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Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)
Possibly one of the worst films ever made and a stark warning for future cinema
There is no escaping that people are suffering from super hero burnout and if I could rate it 0 stars I would.
This film thankfully flopped at the box office but it comes with a terrible warning about how NOT to do commercial tie ins. I get that they can help with the film costs but there is definitely a wrong way to do things and this is literally the worst commercial tie in I've ever seen, I can only think the Mars corporation directed this movie themselves.
When a candy brand is literally a plot device you've moved out of the movie world and instead you've made a 90 minute commercial. There is no excuse for it, no redeeming circumstances you've spent $150m on making a commercial and insulted every single one of your audience by charging money for it at the box office.
Without that scene is the film any good? No. The dialog in most super hero films is suspect but when you try to force a joke into every line it just gets excruciating for anyone watching. Humour needs to be added with context and sympathy otherwise it has no impact.
Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu just phone in performances awaiting the huge pay check and not caring about integrity. You end up feeling literally nothing for any character in this film and when a main character "dies" nobody in the audience is stupid enough to fall for it, its so poorly done and telegraphed from the outset.
This film crossed a line and hopefully it never gets repeated.
Columbo: Murder in Malibu (1990)
Daytime soap episode featuring Columbo
When "Columbo" is at its best the writing and the acting are great. When either the acting fails OR the writing fails it's still a good episode. This is one of the few episodes where both fail.
Peter Falk is great as ever, everyone else is pulled directly from a low budget daytime soap.
The format is slightly different from the usual "Columbo" but that's not why this episode falls so flat, the script is woeful, the acting is poor throughout, the kind of hammy performances you'd expect to see on a cable channel soap opera that has a budget of $500 an episode.
The actors may be phoning it in because they have to say such dreadful dialogue. Not many Columbo episodes would actually stand up in a court of law without a confession but this one doesn't even make sense on screen.
The murderer is caught purely on the fact the victim has their underwear on backwards - which somehow the writers have claimed means "it had to be a man". I've put my own underwear on backwards many times in my life, if I ever end up dead I hope nobody is wrongfully convicted of murder because of that.
Clues to the case are brought up and solved in the same scene, there's no mystery at all, it's like the director has assumed anyone watching this will be in a nursing home and unable to remember things for longer than 30 seconds. The murder weapon itself is mysteriously found 3/4 of the way through an episode right by the house of the victim on the beach.
We're expected to believe the police decided their search radius for the initial murder should not extend beyond the room she was killed in.
I keep referring to this episode as a daytime soap because it feels like Columbo just walked into one, there's no thinking involved everything is spoon fed to the audience, no tension or mystery is allowed to build.
It's not that deviating from the formula is necessarily bad it's just that every time they have tried it it's been poorly done.
I don't think this is quite the worst Columbo but it's definitely in the bottom 3.
Columbo: Sex and the Married Detective (1989)
Promising start ruined by lazy writing, a hallmark of the later Columbo episodes.
The first half of this episode is almost familiar Columbo territory, with the exception of some over the top comedy that feels forced in rather than natural progression, again something the writers struggled with. They seemed aware Columbo had humor in the first run but seem completely unaware WHY it worked.
That aside the episode is decent fare up until the latter half where it becomes a frustrating watch.
Firstly the killer decides not to burn the clothes (for some unknown reason this has to be in her own fireplace), a moronic decision given how careful she was up until this point.
The decision not to burn them was the start of some horrific decision making by the writers, I am aware these are longer film length episodes so they need to extend the plot somehow but the route they took was ridiculous.
We are then led on a merry journey where the killer again dresses as "Lisa" and heads to many different bars in a bizarre montage that not only exposes her to hundreds more witnesses she also hands every single bartender a note with an un-gloved hand thus giving her fingerprints to half a dozen people or more.
Then she decides to burn the clothes - again in her own fireplace, literally the only way she would have been caught prior to the ridiculous Lisa montage
It's an utterly clueless turn around from almost competent killer to complete stupidity in the space of 5 minutes.
If all of these later episodes were completely terrible it would be less frustrating, it's the fact they all have some sort of nucleus of a good idea but the execution is amazingly poor.
This is probably my least favourite purely because of the killer turning into an idiot half way through the episode.
Columbo: Make Me a Perfect Murder (1978)
Easy case for Columbo because the murderer makes it so routine
There's nothing really "wrong" with this episode, it's a perfectly average Columbo.
The murderer thinks she is smarter than everybody else and thinks she should be promoted, everything she does after this proves she was exactly where she should have been.
Her bosses knew she was not ready and her behaviour and constant mistakes throughout the episode both in regards to her work and with the extremely sloppy murder showed us she thought she was much better than she was.
