There have been lots of pretty bad movies this year, but these were the ones that really got to us because of how disappointing they were.
It was billed as the mother of all monster rumbles, what we got was a movie with too many 'overs' – over-edited, over-loud, over-long and over-the-top. As thrilling as it was to see Godzilla and King Ghidorah finally duking it out on screen, this plodding behemoth of a movie spent way too much time on its human characters and not enough on the real stars of the show – the monsters.
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Coming so soon after the pinnacle of superheroes movies, Avengers: Endgame, Dark Phoenix always had the odds stacked against it. But even then, few could have anticipated how badly it played its hand, even with the strength of what is essentially the X-Men's most popular storyline. Over-wrought, unmemorable, and filled with undercooked characters, this was a sad farewell to Fox's X-Men franchise. Here's hoping the Mutants will do better in the Marvel Cinematic Universe...
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"A grating and pointless film, filled with bone-headed plot twists", went the review. We really wanted this to be at least a funny time at the cinema, but sadly, it wasn't. Even having Dave Bautista in it couldn't save it from being a 'cinematic car wreck'. It was so unfunny that it made you want to Grab your way out of there halfway through.
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Yes, they made a ton of money, but the live-action remakes of Dumbo, Aladdin and The Lion King were pale shadows of their classic animated counterparts.
Tim Burton got Dumbo horribly wrong, Aladdin had none of the charm of its animated original, while The Lion King was basically a shot-for-shot remake of the original, with better animation (yes, they're even calling it an animated, not a live-action, remake).
The one bright spot was Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil, which at least tried to do something different, but was just a little unmemorable.
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- 'Dumbo' review: A flight of ele-phantasy that fails to soar
- 'Aladdin' review: Magic carpet ride needs more speed
- 'The Lion King' review: A majestic but recycled circle of life
- 'Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil' review: So good to be bad
What was the point of this again? Without the dynamic duo of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, this attempted resurrection of a flagging franchise just fell flat. The Thor and Valkyrie team-up was entertaining at least, but the story was predictable, the action was unimaginative, and the aliens were completely unmemorable. And don't even get me started on the lame attempt at 'localising' one of the movie's scenes.
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Our review calls it a "strange fever dream of bizarre cat-human hybrids cavorting to Broadway tunes". Other critics have not been as kind. This star-studded adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats musical has been slammed as one of the worst movies of the year.
We think our reviewer was at tad too paw-sitive in his review, though he did write that "after watching this... some will probably want to scrub their mind of it as quickly as possible. It's a surreal film that you will either love or hate, and the phrase 'what the heck am I watching?' will probably flash across your mind several times throughout the movie."
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(Dis)honourable mentions:
- The Angry Birds Movie 2
- The Playmobil Movie
- Annabelle Comes Home
- Hellboy
