The Worst Movies of 2013

Take a look at all of those critics' groups and individual critics' group's lists floating around this month and one thing is clear: 2013 has been an amazing year for movies. Gravity, Inside Llewyn Davis, 12 Years a Slave, Short Term 12—the lineup of the year's best films goes on and on, so much so that the next Academy Awards ceremony, scheduled for March 2, 2014, seems anything but locked up so far. So many worthy Best Picture nominees, and no clear-cut frontrunner. Which, as any self-respecting cinephile will tell you, is exactly how it should be.

While it would be easy, and much more pleasant, to just focus on those aforementioned films and others of their caliber, it's time to bring the mood down a bit here. For every two or three stellar motion pictures released this year, there was one absolute stinker, and by "absolute," think Movie 43-quality terrible. The only awards and honors that will be bestowed upon such soul-crushing films are those dreaded Razzies and, naturally, our annual countdown of the worst movies of the year. As you're about to see, 2013 had no shortage of big-screen direness.

Director: Zack Snyder
Stars: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Laurence Fishburne, Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe, Antje Traue, Harry Lennix, Christopher Meloni, Michael Kelly

Blessed with alien physiology that makes him a god on Earth, Kryptonian Kal-El (a.k.a. Clark Kent, a.k.a. Superman) has always lacked the stakes of DC’s other big hero, Batman. His physical invincibility has meant that the only real threat is to the humans around him, making the central question in most plots: "Does good guy Superman still give a shit about humanity to save it today?" He always gives a shit. He's a super nice guy.

With help from producer Christopher Nolan, who did a fantastic job with the Batman trilogy, director Zack Snyder attempted to inject more grit and gravity into the reboot of the Superman franchise. For a while, it works. Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) is a lonely, self-conscious, guilt-racked alien who lives a nomadic life, using his superpowers to save people’s lives and quickly flee because his dead adoptive father (Kevin Costner), who he failed to save, convinced him he must hide who he is. That’s the kind of weight that would make any man buckle, even a super one who’s stronger than a locomotive.

Man of Steel’s villain, General Zod (Michael Shannon), also has psychological depth. Artificial population control and the stripping of Krypton’s natural resources are responsible for the planet’s core explosion and the near extinction of the Kryptonian race (only Kal and coup leader Zod’s banished followers survive), and yet the General believes he must save his kind by transforming Earth into a new Krypton, killing all humans in the process, and using Kal’s DNA to genetically engineer new Kryptonians. As evil and misguided as his genocidal plot clearly is, his self-righteousness comes from a place of love and duty to his people.

The movie falters when all that pathos gets lost in unremarkable and unmercifully long CGI fights between Superman and Kryptonians who are equally invincible on Earth. The final showdown between Kal and Zod is mind-numbing and tedious as they crash through this building and that building in a vengeful grudge match. When Zod attempts to massacre powerless humans, that conflict is finally resolved with a hand-forcing finishing move so simple and anticlimactic that it trivializes all the preceding action and diminishes what should be a more poignant moment, when Kal kills the only other remaining Kryptonian to save the human race he does not belong to.

As it turns out, Kryptonite is not the Man of Steel's only weakness. Bland comic book movie action also saps him of his superiority. —Justin Monroe

Director: Denis Villeneuve
Stars: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Terence Howard, Melissa Leo, Paul Dano, Maria Bello, Viola Davis

The 2014 "We Got You Sucka" Trailer Award of the Year goes to Prisoners. And you got us good, you savvy Hollywood editors and producers, you. So good, in fact, we almost respect the hustle.

When the Prisoners premiered, the studio wouldn't let us focus on anything else. Whether you were watching Wheel of Fortune or Breaking Bad, you bet your sweet dollar a Prisoners spot aired. Hugh Jackman yelling about his missing daughter; Jake Gyllenhaal blinking intensely and walking in grey rain; Paul Dano doing his serial-killer heavy breathing thing.

