My job as the Toronto Star’s movie critic is great.I get to see many wonderful films before the public does, often months before at festivals like Cannes, Sundance and TIFF. I can hardly wait for my fellow movie buffs to catch such recent Cannes favourites as The Florida Project and The Square and earlier Sundance faves like Call Me by Your Name and The Big Sick (which opens next week).But I also see an awful lot of really bad movies, which makes me earn my keep as critic. I was reminded of it earlier this week while enduring Michael Bay’s latest abomination, Transformers: The Last Knight and also earlier this month while sitting through Alex Kurtzman’s insanely stupid remake of The Mummy. The blockbuster summer of 2017 isn’t going so well.Both of these films are now in my Top 10 list of the worst films I’ve reviewed in my more than 20 years as a Star movie critic. And for this week’s column, I thought I’d actually compile and publish that list, along with the reasons for my ire. I had plenty of bombs to choose from, but I decided against amateur efforts like Troll 2 and The Room that are so incompetently made, they’re a hoot to watch. I also steered clear of factory-issue horror movies, most of which are pretty dreadful for all the wrong reasons, because the beating of a dead (or undead) horse came to mind. I instead sought to list movies where the filmmakers and actors ought to have known and done better, and you’ll have to allow for matters of personal taste in my selections. My No. 10 choice, for example, was deemed worthy of an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, go figure.I’m indebted to Star librarians Astrid Lange and Rick Sznajder for their invaluable assistance in trawling the files for my past put-downs. I also want to give a shout-out to the great headlines written by my editors, with such gems as “Mucus of the Night” for my Phantom of the Opera pan and “The Fee ...
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