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the-desolated-quill · 4 years

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Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2019

Congratulations! You’ve made it through another year! You’ve faced many obstacles and overcome many adversaries to arrive here, at the dawn of a new decade. So as we prepare to leave the 2010s and make our way into the 2020s, lets take a look back at the challenges and hardships of 2019. And by challenges and hardships, I of course mean shitty fiction and media.

Yes, it’s time for yet another edition of Quill’s Swill, where we mark the absolute worst stories that the industry had to offer over the past year and proceed to tear them to shreds. Think of it as like voiding your bowels before the New Year.

As always remember that this is my personal, subjective opinion. If you happen to like any of the things on this list, that’s fine. More power to you. Go make your own list. Also bear in mind I haven’t seen everything 2019 has to offer due to various other commitments. So as much as I really, really want to, I can’t put Avengers Endgame on here. I know what happens. It sounds fucking terrible, but I haven’t seen the film, so it wouldn’t be fair of me to put it on the list, even though it would most definitely deserve it.

...

Seriously, read the synopsis of Endgame on Wikipedia some time. It’s like fanfic written by a nine year old. It’s truly shocking. And now it’s the highest grossing movie of all time? Give me strength.

All In A Row

Don’t you just hate it when you’re expected to parent your autistic child? Like actually show love and care and consideration to your offspring. Look at him, expecting you to treat him like a human being. Selfish bastard! If only there was a play that explored the horrors of having to be a decent person to your own flesh and blood and how objectively awful it is. If you’re one of those people, then the play All In A Row will be right up your street.

Premiering on the 14th February at Southwark Playhouse in London, All In A Row was a total shitshow to say the least. The playwright, Alex Oates, claimed to have ten years of experience working with autistic children, which you wouldn’t have believed if you saw the play as the autistic child at the centre of the play, Lawrence, seemed more like a wild animal than a person. In fact two of the main characters compare him to a dog. And if you thought this wasn’t dehumanising enough, Lawrence isn’t even a child. He’s a puppet. Yes, it’s as bad as it sounds.

All In A Row seems to place all of the blame for the family’s predicament on the autistic child, who’s presented as barely functional, bordering on bestial. There’s no effort to really make an emotional connection with Lawrence (how can you? He’s a puppet!) as the play instead focuses on how this kid has effectively ruined this family’s life because of his autism and aggressive behaviour. Speaking as someone on the autism spectrum, I can say quite confidently that this play is fucking despicable. Badly written, badly conceived, insulting and downright mean spirited. I wouldn’t want Oates looking after my autistic children, that’s for damn sure.

Anthem

EA is back and this time they’re dragging the critical darling that is BioWare down with them.

Anthem was a desperate attempt to jump aboard the ‘live service’ bandwagon, trying to replicate the success of other video games like Overwatch, Destiny and Warframe. They failed spectacularly. The game itself had more bugs than A Bug’s Life, loot drops were often stingy and unrewarding, loading times were farcically long, and the story and worldbuilding was fucking pitiful. Oh yeah, and if you played it on PS4, there was a good chance it could permanently damage it. Thankfully I have a uni friend with an Xbox One and they allowed me to play the game on that. It was a crushing disappointment, especially coming fresh off the heels of Mass Effect Andromeda, which didn’t exactly set the world on fire back in 2017.

It didn’t help that EA’s reputation was in tatters thanks to the lootbox controversy of Star Wars Battlefront II and having to try and win back the trust of fans, but worse still reports began to service of what went on behind the scenes at BioWare during the game’s development. Apparently the game’s story and mechanics kept changing every other day as the creative directors and writers didn’t have the faintest idea what kind of game they wanted to make, and the developers were often forced to work obscenely long work hours in abusive crunch periods to get the game finished for launch. It got so bad that, according to an article on Kotaku, some members of the team had to leave for weeks or even months at a time to recover from ‘stress casualties.’

