Bad movies of 2019

1. Joker 
   
   Todd Phillips' grim - 'n' - gritty take on the origin of Batman's most famous foe took the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, earned the admiration of plenty of critics and directors, and may or may not have received a B- grade in our official review. But it loathed strongly enough by a sufficiently sizable number of contributors to land itself on this list, and so scornful attention must be paid. Somewhere between the toothless attempts at provocation (blacking out the middle two words of a "don't forget to smile!" sign has a strong "Marilyn Monroe Now Going Door-To-Door Trying To Shock People" energy). Its anger is an impotent, irrelevant anger, the rage of a tween.
   
   
   
2. After
   
   Good art can come from anywhere, an important truth that unfortunately sometimes encourages crap like After, a movie based on a YA novel that began as One Direction fan-fiction seemingly inspired by Fifty Shades Of Grey, which itself was rewritten Twilight fan-fiction. As with its various inspirations, a vaguely haunting and specifically negging jackhole (Hero Fiennes-Tiffin) selects a virginal ingénue (Josephine Langford) to draw into an affair of dysfunction and heavy petting. After gets so lost masturbating in this hall of mirrors that the movie convinces itself that it’s reinventing campus romance, posing provocative questions like: What would happen if a girl and a boy were very, very attracted to each other? The answer is the same things that happen on college campuses every year—only at this one, everyone spends their classes talking about the same three public-domain high-school-curriculum novels all semester, and the tortured charisma-void boy must carefully relate a preposterous vengeful-gang-rape backstory without violating the PG-13 rating. Fans of all ages, and of anything, deserve better.
   
   
3. The Kitchen 
   
   On paper, The Kitchen seemed like a winner. The ensemble was solid, led by the buzzy, in-demand trio of Elisabeth Moss, Melissa McCarthy, and Tiffany Haddish. The source material, a Vertigo graphic novel with a gender-swapped gangland premise, was also intriguing. But something must have gone wrong somewhere in the production process—a failure to pre-heat the oven, perhaps?—because what should have been a fresh take on the mob drama came out distinctly half-baked. From the cringe-inducing needle drops to the awkward chemistry between our anti-heroines, The Kitchen is a misfire all around. That becomes especially obvious when you put the film next to last year’s Widows and this year’s Hustlers, two films that brought more thrills, more camaraderie, and better performances to similar source material. Therein lies the silver lining: As least we now live in an era where there’s more than one female-led crime thriller to choose from.
   
   
4. Playing with Fire
   
   While mimicking Dwayne Johnson’s crossover success from the WWE to Hollywood, John Cena generated goodwill with self-aware turns in the raunchy Trainwreck, Sisters, and Blockers, and believably voiced the gentle bull Ferdinand. But his winning streak came to a screeching halt this year with the gallingly unfunny Playing With Fire, directed by the guy who made the second Paul Blart. Surprisingly dark (no one thought to push this movie’s release date back to a time when there wasn’t a raging wildfire destroying California?) while also exhaustingly reliant on jokes about poop, the movie gets an exceedingly stiff performance out of Cena, though everyone on screen mostly just looks embarrassed. They should: This is a comedy that sidelines Judy Greer, relies on dead parents for character development, and genuinely thinks it’s the height of hilarity to wonder, in 2019, what would happen if grown men were forced to take care of children alone.
   
   
5. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot
   
   The old question of separating the art from the artist almost always involves great works of art made by monstrous, morally repugnant humans (of which there is no shortage among film directors). Much rarer is a case like that of Kevin Smith, who has spent most of the past decade tossing off pointless and puerile projects while coming across as a generally stand-up guy who loves his family, friends, and fans, and who doesn’t take himself too seriously. But even if one were grading on a curve of best intentions, it’s hard to mount much of a defense for the awkward, enervating Jay And Silent Bob Reboot; its inanities include painfully drawn-out dad jokes (the man loves his bad puns), stilted attempts at self-deprecating humor, and a cringe-inducing appearance from longtime Smith buddy Ben Affleck. We’ll give Smith this much: At least it’s better than Yoga Hosers.