Film Feature: The 10 Worst Films of 2012

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“Hick”

Hick
Photo credit: Phase 4 Films

I’m ready to join the Daughters of the Confederacy after seeing this travesty, or at least have empathy for southerners as they watch actors like Eddie Redmayne (British) and Alec Baldwin (Long Island, New York) trying to portray their brethren. In a happy plot line, a 13-year-old girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) gets a gun for her birthday and then runs away from home, encountering her new family like Dorothy in the Land of Oz. But there is no pot of gold over this rainbow, as the film consists of leering stereotypes (Redmayne), a creepy Lolita sense for Moretz and a screaming-all-my-lines Oscar baiter (Juliette Lewis). Everything you need to know about this film is that Baldwin – Alec Baldwin – portrays a guy named Beau.

REDEEMING FACTOR: The fall out from the sexualizing of the Moretz character will eventually make her future psychiatrist rich. PM

“A Thousand Words”

A Thousand Words
Photo credit: Paramount Pictures

The worst comedy of 2012 should have been the worst comedy of 2009 but it sat on the shelf for a few years and got even more rotten than when it was first produced. What infuriates me the most about bad moviemaking is when one can literally see the laziness up on the screen. As ticket prices rise and the economy stagnates, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to take a family out to the movies and when one can see Eddie Murphy doing his bare minimum to get through a joke and then offering the least believable emotional manipulation of the year, it’s frustrating. Eddie Murphy’s a millionaire. He owes every single person who sat through this turd an explanation.

REDEEMING FACTOR: Once again, there’s a performer who takes none of the blame as the beautiful Kerry Washington (“Scandal,” “Django Unchained”) does everything she can to make her poorly-written wife character feel genuine. BT

“A Little Bit of Heaven”

A Little Bit of Heaven
Photo credit: Millennium Entertainment

With a title that provides the easiest rejoinder of the year, “a lotta crap of hell,” this steaming pile of cinematic excrement again has as its lead actress the poster child for worst-of lists everywhere – Ms. Kate Hudson. Here she offensively plays a dying woman, whose personality is so repulsive that while everyone falls in love with her or mourns her impending death, I wondered if secretly this wasn’t some absurd satire. Two Oscar winners participate, Kathy Bates as Kate’s mother (apparently Goldie Hawn wasn’t available) and Whoopi Goldberg as God (I kid you not, God. Apparently, that’s how the Kate character views God. What is this, 1992?). With other paycheck cashing performers like Gael Garciá Bernal, Peter Dinklage and Lucy Punch, they may be one of the worst films with the best cast ever. No one, except Kate Hudson (who proves every year she doesn’t care), will have this on their career highlight reel.

REDEEMING FACTOR: It was filmed in New Orleans, so cool vacation for the cast, and the NOLA-style funeral scene at the end meant the audience got to celebrate her demise with the characters, for different reasons. PM

“The Apparition”

The Apparition
Photo credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Imagine a horror film so mind-numbingly incompetent that it crosses the line to performance art in which one questions whether or not the people involved knew they were making an absolute piece of crap. As the most lackluster protagonists of the year wandered around Costco and made brain-numbing chit-chat over tortilla chips, I started to pray for something interesting to haunt them just to alleviate the boredom. And then when the alleged horror of the story kicks in, the movie produces more laughter than fear. Whether it’s people saying dumb things, doing dumb things, or being haunted in dumb ways, “The Apparition” was the dumbest movie of 2012.

REDEEMING FACTOR: Ashley Greene somehow makes it out relatively unscathed as the movie has 1,000 problems but none of them are directly her fault. She’d be wise to expunge it from her IMDB profile like an exorcist eliminating an evil specter. BT

“2016: Obama’s America”

2016: Obama’s America
Photo credit: Rocky Mountain Pictures

One of the foulest pieces of propaganda to ever play in a movie theater, “2016: Obama’s America” is filled with scary lies that are repeated ad nauseum as if partisan hack Dinesh D’Souza – who “made” this film – is talking to simple minded children (the target audience, apparently). With each wacky theory on “how Barack Obama thinks” and “re-creation” of President Obama’s life, brain cells are killed in mass quantities. This is basic red meat for Obama haters, filled with the type of Fox News hyperbole that was used against him in the 2008 campaign, and repackaged in this crass and pointless exercise (Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright, anybody?). To presume theories about another person’s life story, with no opportunity for the actual person to counter the arguments, is the coward’s way of smearing an opponent. So this is chicken shit and bullshit together, designed to scare people into voting against their own interests.

REDEEMING FACTOR: The man who represents the “family values” opposition who funded this dreck, Dinesh D’Sousa, was a married man who this year cavorted with a younger woman who was also married. This scandal caused him to turn in his resignation as president of King’s College. Karma is a bitch, eh D’Sousa? Oh yeah, and President Obama won the election. PM

By PATRICK McDONALD Senior Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com [email protected]