Bona fidebadness — true worst-of-year awfulness — demands that a movie have a certain scale. The attempt must be great, or the stars must be big, or the disaster must be enormous — or the movie must have a combination of all three qualities in different proportions, lest the laurel of ultimate lousy elude it.
That’s why they call the worst movies “bombs.” Bombs have impact. They make you run from the theater. They wreck your whole day.
Well, there were no bombs in 2020. That year we were getting blanded to death, with good movies that weren’t great and mediocre movies that weren’t offensive. Everything, good and bad, seemed as mildly depressed as we were.
But in 2021, the skies opened up, and we had bombs again. We had awfulness that inspired amazement and perplexity and, even on occasion, anger. Movies were back in their full range, from great to beyond-belief bad. What follows is what the ghost of Hamlet’s father might have been thinking about when he said, “O, horrible! O, horrible! Most horrible!”
The Chronicle’s top 10 movies of 2021
No. 1: ‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage’
The sequel to the reasonably entertaining“Venom”turned out to be worst movie Michelle Williams, Tom Hardy and Woody Harrelson ever made — together or separately — and it’s tied with《加勒比海盗2》for the worst movieNaomie Harrisever made.
Yet that doesn’t fully convey the effect of this plodding, dull movie, stuffed with pointless scenes about a guy sharing his body with a toothy, tentacled monster who talks to him all day. Partly shot pre-pandemic in San Francisco, it all led to a climax involving two identical-looking computer graphics trying to kill each other. As I noted at the time, in a happier era this wouldn’t have been merely theworst movie of the year: It would have been one of the worst things to havehappened.
No. 2: ‘The Humans’
Stephen Karam, who wrote the excellent play of the same name upon whichthis filmwas based, directed himself and the actors into a disaster by filming everything at a distance. In fact, he often placed the camera in the roomnextto where the scenes were taking place. They don’t even bother telling film school students not to do his. Until now, no one thought “Make sure to put the camera in the same room with the actors” was something anybody needed to be told.
Richard Jenkins, Beanie Feldstein and Amy Schumer headed the cast in a story about an average American family watching their dreams collapse over the course of one holiday dinner.
No. 3: ‘Spencer’
Five years after his hatchet job on Jacqueline Kennedy with the 2016 biopic “Jackie,” director Pablo Larraín does even worse justice to the memory of Princess Diana.This semi-fictional storypresents “the people’s princess” as a neurotic, mopey nuisance who blames everyone else for her misery as she cuts the skin of her arm with a set of pliers.
Kristen Stewart’s performance as Diana Spencer, which amounted to little more than a vocal mannerism, was embarrassing to watch.
No. 4: ‘Black Widow’
This prequel/origin story about the superhero known as Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) tried to transcend the emotional emptiness of the superhero form with endless conversations between Black Widow and her family about their deepest feelings. But the roles didn’t have the depth to support a deep feeling, so Rachel Weisz and David Harbour, as the parents, and Johansson and Florence Pugh as sisters, were left to flail, investing emotion into an empty vehicle.
The worst of both worlds: long, boring conversations that meant nothing to anyone, interspersed with listless, uninvolving action scenes.
No. 5: ‘Dear Evan Hansen’
Ben Plattwas very young when he originated the title role, that of a high school student, on Broadway in 2015. By the time he made this movie version, he was in his late 20s and looked about as convincingly teenage as Yoda.
The story of an innocent lie that gets out of hand, themovie musicalwas sappy and sentimental, with songs (by Justin Paul and Benj Pasek) that sounded so similar that it was hard to tell whether each number was new or a reprise. Even without Platt looking as much like a high school student as President Abraham Lincoln, the last hour would’ve been unbearably twee.
No. 6: ‘Swan Song’
A movie without a single good scene — without one redeeming moment of cinematic charm — is almost as rare in its purity as a movie made up of entirely good scenes. Not to be confused with theMahershala Ali movieof the same name (which is actually worth watching), this example of pristine awfulnessstarred Udo Kieras a gay hairdresser recovering from a stroke, who leaves his senior facility and goes back to his hometown so he can do the hair of his favorite client, who is dead. The family wants her to look good in her coffin. Sounds bad, huh? I’m making this sound better than it is.
No. 7: ‘Eternals’
Marvel Studios scraped the bottom of the barrel forthis long, ridiculous movieabout a group of superior beings put on our planet to steer us in the direction of progress. A conflict breaks out, but the Eternals have no motivation to fight and nothing at stake. Later, the movie provides new information that gives them evenless战斗的理由。一半的电影包括等ernals arguing among themselves about whether they should do anything. The only relief was the unintentionally hilarious interludes, in which Angelina Jolie — as a mentally unstable Eternal — kept going into a fit and trying to kill all her friends.
No. 8: ‘Four Hours at the Capitol’
This HBO documentaryhas a rare distinction: It was an outrage about an outrage. It told the story of the Jan. 6 insurrection as though it were an unfortunate incident involving people of goodwill having a reasonable disagreement. As such, it gave at least an equal voice to the insurrectionists, even to the point of allowing them to repeat their most baseless assertions.
It’s hard to know if the filmmakers were sympathetic to the insurrection or if they were being subtle about exposing it. In either case, the documentary was a weak response to an event that required something stronger than spineless equivocation.
No. 9: ‘The Woman in the Window’
It seemed like a good idea. This Joe Wright (“Darkest Hour”)film starred Amy Adamsas a snoop, spying on her neighbors. But unlikeJames Stewart in “Rear Window,”she was bad at it, and so the neighbors keep knocking on her door to scream at her. Turns out she’s an agoraphobic alcoholic, and so when she actually does see a murder, nobody believes her.
Despite a talented cast including Gary Oldman and Julianne Moore, the film was a total dud, with a go-nowhere script and laughable over-the-top moments.
No. 10: ‘Cruella’
This was an origin story that no one wanted or needed. Telling the supposed story of Cruella de Vil, the villain of “One Hundred and One Dalmatians,” required delineating a process by which a three-dimensional character — a young woman, alone in the world, who dreams of becoming afashion designer— becomes a one-dimensional monster. Even worse, the movie insisted that Cruella remain sympathetic throughout the entire process. It couldn’t work, and what resulted was amovie so disjointedthat it required Emma Stone, as Cruella, to connect scenes through a clumsily written voice-over.