2017 Schurmys - The Worst Awards

2017 Schurmann Film Awards

The Worst of 2017

The Book of Henry

Welcome to the bottom of the barrel. The place where Colin Trevorrow makes twee family drama-brain cancer-vigilante murder films. The place where the director of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy just forgets to film half his movie and forces Scorsese's editor to try and make something of existing footage revolving around a character named Harry Hole. The place where Charlize Theron and Jarvier Bardem sexily brush their teeth at each other amidst random African genocides. This is the place where Will Smith waxes poetically about the status of fairy lives. These are the worst movies I saw from 2017. While I went out of my way to see some truly horrific trainwrecks I did not subject myself to shit like Transformers: Oh God Why Is King Arthur In This or Pirates of Caribbean: Johnny Depp Doesn't Want to Learn His Lines so consider this section to be less complete than the others.

The Snowman

Worst Editing:

Previous "Winner" - Suicide Squad

Nominees:

1. The Book of Henry
2. The Last Face
3. The Snowman

This is almost completely unfair. Tomas Alfredson claims he shot 85-90% of the script for The Snowman but I can't imagine that's accurate. Poor Thelma Schoonmaker gets transported in from editing Scorsese films to try and salvage mess. I can only imagine she cared about doing a good and thorough job as much as Alfredson did because there is some horrifically awful editing in this film. Obviously, the overall editing was going to be a mess (if someone could tell be what JK Simmons was doing in this film it would be appreciated) but individual scenes have some awkward cutting in them. I didn't think anything could top The Book of Henry and its talent show-murder set up cross-cutting montage but The Snowman did it. All it took was just not finishing filming the movie.

Runner Up - The Book of Henry

"Winner" - THE SNOWMAN

Geostorm

Worst Original Score:

Previous "Winner" - The Sea of Trees - Mason Bates

Nominees:

1. The Circle - Danny Elfman
2. Geostorm - Lorne Balfe
3. Last Flag Flying - Graham Reynolds

To be honest I can't exactly remember why I didn't like the score for The Circle, it was just on my shortlist of bad scores, but I'm just going to assume it's a typical Danny Elfman score but if Elfman just wasn't even trying because he knew the movie didn't deserve it. That descriptions seems to sound right to me. Geostorm is your typical big 90s apocalypse-level disaster movie score but like everything else about the movie it is done about as bad as it can possibly be. Linklater films are known more for their soundtracks and Graham Reynolds shows that perhaps Linklater should stick to licensing music because if hired Reynolds he can't pick composing talent. 

Runner Up - Last Flag Flying - Graham Reynolds

"Winner" - Geostorm - Lorne Balfe

Bright

Worst Cinematography:

Previous "Winner" - Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice- Larry Fong

Nominees:

1. Bright - Roman Vasyanov
2. Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie - Jason Blount
3. Mindhorn - David Luther

Quick everybody, let's all hurry to make the best jokes about Bright being a dimly lit ugly action movie. Handsome is shot like a mediocre HBO sitcom with the cinematographer seemingly aiming for the more plain looking images for every frame. Mindhorn tries to be an action-comedy inspired by cheesy 80s action movies but instead just looks like a bad knockoff of already bad movies.

Runner Up - Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie - Jason Blount

"Winner" - BRIGHT - ROMAN VASYANOV

xXx: Return of Xander Cage

Worst Performance in a Good Movie:

Previous "Winner" - Hugo Weaving - Hacksaw Ridge

Nominees:

1. Elena Anaya - Wonder Woman
2. Bryan Cranston - Last Flag Flying
3. Vin Diesel - xXx: Return of Xander Cage
4. Jared Leto - Blade Runner 2049
5. Seth MacFarlane - Logan Lucky

The "scary" Dr. Poison, yeah, not very scary except a generic Eastern European accent. Wonder Woman could have used any sort of compelling antagonist and Elena Anaya was the biggest failure in that sense. Last Flag Flying is a typical Linklater film, lots of talking, naturalistic performances and story. So then why is Bryan Cranston playing to the rafters. He seems to be trying to turn the film into a big melodramatic comedy which a) is not a thing and b) even if it was a thing, Richard Linklater sure as hell isn't making it. Yes, xXx: Return of Xander Cage is good and yes, Vin Diesel is bad in it. He's easily the lamest person in the movie. Literally every person he shares screentime with is cooler than him. Even the DJ. Ugh, Jared Leto. There's a lot of talent in him but oh boy, does he have no idea how to actually use it. I have no idea what he was going for in Blade Runner 2049 and luckily he isn't given much screentime. Seth MacFarlane is the fucking worst.

Runner Up - Jared Leto - Blade Runner 2049

"Winner" - SETH MACFARLANE - LOGAN LUCKY

Tulip Fever

Worst Ensemble Performance:

Previous "Winner" - Nine Lives

Nominees:

1. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST - Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Audra McDonald, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson
2. BRIGHT - Will Smith, Joel Edgerton, Noomi Rapace, Lucy Fry, Edgar Ramirez, Ike Barinholtz, Happy Anderson, Matt Gerald, Margaret Cho, Brad William Henke, Jay Hernandez, Enrique Murciano
3. THE BYE BYE MAN - Douglas Smith, Lucien Laviscount, Cressida Bonas, Doug Jones, Carrie-Anne Moss, Faye Dunaway, Michael Trucco, Cleo King, Leigh Whannell
4. GEOSTORM - Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Ed Harris, Andy Garcia, Richard Schiff, Alexandra Maria Lara, Robert Sheehan, Daniel Wu, Eugenio Derbez, Zazie Beetz, Talitha Bateman
5. THE SNOWMAN - Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, JK Simmons, Chloe Sevigny, Toby Jones, David Dencik, Ronan Vibert

Beauty and the Beast is all about wasted potential with this cast. While I didn't expect Emma Watson and Dan Stevens to be able to sing and dance, I at least expected them to be decent while not singing. As for the rest I think I can sum it up by saying that I didn't even like Ewan McGregor singin "Be Our Guest". I'll give the cast of Bright some credit. Noomi Rapace didn't look like her normal awful self because her costars were generally even worse than her. That's a nice gesture. The Bye Bye Man is your typical low budget slasher cast of terrible non-descript actors playing teenagers with the added bonus of a clearly not-happy-to-be-there Carrie-Anne Moss and Faye Dunaway with one foot in the grave. The cast of Geostorm tries valiantly but nobody manages to out terrible Gerard Butler, not even the child with no acting talent. The Snowman has a cast full of big names but all of them are making terrible, terrible decisions with their performances. JK Simmons with his accent, Michael Fassbender with his everything and I don't even know what Val Kilmer was going for, perhaps raving homeless detective?

Runner Up - The Snowman

"Winner" - THE BYE BYE MAN

The Last Face

Worst Original Screenplay:

Previous "Winner" - The Sea of Trees - Chris Sparling

Nominees:

1. The Book of Henry - Gregg Hurwitz
2. Bright - Max Landis
3. Geostorm - Dean Devlin and Paul Guyot
4. Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie - Jeff Garlin and Andrea Seigel
5. The Last Face - Erin Dignam

The Book of Henry is the biggest mess of a screenplay ever filmed. I don't even really know where to begin in describing how bad it is. It is a monumental trainwreck that needs to be seen. It's a film where the sexy doctor trying to get close to Naomi Watts after her son's death isn't even close to being the least appropriate relationship dynamic played completely straight. Bright takes what is a cool idea of setting at buddy-cop film in an alternate Earth where the races from The Lord of the Rings are all present but then does literally ZERO worldbuilding. Like none. Well, ok, there's something about an evil god or something being defeated two thousand years ago but the entire world is exactly the fucking same. Even Shrek. Shrek exists in the Bright universe. Geostorm is a typical bad disaster movie. It's not even fun bad. It's just boring bad. Handsome plays like a really long aborted television pilot where the main running joke is that women have sex drives. That's actually it. There's nothing else to the joke. Jeff Garlin is just befuddled that women enjoy sex. The less said about The Last Face, the better. That movie doesn't deserve to exist.

Runner Up - The Last Face - Erin Dignam

"Winner" - THE BOOK OF HENRY - GREGG HURWITZ

The Circle

Worst Adapted Screenplay:

Previous "Winner" - Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice - Chris Terrio and David S Goyer

Nominees:

1. The Bye Bye Man - Jonathan Penner
2. The Circle - James Ponsoldt and Dave Eggers
3. Ghost in the Shell - Jamie Moss, William Wheeler and Masamune Shirow
4. The Snowman - Hossein Amini, Peter Straughan and Soren Sveistrup
5. Tulip Fever - Deborah Moggach and Tom Stoppard

Here's a question for you. What does The Bye Bye Man want? I watched the movie and I have no fucking clue as to his motivations. He seems to hate people knowing his name (perhaps because it is a ridiculous name) and likes trains for some reason. But you also get the sense that he wants people to know his name because despite having supernatural abilities to interact with the physical world he seems to like leaving clues as to his existence behind. Maybe it's just a dumb movie. The Circle attempts to be a satire of tech monopolies like Google and Facebook but kind of maybe ends up supporting them. It sure seems to think Emma Watson is right about things in the end. Ghost in the Shell is just a mess and to be completely honest I don't fully remember much about the plot anymore. A big forgettable mess. The main character in The Snowman is named Harry Hole. That might be acceptable if there was a sort of weird Scandinavian pronunciation going on like making it Ul-Ay but nope, HOLE. HARRY HOLE. There's more wrong with this movie but I think all you need to know is that is a dour crime film that so badly wants to be taken seriously and the best name they could come up with for the main character was Harry Hole (ok, yes the author of the books came up with the name, but fucking change it guys. It's a pulp detective story nobody's heard of in North America, just fucking change it). Tulip Fever is the kind of story where Alicia Vikander fakes her death TWICE in the last half hour and neither instance elicits more than a half-hearted shrug/