Columbo doesn't need to get out of 1st gear to solve this one as the killer makes so many errors there are no other possible suspects and every time she opens her mouth she puts her foot in it again.
As a result there is a lot of padding in this episode due to the lack of any real problem solving required by our favorite detective.
Columbo: Last Salute to the Commodore (1976)
A change of pace and style thar sadly misfires
I've seen every Columbo multiple times and although I don't think this is the worst one it is very close to it.
I don't mind that they attempted to make a "whodunnit" episode as a twist to the usual format, that has angered a lot of people but it could have worked if done correctly.
My major issue with this episode is the ending is horribly flimsy:
The lawyer is for some reason a suspect despite never being at the location for either murder.
The foreman is a suspect somehow despite no motive at all. He would gain nothing, he liked the commodore, he would only likely lose his job if the commodore died.
The actual murderer is pinned purely on the way he reacts to a watch. This is not an admission of guilt, this is not proof he did it, this is not good writing.
It makes absolutely no sense that this was the "big reveal" because nothing about it makes him guilty.
I'm fully aware that a lot of Columbo's cases would not result in a conviction in real life but this episode stands alone as one not at least attempting to make a satisfying conclusion.
The Mandalorian (2019)
Wasted promised full of gaping plot holes, awful dialogue and no subtlety or care
This is billed as the savior of Star Wars after a series of awful films but it is filled with the same flaws.
The Mandalorian is supposedly a legendary hunter yet every episode gets outwitted by a throwaway side character with a trap you don't need the Force to have seen coming a mile away. I suspect the average 4 year old would have seen what was coming.
The dialogue is plain awful with 90% of characters used only as a device to explain the plot (which nobody has trouble following anyway as it has hardly been written with any care or attention to detail).
As it's Disney they ensure the only real violence happens to droids who are disposed of in large quantities while most deaths of actual people happen off screen if at all.
The main villain of season 1 is killed by his own boss for actually no real reason at all and the writers sensing outrage try to explain this in the following episode with one of the worst "get outs" imaginable. Once killing off his own men he then spends an entire episode not killing the trapped protagonists, who he somehow knows are the only ones left alive despite never actually having anyone check.
The "nurse" IG droid programmed to protect the Child frequently forgets this programming and even flies the Child into danger to save the Mandolorian, which again is never explained in the hopes the audience doesn't ask any legitimate questions at all.
This same droid then sacrifices itself into a unit of Stormtroopers who conveniently place every single one of themselves within the very small blast radius of the droid's self destruct.
The season finale is then blessed by the franchises only ever Tie Fighter that doesn't explode on contact with the slightest touch to ensure the villain can survive for another season.
Every episode is a flawed and frustrating watch as it's extremely clear with some decent writing this could have been great. It's not the worst series ever made but is it good? Nowhere close.
GoldenEye (1995)
The worst James Bond film ever made?
When reviewing James Bond films you have to take into account the outdated language and attitudes as well as the technological limitations of the time it was filmed.
Sadly despite all of that this is the single worst Bond film ever made.
GoldenEye is unable to fall back on any of the above, in 1995 the technology was there so the computer programming scenes are inexplicably bad throughout.
Plot lines are forgotten and inconsistent throughout the film.
Ouromov has no issues at all killing the defense minister and the guard in the interrogation room but then for some reason decides to take the only witness to his entire plan (Simonova) alive for a joyride through the streets, at no point attempting to kill her and end any hope of him being discovered.
Trevelyan orders Bond to be killed, instead the guards surround him and he surrenders his weapon and they capture him, against their own orders.
The grenade pen that is supposedly only diffused by 3 more clicks after the initial 3 is completely forgotten about in the scene when Boris is holding it, there are multiple occasions where it is not diffused correctly and still does not go off.
Simonova is a computer programmer and spends the first half of the film screaming and burying herself in her hands and Bond's chest then towards the end of the film is now suddenly trained in how to use handguns.
Janssen is so over the top in her acting I thought I was back watching Adam West's Batman.
Brosnan is a good Bond but is letdown by the script, inconsistent plot and the supporting cast are poor throughout, not one person stands out as doing a decent job.
Unfortunate after a 6 year hiatus that this was the return of Bond. Not much here to enjoy 3/10.
Sean Lock: Lockipedia Live (2010)
Not a patch on "Sean Lock Live"
After seeing his previous show "Sean Lock Live" I was hoping for something equally good or better. Sadly this fails to deliver at all, even the audience seemed at times to laugh out of awkwardness. I expected better from Sean, he is regularly funny on "QI" and "8 out of 10 Cats" and on his previous stand up tour.
