Monday, December 31, 2012

Top 5 Duds of 2012

Ah, the dishonour roll. Half of the worst lot happen to be local fare, and one of them had the distinction of possessing the audacity to pass itself off as a film. Needless to say that there's a fair bit of the horror genre here, because filmmakers may have thought it was easy to make one, but the truth, and results, show that they're grossly mistaken. And here they are:

Trespass
Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman. Sounds like a winner, not. Both were one time, bankable stars where their names alone on the marquee guarantees a box office success, but in recent years they have both fallen from grace given dodgier projects. Putting two wrongs together don't make one right, and Joel Schumacher chalks up yet another dud that was narratively lazy.

Joker
Akshay Kumar and Sonakshi Sinha paired together in Rowdy Rathore was a riot, but together in Joker they'd leave you scratching your head whether they had really read the script carefully before signing on the dotted line. It's science fiction, it's fantasy, and the genres you can just about do anything and get away with it, but here, imagination had run wild in the opposite direction, delivering something catered more for children under the age of 2, where they can't understand anything. It's no wonder, and an obvious warning sign, when both stars decided to ditch their promotional obligations for the film.

The Apparition
If the filmmakers were lazy, you'd get movies like this one. Poor story leading to poor characterization leading to insipid directing, and desperate editing to try and make it look good. It's a horror film gone horribly wrong, and that in itself is the true horror brought about by the movie.

Timeless Love
I'm not even sure why the need for two directors here, other than to have the more recognizable name help in its marketing efforts. One of the lead actors did quite the unprofessional job of badmouthing the film quite publicly, and if you sit through this film you'd soon know why. In an effort to cash in on a trend of youth films, or films that reminisce days of youth, Timeless Love wasn't actually timeless, but showed how films like these should be buried in time. It's a victim of trying too hard, and came off as artificial, hokey, and one extremely long commercial for a watch. No prizes though for observing who sponsored the movie.

- Hsien of the Dead
- My Ghost Partner
These two tied for the worst of the year. There's no story, there's no acting, and Hsien of the Dead looked more like an ulterior agenda gone wrong for somene wanting to put "filmmaker" into one's CV. It's a pity that nobody's quite giving Huang Yiliang the backing and training he needs to become a better filmmaker, as his My Ghost Partner had to hobble funds from so many parties, it could win an award for having the longest end credits of thanks and acknowledgements to its investors, hoping that they won't knock on his door soon to ask for their money back. And for Hsien of the Dead, it's a primary school kid's film project gone horribly wrong, that nothing more should be said about it other than to condemn it to the depths of the hell hole imagination it came from. Singapore's first zombie film credit is now snatched away by an undeserving project - I won't even label it a movie now, to do so is to insult the medium and art form.

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