The Critical Order's Top 10 Worst Movies

I may hate a lot of things, but my hatred in limitless now.


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It's a fun little tradition that for the first week in December, I would usually make a Top 10 about something personal, something that's a bit of an insight into what makes me the man I am today.

And I nearly forgot about it this year.

I was originally going to review The Disaster Artist this week, but because it's in limited release and not playing anywhere near me until next week, I decided to let the readers decide what I would talk about this week, and since this is traditionally when I do my personal Top 10, I figure I would let you all decide what I would talk about. It was neck and neck between my Favorite Anime and my Worst Movies, but you can see which won out by a fraction of a fraction. So... here we are.

I've been known to be a bit negative when it comes to film reviews. Although I like to think I've been more positive this year, there are still those few movies that come out that I just think are the absolute worst. Now if you like these movies, who am I to take away your enjoyment of them? Go on and enjoy them for me, I wish I could enjoy every movie I watch, but there are times that no matter how hard I try, I just can't possibly find anything redeemable in a movie. These 10 movies I just can't possibly like no matter how hard I try. I can't physically like these movies, and if I have to watch a single one of these movies again, it would be too soon.

So first of all, let's clarify what makes a movie a contender for a list. No, none of my Worst Movies list rankings matter here because not only does my opinion change drastically about a movie, but the badness between each movie changes also. 50 Shades of Grey and Movie 43 are bad for different reasons, but one of the two I can still technically call a film. One I can't. This list is for those movies so fundamentally broken that there is no saving them. Also, I'm not putting on here "so bad it's good" movies like The Room, FDR: American Badass, or Reefer Madness!. Those movies went all the way around from being bad to entertaining, so they have merit in some bizarre, eldritchian way. Also I had to have actually seen the movie, so nothing that's bad by reputation. Dragon Ball Evolution, Garbage Pail Kids, or any Ed Wood movie won't make this list because of that reason. So if we're all set and ready, have fun taking a look at my Top 10 Worst Movies, and please don't try and find these movies.

#10: Midnight in Paris (2011)

 Let's start off this list with my definition of Oscar bait, the movies that look like, sound like, and are made solely for Hollywood elites and film snobs. Midnight in Paris is one of the most pretentious movies that I've seen and is centered around a concept that is so fancy that it just becomes 100% unrelatable. In it, Owen Wilson is a writer that is dealing with being unfulfilled because he makes millions as a screenwriter but wants to make an original piece that he's been dreaming off, but his fiancee calls him a dreamer and is pretty much a terrible match for him, so Wilson gets drunk and is able to time travel to the 1920's and meet famous writers and artists all during his vacation in Paris.

Wilson's character is a man who has all of this wealth and a fantastic life, but he feels unfulfilled because of his own dreams an ambitions and is a romantic to a fault. Now there's nothing wrong with a person being unfulfilled, but Wilson does it to his own detriment. The movie basically says that he should follow his dreams and damn his life, as long as he stays true to himself that's all that matters. I'm sorry, but I just find stories like these completely annoying for me to watch. It throws all logic out the door and instead focuses on feelings and emotions, which is fine for some movies, but when it's done like it's done here, it's just unbearable.

And that's because you have Wilson hanging around with famous artists and writers and musicians who wax poetic about the joys of art and unless you know the people they're talking about, none of them are going to hit you. You're just going to watch a bunch of rich people talk about how great the arts are and laugh while drinking champagne and eat caviar in Paris, which is so isolating to me. I hate people that pretend they're smarter than others and claim to know how the world works. Midnight in Paris is essentially two hours of that without anything else really happening. Bottom line, I don't like people telling me about how beautiful and sensational the arts are, how I should follow my dreams and damn reality, and the movie agrees with that in a beautiful sense. I love the arts and am a full supporter of them, but this is just grating to the nth degree. This movie is for the type of people that only care about the arts and the importance of the arts... and nothing else.

#9: The Conqueror (1956)

John Wayne as Genghis Khan.

John Wayne... as a Mongol...

So with that horrible, stupid, terrible, nonsensical, offensive, and laughable casting aside, what makes The Conqueror so bad? Well for me, while The Conqueror is a bland Hollywood epic that lacks the epic scale of Ben-Hur or The 10 Commandments and the John Wayne casting is quite literally the biggest reason to never see this film, I can safely say that The Conqueror is so bad it killed people. No really.

The film was shot 137 miles downwind of a nuclear testing site in Utah, and the cast spent several weeks in the Utah desert south of the nuclear testing site to film The Conqueror. Out of the 220 cast and crew members of the film, 91 of them developed cancer following filming over the course of several years. It would be one thing if a few people had developed cancer, but nearly 40% of everyone involved with the film got cancer. So The Conqueror gave people cancer, but it's made even worse by just how bad of a concept the movie was in the first place. Seriously, JOHN WAYNE IS NOT ASIAN. And you thought people were mad about Scarlett Johansson playing The Major in Ghost in the Shell.

#8: Birdemic 2: The Resurrection (2014)

I know that I said no "so bad it's good" movies on this list, but that's the problem with Birdemic 2. It tried so hard to ape the success of the original, a bonafide classic in unintentionally hilarious comedies, but here everything was deliberate. It's a sequel to Birdemic that does everything the original did, but worse. Except it doesn't have the charm and tries to pass of stupidity as "LOL SO RANDOM" humor. Just because there are dinosaurs doesn't mean that it's funny.

So without the charm of the original Birdemic and without the tone deaf environmental messages being passed off as super seriously as possible ("Wow, that was a great movie, An Inconvenient Truth."), you just have a bad, amateurish movie. Sharknado is able to get away with being continuously bad by constantly evolving. Birdemic 2 instead just keeps doing the same thing again, only with stupid things that don't make much sense. Why are cavemen walking around in a movie about killer birds?

#7: Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

The failure, or at least the mediocrity, of DC films is known far and wide now, and I honestly think it all stems from Batman v. Superman's failings. I fails hard. Like, so hard. Moviebob has begun a several hour deconstruction on why the movie doesn't work that's actually longer than the original film, so you should go check that out to see why it doesn't work, but I'm just going to quote my own review last year just to make it perfectly clear how I feel about this movie.

"You know, some people may say that I wanted to hate this movie. That it was just another superhero movie and that it was Batman v. Superman, so it was going to suck no matter what. That's simply not true. I wanted to enjoy this movie as much as I enjoyed Man of Steel and I wanted to see Superman BE a hero and not a villain. I wanted to see a movie that honored and cherished DC's legacy and give its heroes the respect they deserved. Instead, we have a murdering Batman, a gibberingly insane Luthor, a mopey Superman, a barely there Wonder Woman, and a Doomsday that looks like a cheap version of the Cloverfield monster.

I can't defend this movie. All I can do is look at it, shake my head, and walk away from it. It didn't hurt me as much as I thought it would, and it didn't even disappoint me all that much. It just makes me want to read better Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman stories. Those stories will still exist, and they embody the characters here better than Batman v. Superman ever did. Go read "All Star-Superman", "Kingdom Come", Brian Azzarello's run on Wonder Woman, "The Killing Joke", Scott Snyder's run on Superman and Batman, and even "The Dark Knight Returns". Those will be better stories than this piece of dreck."

#6: The Last Airbender (2010)

You know, Avatar the Last Airbender is a truly great series. It's probably one of the best kids shows ever made and has developed a fanbase that spans generations. It has impeccable actions, great characters and character arcs, a beautiful world that you want to learn more about, and when you have a feature film in development of this franchise, why wouldn't you be excited?

What the hell happened here?

The Last Airbender is a dour, serious movie that takes all of the joy out of the cartoon and just makes it lifeless to watch. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to try and make this movie into a serious action movie, but it could have worked in theory, but not if you remove all of the charm from the original series. Plus the movie just gets basic facts about the series wrong. Character's names are pronounced incorrectly in a stunning display of incompetence. You have REFERENCE MATERIAL where people say their names multiple times an episode, and yet no one could bother to pronounce the characters correctly?

But then you just have the basic structure of the movie. How, OH HOW, can you adapt the entire first book of the series, which encompasses 20 episodes, into a movie the length of four, maybe five episodes? No matter how you sliced it, the movie can't work and sacrifices so much to the point where you would be better off with no movie than any movie at all. I asked my friend, a diehard Avatar fan, what he thought of the movie, and his reaction was so perfect that it just sums everything up ever so nicely.

"The worst adaptation of any anime... really the worst adaptation of anything ever."

#5: Mamma Mia! (2008)

HATE. HATE. HATE.

1) I hate ABBA, so making an entire musical around ABBA is a terrible idea for me.

2) Let's make the musical as annoying as possible by featuring a romance plot that eventually gets sidetracked by the main character's mother learning how to get her groove back and having her friends all be selfish pricks.

3) Let's then make it into a movie and just put Meryl Streep as our main character because it's Meryl Streep, which means that she will always be good in everything.

4) Let's ALSO make all of the songs goofy as hell with some of the worst dance choreography in any feature film I've seen!

5) Still not bad enough? Okay! Let's then cast everyone else as actors who can't hold a tune or even sing for their life (looking at you Pierce Brosnan).

6) What, is all of that not good enough for you? You got it! Let's just make the whole thing emotionally pointless. It's happy for the sake of happy and is engineered to try and make you feel pleasant without any reason for it. Why is everyone happy? Because we're all singing ABBA! And there's a beach! And there's love! WHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Where's my noose?

#4: United Passions (2014)

Behold, the worst grossing movie of all time. A film so bad it had a worldwide total of less than $1,000. It's so bad that no one saw it .Only a few people have ever claimed to see this FIFA propaganda movie, but I have, and it is beyond bad.

I'm not a big football/soccer fan, so when I saw this movie, all I could do was try and understand why this movie was so bad. And the answer is that it's tone deaf. It has no idea what it's doing, is completely unaware of what is happening in the world, and was made by people that really only cared about bolstering themselves without thinking about the ramifications.

There are a ton of moments in the movie that don't work, but they mostly come towards the second half of the movie. It's there that you get a World Cup victory that is horrifying for the heads of FIFA and a tragedy, but is actual a moment of national pride for the country that won, and several heads of FIFA explaining how corrupt they are and how much they love to play God. And the movie has us sympathize with them. We're meant to feel bad for the FIFA executive when he's asked about a question of fairness in his own sport, and how dare you question you lord and savior FIFA for giving you the right to play football/soccer! The lord giveth, and the lord can taketh away.

Honestly, United Passions is just a giant piece of propaganda that I can't help but laugh at, mostly because of how even when this movie was being "shown in theatres", FIFA was under heavy scrutiny for corruption charges and allegations of misconduct. But at least United Passions still thinks they're nice people!

#3: God's Not Dead (2014)

I'm not going to lie, it's getting harder and harder to talk about why these movies are so terrible. I'm not kidding, there are only so many ways I can say "I hate this" before I start feeling drained, and God's Not Dead is probably one of the most draining movies I've ever seen. It's hateful, completely rude, and is generally just offensive to anyone outside of its own narrow mindset.

So let's just do a checklist for this movie. Are you an atheist? You are the villain of this movie. Also the atheist in this movie abuses his wife and treats her like an idiot for believing in God. Are you a Christian? Congratulations! You're the hero of the movie! You are always right and with convert any atheist to your cause! Did an atheist just get hit by a car and is slowly dying? It's okay, because they now believe in God! Also, you can convert a woman that was a liberal reporter who got cancer for being a liberal and questioning God and Christians! Also if you're a Muslim you beat your children and will kick them out of the house for being interested in Christianity. So in short, Christians are good, and everyone else are evil monsters that want to take away your Jesus.