And we fell for it, hard. The story goes as follows: Keller Dover (Jackman) and his family are enjoying a pleasant family dinner with neighborhood friend Franklin Birch (Terrence Howard) and his wife. Incidentally, their daughters go play outside and disappear seemingly into thin air. And that's where the trailer's high ends and the awful movie bait-and-switch reality sets in.

Gyllenhaal plays an incompetent detective that blinks about, roughly, 850 times per syllable and solves the crime by mind-blowing, stupid coincidence. Jackman shouts every line (seriously, every line), and shouts even louder when torturing Dano. Maria Bello takes a nap throughout the whole thing (she literally sleeps on-screen for nearly the entire film).

In the end, Prisoners sold us a glorified, below-average police procedural and made a killing (nearly $120 million worldwide). Don't ever underestimate the art of the trailer, again. —Frantz Rocher

Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Stars: Naomi Watts, Naveen Andrews, Cas Anvar, Laurence Belcher, Harry Holland, Douglas Hodge, Geraldine James

It's funny to look back on all the trade articles about the casting for this biopic, considering it completely bombed. When news broke that the late princess' late would be turned into a big production, names like Jessica Chastain and other Oscar favorites were thrown around.

The lead role in director Oliver Hirschbiegel's went to Naomi Watts. Although she does a valiant job looking and acting the part, Watts' effort is ultimately undermined by a royally shitty script and cheesy Hallmark Channel-style directing. -Tara Aquino

Director: Baz Luhrmann
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, Jason Clarke, Isla Fisher, Adelaide Clemens, Elizabeth Debicki, Jack Thompson, Amitabh Bachchan

Between the ecstatic, cartoonish trailers and the guarantee of wall-to-wall pop hits handpicked by Shawn Carter, The Great Gatsby was delivered to us with a promise: It would be fun. A mess? Probably, but at least a fun mess. What director Baz Luhrmann, who struck the right balance of excess and fidelity adapting Romeo and Juliet in a similarly caffeinated fashion, wasn't supposed to do was bore us. And yet Luhrmann's adaption of Fitzgerald's high-school staple is dull. It's the worst offense this summer blockbuster could have committed.

The geniuniely fun and strange first hour keeps The Great Gatsby from being one of 2013's most egregious mistakes. Do you realize that you need to watch lubricated white people pop bottles and get dumb in a Jazz Age Manhattan hotel room while Jay-Z and Kanye West's "Who Gon Stop Me" blares from the movie theater speakers? Probably you have no idea, but trust us-you need this. The first hour is full of weird moments like this, and they successfully push the poor decisions into the background, like the frame story where Nick is writing the text of Fitzgerald's novel in a sanitarium (he's become a depressed alcoholic-just one of many odd instances where the film tsk-tsks drinking).

But eventually Luhrmann decides his Gatsby needs to be a grand love story, and so he turns to Gatsby (Leonardo Dicaprio) and Daisy (Carey Mulligan). Thing is, The Great Gatsby isn't a grand love story. These characters aren't people you care for; that's not what Fitzgerald is getting at. They illuminate particular American problems about invention and excess and failure. What they don't do is fuel a gripping romance. Somebody should have told Luhrmann. -Ross Scarano

Director: Tommy Wirkola
Stars: Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, Peter Stormare, Thomas Mann, Derek Mears

To a certain kind of viewer, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters delivers on its surface-level promises. The majority of its barely 90-minute duration is comprised of action, gore, Jeremy Renner, and Gemma Arterton mowing down ghouls with crazy automatic weapons, and then more of that. Watch, wince, and repeat.

Shut your brain off and it's meaningless fun. But it's also middling fun, a horror-comedy that's neither overly horrific or all that funny. Director Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow) never elevates the schlocky proceedings to a Peter Jackson in Dead Alive level of gruesome anarchy, which a film called Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters should be, no questions asked. -Matt Barone

Director: Nicolás López
Stars: Eli Roth, Lorenza Izzo, Andrea Osvart, Ariel Levy, Natasha Yarovenko, Nicolas Martinez

The scariest thing about Aftershock? Selena Gomez's random but kind of fun cameo is the most memorable thing about it.

No fault of the film's solid cast, made up mostly of fresh-faced Chilean talent, director Nicolás López's tonally uneven disaster flick volleys between goofy humor and coldly brutal violence, neither of which registers beyond "gratuitous. Co-written by Eli Roth (who also plays the protagonist, an American tourist), Aftershock tries to emulate the structure of Roth's successful Hostel, playing half like a fish-out-of-water comedy and half like a grisly exploitation film—ultimately, though, the film's only shock factor comes from how bland the whole thing is.

When Gomez walks into the frame for her distracting, albeit brief, cameo, you're left wishing James "Alien" Franco would show up and hand everyone a pink ski mask. —Matt Barone

Director: Gore Verbinski
Stars: Armie Hammer, Johnny Depp, William Fichtner, Ruth Wilson, Tom Wilkinson, Barry Pepper, Mason Cook, Helena Bonham Carter, James Badge Dale

Somewhere, Taylor Kitsch feels a lot better about himself.

Reporting on The Lone Ranger's massive tanking at the box office last weekend, many bloggers commented that it's on par with last year's John Carter, another Disney production that cost a bundle and made a relative pittance. It's that rare instance of moviegoers nationwide showing an admirable lack of interest in what's just another example of an expensive wannabe blockbuster programmed for no reason other than to make serious coin.

Director Gore Verbinski's overlong adaptation of the old western TV series has plenty of problems, but three huge issues are its biggest deal-breakers. One, Johnny Depp gives his lamest performance yet as the monotone Tonto, shamefully trying to make unfunny punch lines and visual gags work, without success; two, Armie Hammer shows the aforementioned Mr. Kitsch how to truly bungle your first big shot at leading a movie franchise; and, three, Verbinski can't settle on a coherent tone, volleying between strong violence and moments of levity involving a weirdly talented horse and its chunky manure. We'll spare you any fecal metaphors here. -Matt Barone

Director: Robert Schwentke
Stars: Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Bacon, Mary-Louise Parker, Stephanie Szostak, James Hong, Marisa Miller, Robert Knepper

Who thought this was a good idea? Hey, let's get Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds to team up as a couple of undead cops! It'd be so funny! They'd pal around and shoot the shit while searching for their killers!

If the title was indicative enough (though, it was adapted from Peter M. Lenkov's comic Rest In Peace Department), the film is extremely formulaic, right down to mailed-in jokes and an [insert random model here to play a hot girl] for eye candy. It's the kind of movie that makes you realize how many millions of dollars studios waste. It's the kind of movie that makes you feel like you're watching stale bread mold on screen. -Tara Aquino

Director: Brian De Palma
Stars: Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace, Karoline Herfurth, Paul Anderson, Rainer Bock

If nothing else, Brian De Palma is still a master of visual style. In the veteran filmmaker's latest thriller, the little-seen Passion, he goes back to many of his old, always welcome tricks: brightly lit color schemes and split-screen action, all of which are punctuated by those familiar, Bernard Herrmann-esque music cues. Like all De Palma films, Passion at least looks great, but, sadly, that's as far as the compliments will go here. It's about as superficial a film as you're likely to see anytime soon.

Tackling his routine story ground (double-crosses, murder, sexual intrigue), De Palma overheats Passion to the point of silly melodrama. The plot, centering on a businesswoman (Noomi Rapace, totally miscast) trying to duck her new boss' (an over-the-top Rachel McAdams) increasingly dangerous obsessions, is incoherent, piling twist upon twist until you're left more disinterested and frustrated than intrigued. Even those aforementioned visual ploys, namely the split-screen, feel unnecessary—they look cool enough, but serve no discernible purpose other than to remind you, that, yes, this is a film made by the guy who once directed Carrie.

