The bad batch: My least favourite films of 2017

Thumb's up? Nope, it's a definite thumb's down for Assassin's Creed

I wasn't going to bother with a "worst of the year" list this time, as I'd somehow avoided seeing most of those films already widely acknowledged to be 2017's most rotten. I'd avoided The Book Of Henry, gave The Emoji Movie a swerve, and paid no attention whatsoever to the likes of Baywatch and Transformers: The Last Knight. Having given it a bit of thought, though, it turned out there were still a great many absolute stinkers worth naming and shaming. A surprising number of them were 'Netflix Originals' and, oddly, some starred actors of whom I am very fond (including Juliette Binoche, Marion Cotillard, and Javier Bardem). Only films released in the UK on any format between January 1 and December 31 2017 qualified for inclusion...

10. Assassin's Creed

Director: Justin Kurzel  UK release date: January 1
Despite starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, and boasting a budget of some $125million, the Macbeth director's video game adaptation is a howling mess. The storyline is confused and confusing, and there is so much exposition you could stick a flag in it and declare it an independent nation. It's all topped off with iffy CG and a grungy colour palette that goes all the way from turd-brown to corpse-grey. See my full review here.

9. To The Bone
Director: Marti Noxon  UK release date: July 14
Soppy and unconvincing drama about anorexia, written and directed by Buffy The Vampire Slayer alum Noxon. Lily Collins is Ellen, a young woman battling the disease, who seeks treatment under Keanu Reeves' unconventional doctor at a live-in rehab clinic. Alex Sharp's Luke – a weird and wacky Brit – is so annoying you wish the reassuringly wooden Reeves would turn into John Wick and put a bullet between his eyes. 

8. Naked
Director: Michael Tiddes  UK release date: August 11
Shameless rip-off of Groundhog Day that steals everything from Harold Ramis's 1993 comedy classic, apart from its great jokes and infinite charm. This 'Netflix Original', directed by Fifty Shades Of Black's Tiddes, sees Marlon Wayans cursed to relive the hour before his wedding over and over again, until he shapes up and gives his wife-to-be (Regina Hall) the ceremony and husband she deserves. Insufferably predictable and laughter free.

Bare-faced cheek: Naked rips off Groundhog Day... it doesn't go well

7. Death Note
Director: Adam Wingard  UK release date: August 25

Po-faced live-action Netflix adaptation of the Japanese manga that fails to make good use of its USP – namely, Ryuk, an eight-foot tall demonic death god, voiced here by Willem Dafoe. The CG creature turns up quite a bit at the start, then only appears intermittently for the rest of the film, actually doing very little. If you have a massive demon as your film's visual centrepiece, might it not have been an idea to keep him gainfully employed?

6. From The Land Of The Moon
Director: Nicole Garcia  UK release date: June 9
The year's worst plot twist goes to this dreary romantic melodrama. In 1950s France, Marion Cotillard's Gabrielle is stuck in a loveless marriage but falls in love with another man when, ill, she is sent away to a clinic in the Alps for treatment. It isn't predictable but only because the twist is so ludicrous (not to mention unoriginal) you spend the film's final moments trying to decide whether to laugh or throw things at the screen.

5. Slack Bay

Director: Bruno Dumont  UK release date: June 16
Obnoxious French black comedy from director Dumont. Set in 1910, it sees an affluent family arrive at their lavish holiday home for the summer, only to find themselves embroiled in a police investigation into a series of mysterious disappearances. People fall over a lot, the two lead cops look like Laurel and Hardy for some reason, and there's even a family of cannibals. A masterclass in overacting, especially from Juliette Binoche in a career low.

Kiss of death: Slack Bay does little for Anglo-French relations

4. The Circle
Director: James Ponsoldt  UK release date: June 30
Leaden Emma Watson lands her dream job at the titular Facebook-style company in Silicon Valley, but quickly finds her life subsumed into its corporate strictures and demands. Shockingly, it turns out these tech companies are robbing us all of our privacy and identity, something I'd certainly never considered before (sarcasm). In fact, Ponsoldt's film is so bad not even Tom Hanks, as a creepy Steve Jobs-esque CEO, can save it.

3. Little Evil
Director: Eli Craig  UK release date: September 1
Adam Scott marries Evangeline Lilly's single mum and becomes convinced her six-year-old son is the Antichrist in this supposed comedy/horror from Netflix. The idea to use the set-up of The Omen as a way into exploring the difficulties of being a step-parent is a solid one, but writer/director Craig fails to take it anywhere remotely interesting. The jokes aren't funny, the horror isn't scary, and the "power of love" ending made me want to sacrifice a virgin.

