2012 in Film: The Year's "Worst" Films.

Almost to the end, folks.  But before we finally recap the best (or, err, my favorites) of 2012, let's take a pit stop to discuss what are arguably the worst films of 2012.  Now as always, I can't presume that I've seen every probable terrible movie out there (I generally avoid Adam Sandler comedies and didn't catch Parental Guidance in time), but I tried to highlight films that were both very bad and whose respective failures meant something more than just their artistic inadequacy.  As always, the films below are in alphabetical order.  So, without further ado, let's dive in!

Alex Cross:
To William Hurt in A History of Violence, "How to do you f*** that up?!"  You have a long-running detective series filled with larger-than-life villains and often insanely over-the-top violence.  You have Tyler Perry, if perhaps cast against type than at least hungry to prove that he can do something different.  You have Matthew Fox theoretically willing to chew up every bit of available scenery.  And you have audiences primed for a kind of old-school adult-skewing genre picture that the previous two Morgan Freeman-starring Alex Cross films (Kiss the Girls and Along Came A Spider) represented back in the 1990s.  How in the world do you make this film this incredibly boring?  First of all, you take an explicitly R-rated story and neuter it into a still-inappropriate PG-13.  Then you pile on generic cliche on top of generic cliche.  Then you instruct every actor other than Fox to be as lifeless as possible.  Finally, you never decide to make a down-to-Earth crime thriller or a would-be superhero/super villain story.  The end result is a painfully dull would-be thriller that can't hold a candle to the most average episode of Criminal Minds.

Weekend Box Office (06/17/12): Rock of Ages and That's My Boy tank while Madagascar 3 remains strong and Prometheus plummets.

I try to remain somewhat positive about box office, if only to counter the relentless 'It's a bomb!' or 'Big Star FAILS!' punditry that makes up much of the box office pundit world.  But there is little good news to report about this weekend's two big releases.  The top new release was Warner Bros' broadway adaptation Rock of Ages.  The 80s rock homage pulled in just $15 million.  Now to be fair, while the film's opening is far below the $27 million debut of Adam Shankman's last musical, Hairspray in July 2007 as well as the $27 million debut of Mamma Mia! four summers ago, it's actually the sixth-biggest debut for a modern musical, which shows how rare they are even in a post-Moulin Rouge era (Moulin Rouge opened with $13 million eleven years ago, by the way).  It's a bigger opening that Rent ($10 million), Dreamgirls ($14 million on under 900 screens), Burlesque ($11 million), and Sweeney Todd ($9.3 million on 1,249 screens).

Rock of Ages gets a poster that advertises its insignificance.

Not much to comment on.  The film looks patently silly and may be quite terrible, but it's among the ones I most want to see this summer.  The cast is top-notch and Adam Shankman's Hairspray is my personal favorite screen musical of the post-Moulin Rouge era.  I don't presume this will be *good* (the trailers seem weirdly off, even in terms of simple lighting), but I'm presuming this will be awfully fun.  This one drops on June 15th, so as always, we'll see.  But even if it's "nothin' but a good time', that should be enough.  Anyway, the second trailer is embedded below after the jump.

Scott Mendelson

Rock of Ages gets a 'bangin' trailer... My wife is going to want to see this one.

Oddly enough, it's Alec Baldwin that feels the most mannered in this star-filled version of the 80s-rock homage musical from 2006.  The trailer wisely hides the main attraction, which is seeing Tom Cruise as a stereotypical 80s rock star, until the very end of the spot.  The cast looks impressive, and kudos to New Line Cinema for not hiding the fact that this is actually a musical (it's subtle, but there are at least two shots of characters actually signing out loud).  I happen to think that Hairspray is the best film musical of the modern era (sorry, didn't like Moulin Rouge and Chicago is painfully overrated), so Adam Shankman helming this one puts it pretty high on the list.  Rock of Ages will be released on June 1st, 2012.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson