending – just boom – wtf – end credits.

Junior

Another one of Arnie’s experiments at branching out from just punching heads off and exploding shit. Which is fine, some of those were good. Increasingly though you now look back at Arnie’s mid 90s output and think ‘man, you were still in peak physical condition, why didn’t you make another action movie’. Lets not forget – T2, Total Recall, True Lies, Last Action Hero, even End Of Days were all ostensibly action movies but which elevated the genre and did something different. Eraser and The Sixth Day tried but were not very good. An average Arnie action movie is still better than whatever bollocks this is, a diluted comedy free from the laughs of Kindergarten Cop and the charm of Twins, with added romance. It’s watchable, as Arnie always is, and there’s great cast support, but there’s nothing memorable, no laughs, no one-liners, nothing exciting or funny – the one joke (man gets pregnant) could have worked with any actor. Arnie could have made one more great action movie in that period – a true Expendables, a King Conan, his version of I Am Legend. Sigh.

Muriel’s Wedding

It’s Australian Four Weddings. But somehow even more for women.

Mission To Moscow

I’ll defend the Police Academy series to the death. Even number 5 which didn’t know how to recover from Guttenberg leaving the series, and 6 which wasn’t very good. Mission To Moscow is basically unforgivable. There’s another fake Mahoney, most of the cast has buggered off, and it’s extremely cartoonish. Rather than being a series of loosely connected vignettes highlighting the ridiculous characters, this one somehow tries to focus more on plot, but forgets to make the plot interesting or coherent. There aren’t really any laughs – I mean, I’ll laugh watching Lassard do anything, even if that is him trying to communicate with Russian jugglers or whatever he’s doing here – and there’s a bit where fake Mahoney’s moustache goes ‘woop’…. you can see I’m struggling here. The most interesting thing is that we have Ron Perlman doing his finest Zangief impression, Christopher Lee as a Russian Cop, and Claire Forlani looking effing gorgeous. It’s best to forget this exists.

Renaissance Man

Danny DeVito – what were you thinking?

Sirens

It’s more Hugh Grant. Lets be honest, there’s only one reason anyone would watch this, and if anyone does foolishly watch this for that one reason, they’re going to be sorely disappointed. It’s about an English Church dude who goes to Australia and is shocked to see boobs. It’s somehow less interesting than that sounds.

Let us know in the comments if you enjoyed any of the films listed above, and feel free to share the movies of 1994 which you couldn’t stand!

Nightman’s Least Favourite Movies Of 1995!

12 Monkeys

We’re coming in hot today, with the beloved by most 12 Monkeys, Terry Gilliam’s crazed tale of time travelling, airports, disease, and Brad Pitt’s hilarious attempts at acting. I have an amount of admiration for 12 Monkeys but a deeper look unravels what a shambles the plot is, and the twists are of the usual sort you find in time-travel movies. I came to the film late, spurred on by heaps of praise by people whose opinions usually mesh with my own. It’s good, but it’s not movie of the year good. If there’s any lesson here, it’s probably that your friends are dicks and you can’t trust their recommendations. BECAUSE THEY’RE A FUTURE VERSION OF YOU. But yeah, one of Brad Pitt’s early attempts at ‘big, real, acting’ following the much more interesting Kalifornia and Interview With The Vampire, are hilarious and I will never understand how he was nominated for any Award, never mind an Oscar.

When Nature Calls

I love the first Ace Ventura. I don’t love the second. Less interesting story, a re-tread of jokes and one-liners which were already over-stated by the time the second film was announced, but beyond that it’s simply more of the same. Normally I would say ‘bring it on’, but I would have much preferred more of the same of The Mask or Dumb And Dumber, or more of the same of Ace Ventura, but with some effort.

Assassins

I’m still not sure how you bring together 1995 Antonio Banderas, Sly Stallone, and give a Wachowski’s story about guns and killings and hitmen to Richard Donner, and make it a dull slog. It’s such a nothing story – the Wachowskis had clearly been watching a lot of John Woo movies and thought they could make their own take on homoerotic machismo (plus guns), but forgot to make it interesting, then everyone else involved didn’t bother giving it any style or attempt to flesh out the characters or assign any sense to whatever the hell was going on.

Get Shorty

Another one of the post Pulp Fiction movies which every studio was pumping out between 1995 and 2000, but this one comes with some genuine cred, based on a story by Elmore Leonard. Cool cast too. I don’t know why ‘cool’ is equated to jazz in movies, when any music fan knows that jazz actually equates to ‘shit’, so we’re subjected to a shitty score, people in sunglasses, dialogue which feels as if the characters are ripping pages from a bad book of poetry and passing them to one another instead of speaking. It’s a hideous bore too, though every time I’ve seen it has been late at night when I’ve already been tired.

Haunted

Haunted may be the most boring, sleep inducing movie of all time. There was a lot of it this year – it’s as if they knew Desperado and Goldeneye were coming out this year and thought ‘why bother’.

Moonlight And Valentino

I get there’s a market for this sort of thing – lonely, middle aged housewives for example – and because I’m not one of those, Moonlight And Valentino was never going to do anything for me. It’s not even good enough for any awkward ‘look, it’s John Bon Jovi’ laughs. As with any other year, there were a number of equally unacceptable shitty rom coms/dramas/costume nonsese that I could have added in this spot – The Englishman Who Climbed A Hill, The Scarlet Letter, Sabrina, Miami Rhapsody etc, but this one commits the cardinal crime of being such an up itself story of unrealistic soap opera relationships that you can neither take it seriously, not laugh at it. Plus it has Gwyneth Paltrow.

Nine Months

I’m surprised this didn’t have Gwyneth Paltrow, but it does have Hugh Grant which is essentially the same thing. It’s a remake of a French film where the comedy simply doesn’t translate. The story is basically about your typical bloke, drifting along, happy with his life, career, relationship who knocks up his girlfriend and begins freaking out. The Simpsons did it better in a single episode. Not only does the humour not translate, there is no attempt to attune the humour in any way, Hugh Grant will never be funny (unless he’s attacking snake people), and like every movie of its ilk you know precisely how it’s going to end from the moment the opening credits run. It’s a shame, as this year had a few decent movies in this genre – While You Were Sleeping, Waiting To Exile….. and Showgirls.

Rob Roy

What a load. Of. SHITE.

To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything Julie Newmar!

Another film where we have to whip out the checklist of things I don’t like; ridiculous name. Quirky camp comedy. Drag. Stockard Channing. Being tame. The only thing going for it are a few interesting cast choices and the fact that it’s a road movie, but those aren’t enough to save it.

Village Of The Damned

Carpenter was on the verge of checking out by this point. I feel like if he had achieved a hit with this, regardless of quality, he would have been more prolific throughout the rest of the decade and into the 2000s. To be fair, it had a lot of positives going in – unusual cast, the genre is precisely in Carpenter’s wheelhouse, and Carpenter has a track record of making good remakes. I would have loved Carpenter to have tackled a Bodysnatchers story, but Abel Ferrera got there first. Instead, he updates the 1960 British classic of the same name. Sadly it’s clear that Carpenter doesn’t give a shit – there’s none of his usual style or flair, the characters don’t feel like real people or even caricatures, and it’s dull. Even the Soundtrack doesn’t help. It does provide some darker twists which set it apart from the original, but it’s a disappoint on all fronts. It was a failure at the Box Office too, and so Carpenter stopped caring about movies.

Let us know in the comments what your least favourite movies of 1995 are!