To think this was the same company that gave us Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Knights Of The Old Republic. Thank God that Obsidian Entertainment is there to pick up the slack on the RPG front because I think it’s safe to assume that BioWare won’t be around for much longer at this rate.

The Lion King (2019 remake)

Here we go. Yet another live action remake of a Disney classic. Excpet it’s not live action, is it? Well... it’s live action in the sense that Dinosaur was live action (remember that film? Don’t worry if you don’t. No one does). Real locations but CGI characters. Millions of dollars spent on cutting edge tech to create photo realistic animals... and the film ends up duller than a bowl of porridge that really likes trainspotting.

It’s not just the fact that The Lion King remake is yet another soulless cash grab from the House of Mouse, it’s also the fact that it’s done really badly that upsets me. The Lion King works as an animated film. Bright colourful images, over the top song and dance sequences and vibrant character designs. As a ‘live action’ film, it just looks awkward and stilted. None of the animals are very expressive, leaving it up to the poor voice actors to carry the film, and to cap it all off the CGI isn’t even all that convincing in my opinion. At no point did I look at Simba and go ‘oh yeah, he looks like a real lion.’ It’s so obviously fake. In fact it reminds me of those early 00s movies like Cats & Dogs or Stuart Little where you see the jaws of the talking animals moving up and down like some messed up ventriloquist act or something. And here’s me thinking cinema has evolved past this.

BBC’s The War Of The Worlds

Remember Peter Harness? That guy who wrote that Doctor Who episode about the moon being an egg? Yeah, he’s back and he’s doing an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds. And guess what! It’s fucking ghastly! :D

The three part BBC mini-series was without a doubt some of the worst telly I think I’ve ever seen. It’s staggering how clueless Harness is as a writer. For starters he managed to achieve the impossible and somehow made a Martian invasion of Earth boring. I didn’t even think it was possible, but somehow he pulled it off. Then he sucks all tension out of the story by revealing the ultimate fate of the Martians at the beginning of the second episode, so now any threat or danger has been chucked out of the window because we know that the main female protagonist Amy at least would survive. And then finally he takes a massive dump over the source material by having humanity weaponise typhoid to kill the red weed rather than just having the Martians die of the common cold like in the book. Because God forbid us Brits should be presented as anything other than heroic and dignified.

So what we’re left with is a poorly realised allegory with ineffectual horror tropes full of OTT progressive posturing in a pathetic attempt to make Harness and the BBC look more liberal than they actually are. There’s no effort to really explore the themes of imperialism and colonialism outside of casual lip service, and we barely get a glimpse of the dark side of humanity. Everyone is presented as flawed, but basically awesome or, in the case of Rafe Spall’s character, utterly gormless. Our TV license fees help fund this shit, you know?!

And if you think this was bad, just wait till New Year’s Day where we’ll get to see Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ butcher Dracula. Can we stop giving these beloved literary icons to these hacks please?

Glass

I liked Split. It wasn’t an amazing movie, but it was entertaining with some good ideas, a great performance from James McAvoy and was a true return to form for M Night Shyamalan. That being said, I wasn’t keen on the idea of it taking place in the same universe as Unbreakable. I feared it would be a step too far and we’d end up having something like... well, something like Glass.

On paper, Glass isn’t a bad idea. The idea of superpowers being a delusion is legitimately intriguing and could have been a great post-modern deconstruction of the superhero genre. Except Shyamalan never actually does anything with it. The first act drags on and on with absolutely nothing happening, none of the characters really grow or change over the course of the film, Bruce Willis in particular is basically only here for an extended cameo as his character does pretty much nothing for the majority of the film, and then the entire film is undermined by that stupid Shyamalan twist. Turns out superhumans are real and there’s a big cover up. Oh great! So not only does it render the entire film pointless, it also undoes what made Unbreakable and Split so good. They’re no longer people capable of extraordinary feats via rational means. They’re just superhuman. They can do anything. Sigh.

Shyamalan... maybe it’s time to give up the director’s chair, yeah?

