A conversation takes place every year about how end of year worst-of lists are counterproductive or don’t add anything to the overall conversation about the current cinema. Once again, I vehemently disagree. If you can avoid spending your money or time on a bad movie, my mission here is done.

1) HURRY UP TOMORROW – The Weeknd’s vanity project is shockingly hollow and devoid of anything emotionally worthwhile or anything worth going to the movies for. It’s almost impressive how little there is here despite the pedigree involved. There is almost nothing to latch onto emotionally and I cannot understate how I felt literally nothing throughout this seemingly endless, excruciatingly repetitive experience. Makes Mariah Carey’s Glitter look like Citizen Kane. The cinematic equivalent of the ‘men would rather (blank) than go to therapy’ meme.

Hurry Up Tomorrow can now be rented on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home.

2) ANACONDA – Probably not a good thing when you’re actively rooting for the giant CGI snake to kill all of the film’s stupid characters. A painfully unfunny slog that felt like it lasted forever, despite being just over 90 minutes.

Anaconda is playing in theaters now.

3) FIXED – Every so often, we get an animated film for adults where the majority of the jokes feel like they could have been written by a 13-year-old boy. Occasionally, this works, but usually it does not. And I’m always an advocate for more hand-drawn animation, but not like this. Everyone involved with this project should be arrested for crimes against humanity.

Fixed is currently streaming on Netflix.

4) JULIET & ROMEO – I think we have to dethrone Cats as the most embarrassing musical film of the last 10 years.

Juliet & Romeo can now be rented on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home.

5) FLIGHT RISK – I think this might be one of the single worst movies I’ve ever seen. I almost got up and left about 3-5 different times over the course of Flight Risk’s 90-ish minutes, but stuck it out for some reason. I should have realized because this is a B-movie thriller directed by Mel Gibson, but this feels so catered to his conservative fans, it feels like an insult to everyone else’s intelligence. Basically, the world we live in is punishing enough. You don’t need to make it any worse by watching Flight Risk.

Flight Risk can now be rented on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home, and is currently streaming on HBO Max.

6) KINDA PREGNANT – I’ve always kind of been an Amy Schumer apologist, but she’s starting to lose me. Kinda Pregnant is a ridiculous story that feels reductive and misogynist and it’s aggressively not funny. It’s hard to get into the mindset of what our protagonist wants and why her central deceit lasts as long as it does. Every person in this movie is kind of awful and unlikable and that would not be a problem if the movie were funny. And it never is.

Kinda Pregnant is now streaming on Netflix.

7) BACK IN ACTION – I try not to engage with the ‘streaming service sets money on fire’ movies, but I thought I’d give this one a look because I wanted to see Cameron Diaz in something again. It’s been a decade since she’s been in a film and while it’s nice to have her back, it feels like so much money was spent and they forgot to write a screenplay. It’s depressing to see actors like Andrew Scott, Kyle Chandler and GLENN CLOSE wasted in something like this hacky mess.

Back in Action is currently streaming on Netflix.

8) LOVE ME – I love this concept, I love these actors, and this film decidedly did not work for me. You notice about 20 minutes or so into the movie that there are not enough ideas here to fill a feature length movie. And then the film just basically keeps repeating itself for the remaining 70 minutes. Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun are doing the best they can with a script that isn’t giving them much. This is meant to really hook you emotionally and I just did not care. About anything.

Love Me can now be rented on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home. It is also currently streaming on Kanopy and Paramount+.

9) A MINECRAFT MOVIE – Feels joyless and lacking in imagination. I was hoping for some good world building here, and unfortunately most of the places we travel with these characters to kind of look like crap, and worse, they all kind of look the same. It’s all green screen backdrops and CGI, and I feel like it would have made a difference here if they had spent the money and time to build more tangible, practical sets. Another big problem is that for all this movie preaches about the power of creativity, it never feels very creative itself.

A Minecraft Movie can now be rented on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home. It is also streaming on HBO Max and Prime Video.

10) THE HOME – Only 90 minutes and feels much longer. It’s never particularly interesting or scary, or even fun in a campy way. Over reliant on jump scares, and most of them occur in dream sequences. Once we get to the reveal of what’s really going on here, the film’s IQ dives off a cliff. Not that this cliff was really that high to begin with.

The Home can now be rented on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home. It is also currently streaming on Starz.

