"Where there is light, there must also be darkness"
"90% of the queens in London sing live"
- Ancient Proverbs
Unfortunately, alongside all the fantastic, mind-bending joys of the past ten years, there was also a fair amount of stinky ass bullshit released as well. So here are the ones I hated most. Generally I avoid bad movies so this list doesn't contain obviously dreadful stuff like Transformers or Adam Sandler, these are just the ones I, for whatever reason, had to sit through. (NB: I haven't actually seen Joker but it's the kind of wanky mediocre boy film that boils my piss so you get the idea).
10. Human Centipede 2 (2011)
The other nine films on this list are all worse than Human Centipede 2, I'm sorry but I can't change objective facts :(. Obviously this film is vile, it came out at a time when every sociopath with a camera was scrambling to release the most fucked up bullshit they possibly could. In an alternate timeline I like to imagine this trend continued and we're now on the fourth Rapist Paedophile Cum Clowns from Hell: 4D movie. Luckily everyone realised that extreme shock horror is dull and stupid. Human Centipede 2 is abysmal in every sense and shouldn't be watched by literally anyone. But if it's a choice between this and the other 9 films here? Sorry, then it's a must recommend on Letterbox.com from me.
9. Nocturnal Animals (2016)
"What if we made a revenge fantasy film where a tortured male writer sticks it to his bitch ex-wife by writing a book about her and her daughter getting brutally raped and murdered but in a really sexy and stylish way?" - Tom Ford, male hero.
You can just hear the flies of every male critic in the world unzipping in unison at this one. Not only is this film bad and boring, it's deeply misogynist and in such a shameless way, I can't believe Amy Adams (or even Jakey G for that matter) agreed to this??? It's a truly nasty film which opens with the torsos of naked, fat bodies dancing in slow motion for no other reason than to elicit laughter or disgust, and ends with the awful male character getting revenge on his ex-wife by forcing her to read a novel about her getting raped and killed as some kind of weird power play. Avoid forever.
8. Call Me By Your Name (2018)
Can we not have one nice gay romance that isn't in some way tragic, bad or creepy? Call Me By Your Name is a bizarre romanticising of statutory rape and not one person in the movie thinks there is anything wrong with it. And neither do any of its millions of thirsty gay fans. Aside from the criminal aspect, it's also pretentious, boring, bad and creepy. There's that wanky scene where Timmy Tim plays Bach in the style of Beethoven or some bullshit. Realistically it should have been him showing his elderly boyfriend the live lounge of Miley covering Summertime Sadness. I don't care if it's not the right time period, if you're gay you find a way.
7. The Minions as a concept (2010s)
More of an insidious cultural tapeworm than a specific film, I hate these little yellow men. They're not funny and the memes they spawned are an unfiltered glimpse into hell. I hate them, leave them in this decade along with those vicious meerkats from that car insurance advert.
6. Inception (2010)
Everyone needs to grow up and stop wanking over this boring, average film. It was billed as an "intellectual blockbuster" and I personally can't think of anything more wanky than that. Christopher Nolan is one of those men who is held in such high esteem by seemingly every straight male 'film buff'. The same men who sent Leslie Jones death threats following the Ghostbusters reboot without seeing it, will similarly defend anything Christopher Nolan does with the same blind fury. Inception doesn't actually make that much sense, it's pacing is all over the place and none of the characters evoked an ounce of emotion in me. Ellen Page is a young student plucked off the streets by Leonardo Dicaprio and taken to his basement (not a stretch for Leo here) and taught the whole dream machine thing in about five minutes and she's just like, yes. This is normal and I completely understand. Boo. The best Nolan film is Memento and everything he's made since has been an over-hyped, grey, turgid bore.
5. IT: Chapter 2 (2019)
Speaking of turgid bore, IT 2 sucked. This film is TWO AND A HALF HOURS LONG, opens with a literal, gay hate crime and then plays out as one very long filmic hate crime. Tonally it feels like Scooby Doo with gore. All it is is every one of its 70 characters entering a different CGI horror set piece, getting spooked, not dying and then returning to the group and tagging the next person in. It's unrestrained and ironically toothless. Please don't make any more of these I can't take it. Although there was one scene where Pennywise is just Billy Skars in minimal makeup and I was like yaas daddy. I'd climb in a sewer for him any day.
4. The Hangover Part II (2011)
I have no idea why I saw this. I think I must have been on a family holiday and it happened to me against my will. The Hangover series are the epitome of the bro comedies; just loud, nasty and boring. Luckily the snowflakes won and Todd Phillips says he won't make any more comedies because it's too hard to make anything funny in the age of 'political correctness'. I've yet to see Todd Phillips make anything close to comedy so I'm puzzled by his stance on this, he's just moved onto the next natural step for him instead: self-insert fantasies for misunderstood school shooters.
3. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)
See 'Inception'. I truly do NOT understand why this has been so well received. It's actively not good. I used to be straight in the noughties so naturally quite liked Tarantino but his films have just got exponentially worse and worse. Kill Bill was fun and silly but this is VERY BAD and I actually need someone I respect to explain to me why on earth anyone like it. The entire plot of this film is just Leo, Brad and Quentin jacking off into the void for close to 70 hours whilst Margot Robbie takes her shoes off and dances in the background. Incredibly boring, incredibly indulgent, incredibly long and about nothing. I DON'T GET IT.
2. Boyhood (2014)
If this film was made in the typical way with several actors of various ages playing the characters as they aged up there would be no buzz whatsoever. It's only got any attention because of its gimmick and that's the objective truth. A boring, self-indulgent waste of time. It's just been announced Linklater is repeating the gimmick and adapting the musical, Merrily We Roll Along over the next 20 years. Which if you ask me, is incredibly presumptive, let's just hope the Nazi zombies of the desert wastelands like Sondheim I guess.
1. mother! (2017)
mother! is the epitome of everything I hate in the film industry. A singular-minded, male director thinking he is a fucking genius and can do exactly what he wants and if you don't like it "you just don't get it" (see most of the other films on this list). There was a lot of buzz around the release of this turd with many articles quoting that Aranofsky had written the script in a weekend. Yeah mate, we can tell. It's a film that you can tell a lot of men think is fucking genius when in relaity it has the substance and longevity of a wet crisp. The central metaphor isn't a metaphor, it's just the old testament set in a house. JLaw is a hot, dutiful housewife/ Mother Earth and Javier Bardem, her old man husband, is a poet, artist, genius/ God. JLaw and Aranofsky were dating at the time and... yeah he basically thinks he's God doesn't he. Male critics lapped this up and boyfriends all around the world delighted in 'explaining' this INCREDIBLY obvious film to their girlfriends. It is bad, it is stupid and it is immensely misogynist; the advertising gloated about the controversy whilst proudly displaying an image of JLaw's beaten up face. It's shameless and awful and exists to be consumed by a masturbatory legion of the world's worst men, talked about for a weekend and forgotten forever. A loud, expensive vanity project devoid of any meaning. It is the art equivalent of throwing plastic in the sea.