Ladies and gentlemen, logic is gone in this movie. All things that you thought were right in the world, the separation of church and state, sound debate and arguments, and the freedom to let other people do whatever they want, are all evil and you should feel bad for the persecuted Christians. The persecuted... Christians. So yeah, this movie set a dangerous precedent and standard for films in America and probably also encouraged a really dangerous sect of though in America that are genuinely unsettling. Also, this movie features Christian rock music, so it easily deserves hate for that. Still better than Country!

#2: Norbit (2007)

GET IT??? CAUSE EDDIE MURPHY IS PLAYING A FAT WOMAN! HE'S NOT FAT AND HE"S NOT A WOMAN! HUR HUR HUR HUR HUR!

Behold ladies and gentlemen, the worst comedy I have ever seen. A movie that tries to be funny by having Eddie Murphy play three separate characters, all of whom are just the worst/ Which would you like to see more? Would you like to see Eddie Murphy play Norbit, a weak willed, annoying and spineless man whose voice will drive you to put nails into you ears? Or would you rather see Eddie Murphy play Mr. Hangten Wong, an Asian man who is exactly every Asian stereotype put to film (I don't know how to feel about Eddie Murphy playing an Asian man... though I'm pretty sure it's still crap)?

No, you want to see him play a fat black woman named Rasputia, the worst character I've ever seen in any movie! What's not to laugh about a fat black woman being loud, arrogant, and being worse than every Medea movie put together? This movie is so bad that it was actually the one time I got inches away from leaving the theatre. This was the one to nearly make me do it. I can't think of a single thing in this movie that works. I know that it's fun to hate on the _________ Movie's like Scary Movie, Date Movie, and Epic Movie, but at least you may get a chuckle over how bad the jokes are. Norbit doesn't even get that. It takes generic roles that would belong in a bad blacksploitation movie and turns them up to 11 for a... comedy?

I know that Eddie Murphy can be funny, but Norbit ruined him for a while for me. I like him a bit now, but man... Norbit is just trash of the highest proportions.

#1: Cyrus (2010)

Never before have I been more uncomfortable watching a movie. Never before have I wanted to sink into the depths of my seat like in Cyrus. I'm pretty sure I'm staring into the mind of a serial killer when I watch this. This movie shouldn't even be named Cyrus, it should be called Oedipus, since it's so close to being about a man who makes love to his mother.

Instead we have John C. Reilly fall in love with a woman who's son, Cyrus, still lives at home. The problem is that he's in his mid 20's and is HIGHLY possessive of her. Like, he stalks John C. Reilly for being with his mother. He acts like a neurotic mess in order for her to choose him instead of her. He makes John C. Reilly his mortal enemy for taking away his mother from him. He gets drunk and claims that John C. Reilly attacked him and says that he's trying to steal his mother away. Cyrus is the definition of a sociopath, manipulating people until they are an emotionally wreck just so he can be alone with his mother.

Norman Bates would tell this man he's a bit too obsessed with his mother for God's sake. At least Norman Bates never pretended to be insane to drive people away from him, and at least he didn't manipulate his mother to do whatever he says. Nah, he just was a psychotic monster, but I would still say that Norman Bates isn't as detestable as Cyrus is.

And the most shocking thing to me is that this is meant to be a black comedy. It's supposed to be funny in a sick and twisted way how much this man loves his mother. I don't know what planet this concept would be funny and that's coming from someone with a pitch black sense of humor. I don't find a man trying to have sex with his mother funny. I don't find a woman being blind to how a person manipulates them humorous. I don't chuckle when I see a man be broken so much he thinks he's going to die alone because a man child made his life a living hell. Cyrus is a deeply unpleasant movie from start to finish and it made not only me, but my entire family just completely repulsed when we saw it together. And that is why Cyrus is without a show of a doubt, the worst movie I have ever seen.