2015 in review: The disappointments

The worst films of the year – Get Hard, Pixels, the 20 minutes of The Wedding Ringer I could stomach – aren't worth the hike in my blood pressure it would take for me to discuss them, so let's do something different. Here are 10 movies I expected good things from in 2015 but which, for me, failed to deliver on the hype. Some are irredeemable turkeys (Black Mass, Pitch Perfect 2), others are watchable despite their shortcomings (Trainwreck, Sicario)...

1. Crimson Peak (pictured above)

Visually stunning but ultimately vacuous gothic horror/romance from director Guillermo Del Toro. It lacked the punch (both political and supernatural) the director had brought in the past to Spanish-language films such as The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. 

2. Sicario

The complexities of the Mexican drug war reduced to clumsy macho revenge fantasy. A pity because elsewhere there is much to admire in Denis Villeneuve's film, not least a fine leading turn from Emily Blunt (Edge Of Tomorrow) as an in-over-her-head FBI agent. Probably this year's most overrated movie.

3. Black Mass

Johnny Depp abandons silly cartoonish roles in movies such as Mortdecai and The Lone Ranger to play an, erm, silly cartoonish role as real-life gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger. Depressingly one-note throughout, Black Mass is a mess of witless confrontation, murder and misogyny. Goodfellas for dummies.

4. Trainwreck

Amy Schumer's US TV vehicle - Inside Amy Schumer - is one of the finest sketch comedies to appear on either side of the Atlantic in the last 20 years. Trainwreck (co-written by and starring Schumer) was director Judd Apatow's attempt to refashion her schtick for the American mainstream and it smoothed off far too many of the comic's sharp edges. In fact, the film's boozy, promiscuous journalist was like something out of 1990s Britain - a story about a ladette, only 20 years too late.
5. Pitch Perfect 2

The original film about an all-girl a cappella group starring Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson had charm by the bucketload and plenty of funny moments. The rotten sequel was lumbered with one of the year's worst scripts and generous lashings of casual racism. Witless tripe. 

6. Southpaw

After Nightcrawler and Enemy, I couldn't wait to see what Jake Gyllenhaal did next. Unfortunately, it was this absurdly melodramatic boxing flick that contained plot holes so huge you could manoeuvre Starkiller Base through them with no danger of touching the sides.

7. Star Wars: The Force Awakens

After all that hype and anticipation, J.J. Abrams' bow as Star Wars supremo had its moments but far too much of it felt secondhand. Nods to the past were inevitable but The Force Awakens too often seemed like a nostalgia-soaked mash-up of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, with Abrams even wheeling out a pimped-out Death Star in lieu of a decent or original plot. Admittedly, Finn and Rey were intriguing new characters but Kylo Ren was like Harry Enfield's Kevin The Teenager in Darth Vader cosplay. 

8. The Overnight
Limp sex comedy that manages to squander both its great cast (Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling and Jason Schwartzman) and intriguing premise (a vanilla married couple are invited to dinner by their new friends, who may be swingers). Despite being barely 80 minutes long, The Overnight runs out of steam long before the end. 

9. Me And Earl And The Dying Girl
One of those quirky US indies that arrives on UK shores every year having been the "toast of Sundance". I genuinely can't remember the last time I loathed a lead character in a movie the way I did Thomas Mann's Greg (the titular Me), an irritating little twerp full of fashionable ennui in need of a good, hard kick up the arse. 

10. Avengers: Age Of Ultron

2014 was probably the best year for superhero flicks to date with Guardians Of The Galaxy, Captain America: Winter Soldier, and X-Men: Days Of Future Past all impressing. Unfortunately, it was back to earth with a bump this year as Fantastic Four stank the place out, Ant-Man was a curate's egg, and Joss Whedon's Avengers sequel was overlong and cluttered. Let's hope 2016's Deadpool and Captain America: Civil War stop the rot.  

