The Archivis' First Annual Not Buster "Awards" (Worst of 2014)

Alo Party Peoples

I know this seems a bit premature, but two things. 1) Wild, the Reese Witherspoon hiking to conquer addiction movie doesn't seem to be playing in my area yet, (though I've heard good things about it), and 2) there is no way that I will see anything worse than number one before Christmas. Let's get to the show, but first, some dishonorable mentions.

• Lucy: Dangerously close to ending up on the list proper, Scarlet Johannson is fantastic as always, she and a top notch visual effects team keep it from total failure, but they cannot save a disjointed, pretentious, out of control production that resembles the action movie version of Cosmos.
• The Maze Runner: From sparse ugly sets, to a pointless third act reveal, to wooden performances all around, I had to check twice and make sure this wasn't an M. Night. Shyamalan gig. I know how serious a remark that is, and I'm sticking with it.

Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Written by Adam Cozad
and David Koepp

#5) Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

How do you take a character who's origins are inherently tied into the politics of the late 20th Century and the Cold War and make them work in a post-9/11 21st Century setting? Not like this. Paramount Pictures' attempt to retrofit the late Tom Clancy's spy hero into a Bourne-esque super soldier/potential reliable franchise  resulted in a dull, washed out slog of an action movie, and an inept failure of a smart espionage thriller, with both elements undermining each other. I don't expect we'll be seeing this version of Jack Ryan from this forgotten dud again any time soon.

Directed by R. J. Cutler
Written by Shauna Cross

#4) If I Stay

What could have been a smart little idea for a slow burning, meditative mood piece and an actor's showcase, an out of body experience of a woman in critical condition in the ER slowly watching her equally critical family die around her, was unforgivably wasted by attaching it to a twee, indie rock infused, completely un-involving teenybopper romance story. Like I said in my review of it "If I Stay feels like half of a really good movie spliced together with a thoroughly mediocre one."



#3) Pompeii 3D

Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson
Written by Janet Scott Batchler
Lee Batchler and Micheal R. Johnson

This is an actual thing that exists. For something as inherently cheesy sounding as the doomed romance disaster movie version of Pompeii, this dead zone entry fizzled out in a show of restraint forced on it by a PG-13 rating and a Valentines Day release date.. If your'e going to make this concept, then go all out. Make the blood pop, the sleazy stuff something you wouldn't show your mother, but no, we got a safe, sterile version of what could have been worth a matinee.





#2) Divergent

Directed by Neil Burger
Written by Evan Daugherty and
Vanessa Taylor

In a year that was positively awash in bad YA movies, this wasn't the worst, we'll get to it, but this was the one that got under my skin the most. The production design, beyond cheap, all of it looks like it was shot in abandoned warehouses and office buildings that they didn't have to pay rent for. The acting, boring and pointless, even from Shailene Woodley who has shown herself to be capable of emoting elsewhere. The script, lazy, pandering garbage that frames it's dark future in terms of high school social cliques only made slightly interesting in that it's the Jock tribe rather than the Nerd tribe painted as heroes, but is otherwise insulting in how much it laser focuses itself on the wallets of insecure teenagers.


#1) The Giver

Directed by Philip Noyce
Written by Micheal Mitnik and
Robert B. Weide

I am confident in saying that The Giver is the worst movie I saw this year. Not because of it's politics, not because of it's market niche, but because it is an inept failure of a production. When I first heard that The Giver was going to be a movie, I saw a slight glimmer of hope, but then the first trailer hit and I realized that the book Hunger Games was drawing from was being turned into a lazy cash-in on the Hunger Games movies. From production design stolen from a Build Your Own Fascist State Kit, to lazy use of monochrome that completely misses the point of why the Lois Lowry used monochrome in the book, to phoned in performances from every member of the cast save a constantly mumbling Jeff Bridges, to a climax and resolution that resemble the end of a late 20th Century video game more than a feature film, and visual effects to match, this was a disaster. What a letdown.



Let's hope for a better crop in 2015.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

The title of today's article was suggested by Olivia from the RDA chat. Thanks for being a reader.