Cats

Oh come on! Don’t act surprised! Did you honestly think I wouldn’t put Cats on this list?!

Cats, without a doubt, is the worst film of the decade and, yes, the CGI is terrible. Not only are there these sub-human cat mutants running around, we also have mice and cockroaches with child faces, James Corden coughing up furballs, Taylor Swift trying to give the furries in the audience boners, Idris Elba looking disturbingly underdressed and Rebel Wilson being... well... Rebel Wilson. It’s a disaster of a film. And really, should we even be surprised? We all knew this was going to suck. And no it’s not because of the CGI. I thought the CGI in Pokemon: Detective Pikachu was creepy as well, but at least it had a decent script and good performances to back it up. No the reason why Cats sucked is because... it’s Cats. It’s always been that bad. No amount of ‘advanced fur technology’ was going to change that. It was still going to be a confused, plotless mess with one dimensional characters and bad songs.

The only consolation I had was that I didn’t waste money buying a ticket. A friend of mine snuck me into the premiere and we watched it in the projector room. The plan was to make fun of it and have a laugh, but we didn’t even do that because honestly there’s nothing to really make fun. There’s only so many times you can take the piss out of the CGI and honestly the film was just boring more than anything else. It doesn’t even have the distinction of being so bad it’s good like Sharknado or Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. It’s just bad, period.

I just hope we don’t see something similar happen to Starlight Express. Just think. Anthropomorphic, singing trains on roller skates. Shudder.

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker

Finally we have yet another cynical cash grab from Disney.

I confess I didn’t exactly go into The Rise Of Skywalker with an open mind. I was never all that keen on a sequel trilogy in the first place, and neither The Force Awakens nor The Last Jedi ever convinced me otherwise. Admittedly they weren’t bad movies. Just derivative and painfully uninspired, and I was expecting more of the same for Episode IX. What I got instead was quite possibly the worst Star Wars film since Attack Of The Clones. Yes, it’s that bad.

This film is very poorly made, filled with plot contrivances and logic holes galore. I lost count of the number of times the protagonists got into a dangerous situation because of Rey constantly wandering off like a confused toddler lost in a shopping mall. Oh and we finally find out who her parents were and it was quite a twist, but only because it was really stupid. Of course we didn’t see it coming because nobody would have guessed it would be something that moronic. I feel JJ Abrams’ stupid ‘mystery box’ philosophy is to blame for this. It’s derailed countless franchises before such as Lost and Cloverfield, and now Abrams has fucked up Star Wars because he’s obsessed with mystery for the sake of mystery and Disney are so lazy that they couldn’t be bothered to plan an actual trilogy out properly beforehand. Instead they just wing it, making it up as they go along, which led to Rian Johnson ‘subverting our expectations’ and left Abrams desperately trying to pick up the pieces.

In fact a lot of The Rise Of Skywalker seemed designed specifically to appease people of both sides of the wide chasm The Last Jedi had created. The roles of characters of colour like Finn and Rose were significantly reduced, Poe and Finn don’t end up together because of homophobia, but we do see two women kiss in the background of one two second shot that could easily be cut out when they release the film in China, Kylo Ren gets his stupid redemption even though he hasn’t fucking earned it, Lando Calrissian shows up for no fucking reason, Rey is given ‘flaws’ relating to her parentage in order to combat those accusing her of being a Mary Sue, but they’re the boring kind of flaws that don’t have any real impact on her character, and that ghastly ship Reylo is made canon even though it makes no sodding sense in the context of this movie, let alone the whole trilogy. They even go to the trouble of baiting us with a FinnRey romance before pulling the rug out from under us. Then, just to add insult to injury, the film retroactively ends up making the entire original trilogy completely pointless. All because Disney wanted more dollars to put in their Scrooge McDuck money bin.