Not to mention, Blow Out, Dressed to Kill, and Femme Fatale, those memorable, sordid thrillers that De Palma so desperately wants viewers to remember while enduring through Passion. That will happen, just not positively. —Matt Barone

Director: Roman Coppola
Stars: Charlie Sheen, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Patricia Arquette, Katheryn Winnick, Aubrey Plaza, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Dermot Mulroney, Bar Paly

Some inside jokes should never be exposed to the world. A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III is a prime example. A long-in-the-making collaboration between old friends Charlie Sheen and writer-director Roman Coppola, it's an artificially quirky exercise in pretentious unfunniness, in which Sheen gets the opportunity to lampoon himself a bit as a successful playboy whose world crumbles when his sexy girlfriend, Ivana (Katheryn Winnick), leaves him.

Charles Swan has zero subtlety. At one point, Sheen's character suffers what appears to be a heart attack and starts having bizarre hallucinations, none of which make any narrative sense or inspire any laughter. In one, he's tormented by a group dubbed Ivana's Society of Ball Busters. It's pathetic.

That Coppola and Sheen thought any of this would translate to wider audiences outside of their most forgiving friends and family members is shameful. That they dragged folks like Bill Murray, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Aubrey Plaza down along with them is just sad. -Matt Barone

Director: Courtney Solomon
Stars: Ethan Hawke, Selena Gomez, Jon Voight, Rebecca Budig

Actual plot: Selena Gomez plays a baby gangster and Ethan Hawke, who plays a man she tried to boost, takes her on a race against time to save his kidnapped wife from a mysterious villain.

This is a real movie, and it is called Getaway. Despite the film's $18 million budget, and Gomez's star power, it only took home about $11 million. Which is to say, whoever thought Gomez looks intimidating either needs to be fired or seek therapy for some deep-seated issues they clearly didn't deal with as a child. -Tara Aquino

Director: Andrew Niccol
Stars: Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons, Jake Abel, Frances Fisher, Chandler Canterbury, Diane Kruger, William Hurt

Perhaps the world is wising up to YA novelist Stephanie Meyer's shtick, because her latest attempt at global domination, The Host series, bombed at the box office. With good reason, we should add. Her follow-up to the Twilight phenomenon, the series imagines a heroine who attempts to save what's left of humanity, all the while resisting the alien parasite that's taken hold of her body. It sounds kinda cool, but it ends up functioning like a '90s Nickelodeon teen show that takes itself way too seriously. The film doesn't understand melodrama or camp. Consider it Alex Mack-meets-Allen Strange-meets everything that is wrong about Twilight, with a little schizophrenia peppered in. Oh, and everything is silver.

Maybe we'll laugh at this in the distant future, but for now we'd all just like the Stephanie Meyer ride to stop.-Tara Aquino

Director: Antoine Fuqua
Stars: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Rick Yune, Dylan McDermott, Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, Robert Forster, Cole Hauser, Ashley Judd

Squint and Olympus Has Fallen is almost a hilarious parody of conservative action flicks. It's far nicer to believe that, say, the scene where rogue secret service agent Mike Banning (played by Gerard Butler-who isn't even American!) beats a North Korean terrorist to death with a bust of Abraham Lincoln is a joke than anything else.

The alternative is that the film, which imagines an attack on the nation's capital, is just a tainted wellspring of jingoism. That it pries the viewer for easy suspense and anger by recycling the images of 9/11. That it creates a space for guilt-free xenophobia.

These are all the reasons why the film is morally reprehensible. If you're not interested in that take, trust that it's a poor movie because it's a boring one, too. It recycles Die Hard the way it does the 9/11 attacks, but with little charm and even less fun. If you really want to have a good time, politics be damned, try the liberal alternative, White House Down-Channing Tatum derps in all the right ways, and Jamie Foxx keeps his Jordan 4s clean. What more could you ask for? -Ross Scarano

Director: Malcolm D. Lee
Stars: Ashley Tisdale, Simon Rex, Erica Ash, Darrell Hammond, Jerry O'Connell, J.P. Manoux, Molly Shannon, Sarah Hyland, Katrina Bowden, Tyler Posey, Bow Wow, Heather Locklear, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Jasmine Guy, Lil Duval, Katt Williams, Terry Crews

Because the world needed another unimaginative collection of obvious pop culture references, Scary Movie 5 came and went in theaters in early April, pleasing no one except High School Musicalgraduate Ashley Tisdale's agent-at least she got a leading role out of the deal.