Runner Up - The Snowman - Amini, Straughan and Sveistrup

"Winner" - THE BYE BYE MAN - JONATHAN PENNER

The Bye Bye Man

Worst Actress in a Supporting Role:

Previous "Winner" - Julia Stiles - Jason Bourne

Nominees:

1. Talitha Bateman - Geostorm
2. Lucy Fry - Bright
3. Holliday Grainger - Tulip Fever
4. Sarah Silverman - The Book of Henry
5. Cressida Bonas - The Bye Bye Man

First, can we give a hand to Noomi Rapace, a terrible actress who was in a terrible movie (Bright) but didn't make the cut here. Good job Noomi! As for these five actresses. Talitha Bateman is perhaps a great actress, acting exactly like you'd expect a child sired by Gerard Butler to behave but I think the casting director just found a terrible child actress and called it a day. Prove me wrong Talitha. Lucy Fry out terribles Noomi Rapace in Bright. That's saying something. Holliday Grainger is such a nothing in Tulip Fever. Her forbidden romance isn't romantic, her comic relief isn't funny and her mastery of intrigue leaves a lot to be desired. Sure, it's hard to blame Sarah Silverman when her character is alcoholic middle aged woman who is maybe in a romantic relationship with her best friend's eleven year old son but unlike everybody else in the movie, she doesn't even seem to be trying. Nobody expected but from anybody in The Bye Bye Man. Cheap, terrible horror movies like that never pay to get actually talented actors but Cressida Bonas is a whole different level of terrible.

Runner Up - Lucy Fry - Bright

"Winner" - CRESSIDA BONAS - THE BYE BYE MAN

The Glass Castle

Worst Actor in a Supporting Role:

Previous "Winner" - Jared Leto - Suicide Squad

Nominees:

1. Ellar Coltrane - The Circle
2. Max Greenfield - The Glass Castle
3. Lucien Laviscount - The Bye Bye Man
4. Seth MacFarlane - Logan Lucky
5. JK Simmons - The Snowman

Welp, we can probably call it a wrap on Ellar Coltrane. The kid from Boyhood proved to be completely inept when called upon to play a character instead of himself. Max Greenfield should probably just stick to comedy. Quality wise his performance in The Glass Castle is the polar opposite to his work on New Girl. I had never heard of Lucien Laviscount before and doubt I'll ever see him in the future except possibly in bad movies I subject myself to. He's not the worst part of The Bye Bye Man but he certainly is one of the many terrible elements. Seth MacFarlane is fucking terrible. Done. Get over it. He's awful and not even Soderbergh could make him entertaining. Sure, you can't really blame JK Simmons for the fact that his story makes no sense, doesn't go anywhere, and really could have easily been cut but he can get blamed for that terrible accent he was going for and a general lack of caring towards his role. Hey, not everything is Whiplash and sometimes somebody just gives you a paycheck to hang out in Sweden mumbling nonsense about sports or something.

Runner Up - Max Greenfield - The Glass Castle

"Winner" - ELLAR COLTRANE - THE CIRCLE

Ghost in the Shell

Worst Actress in a Leading Role:

Previous "Winner" - Melissa McCarthy - Ghostbusters

Nominees:

1. Scarlett Johansson - Ghost in the Shell
2. Charlize Theron - The Last Face
3. Alicia Vikander - Tulip Fever
4. Emma Watson - The Circle
5. Naomi Watts - The Book of Henry

This is a very impressive list of actresses. I can easily imagine a year in which these five are all nominated for doing great work. This is not that year though. Scarlett Johansson is merely bland as opposed to bad as is probably just a victim of me not searching out for more terrible movies. Ghost in the Shell has bigger problems that her performance. Charlize Theron is awful in The Last Face. She so bad you could take whatever your favourite Charlize Theron performance is (whether it is Monster, Mad Max: Fury Road, Young Adult or something else), inverse it and multiple the result by about a hundred. I'd say it appears like she is actively trying to sabotage the film but The Last Face did not need any help in that department. Is Alicia Vikander suffering from the post-Oscar blues? We'll see if Tomb Raider is any good (hint: probably not, but probably not her fault) but her projects have been pretty minor and forgettable except for Tulip Fever since that Oscar win. And Tulip Fever is not a movie to be remembered by. I'm sure Emma Watson made a lot of money in 2017 for her acting and that's something because she sure shouldn't be proud of the work she did. She barely passable in Beauty and the Beast before she has to sing and she is distinctly not good in The Circle. Poor Naomi Watts. I don't think Meryl Streep could have done good work in The Book of Henry but while she certainly puts in the effort, Naomi Watts never comes close to making her character seem like anything more than a collection of terribly written characteristics being put through a hilarious illogical set of circumstances.

