Nicole Kidman famously said in her AMC ad, “We come to this place for magic.”
Yes, and so often we leave this place with a pounding headache.
Of the more than 100 films I saw in 2024, here are the five that gave Excedrin Migraine the most business.
And to cleanse your palate, check out our 10 best movies of the year.
‘Megalopolis’
Is it OK for lauded directors to spend $100 million of their own fortune on a laughable ego trip? Absolutely. It’s also fine for them to fill a gold-plated swimming pool with Skittles. But that doesn’t mean critics have to like or even respect it — especially when they’re charging the public to sit through their self-indulgent twaddle. Coppola’s long-awaited film turned out to be horribly written, ugly, preachy rubbish.
‘Madame Web’
Dakota’s career went south with this Sony-Marvel monstrosity about a stressed-out paramedic who develops psychic powers thanks to rainforest arachnid venom. One of the now infamously leaden lines handed to Dakota Johnson’s Cassandra Webb? “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died!”
‘Borderlands’
Cate Blanchett has gone from “Tar” to tarred and feathered for this rancid video game adaptation hardly anybody knows exists. In August, I called it the worst movie of the year and I stand by that.
What do comic book fanatics love more than anything else in the world? Musicals, of course! Just look at the last two major ones on Broadway: “It’s a Bird… It’s a Play… It’s Superman!” and “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” — both ginormous flops. Director Todd Phillips got a little too big for his britches after the first “Joker” with Joaquin Phoenix grossed more than $1 billion and made the cut for the Best Picture Oscar category. He added Lady Gaga into the mix and tossed in a bunch of old MGM songs. Superhero fans shunned it like regular showers.
‘Red One’
This Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson sludge, a moronic Christmas movie about a security guard trying to rescue a gym-rat Santa Claus, cost a reported $250 million to make. It cost me countless braincells to endure.