The Rise Of Skywalker, and indeed the entire sequel trilogy, should serve as a cautionary tale against the dangers of hype and nostalgia. The reason The Force Awakens was successful wasn’t because it was a good movie (because lets be brutally honest here, it really fucking wasn’t). It was because it gave gullible Star Wars fans warm fuzzies because it reminded them of A New Hope whilst tempting them with the vague promise that things might get more interesting later on. And when that didn’t materialise, quelle surprise, the fanbase didn’t take it very well. I would love to think that this will serve as an important lesson for the future when people go and see Disney movies, but who am I kidding? I guarantee at some point we’re going to get Episodes X, XI and XII and we’ll have to go through this sorry process all over again.

So there we have it. The worst of 2019. May they rot forever in Satan’s rectum or wherever it is stories go to die. Tomorrow we’ll take a look at the other end of the spectrum. Yes it’s the Quill Seal Of Approval Awards! The best of the best! Who shall win? The suspense is killing me! Ooooh, I can’t wait! You’ll be there tomorrow, won’t you? Of course you will. How could you not?

#quill's swill #quill's swill 2019 #worst of the year #review #opinion

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birdlord · 4 years

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Everything I Watched in 2019

Movies

The number in parentheses is year of release, asterisks denote a re-watch, and titles in bold are my favourite watches of the year.

01 The Death of Stalin (17) does a neat trick of building goodwill for Steve Buscemi’s Krushchev, then brutally pays that off in the last few minutes.

02 Sorry to Bother You (18)

03 Support the Girls (18)

04 Paddington (14)*

05 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (16)

06 Eighth Grade (18) probably the most terrifying movie I watched all year, if you didn’t watch it through your fingers, who even are you?

07 Morvern Callar (02) much less bleak than the book, but then, nearly anything would be

08 The Favourite (18) revolting and beautiful.

09 Columbus (17) a really lovely movie about architecture and parent-child relationships.

10 Bring it On (00)*

11 The Land of Steady Habits (18) feels wackier than your average Holofcener, but still a good watch.

12 Spotlight (15) i was really bowled over by this, and wasn’t expecting to be. Workmanlike filmmaking, but an extraordinary story, well-told.

13 The Killing of a Sacred Deer (17) Barry Keoghan is a blank, but somehow compelling screen presence. This one has an ending that made me bark with laughter.

14 Legends of the Fall (94)

15 Moneyball (11)* if you don’t feel like watching anything in particular, you can always watch Moneyball

16 If Beale St Could Talk (18) very beautiful, but I failed to connect with it on any other level.

17 For Keeps (88)

18 Abducted in Plain Sight (17)

19 Oscar Shorts (Animated) (18) the offerings were very sappy this year, but the winner was decent! Lots of Toronto content (weird).

20 Oscar Shorts (Live Action) (18) *unquestionably* the worst one of these won ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

21 Velvet Buzzsaw (19)

22 Vice (18) ugh

23 Friends with Money (06)

24 Can You Ever Forgive Me (18)

25 Bohemian Rhapsody (18) haha what. was. that.

26 Mars Attacks (96)*

27 Paddington 2 (18)

28 Buffy the Vampire Slayer (92)*

29 Shoplifters (18)

30 Blindspotting (18) jacked Ethan Embry in a supporting role?! Whither? Howso? Wherefore?

31 Witness (85)

32 Harry & the Hendersons (87)*

33 The Matrix (99)*

34 T2 Trainspotting (17)

35 Blockers (18)

36 The Slums of Beverly Hills (98)

37 Can’t Hardly Wait (98)*

38 Avengers: Infinity War (18)

39 Iron Man II (10)

40 Isle of Dogs (18)

41 Chinatown (74)*

42 To Live & Die in LA (85)

43 Age of Innocence (93) Daniel Day-Lewis manages to make Newland Archer compelling, where in the novel he’s...the worst?!