As for everyone else involved with the spoof franchise's nadir, the only who shouldn't be ashamed of themselves are Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan, for obvious reasons. The rest of the sequel's acting victims-including Darrell Hammond, Heather Locklear, Molly Shannon, and, believe it or not, Jasmine Guy-degrade themselves in the name of easy paychecks and dated humor. Amongst the films spoofed in Scary Movie 5: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (released in August 2011), Black Swan (a December 2010 release), and Inception (July 2010). Somehow, Gone with the Wind was spared. -Matt Barone

Director: Geoffrey S. Fletcher
Stars: Saoirse Ronan, Alexis Blidel, James Gandolfini, Danny Trejo, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Cody Horn, Tatiana Maslany

Violet & Daisy, written and directed by Oscar-winner Geoffrey Fletcher (for writing Precious), is the kind of transparent movie where the filmmaker's various influences are on full, unsubtle display, and not in the enjoyable Tarantino way. Even worse, Tarantino is obviously one of Fletcher's key influences in this annoyingly esoteric mishmash of crime movie tropes, Clueless characters, and pseudo-existential musings.

Saoirse Ronan and Alexis Blidel salvage small amounts of face as two teenage hit-girls act like immature pop princesses and kill with ruthless force. On this particular assignment, they're assigned to terminate a terminally ill man (the late James Gandolfini), but instead of immediately offing him, the girls engage in several over-written chats about life, death, and self-evaluation. The occasional violent asides, meanwhile, like a a bit where the girls dance on top of people they've just shot (a.k.a. the "internal bleeding dance"), feel gratuitous, not effective. -Matt Barone

Director: Ed Gass-Donnelly
Stars: Ashley Bell, Julia Garner, Spencer Treat Clark, Muse Watson, Louis Herthum

Only the most passionate and informed of horror movie fans even knows that The Last Exorcism Part II-the unnecessary sequel to the successful and fairly creepy 2010 found-footage movie-opened in theaters in early March. And surely not one of them is happy about that knowledge.

Abandoning the first-person POV aesthetic, The Last Exorcism Part II instantly establishes itself as an all-around familiar affair, offering nothing creative to the demonic possession sub-genre. Returning star, and impressive contortionist, Ashley Bell does her best to inject some dignity into this bland and silly misfire, but her efforts are for naught. She's powerless against a moronic script that surrounds her with a love interest who might as well be a robot, hallucinations of her dead father (who has facial hair here, even though he was clean shaven while dying in the first movie), and awful CGI blazes during the film's Firestarter-esque finale. -Matt Barone

Director: John Moore
Stars: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Yuliya Snigir, Cole Hauser, Amaury Nolasco, Mary Elizabeth Winstead

When a film's star doesn't seem to give a damn, why should anyone who's watching his or her shitty movie care? That's the sentiment conjured up by A Good Day to Die Hard, the worst Die Hard film ever and a depressing 97 minutes for Bruce Willis' most excitable fans.

Playing the unkillable John McClane with all the verve of a George A. Romero zombie, Willis sleepwalks through a loud, story-free barrage of whatever action sequences featuring stock characters busting guns, jumping through glass windows, and taking down CGI helicopters. The biggest casualty of all, though, may be poor Jai Courtney, the young Aussie actor who landed the coveted role of John McClane's son. There's no torch passed here, only a sympathetic, metaphorical hug for not being able to top Live Free or Die Hard's puny Justin Long when it comes all-time best McClane sidekicks. -Matt Barone