2. The Last Face
Director: Sean Penn  UK release date: May 12

This well-intentioned clunker sees Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem's crusading doctors conducting a fraught romance amidst the mayhem of Liberia's second civil war in 2003. It's horribly clumsy and cloyingly earnest, with none of its black African characters granted any agency whatsoever. They are little more than extras in what should, after all, be their story. Worst of all, though, is its dialogue – "she's leaking urine, but she's dancing" being perhaps the most ill-advised line in any film I've seen all year.

1. Tomboy

Director: Walter Hill  UK release date: March 13
In his heyday, veteran Hill directed the likes of The Driver, 48 Hours and The Warriors. This monstrosity, however, is such a fall from grace it seems likely he made it for a bet (i.e. "I bet you can't make one of the worst movies of all time"). Michelle Rodriguez is Frank Kitchen, a macho hitman transitioned into a woman against his will in an act of revenge by Sigourney Weaver's mad scientist. The premise is beyond stupid and the film lives down to it at every available opportunity. A turgid, misogynistic, transphobic shambles. Read my full review here.

Just shoot me! Tomboy is the worst film I've seen all year

Coming next: The third annual 'Resties'. Watch this space...

Colossal, The Last Face, and Nocturama: Your Week In Film (September 11-17)

Big fun: Colossal is an unusual and original monster movie

The highs and lows of this week's UK home entertainment releases, on DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD. All films mentioned are available to rent, buy or stream now, unless otherwise stated.

Ratings guide: WWWW - Wonderful  WWW - Worthwhile  WW - Watchable  W - Woeful

Creature features, from the original King Kong down, often contain a subtext that suggests "man is the real monster", but I'm not sure such a notion has ever been spelled out so explicitly or originally as it is in Nacho Vigalondo's Colossal (DVD, Blu-ray, VOD) WWW½. 

Anne Hathaway plays alcoholic Gloria, who, after losing her job and being kicked out by her boyfriend (Dan Stevens), is forced to return from New York to her sleepy hometown. There she reconnects with old school friend Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) and even gets a job in the bar he owns. At the precise same time Gloria is making her less than triumphant hometown comeback, a monster – or "kaiju", as we nerds call them – starts stomping its way across Seoul, leaving death and destruction in its wake. Gloria quickly realises that she and the creature are linked in some weird way and that she can even control its actions. Things just get stranger and wilder from there...

Of course, Colossal's subtext is screamingly obvious. It is really about the toxic effect Gloria's drunken behaviour has on other people – how her bad choices impact those around her, especially long-suffering boyfriend, Tim. It's about selfishness and depression, about how being drunk all the time makes you a colossal pain in the arse, how your lies compel even those who love you to turn their backs. When inebriated, Gloria is, quite literally, a monster. As it turns out, she isn't the only one. Films about drunks are mostly very, very serious, whether that's Leaving Las Vegas, Clean And Sober or Krisha, but Spanish indie director Vigalondo turns all that on its head to pleasing effect as he expertly mixes comedy, melodrama and action, whilst hitting us with some cleverly worked twists. 

Despite her Oscar success for Les Mis, I've always considered Hathaway a rather underrated actress. Gloria is a deceptively complex character, one who attempts to wear her despair and self-loathing lightly, and Hathaway really nails that dichotomy. I've always had a soft spot for Sudeikis too, even when he's playing insufferable wise ass characters in the middling likes of Horrible Bosses and We're The Millers. He's great here, a study in bullying, boorish, toxic masculinity, the result of unrequited love and small-town frustration.

Upon its theatrical release, some critics suggested Colossal falls apart towards the end but I'm not having any of that. Vigalondo (Timecrimes) smartly raises the stakes, offers up a gratifyingly wacky explanation for Gloria's kaiju connection, and even gives her redemption, as another entity linked to a different character enters the fray as her monster's nemesis. In fact, the only thing I didn't like about the movie is Hathaway's wig, which is every bit as abominable as the creatures menacing Seoul.

Appetite for destruction: Anne Hathaway has a Colossal problem

Nocturama WW½ has arrived on Netflix with precisely the sort of fanfare you'd imagine the streaming service might reserve for a French arthouse film about a terrorist attack on Paris – none whatsoever. I doubt director Bertrand Bonello will mind too much though as the notoriety it has gained in the past year or so guarantees his seventh feature is certain to make a splash. It was snubbed at last year's Cannes (not invited, never mind screened), and that's understandable really as France had suffered the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan atrocities at either end of 2015. Understandably, no one was much in the mood for a rather arch, unknowable movie about blowing people up. Despite that, Nocturama is perhaps the most hotly-debated foreign language film of the past couple of years.