11) HELL OF A SUMMER – There is a way to combine the summer camp hangout movie and the slasher flick, but Hell of a Summer never finds that balance. There are too many characters, and yet nobody to care about. The film is nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is, and even at a trim 88 minutes, it somehow feels endless. This cast is great, and there’s a lot of promise here, but I could tell early on this wasn’t going to work for me and then it just kept not working for the remainder of the running time. Think that period in the late ‘90s-early ‘00s where every slasher movie wanted to be Scream.

Hell of a Summer can now be rented on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home. It is also currently streaming on Kanopy and Hulu.

12) ELLA MCCAY – This one hurts. I love James L. Brooks, and many of the actors in Ella McCay, but despite everything working in its favor, the film never, ever works. A grating, obnoxious, unfocused and unfunny mess that never makes proper use of its potential. As a comedy, it’s trying way too hard and also not hard enough. As a drama, none of the moments that are supposed to tug at the heartstrings ever ring true. As a story about an ambitious female politician, it feels reductive and outdated. 

Ella McCay is currently not available anywhere, but will eventually be rented and purchased on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home and will be available to stream on Hulu and Disney+.

13) EDDINGTON – Ari Aster is great in the horror space. He started to lose me with Beau is Afraid. He’s completely lost me now. He’s not a sociologist or a satirist. I think it’s important that we revisit the time of the early pandemic, as it’s kind of already being buried by history, but I also kind of hated this movie. It’s wildly disorganized, way too long and meandering, incredibly heavy handed and smug, and kind of infuriating. There are a million half-baked subplots that go nowhere, there’s almost no one to root for here, and overall this left me very cold.

Eddington is available on Blu-ray, and can be rented or purchased on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home. It is also currently streaming on HBO Max.

14) LOVE HURTS – It became glaringly apparent through the seemingly endless 83 minutes of Jonathan Eusebio’s Love Hurts that a film cannot coast on the good graces of its stars. You also need a script.

Love Hurts is currently available on Blu-ray and can be rented or purchased on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home. It is also currently streaming on Prime Video.

15) THE SMASHING MACHINE – Unfortunately very surface level and emotionally uninvolving. I wasn’t really impressed with the work Dwyane Johnson was doing, I wasn’t impressed with the script, and the camerawork and editing suggests that Safdie is desperately trying to elevate this sport to something important or meaningful when it’s really just men punching each other. Emily Blunt is totally wasted. And to be frank I was just so bored.

The Smashing Machine can be rented or purchased on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home.

16) HIM – There is so much style here, so many striking images, that it’s kind of baffling how hard this movie fumbles the bag. The script is weak, the themes aren’t explored in memorable ways, and perhaps worst of all, it kept reminding me of better movies. For a film as intense as this, I should not have been looking at my watch this much. And don’t even get me started on that third act.

HIM can be rented or purchased on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home. It is also currently streaming on Peacock.

17) THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SEARCH FOR SQUAREPANTS – Somewhere along the way, SpongeBob lost what made him special. With an overabundance of bathroom humor and shockingly few laughs, this new SpongeBob film was not the rush of nostalgia dopamine that I was expecting. Sometimes they need to mercy kill the franchises you’ve loved since you were a kid, and unfortunately I think the world of SpongeBob has given us all it can.

The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants is currently playing in theaters.

18) ANNIVERSARY – If you’re going to make a very of-the-moment political thriller in 2025, you cannot be this vague about it. It’s meant to be this grave warning about what could happen if this country keeps going the way it’s going, but the messaging is so muddled because the movie never has the guts to say the quiet part out loud. And right now, it kinda has to.

Anniversary can be rented or purchased on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home.

19) THE AMATEUR – This film requires massive suspension of disbelief, and it should not be this easy to pick a film’s plot apart. I’m still not sure what to make of Rami Malek as an actor, and basically I just didn’t really care about what happened to this person or anyone else in this movie. I guess for the kind of thing you throw on when it’s on TNT in the middle of a rainy Saturday afternoon, it’s fine, but overall this is pretty underwhelming stuff.

The Amateur can be rented or purchased on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home. It is also currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+.

20) CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD – This might be the worst a movie of this budget has ever looked. CGI is unsightly. Editing is atrocious. A million plot lines that ultimately mean nothing. An apparent avoidance of anything interesting that’s naturally existing in this story. This story is very political and this movie is so scared to alienate anyone in the crowd, it actively shies away from anything that could have made it interesting. There’s also a ton of shoutouts to Marvel movies I don’t remember at all, and the fact that THIS much homework is involved in enjoying a blockbuster movie is just insane.

Captain America: Brave New World can be rented or purchased on digital platforms like iTunes and Fandango at Home. It is also currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+.