Even a terrible movie can be boring. Or it can be utterly, head-scratchingly incoherent. It can even can mindlessly annoying. The year 2022 has been an exciting one for movies, especially with epic cinematic masterpieces like Avatar 2, and Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness, but there were a few duds that failed so miserably, we wonder why they were even made.
Here is a look at some of them:
1. Amsterdam
This movie by David O. Russell was released in October. It is set in a 1930s America that appears to be behind glass. The plot is unclear from the outset as Christian Bale’s and John David Washington’s characters argue about an upcoming autopsy for ambiguous reasons.
Amsterdam shows the characters played by Christian Bale, John David Washington, and Margot Robbie to be involved in the least tempting of love triangles, but the underlying story is about a fascist takeover attempt.
By the time the movie gets there, you wish Russell had thought the waste of time and money over with a better vision.
2. Bones and All
This Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell-starrer has them playing flesh-eating non-zombies. It hit the ground hard when viewers realized that for roughly two hours and ten minutes, not much actually happened. You can’t just gawk at the enormous holes in Timothée Chalamet’s jeans all day that expose a set of bones that are almost as exposed as the plot.
3. Firestarter
After watching this horror/sci-fi movie disaster, one would probably ask who thought it would be a good idea to remake one of the 1980s’ worst Stephen King films only to make a worse version of it.
The 1984 Drew Barrymore film used one of Stephen King’s metaphors for uncontrollable wrath but the contemporary adaptation is overstuffed with conspiratorial story twists.
4. Three Thousand Years of Longing
When George Miller directed the Mad Max movies, he is a visionary. The rest of the time? Not so much.
This movie is based on a multi-tiered tale that time-travels across history while reducing it to a cliché. Idris Elba plays a cheery djinn who grants Tilda Swinton’s character three wishes. Swinton plays a repressed ‘narratologist’ in the film.
Yawn.
5. Blonde
Casting for Andrew Dominik’s heartbreaking NC-17 version of Joyce Carol Oates’ novel, Blonde, was always going to be a challenge because portraying Marilyn Monroe is no easy feat.
Despite her accent troubles, Ana de Armas performs better than others but her character is made into a hollow and one-dimensional portrayal of the original blonde bombshell.
6. 355
Lastly, Penélope Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o, and Jessica Chastain were part of the all-female dream cast assembled to show that spy movies aren’t only for men. In the movie 355, four women set out on a brisk quest to rescue the world while avoiding a shadowy individual who is keeping tabs on their every move.
Although they weren’t the first to do it, the creators failed when they chose Simon Kinberg, who messed up the last X-Men movie to be 355‘s director, and he made an Oscar-winning cast look like fools.
