Nothing is more nauseating for a movie critic than adding up the number of hours he spent over the past year watching utter garbage.
We’re talking multiple 8-hour-day work weeks.
Imagine the possibilities for those lost stretches of time. Instead of staring dead-eyed at Jared Leto acting like a chain-smoking poodle in “Morbius,” I could’ve signed up for French classes. Rather than retching at “Jurassic World: Dominion,” I might have finally gotten my driver’s license. (Embarrassing, I know). And instead of seeing “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” I could have caught up on some shut-eye. Oh, wait.
For every artistic triumph, the rapidly shrinking movie-going public found themselves saddled with about 20 unforgivable disasters —the kind of film that I would’ve happily walked out of, if only that were an option for a film critic.
Because I had to white-knuckle it through them, here are my thoughts on a few of the films that, as Gen Z likes to say, contributed to my growing mental trauma.
In the spirit of goodwill, I have limited myself to five.
Amsterdam
Taylor Swift makes an appearance in this stinker. 20th Century StudiosNice city, crap movie. What made David O. Russell’s “Amsterdam” so heinous and interminable is that the director is usually a sure thing. He also helmed “Silver Linings Playbook” and “American Hustle.” However, Russell’s eyesore — starring the trio of Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington — was self-indulgent and impossible to track. And even the brief, blink-and-ya-miss-it moments of lucidity were boring as hell. ‘Amsterdam’s’ lasting legacy will be the Internet exploding over Taylor Swift’s character getting thrown under a bus.
Morbius
Jared Leto is a freak in “Morbius.” ©Sony Pictures/Courtesy EverettI can’t believe I’m saying this, but Jared Leto was actually better in “House of Gucci.” His comic book movie about the undead was positively deadly. Slinky method actor Leto this time pretended to be the Babadook after combining his DNA with a vampire bat’s and turning into a New York blood-sucker. He sucked all right!
Black Adam
For once, The Rock landed with a thud. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was poised to be a new cornerstone of the DC Extended Universe as Black Adam, an ancient anti-hero from the Middle East who levels buildings with a quip. The Rock — usually a huge draw — became The Pebble. The movie was a ginormous flop that critics hated, made a pittance at the box office and exemplified all the problems dunderheaded DC is facing. The studio is a conveyor belt of artistically incompetent boulder-dash.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
Even typing that title just now was a chore. This fugly fantasy series, part of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, is a calamitous mess that must end ASAP. Eddie Redmayne is a wonderful actor, but nobody cares about Newt Scamander and his magical bag of flying gerbils. “Secrets of Dumbledore” was the worst yet. This planned five-film story (for the love of God) is supposed to be an epic saga about combatting fascism, but all it is really is a pile of soot. “Fantastic” my arse.
Jurassic World: Dominion
“Jurassic World: Dominion” is the latest addition to the franchise. John Wilson/Universal Pictures aWhen we first stared in awe at the T-Rex in Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” back in 1993, little did we know that nearly 30 years later the dinosaur franchise villains would become Steve Jobs and a swarm of locusts. Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum returned in what was a forced exercise in bumbling nostalgia and rotten, overly convenient plotting. Methinks it’s high time for an extinction-level event.






