Basket Of Deplorables: 12 films I really didn't get along with in 2016...

Heads you lose: The Green Inferno is No.6 on my naughty list

In the interests of full disclosure, there were a great many reportedly terrible films this year that I managed to avoid. These included: Inferno, Mother's Day, Gods Of Egypt, Nine Lives, Ride Along 2, Ben Hur and Yoga Hosers. Of the ones I did see, these were easily the worst...

12. Ma Ma (director: Julio Medem)
Sappy, soppy, soapy Spanish melodrama starring Penélope Cruz as a single mum battling breast cancer and conducting an affair with a recently-widowed football scout. Director Medem has clearly lost his way since the excellent Sex And Lucia, while Cruz seems to do any old nonsense these days (she's in Zoolander 2, as well). By the time her oncologist started singing I'd lost the will to live and, at the end, was actively rooting for the cancer.

11. Zoolander 2 (dir: Ben Stiller)
This totally unnecessary sequel (2001's first instalment and Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno surely exhausted all the best fashion industry jokes) sees Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) and old pal Hansel (Owen Wilson) return to the catwalk after 10 years in exile following a personal tragedy. I like Stiller but when your movie contains more celebrity cameos (everyone from Sting to Anna Wintour) than it does decent gags, you know you're in trouble.

10. Suicide Squad (dir: David Ayer)
The trailer for this supervillain blockbuster promised us a spiky, punk rock antidote to the usual slick but formulaic superhero fare. Unfortunately, Ayer's film was more Jimmy Pursey than Johnny Rotten - a clumsily-plotted mess which lurched from A to B with all the elegance of a methed-up sloth. Jared Leto's 'Gangsta Joker' divided opinion but, for me, the movie only came to life in the 10 or so minutes he was on screen.

Suicide isn't painless: Trailer better than film shocker

9. Jane Got A Gun (dir: Gavin O'Connor)
Lifeless, listless and entirely unconvincing Western in which Natalie Portman (perfect hair, perfect teeth, non-existent personality) has to defend her badly-wounded husband and young daughter from a gang of wrong 'uns, led by Ewan McGregor. Fussy and overcooked, its multiple flashbacks, clunky twists, and constant need to spell out the plot in excruciating detail made it an ordeal.

8. The Danish Girl (dir: Tom Hooper)

I'm not sure how it's possible to make a film this boring about the extraordinary life of transgender pioneer Lili Elbe but somehow Hooper (Les Misérables) manages it. Eddie Redmayne never once convinces as Elbe, all coy glances, nervous smiles and theatrical hand gestures. There's technique in abundance but precious little soul - something that could be said of the whole movie. Only Alicia Vikander emerges with any credit.

7. Freeheld (dir: Peter Sollett)

Painfully earnest and embarrassingly pantomimic retelling of a genuinely moving true story. Julianne Moore is the New Jersey cop dying of cancer who is desperate to pass on her pension to civil partner Ellen Page. But reactionary forces are having none of her plea for equality and her quest ends up in court, where Steve Carrell turns up as a professional rabble-rouser with three character traits: loud, gay and Jewish. The whole thing quickly descends into farce and not the good kind.

6. The Green Inferno (dir: Eli Roth)

Roth's homage to the likes of Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox sees a group of idealistic American college kids travel to the Amazon to save the Rain Forest from a logging company. Unfortunately, the tribe whose habitat they are seeking to protect turn out to be chartered surveyors. No, not really, they're cannibals and quickly put the bite on our naïve heroes. Roth's film is just a bad cover version of far superior movies with some right-wing guff about Social Justice Warriors tacked on to gain a few column inches. He could do better in his sleep.

Fresh meat: Roth's cannibal flick is no genre classic 

5. Independence Day: Resurgence (dir: Roland Emmerich)
Another unnecessary and inferior sequel that lacks any of the original movie's considerable charm. Jeff Goldblum is as watchable as ever, as the first film's killer aliens return for a second go-round, but there's a big Will Smith-sized hole here that the next generation of ET fighters (a collection of dullards you'd struggle to recall even with a death-ray to your head) never comes close to filling.

4. Swiss Army Man (dir: Daniel Scheinert)
I don't like earnest films and I don't like twee films. Swiss Army Man manages to be both and is annoyingly smug into the bargain. Paul Dano is a castaway who discovers the corpse of Daniel Radcliffe washed up on the beach one morning. Dano uses the dead body - who he christens Manny - as a fart-propelled raft as he bids to return to civilisation. I'm sure director Scheinert thinks his film has something profound to say about loneliness, madness and the need for human connection, but I just found it silly and utterly unbearable.

