The 20 worst films of 2014

http://www.avclub.com/article/20-worst-films-2014-212689?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=LinkPreview:1 efault

Not surprisingly, they have the right-wing stinkers in their list:

20. Atlas Shrugged, Part III: Who Is John Galt?

The whimpering, ersatz finale to medical equipment millionaire John Aglialoro’s three-part adaptation of Atlas Shrugged could have been a serious contender for the number one spot on this list, if only it had been in theaters long enough for more than one of this poll’s participants to see it. Bringing Ayn Rand’s vision to the screen with all the licensed stock footage, community-theater acting, and state-park locations that a very small amount of money can buy, Aglialoro and director James Manera have created one of the definitive cut-rate movies—a film that achieves the improbable by resembling a mockbuster knock-off of itself. From its flubbed lines (“It’s like I can’t believe you alive!” could be this generation’s “Time for go to bed”) to its sub-Wiseau utility-closet sex scene, this is a film so shoddy that it almost qualifies as a must-see. [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

18. Saving Christmas

Saving Christmas may not be the worst movie of the year, not least because of the provocative question it raises: How much story, character, and actual footage must something contain to be considered an actual movie? For the sects of Christianity hell-bent on supporting whatever product Kirk Cameron is peddling, the answer is “experimentally little.” Imagine trying to sell a movie set primarily in a parked car where a faded sitcom star gives a 45-minute lecture to the general moviegoing public, then imagine how few people would even consider showing up. But because Cameron has positioned himself as fighting back against a perceived war on Christmas by condescending to his fictional brother-in-law Christian (Darren Doane), his ramblings become weird totems of faith-friendly entertainment, even if they don’t actually provide it. Director and co-star Doane keeps lingering on dramatically lit soundstage shots of inanimate objects like a rock or Christmas trees, like a bargain-bin Terrence Malick who’s never been outside. It fits the driving message: The chintzy, material celebrations of Christmas are not just permissible but preferable, because it’s all in service of a holiday where Christ himself was made material. By this logic, parishioners can take communion by gnawing on some plastic dollar-store toys—or, next year, DVDs of Saving Christmas. [Jesse Hassenger]

15. America: Imagine The World Without Her

Wing-nut kitsch of the first order, Dinesh D’Souza’s follow-up to 2016: Obama’s America opens with a Continental Army soldier writing a letter on September 11, 1777 (“My loving wife, these past few months away from you and Nathaniel have been difficult”) and ends with freed slaves dancing while Phillip Phillips’ “Home” blares on the soundtrack. In between these two high-water marks of tasteless cheese sits a specious, conspiracy-kook paean to… Dinesh D’Souza. At times hilariously insincere, D’Souza’s feature-length tribute to his humility and love for colonialism, exceptionalism, and the American dream plays like the defense’s side of a sentencing hearing, climaxing in a scene where the director poses for the camera in handcuffs and then gets up to stare at the Lincoln Memorial. Three months after the movie’s release, D’Souza was sentenced to a halfway house for campaign fraud. [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

1. Left Behind

Casting wild man Nicolas Cage in an evangelical doomsday thriller sounds like a recipe for camp nirvana. But while there are quite a few big, unintentional laughs in Left Behind, the overwhelming emotion the movie provokes is pity. How strapped for cash, how totally desperate, must Cage have been to sign on to such a cut-rate production—a bargain-basement disaster movie legitimized only by the presence of an Oscar winner in its cast? And how did producer Paul LaLonde manage to make an even chintzier version of this bestselling material than the one Kirk Cameron starred in 14 years ago? The Sharknado of faith-based entertainment, Left Behind is a crapterpiece of near divine mystery, flummoxing mortal moviegoers with its awkward blend of Old Testament moralizing and broad comic relief. Just don’t weep too hard for the film’s movie-star ringer: Judging from the training-video production values, Syfy-grade special effects, and porn-worthy performances, Cage may have received a rather sizable portion of the $20 million budget, approximately $19,900,000 of which seems to have mysteriously disappeared on its way to the screen. [A.A. Dowd]

The rest at link.