Runner Up - Emma Watson - The Circle

"Winner" - CHARLIZE THERON - THE LAST FACE

Death Note

Worst Actor in a Leading Role:

Previous "Winner" - Ryan Reynolds - Deadpool

Nominees:

1. Gerard Butler - Geostorm
2. Jaeden Lieberher - The Book of Henry
3. Douglas Smith - The Bye Bye Man
4. Brad Pitt -War Machine
5. Nat Wolff - Death Note

Gerard Butler is terrible, we all know that, and Geostorm might be his worst work yet. He somehow completely misreads every scene and it isn't even funny bad. Ugh. I don't think I've ever hated a child more than Henry. Oh god is Jaeder Lieberher insufferable as the super-duper genius in The Book of Henry. Douglas Smith is just plain bad. Even kind of adorably bad. His character is like 18 and so badly wants to be married with children. That's literally his entire life goal. Smith is not very good at selling it, though to be fair, I don't think any 18 year old could sell that. Wait, I'm being handed a note. He's 32!!! Well then what the fuck is his problem? If you enjoyed Brad Pitt's accent in Inglourious Basterds and want more of it War Machine might just be the movie for you. A word of warning though, I think he's suffered a stroke sometime between the films though. And he isn't given Tarantino-level dialogue to say. Nat Wolff. Just Nat Wolff. His performance may be the director's fault because Death Note has no fucking clue what tone it wants, instead opting to blindly bounce around from comedy to horror to serious drama to detective movie to love story and back around to gonzo comedy but Nat Wolff is just bad at everything. He doesn't even come close to accomplishing anything productive in the film.

Runner Up - Nat Wolff - Death Note

"Winner" - JAEDEN LIEBERHER - THE BOOK OF HENRY

Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie

Worst Director:

Previous "Winner" - David Ayer - Suicide Squad

Nominees:

1. Tomas Alfredson - The Snowman
2. David Ayer - Bright
3. Sean Penn - The Last Face
4. Stacy Title - The Bye Bye Man
5. Colin Trevorrow - The Book of Henry

Well Tomas Alfredson went from making films like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Let the Right One In to half making terrible detective films about a Harry Hole. What the fuck? David Ayer's 2017 disaster of a film isn't quite as bad as his 2016 disaster. If he continues to improve at this rate making a film a year we're looking at something passable in 2043. Fuck Sean Penn. I don't even feel like I need to say more. Just Fuck Sean Penn. The Bye Bye Man was always destined to be a bad movie and Stacy Title perhaps was the perfect director for it then. Colin Trevorrow's work on The Book of Henry is already legendary. It's so bad it got him fired from Star Wars Episode IX.

Runner Up - Sean Penn - The Last Face

"Winner" - COLIN TREVORROW - THE BOOK OF HENRY

Shit

Worst Film:

Previous "Winner" - Suicide Squad

Nominees:

1. The Book of Henry
2. Bright
3. The Bye Bye Man
4. The Circle
5. Death Note
6. Geostorm
7. Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie
8. The Last Face
9. The Snowman
10. Tulip Fever

I really wanted to give this to The Last Face but fuck that movie. It doesn't even deserve the distinction of being the worst movie of the year. The Book of Henry is a wonderful delight of a film. It's adorable in how many bad decisions it makes (all of the decisions)

Runner Up - The Last Face

"Winner" - THE BOOK OF HENRY

And that does it for the worst movies of the year. Thanks for sticking with it. I know there's only so much shit you can handle and this year produced a literal mountain of it. As your reward you'll get a Hall of Fame induction ceremony tomorrow honouring the best of the best to ever dabble in the world of film

Worst Awards Stats:
Number of Nominated Films: 20
Film With the Most Nominations - TIE The Book of Henry and The Bye Bye Man - 7
Films With Multiple Nominations:
7 - The Book of Henry, The Bye Bye Man, 6 - Bright, Geostorm, The Snowman, 5 - The Circle, The Last Face, 4 - Tulip Fever, 3 - Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie, 2 - Death Note, Ghost in the Shell, Last Flag Flying, Logan Lucky
Number of "Winning" Films: 8
Film With the Most "Wins" - The Book of Henry - 4
Films With Multiple "Wins" - 2
4 - The Book of Henry, 3 - The Bye Bye Man

The Book of Henry