44 Shopgirl (05)*

45 The House (17) didn’t sustain all the way through, but then, that’s how mainstream comedies often go.

46 The Beguiled (17)

47 Badlands (73)*

48 Poetic Justice (93)

49 The Empire Strikes Back (80)*

50 Calibre (18)

51 The Kindergarten Teacher (18)

52 Hounds of Love (17) a nice little Aussie thriller, set in the 80s

53 Kicking & Screaming (95)*

54 Octopussy (83)*

55 Jaws (79)*

56 Lover Come Back (61)

57 Frenzy (72)

58 Always Be My Maybe (19)

59 Certain Women (16) took a while to get to this one, but it’s as great as they say it is.

60 Baby Driver (17) all flash, little substance.

61 Sneakers (92)

62 Roadhouse (87)*

63 Bull Durham (88)*

64 Ghostbusters (84)*

65 Booksmart (19) I think this will improve on multiple viewings, though I loved the soundtrack and the mix of characters.

66 Hereditary (18)

67 Rebecca (40) George Sanders as Rebecca’s cousin is BRILLIANT

68 Vertigo (58)*

69 The Dead Don’t Die (19)

70 Crawl (19)

71 Dazed & Confused (93)* If you don’t watch this once a summer, what is wrong with you?

72 Jackie Brown (97)

73 Talk Radio (88)

74 The Guilty (18)

75 Killing Heydrich (17)

76 Lady Bird (17)*

77 Billy Elliot (00)*

78 White House Down (13)* Channing Potatum saves the White House!

79 The Film Worker (17)

80 Whitney (18)

81 Mascot (16)

82 Apocalypse Now (79)* technically I’d only seen the Redux version from the early 2000s, so the regular cut is new to me.

83 Apollo 13 (95)*

84 Psycho 2 (83) the twist is very guessable, but there are a couple of nice-looking scenes.

85 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (04)*

86 The Bodyguard (92)*

87 Murder Mystery (19)

88 Wildlife (18)

89 The Stepford Wives (75)*

90 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (71)*

91 The Natural (84)

92 The Other Boleyn Girl (08)

93 Speed (94)*

94 Opera (87)

95 That’s my Boy (12) haha what?!

96 The Big Short (15)

97 Elizabeth the Golden Age (07)

98 The Glass Castle (17) when I read the book, I genuinely thought it was fiction, it’s so insane.

99 Dawn of the Dead (78)*

100 All About Eve (50) lady on lady violence is a special thing

101 La La Land (16)

102 Morning Glory (10) remember Rachel McAdams?

103 Casino (95)*

104 Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (06)

105 Pet Sematary (19)

106 Clue (85)*

107 Her Smell (18) amazing soundtrack and the songs were well-chosen. Heartbreaking musical moment in the final act.

108 Bobby Sands: 66 Days (16)

109 She’s Gotta Have it (86)

110 Good Morning (59)

111 Hustlers (19) I didn’t connect with this as much as the reviews led me to believe I might.

112 Nocturnal Animals (16)

113 Kill Bill Vol 1 (03) I’d only ever seen the second one before, being a non-Tarantino completionist.

114 Fried Green Tomatoes (91)* I watch this more than anticipated...

115 Steel Magnolias (89)

116 Notting Hill (99)*

117 A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (19) the tiny city models were inspired!

118 National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (89)*

119 Let It Snow (19)

120 Frozen (13)

121 The Irishman (19) most interesting as a sort of pastiche/reckoning on the part of Scorsese about his other gangster films. Really outmoded view of unions. Definitely could have been edited down if anyone were able to come to it without undue reverence, but I did love the bit about the fish.

122 Girls Trip (17) actual plot is beside the point.

123 About a Boy (02)* I always think of this as the “vomit and sweaters” movie, anyone else?

124 Animal House (78)*

DOCUMENTARY : FICTION - 4:120

THEATRE : HOME - 9:115

TV Series

01 Russian Doll - I think I would have enjoyed this more if it hadn’t been bingeable - would have made a nice week-by-week discussion sort of show. I loved to watch the changes between re-ups of our major characters, and I think the actual plotting would reward re-watches.

02 Catastrophe S4 - A satisfying ending to an excellent show, with very charismatic leads (and deeply weird supporting characters). Had to write around Carrie Fisher’s death, and I’m sure did a better job of it than Star Wars did.