3. Special Correspondents (dir: Ricky Gervais)
Gervais's resurrection of his David Brent character in On The Road certainly had its moments but this Netflix-only release was a real buzz-kill. Eric Bana is a radio journalist, Gervais (who stars, writes and directs) his technician. When the pair miss their flight to war-torn Ecuador, they improvise - holing up in New York and delivering fake reports from the 'frontline' instead. Based on a true story, it's a nice set-up but the execution is not only deeply unfunny but clumsily racist too.

2. Rock The Kasbah (dir: Barry Levinson)

The once great Bill Murray is a washed-up rock tour manager who, desperate for a decent payday, accompanies one of his acts (Zooey Deschanel) to play for US troops in Afghanistan. When she runs out on him and steals his money and passport, Murray is left high and dry. For reasons too tedious to recount, he ends up embroiled in the sale of ammunition to a Pashtun tribe and, among them, meets Salima (Leem Lubany), a talented young singer who he enters into the country's version of Pop Idol, much to the horror of her traditionalist father and lots of other unpleasant-looking men with beards.

Rock The Kasbah is a film in which no Middle Eastern cliché is left unmined, where every cultural stereotype imaginable is blundered through, and the scene in which Murray performs Smoke On The Water is so buttock-clenchingly bad it should have caused a diplomatic incident. Worst of all though is the fact this should really be a film about Salima (the film is very loosely based on the story of Setara Hussainzada, who outraged conservatives by performing on the Afghan Star TV show without her hijab), but she's barely a bit-part player.

Meanwhile, poor 37-year-old Kate Hudson gets to play 66-year-old Murray's love interest in a sure sign her career is about as far down the dumper as it's possible to get.

1. Knight Of Cups (dir: Terrence Malick)

Having adored Malick's films in the past (especially Badlands and The Thin Red Line) it gives me no pleasure to say this is quite the most preposterous and awful move-watching experience I've had in the past 12 months. Christian Bale plays Rick, who, despite being a handsome, rich and successful Hollywood screenwriter is full of misery and ennui. He spends the entire movie moping about Los Angeles, occasionally pausing to remember a failed dalliance with some gorgeous woman or other (Cate Blanchett, Freida Pinto and Natalie Portman are among his conquests) before whispering self-pitying cod-philosophy over a variety of random images. (There's some stuff about Tarot cards, too - hence the title - but that's even more tiresome than the rest of it).

A Knight's fail: Malick's film drove me to distraction

Rick, it seems, is in the throes of a mid-life crisis and instead of buying another Porsche or marrying a 20-year-old supermodel like any self-respecting Hollywood arsehole, moans about it incessantly for two hours solid. "I spent 30 years not living life but ruining it for myself and others," he whines. "I can't remember the man I wanted to be." Oh, boo-hoo-hoo, poor rich, handsome Rick. The idea of a wealthy American white man having anything to complain about is absurd at the best of times but, post-Trumpageddon, seems vaguely obscene. If I didn't own a big, expensive telly, I'd have surely thrown something blunt and heavy at the screen.

In Malick's favour, his movie is beautifully scored and shot, but the constantly shifting, almost impressionistic, nature of the visuals grows quickly dull and disorienting. I'm sure it's meant to reflect our protagonist's chaotic state of mind but seeing as how I, at no point, care about Rick or his state of mind, it's a device that is distracting at best and, ultimately, just incredibly grating. And while I'm willing to accept Knight Of Cups is perhaps 2016's most divisive film - I know people who love it and it certainly made more than a few critics' end-of-year lists - I'd rather re-watch the other 11 movies mentioned here back-to-back than ever see a minute of it again.

**Coming soon: my top 30 films of the year**

White Girl, Suicide Squad, and The Shallows: Your Week In Film (December 5-11)

Gone Girl: The excellent Morgan Saylor plays naïve and privileged Leah

Perhaps I'm becoming a prude in my old age but the first thing to strike me about White Girl (Netflix, available now) WWW was the startling regularity and seeming gratuitousness of its sex scenes. Morgan Saylor - the very promising young actress who plays Leah, the film's sort-of protagonist - seems to spend most of her time 'on the job' or at least partially naked (that's when she isn't snorting industrial amounts of cocaine). Leah reveals her breasts like the rest of us scratch our noses or fiddle with our hair - frequently. It's all very 'male-gazey', too, which is a surprise because White Girl is actually written and directed by a woman, Elizabeth Wood.

I'm going to give Wood the benefit of the doubt, though, because her movie is very deliberately one in which everything is permanently turned up to 11 and hyper-intense. An innocent bit of kissing and canoodling, or under-the-blankets fumbling, simply wouldn't fit White Girl's hedonistic 'have a good time, all the time and screw the consequences' ethos.

Based on Wood's real-life experiences, the film sees pretty, entitled New York college student Leah getting in well over her head when she begins a relationship with Blue (Brian Marc), the small-time Puerto Rican coke dealer who hangs out with his mates on the street where she lives. Interning at some awful hipster magazine over the summer, Leah discovers she can hook up Blue with a more affluent clientele for his produce but, when he is busted by an undercover cop and faces a long-stretch in prison, she resolves to do whatever it takes to free him.