Director: Peter Farrelly, Elizabeth Banks, Steven Brill, Steve Carr, Rusty Cundieff, James Duffy, Griffin Dunne, Patrik Forsberg, James Gunn, Brett Ratner, Will Graham, Jonathan van Tulleken
Stars: Halle Berry, Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber, Kate Winslet, Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear, Emma Stone, Gerard Butler, Seann William Scott, Johnny Knoxville, Elizabeth Banks, Kieran Culkin, Chloe Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Justin Long, Bobby Cannavale, Jason Sudeikis, Katrina Bowden, Leslie Bibb, Common, Seth MacFarlane

For anyone who's brave (or stupid?) enough to sit through Movie 43, there really is no debate about what's this year's worst movie thus far. It's a cinematic disaster of gargantuan proportions, an epic miscalculation somehow featuring names like Kate Winslet and Naomi Watts, and a humongous waste of endless A-list talent.

Worst of all, it's just not funny. At all. Trying to be a new-age Kentucky Fried Movie, Movie 43 haphazardly weaves together a series of raunchy, idiotic vignettes designed to give mostly serious actors the chance to let loose. But the best any of the film's writers could come up with are, in no particular order of heinousness, the sight of Halle Berry making guacamole with her breasts, a cartoon cat pissing on Elizabeth Banks, and Hugh Jackman playing a guy on a blind date who unfortunately has testicles dangling from his neck.

Laughing yet? As terrible as those ideas all sound on paper, they're even worse in execution. The only star who leaves Movie 43 relatively unscathed is Terrence Howard, whose bit as the coach of an all-black basketball team is, at worst, a lame Chappelle's Show sketch. At least he doesn't have a pair of nuts beneath his chin. -Matt Barone

Director: Vince Offer
Stars: Lindsay Lohan, Michelle Rodriguez, Adrien Brody, Rob Schneider, Vince Offer

Have you ever wondered what a movie directed by the ShamWow guy would look like? Well, you've now got your answer in inAPPropriate Comedy, and it's much worse than any informercial-hating cynic could've imagined.

As for that obnoxious title, inAPPropriate Comedy is a sketch collection in which all of the segments are introduced as phone applications. Why? Fuck if we know, but nothing in this laugh-free comedy is worthy of even tickling Candy Crush's megabits. Somehow, director Vince "ShamWow" Offer convinced stars like Adrien Brody and Michelle Rodriguez to join the reputable duo of Rob Schneider and Lindsay Lohan in a series of skits whose wittiness never exceeds Brody playing "Flirty Harry," a silly character with the catchphrase, "Go ahead, make me gay." Sham-womp womp. -Matt Barone

Director: Michael Tiddes
Stars: Marlon Wayans, Essence Atkins, Cedric the Entertainer, Nick Swardson, Dave Sheridan, David Koechner, Andrew Daly, Alanna Ubach, Affion Crockett

Good on Marlon Wayans for taking the initiative to break away from his family's inner circle and oversee his very non-Scary Movie spoof film. Bad on him, however, for bringing nothing new to the comedic genre other than blatant homophobia and one or two semi-clever riffs on horror's found-footage conceit, namely a kind of humorous bit that re-purposes Paranormal Activity 3's oscillating fan trick.

A Haunted House starts off promising enough, hinting that it's actually more of a domestic comedy of errors (about a guy who's living with his girlfriend for the first time) than a sloppy compilation of references and sight gags. But then Adam Sandler's dark prince of non-comedy Nick Swardson shows up as a gay psychic, and it's all downhill from there for Wayans and company. The fact that A Haunted House is slightly better than Scary Movie 5 isn't exactly a compliment. -Matt Barone

Director: Ruben Fleischer
Stars: Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Sean Penn, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Mireille Enos, Nick Nolte, Michael Pena, Robert Patrick, Holt McCallany

There's no reason why Gangster Squad shouldn't be this generation's L.A. Confidential. A hard-boiled clash between Los Angeles machine-gun-slingers and tough street cops, the year's most disappointing Hollywood production boasts a starry cast of usually reliable talent (Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Sean Penn, Josh Brolin) and a fascinating real-life subject (how a bunch of heroes broke laws to take down Brooklyn mobster Mickey Cohen's late-1940s reign over the City of Angels). It should've been something special.