**Next up: My 10 favourite documentaries of 2015**

Not even Jake Gyllenhaal can save Southpaw, a boxing flick that is both predictable and absurd

Review (contains spoilers)

Southpaw
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rachel McAdams, Oona Laurence
Run time: 123 mins

Like the recent Floyd Mayweather Jr v Manny Pacquiao fight, boxing films often look good on paper but, in reality, fail to deliver the thrills and spills you anticipate. In fact, I remember chuckling to myself last year when I saw this article in the Daily Telegraph supposedly listing the best 10 boxing movies of all time. The fact its writer had to include the ridiculous likes of Rocky IV on his list said it all really – there haven't been many truly great films about the pugilistic art.

I'll give you Raging Bull (a scuzzily perfect lamentation on the fight game) and Rocky (cinema's quintessential underdog story) but, generally speaking, movies about boxing mostly contain hackneyed plots, paper-thin characters, and uplifting, triumph-of-the-spirit endings clumsily telegraphed in the opening moments. Unfortunately, Southpaw does nothing to improve the situation as you'd be hard pressed to find a more predictable movie in this or any year.

Jake Gyllenhaal is light-heavyweight boxing champion Billy Hope (Great White Hope – get it?). Despite a foolishly reckless fighting style, he's on top of the world with a 43-0 record, a loving family (wife Rachel McAdams and young daughter Oona Laurence), and a mansion the size of a small country. Raised in a Hell's Kitchen orphanage (something the film tells us twice early on to make sure we get it), he is the living embodiment of the American Dream; someone who has, quite literally, fought his way up from the very bottom to the very top.

But Billy's perfect existence is turned upside down when he and belligerent rival Miguel 'Magic' Escobar (Miguel Gomez) brawl at a charity function. Hope's missus is accidentally shot and killed in the ensuing fracas and it isn't long before the fighter's career is on the ropes, his young daughter taken into care. Broke, suicidal and facing ruin, he's reduced to getting a job cleaning up at a gym owned by trainer Tick Willis (Burgess Meredith Forest Whitaker). Can Hope-turned-dope Billy somehow get his life back together and return to the pinnacle of his sport? What do you think?

Southpaw’s problems go deeper than mere plodding predictability. There are plot holes so big you could comfortably steer Floyd Mayweather's planet-sized ego right through the middle of them. Screenwriter Kurt Sutter (creator of TV’s Sons of Anarchy) doesn't seem to understand how modern American celebrity works. Even at his lowest ebb, Hope – an internationally famous sporting superstar, remember – wouldn't end up mopping floors in some flea-bitten gym, he'd be bombarded with offers for confessional interviews (does Oprah not exist in the Southpaw universe?). And even if Billy’s lucrative endorsements dried up, there would still be book, magazine and newspaper deals, reality shows and TV punditry. Massive celebrity + personal tragedy = big bucks, so if Billy needed cash as quickly as the film insists he does, he could get it easily.

Also, has any fighter in the history of boxing fought like Billy Hope – all offence, no defence – and somehow been able to win 43 fights with no losses? Of course not. It's absurd and distracting enough to yank you right out of the narrative. A fighter with a style like that would have his arse handed to him every time he stepped into the ring – he'd either be beaten senseless inside two rounds or the ref would stop it when the blood started flowing like cheap red plonk. Christ, Audley Harrison would come out of retirement just to get it on with a fighter as wide open as that.

Then there's the fact the death of Billy's wife, Maureen, never appears to be investigated or prosecuted. There's a short scene right after the shooting in which a distraught, blood-smeared Hope is briefly interviewed by a couple of cops but then it's never mentioned again... despite there being numerous witnesses to the incident, including Billy himself. Do the police not bother interviewing Hope again or let him know how their investigation is progressing? Call me old-fashioned, but if my wife was gunned down in public, I might just have a passing interest in her killer being brought to book. 

