Readers’ Poll: The 10 Worst Movies of 2014
This may have been a particularly great year for movies – see Boyhood, Whiplash, Gone Girl, Birdman and Foxcatcher, preferably more than once – but there was also the usual pile of disappointing sequels, inane remakes, lifeless horror flicks and general slop that tested our patience and insulted our intelligence. We asked our readers to select their least favorite movies of the year. Here are the results.
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‘Left Behind’
Nicolas Cage is an amazing actor. If you don't believe that, check out his work in Adaptation and Leaving Las Vegas. Unfortunately, he also has a tendency to take on any project that comes with a decent paycheck. That explains his decision to play the lead in Left Behind, a big screen adaptation of a wildly popular evangelical book series about those left on earth after all the true believers have been "raptured." Cage plays an airline pilot trying to sort through the confusion and chaos of the event, but he mostly seems bored and disinterested by the proceedings. Critics tore it to shreds, and the huge Christian audience that comes out for event films like The Passion of the Christ mostly stayed home.
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‘Tammy’
At a certain point all comedians need to vary their schtick. If they don't, even an amazing act starts to become dull and predictable. This is the reason why Bill Murray is still a movie star and Chevy Chase is not. It's way too early to count out the brilliant Melissa McCarthy, but many critics feared that Tammy might have been the first step in the wrong direction. We've all seen her play the inept, bumbling, potty-mouthed fool in Bridesmaids, The Heat and This Is 40, and here she's a disgruntled fast food worker who hits the road when her life falls apart. It actually managed to crack $100 million, but many who went were underwhelmed with the experience. Hopefully McCarthy has something different for us next time out.
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‘Annabelle’
Haunted house flick The Conjuring was one of the biggest surprise hits of 2013, and many fans felt that the freakiest component was Annabelle, a possessed doll we meet in the first few minutes. An Annabelle spinoff was inevitable, and by the standards of Hollywood it was huge hit, grossing $252 million against a mere $6.5 million budget. Unfortunately, all those people saw an extremely formulaic and extremely boring movie. How many times can we see a haunted doll go on a murderous rampage? We fear the answer is might be "many, many more." A sequel is already in the works.
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‘Noah’
Director Darren Aronofsky may have found himself in an un-winnable situation when he decided to turn the biblical story of Noah into a big-budget Hollywood movie. A white-washed adaptation would have been pointless and boring, but the story in the Bible is extremely complicated and very hard to film. For example, Noah had an extremely tumultuous relationship with his son Ham. Some scholars even think that Ham castrated Noah, and the speculation grows even gnarlier from there. Either way, Aronofsky's warts-and-all Noah (and some of the more supernatural elements behind him) angered many in the Christian community, but the film still made $362 million regardless.
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‘Transcendence’
Johnny Depp hides behind heavy makeup and elaborate costumes during most of his movies, but in the early scenes of Transcendence his face is completely uncovered. He probably regrets that decision now, because the movie, which tells the story of a dying scientist who transfers his brain onto a computer, is an absolute turkey. How many times have we seen better films about the dangers of technology? Why must Depp take any job where the studio pays his huge salary demand? Is it against his religion to make even a single indie movie? He's never been better than he was in Ed Wood, and that was one of the last times he made anything that could be described as even close to small-scale.
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‘Dumb and Dumber To’
The good people behind Dumb and Dumber To had a tough task: how to follow up one of the most beloved comedies of the past 25 years, particularly considering that almost every comedy sequel in history has been a disappointment? For every one Addam's Family Values there are 75 Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles trainwrecks. Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels gave it their all, but the road trip-themed movie felt too familiar and not nearly enough of the jokes connected. That said, we love these characters so much that we'll be first in line for part three.
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‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1’
The ridiculously wordy title to this movie says it all. Ever since Hollywood divided the last Harry Potter book in two, they realized that this kind of surgery will net them an extra $500 million or so. There's a reason why Mockingjay feels like half a movie with no real climax: That's exactly what it is. If money weren't the primary consideration, they would have told the story in two hours and created a far more satisfying work. Then again, considering the fact they cut The Hobbit into three pieces, perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky.
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‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’
The world wasn't exactly screaming for another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, but that's exactly what we got. This time around, Megan Fox played April O'Neil, a struggling TV reporter that stumbles across an incredible scoop: There are four teenage mutant ninja turtles living in the subway! The gang soon gets involved in Shredder's attempt to unleash a virus on New York City, but the whole thing is just boring and predictable. Please spare us another one of these things.
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‘Saving Christmas’
Poor Christmas. It's always under attack from those damn atheists and liberals. Thankfully, Kirk Cameron is here to win the so-called war against it, making a movie about a devout Christian determined to prove to his skeptical brother-in-law that Christmas is indeed a religious holiday with deep biblical roots. Most of his arguments are far from true, and the film is so despised it currently sits at Number One on the IMDB's Bottom 100 movies of all time list. Cameron thinks this is the result of a conspiracy by the "haters and atheists."
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‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’
Watch Mark Wahlberg's face in the newest Transformers movie and you can actually see him calculate how much money he's getting paid per second. The actor is no dummy, and he must know this series' fourth chapter is no Boogie Nights – or even Ted. In this installment, the humans are once again threatened by the evil… Oh, who cares? It's an endless series of explosions that numb your senses and brain. And it made over a billion dollars. It's the embodiment of everything wrong with Hollywood, and our readers were very wise to name it the worst movie of 2014. When part five comes out, the new episode will probably be the worst movie of that year too.