Instead, Gangster Squad is a soulless video game, marred down by cliched characters, cartoonish violence, and a superficial pulpiness that's comparable to Frank Miller's film travesty The Spirit. Which leads us to the film's producer's biggest misstep: giving the directing assignment to Ruben Fleischer, the talented though inexperienced and out-of-his-element filmmaker whose best work was the horror-comedy Zombieland.

In Gangster Squad, Fleischer employs Zack Snyder's brand of same slow-motion action and overall glossiness, giving it a sheen that best suits hollow eye candy projects like Sucker Punch. Gangster Squad shouldn't have been that. -Matt Barone

Director: Dario Argento
Stars: Thomas Kretschmann, Rutger Hauer, Marta Gastini, Asia Argento, Unax Ugalde, Miriam Giovanelli, Giovanni Franzoni

It wouldn't even make sense to rehash that old phrase "Oh, how the mighty have fallen" in the case of Dario Argento—he's been embarrassing himself since 2007, when the enjoyably bad but still, you know, bad Mother of Tears premiered. In 2009, the Italian horror icon descend even further into the land of suck, making his worst movie, at the time, in Giallo, a serial killer dud that star Adrien Brody has since renounced.

Neither of those cinematic turkeys, though, prepared fans of Argento's past horror treasures (e.g., Suspiria, Inferno, Deep Red) for the abomination that is Dracula 3D. A loose, incredibly inept adaptation of Bram Stoker's seminal vampire novel, Argento's darkest hour plays like an unholy combination of awful student film and unintentional Ed Wood parody, with cheesy wah-wah synth music, robotic acting, and laughably terrible CGI. Though, in slight defense of Argento's heinous version of Dracula, there is this:

Director: Dennis Dugan
Stars: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, Salma Hayek, Maria Bello, Maya Rudolph, Alexander Ludwig, Steve Buscemi, Shaquille O'Neal, Tim Meadows, Taylor Lautner, Milo Ventimiglia, Aly Michalka, Steve Austin

The first Grown Ups, released in 2010, was an affront to humanity, but at least one could write the film off as an excuse for Adam Sandler and his famous friends Kevin James, David Spade, Chris Rock, and Rob Schneider to hang out together and get paid at the same time—insulting to their paying audiences, yes, but excusable the first time. With this year's beyond-lazy and abysmal sequel, however, the leniency is over. Grown Ups 2 is the epitome of cash-grabbing, artistic brain-farting, and Sandler no longer deserves anyone's mercy.

Sandler and his disrespectful (towards their fans, that is) buddies spend the entirety of Grown Ups 2 spitting in the faces of anyone masochistic enough to buy tickets. Foolish, non-discerning moviegoers who, if it hadn't hit them already, surely started hating themselves once the film's characters watched Colin Quinn's pouring out chocolate ice cream made to seem like he's defecating. Whether Sandler's reactionary laughter is aimed at that awful sight gag or you, the viewer, is anyone's guess. But probably both. —Matt Barone

Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Stars: Jaden Smith, Will Smith, Zoë Kravitz, Sophie Okonedo

After Earth, in spite of itself, has one of the most unintentionally brilliant action sequences in years. It's the film's final showdown between Jaden Smith's underdog warrior and a giant monster, and it's dampened by non-starter fight choreography that feels like it was undercut by Quaaludes. But with every lifeless leap and swing of Jaden's spear, the scene cuts back and forth to Will Smith's injured, dying character slowly fading away, though it looks like he's falling asleep the entire time.

It's the perfect representation of an After Earth audience member's surely catatonic state while enduring this sleepy vanity project for Jaden Smith to become an action movie star. Spoiler: He's no Will Smith, nor is he even on par with those 3 Ninjas kids. As directed by Hollywood punch line M. Night Shyamalan, After Earth has no sense of urgency, zero thrills, and is by far the worst movie Will Smith has ever made. And we've seen Seven Pounds. -Matt Barone