Bonello (Saint Laurent) spends much of the first hour introducing us to a large group of characters – all young, multi-ethnic, and attractive – as they go about their business, riding the Paris subway, passing around mysterious packages, and generally putting things in place for the co-ordinated assault on a number of targets – including a corporate office and a government building – that follows around halfway through. The group – minus a couple who run into trouble – then retire to an opulent Harrod's-style Parisian department store to lie low for 24 hours, before trying to make their escape, as the police close in.

The filmmaker at no stage lets you into his characters' heads – not David's (Finnegan Oldfield), Yacine's (Hamza Meziani), Sabrina's (Manal Issa) nor any of their comrades'. You therefore have precisely no idea what the group's attack is meant to achieve, or in who's interest it has been carried out. None of them call up a newspaper to claim responsibility for it. Moreover, they seemingly have no demands they wish to extract from the French state and none of the group mentions politics or religion – in fact, they don't have much to say at all and barely a single personality between them (getting such oddly "blank" performances from his cast can't have been easy for Bonello). In fact, these are the sort of fresh-faced kids you're more likely to encounter at an undemanding pop concert than on a highly-charged political demo or on their way to an ISIS training camp in Syria. 

Despite being so deliberately opaque, Nocturama has the urgency and tension of a bonafide thriller, even in its meticulous, slow-burn first half, but Bonello leaves you to draw your own conclusions about his characters' motives. Are they lashing out at capitalism, only to be seduced by it later when they reach the department store, with its flash designer clothes and expensive TVs? Are they merely a bunch of bored, mixed-up kids for whom blowing stuff up is just another lifestyle choice? Is Nocturama even about terrorism at all, and is it in fact meant to be more of a scream into the void at the way in which the young are perceived and treated in 21st Century western society? They are required to get jobs they hate, consume "stuff" they don't need, and any rebellion against that will inevitably bring down the full sanction of the state upon them. To be honest, I have no idea, and no one else seems to either, which is, of course, the film's blessing and curse.

Nocturnal animals: Young terrorists launch multiple attacks on Paris

I don't know whether The Last Face (DVD and VOD) W is quite as dreadful as the reviews have suggested (the film currently sits at a derisory five per cent on Rotten Tomatoes), but it's certainly damned close. Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem are doctors – she the head of an international aid agency, he a dashing surgeon – conducting a fraught romance, amidst the murder and mayhem of Liberia's second civil war in 2003.

Actor-turned-director Sean Penn (Into The Wild) occasionally conjures images both haunting and powerful from the violence, and his film exhibits a woozy, dreamlike quality that calls to mind Terrence Malick. Unfortunately, everything else about The Last Face is horribly clumsy and cloyingly earnest. Despite being set in West Africa, not a single black character is granted any agency whatsoever – the Liberians, cast either as victims or savages, are little more than extras in what should be their story. Meanwhile, Jean Reno, Jared Harris and Adèle Exarchopoulos are wasted in nothing supporting roles, the film proceeds at a snail's pace, and some of the dialogue is cringe-making ("She leaks urine, but she's dancing"). It's a well-intentioned but profoundly wrong-headed holiday in other people's misery, from which Bardem and Theron only just about emerge with their dignity intact.

Losing Face: Sean Penn's war drama is a wrong-headed mess

Finally, there's Suntan (Dual format) WWW½, a film I praised back in April when it received a simultaneous cinema and VOD release, and then again in July when it made #20 in my top 25 films of the year so far. It's out as a dual format Blu-ray/DVD this week, the first release from Montage Pictures, a new sub-label from indie distributor Eureka, intended to showcase "ground-breaking and thought-provoking world cinema from new and upcoming directors".

Argyris Papadimitropoulos's film (in Greek with English sub-titles) starts off as an offbeat black comedy about a lonely middle-aged doctor (Makis Papadimitriou's Kostis) relocating from the mainland to one of Greece's resort islands, and struggling to fit in with the locals. As summer comes, he falls in love with a carefree tourist, much younger than himself (Elli Tringou's Anna), and quickly inveigles himself with her friends. Of course, his clumsy infatuation leads to disaster as the movie's tone turns ever darker. It's original, creepy and disturbing, and hopefully indicative of the quality of films Montage will be bringing us in the months to come.

Doctor in trouble: Kostis's infatuation with a young tourist doesn't end well

What I shall be watching this week: I need to catch up a bit this week, so It and Wind River.