For all that, there are moments when Southpaw gets it right. Antoine Fuqua – director of Training Day and The Equalizer – could cook up a powerful action sequence standing on his head and his fight scenes here have a real visceral energy. Some of the punches Billy throws and has thrown at him actually made me wince. Outside the ring, an impressively ripped Gyllenhaal comes close to making a fairly charmless, one-note character likeable. There's also an intriguing reason why Hope picks Tate to be his trainer that is mentioned once and never revisited, and Southpaw is full of these little hints of a better film buried beneath the shambolic plotting and, I’m guessing, last-minute rewrites and studio interference.

The idea of two great boxing rivals inextricably linked through tragedy meeting in a bitter final slugfest is a good one. But when Billy gets his title shot and a chance of revenge/redemption it's dulled because Escobar is hardly in the film and behaves like a cartoon character when he is. It's like Hope isn't about to fight a living, breathing human being at the end, it's as if he's going toe-to-toe with Yosemite Sam or Dick Dastardly. 

Billy's big finale also lacks impact because the accident that actually kicked off this unfortunate chain of events was as much his fault as Escobar's, although neither of them were the ones who fired the fatal shot. Yes, the man who has taken Hope’s title belts is a dick and a braggart but that's all he is – he isn't the monstrous big bad required to make Billy's eventual victory truly sweet. Escobar is little more than cannon-fodder, hurriedly reintroduced towards the end to facilitate an upbeat finale.

Hope's real battle is with his self – a man for whom uncontrollable rage is both a blessing and a curse – and whilst that is hinted at throughout the film (especially in a couple of strong scenes with an underused Whitaker) it is never fully explored. It’s symptomatic of a boxing movie that simply fails to land enough of its punches. Southpaw did, however, make me want to throw in the towel halfway through.

Rating: W

Southpaw is in cinemas now

Ratings

WWWW = Wonderful

WWW = Worthy

WW = Watchable

W = Woeful

5 for Friday (July 24): Trailers, new releases and box office

The world and his wife (and their dog) will have seen Pixar's Inside Out trailer by now but here are five more previews for films making their cinema debuts today...

1. Eden 
French writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve's fourth film follows the fortunes of Paul, an ambitious teenage DJ in Paris in the early '90s. Perfectly evokes a nightlife of sex, drugs and music, music, music.

2. Best Of Enemies 

Fascinating documentary chronicling the series of US TV debates in 1968 between liberal Gore Vidal and conservative William F. Buckley Jr. The encounters become explosive, vitriolic and gladiatorial, a way of presenting televised political discourse unheard of then but par for the course now.

3. Southpaw
Jake Gyllenhaal bulks up for his role as Billy Hope, a boxer trying to get his life and career back on track after losing his wife in a tragic accident. To be honest, it all looks a bit overblown and clumsy (Billy Hope? Really?!) but Gyllenhaal is always worth watching.

4. Maggie 
Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in a zombie movie with surprising depth and humanity. Abigail Breslin steals the show with a fine performance as a young woman battling to keep hold of her humanity after being bitten by a member of the undead. Read my full review here.

5. The Legend Of Barney Thomson
Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting, The World is Not Enough) stars and directs a Glasgow-set black comedy about a downtrodden barber whose dull existence is turned on its head when he accidentally turns killer. Emma Thompson - playing his mum - and Ray Winston also star. 

Also on release this week...
Inside Out 
The Last Sparks Of Sundown (from Monday)
Promise Dad
Ruth & Alex 
Wrong No. 
You're Ugly Too

UK box office top 10
1. Ant-Man
2. Minions
3. Ted 2
4. Jurassic World
5. Andre Rieu's 2015 Maastricht Concert (Event Cinema)
6. Terminator: Genisys
7. Bajrangi Bhaijaan
8. Magic Mike XXL
9. The Gallows
10. Amy

US box office top 10
1. Ant-Man 
2. Minions 
3. Trainwreck 
4. Inside Out 
5. Jurassic World 
6. Terminator Genisys 
7. Magic Mike XXL 
8. The Gallows 
9. Ted 2
10. Mr. Holmes