03 Friends from College S2 - More of the same, which is what I was after. A show like cotton candy (but with more infidelity).

04 High Maintenance S3 - A lot more of this season took place outside of New York City, which was a great change of pace. And a great deal more information about The Guy and his own life; both difficulties and successes included.

05 Losers - This was a great little docuseries on Netflix that I didn’t hear a lot of people talking about - it’s about sports losses, but unusual sports ie curling, figure skating and the like. You’d think it would get repetitive, being as it’s always about recovering after loss, but it doesn’t! I wish they would make another season….

06 Shrill - a tight six episode dramedy about an alt-weekly journalist in the Pacific Northwest, based on Lindy West’s memoir of the same name. John Cameron Mitchell as her boss (based on Dan Savage) stands out of the ensemble cast, as does Annie’s roommate played by a British standup Lolly Adefope.

07 Broad City S5 - I haven’t always kept up with Broad City, but I came back to it for its final season, and thought it did a good job of setting its characters up for big changes in their lives.

08 I Think You Should Leave - It’s easy to assume that all sketch comedy is terrible and always will be, but then you see this, and throw your TV out the window (due to all the laffs)

09 Fleabag S2 - Everything you’ve heard is true, this season is goddamn hilarious and ridiculously sexy. A huge step up from the first season, which was already pretty fantastic and incisive.

10 Fosse/Verdon - Musicals are not particularly my bag, so I’m sure there was a lot that I missed in terms of references, but the lead performances ably carried me through all of the time jumps and various performances.

11 Stranger Things S3 - Say it after me: d-i-m-i-n-i-s-h-i-n-g r-e-t-u-r-n-s! Maya Hawke kills it, though.

12 Big Little Lies S2 - Unnecessary, and (if possible) even sillier than the first season.

13 Lorena - Part of the ongoing quest to rehabilitate the maligned women of the 1990s, this gave me tons of context that I had no idea about at the time, due to being a dumb kid.

14 Glow S3 - I felt like I was losing steam on this series this year, but episodes like the camping ep kept me coming back. A great ensemble, though some unusual character choices (like a certain kiss *cough*) took me out of it by times.

15 Lodge 49 S1-3 - I’d kept hearing about this show, so I finally sought it out. I can’t say it was amazingly compelling (I almost dropped it after the first season) but it’s definitely an oddball of a show, slipping from setpiece to setpiece with little regard for logic. For me, a background show.

16 Chernobyl - This show really gave me the Bad Feeling, humans were definitely A Mistake.

17 On Becoming a God in Central Florida - Kiki in a trashy mode, not as infinitely appealing as the version she pulled off in the second season of Fargo, but scrappy and industrious nonetheless.

18 Show Me a Hero - I’d put off watching this for years, it felt like it was going to be too dull (housing policy in Yonkers?) but it’s great, and larded up with Bruce Springsteen songs, obvs.

19 Great British Bake Off S9-S10 - I’d also held off on watching this for a long time, out of loyalty to Mel, Sue, and Mary Berry. But I needed some comfort viewing towards the end of the summer, and the new hosts and judge do an able job, although the show’s tropes are feeling a bit well-worn at this point.

20 Righteous Gemstones S1 - A rollicking ride for sure, with a great cast. Your mileage/patience with Danny McBride may vary, so keep that in mind, naturally.

21 This Way Up S1 - A small show starring the fabulous Aisling Bea, about mental health and families and some nice comic physical acting. Oh, and in case you were watching The Crown and crushing on Tobias Menzies’ version of Prince Phillip, he plays a hot dad love interest in this, which gives you all the Tobias you’re looking for, without the PP racisms.

22 The Crown S3 - This is the first season of the big cast switchover, and I thought it stuck reasonably well, once we were in it an episode or two. This season concentrated even less on Elizabeth herself, preferring her sister, husband, and (newly!) her children.

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