Check your hedonism: White Girl turns it up to 11

White Girl is a raw, breathless piece of work that doesn't stop still for a moment, Wood's wandering camera perfectly capturing the scuzziness of big city life and the euphoric mania of the NYC club scene. The movie belongs to Saylor, though, and hers is a brave performance - not just because she spends a lot of it in various states of undress but because Leah often isn't terribly sympathetic. Her philosophy is simple: there's no problem that can't be solved by sex, drugs or cold, hard cash. As a result she's reckless, manipulative and frequently downright foolish.

Wood invites you to dislike her protagonist pretty much from the get-go (even White Girl's title carries a hint of contempt). Leah is someone from the American Midwest who has clearly led a fairly cossetted life (her mum still sends her care packages) and just dives headfirst into every bit of craziness on offer once she reaches New York - fucking and drugging like there's no tomorrow. Unfortunately, being young, silly and privileged, she doesn't realise her actions can have dire consequences for those around her (consequences far worse than she would ever have to suffer). There are times when you can't help but feel sorry for her and you'd have to be incredibly cruel or an arch misogynist to believe Leah is entirely the architect of her own troubles. But Wood never lets her character off the hook, even when you think maybe she should, just for a little bit.

The stuff I liked about Suicide Squad (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) W½ can be dealt with in short order: Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Viola Davis and Jared Leto, the latter adding much needed danger and unpredictability to proceedings every time his Joker (Sid Vicious channelling Al Capone) put in an appearance. The problem with the rest of David Ayer's film is that it's a bog-standard s̶u̶p̶e̶r̶h̶e̶r̶o̶ super-villain flick when its trailers promised something spikier and cooler. I expected punk rock and got a pantomime.

Girl v Shark thriller The Shallows (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) WW isn't a whole lot better. Blake Lively is depressed medical-student-cum-surfer Nancy, catching some waves at a secret beach in Mexico, following the death of her beloved mother. A few hundred yards from shore she's attacked by a great white shark (it's never a hammerhead or one of those ones with the really big mouths, is it?) and not only badly injured but stranded too. Can she make it back to dry land? Can she summon help? It's a smart and simple set-up and everything initially goes rather swimmingly (boom-tish!).

Unfortunately, the entire enterprise gets rather soggy and starts to sink when we come face to fin with the shark itself, an unconvincing CGI creation that you never believe is real, even for a moment. Still, at least it wasn't in a tornado or possessed by the devil.

Lacks bite: Blake Lively in The Shallows

Pete's Dragon (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) WWW sees an altogether more life-affirming coming together of human and beast. This charming remake of Disney's 1977 live action/animation adventure sees five-year-old Pete adopted by a ruddy great dragon – who he names Elliot – after his parents die in a car crash and he, the wreck's only survivor, gets lost in the woods. Kid and creature remain undiscovered within the forest's dense canopy for six years until a logging operation brings them into contact with humanity – some kind (Bryce Dallas Howard's forest ranger, and her dad Robert Redford, who'd encountered the dragon many years before), some with a villainous glint in their eye (ruthless logger Karl Urban).

The plot's ebbs and flows are fairly predictable (boy gets dragon, boy loses dragon, rinse and repeat) but David Lowery's film is a real treat despite that. It's sweet and sentimental but never cloyingly so – simple, straightforward, and refreshingly old fashioned too. Despite the presence of a colossal mythical beast and a seat-of-your-pants final act, this is a small story – one that's really about family, friendship and imagination.

Mud glorious mud: Aleksey German's Hard To Be A God 

In my round-up of 2015, I named Hard To Be A God (MUBI, from today) WWW as the maddest film of the year and I not only stand fully behind that assessment but am happy to extend it into this year too. Late Russian director Aleksey German's magnum opus is set on an alien planet stuck literally in the Dark Ages. A group of Earth scientists are present to study the natives but are clearly becoming slowly but surely assimilated. Cue three hours of sex, mud, brutality, spit, mud, blood, shit, mud and piss. It's an extraordinary film in many ways and a real cinematic experience (even on the small screen), but it's also an exercise in endurance. Did I mention the mud?

Finally, there's Midnight Special (Sky Cinema Premiere, 14:15 and 20:00, from Friday) WW, Jeff Nichols' Spielbergian sci-fi about a young boy with superhuman powers. The film starts strongly enough but rather falls apart in its final act. Michael Shannon's as watchable as ever though and, in the spirit of the season, I'm happy to forgive its flaws and give it another go.  

Ratings

WWWW - Wonderful

WWW - Worthwhile

WW - Watchable

W - Woeful