At best this show reaches average, I smiled once or twice but I didn't laugh once. Hopefully this is just a blip in his career and his next show will reach the heights of his previous routines. I found this painful viewing at times and his little giggles at his own jokes became annoying after a while.
3 out of 10.
Merlin (2008)
Takes over Doctor Whos peak time slot on BBC1 and shares the same failings.....
I'm fully aware 7pm on a Saturday is a time slot for family viewing, I thought Doctor Who had bad acting and really poor special effects... laughably poor. This show replaces Doctor Who and it's even worse... seriously bad acting, even from the established members of the cast (Anthony Head, Richard Wilson), some of this could be down to the terrible scripts and dialogue though.
The special effects are terrible, anyone in the US that is unlucky enough to see episodes of this will assume it's designed to be a comedy, the biggest joke is this is meant to be a drama.
You can't blame the budget for poor effects, it's been show many times over that you can build models cheaply that look far better then these terrible computerised effects. Bad effects can be overlooked if the rest of the show stands up on it's own but it clearly doesn't. There is no saving grace for this show, it's awful on every level.
Surely families who sit down together on an evening deserve better then this tripe?
Transformers (2007)
Average Action Film
The biggest movie of the summer? I hope not. I was a huge Transformers fan as a kid in the 80s and was looking forward to this film, unfortunately it doesn't deliver at all. There is no plot, no script, very bad dialogue and poor humour throughout.
A little more effort on the script and this could have been the movie of 2007. I think they blew the entire budget on special effects.
Saving graces are the special effects and the action scenes. If you want to see Transformers done properly buy the 1980s animated movie. Parents be wary, although this film has a low rating there's no way i'd let kids under 12 see this film, it contains a largely adult themes.
I went to see the film with 4 friends, they all enjoyed the film a lot and reading the other comments and the IMDb rating it seems i'm in the minority on this but I really think this film failed to deliver.
Lets hope like with Star Wars the sequel turns out better....
Doctor Who (2005)
Poor return of classic old show
Doctor Who has always had a reputation for being a bit tongue in cheek, something not to be taken too seriously. However with this shows return in 2005 they kept the same terrible special effects and really hammed up acting but tried to make it a series show.
The special effects are worse then those used in Babylon 5 a show much older then Dr Who. The plots are flimsy, the dialogue is for the most part terrible and the acting is full of visibly forced emotion (something I hate).
Now none of the above was ever a problem before because the show was designed to be that awful, soon as they tried to make this into a serious drama they made a huge mistake.
The only thing that kept me watching was Billie Piper, while not the most attractive woman around she has an undeniable sexiness, as soon as she left the show I stopped watching too.
We Brits clearly cannot do a decent sci-fi show or if we make one we ruin it with terrible special effects which are already 5 years out of date when added to the show. Leave the top notch Sci-Fi shows to the Americans, they do this stuff so much better then we can.
Not sure how this can be rated so highly, I guess it's suitable family viewing which is a plus compared to most of the other stuff on at the moment but if you haven't got kids I really can't see how you can enjoy this show in the slightest.
Johnny English (2003)
Embarrassingly bad!
I didn't have very high expectations for this film, but it was even worse then I thought. This is a one joke film, ruined by the fact the joke was used in the trailer, so you could have just watched the trailer and avoided the rest of this terrible film.
Naked Gun did this stuff so much better, and many years earlier. Apart from the sushi bar scene all the jokes were stolen from other films and the anti-french jokes were cringeworthy.
John Malkovich in particular was terrible, definitely a film he did for the money, i'm a big fan of his films but this is definitely his career lowpoint to date.
If this is the best we can do in Britain then there's not much hope for us. We have a great many decent comedy actors, it's about time we gave one of them a film break rather then re-using Rowan Atkinson and the rest of the "past it" brigade.
2.5 out of 10
The Transformers: The Movie (1986)
A classic film, the birth of Anime..
I first got a copy of this film in 1987 when I was 5 years old. I now own it on dvd and it's still a brilliant film, an impressive voice cast, an excellent script backed by some 80s metal music. You can't get any better, it's a pity the Transformers tv series couldn't have been this good.
In my view Transformers was the original Anime and is still a great film even if you're not an Anime nut. A must see! 9/10.
Legally Blonde (2001)
Predictable from start to finish...
I was very disappointed with this film after all the good things i'd heard about it. The plot was WEAK it was so predictable right from the beginning, this is supposed to be a comedy but I didn't find anything about this film amusing.
Reese Witherspoon is a great actress and her talents are wasted in this film, weak humour, weak script, even for a teen movie it's poor. 3 out of 10.