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Low-level disappointments
Saving Private Ryan - Decent. Good acting and occasional scenes of very real intensity, but its sincerity as a war movie gets drowned out by all the saccharine (a word that I rarely even use) patriotism and one-sided examination of World War II. I especially take issue with Ryan being portrayed as a hero despite selfishly making his mates risk their lives.
The Imitation Game - Just like SPR it's well-acted, but just doesn't hit me emotionally. The conflict where people turn on Alan Turing feels so forced since he doesn't act as tyrannical as the characters make him out to be. It also could've gone deeper into his repressed homosexuality.
Bohemian Rhapsody - The best of the movies I'm including on the list, though still not perfect. Rami Malek does a good job and makes you invested into his character, but an Oscar-winning performance? I dunno, I definitely saw ones more deserving of the win that year. It also has a by-the-numbers feel to it at times, playing it safe by showing small pieces of every major event rather than exploring them deeper. Entertaining? Absolutely, just not an awardworthy film by any means.
Medium-level disappointments
Frozen - Inoffensive, but nowhere near worth all the acclaim it received. This Disney outing lacks the charm and heart from most of their films. Good songs (except Let It Go and Fixer-Upper, which are just annoying to me) and you can bear through it I guess, but wouldn't watch again.
Mad Max: Fury Road - One of my most frequently brought up letdowns on this site. Yet I don't hate it, it's just one of those movies that I couldn't get into. Sometimes I'm okay with just observing the visuals (Begotten is a fascinating film even though I didn't understand at all what it was about at first), but considering this is a lavish production with bigname actors I expect a little more. The visual look is indeed the strongest aspect, but can't carry the whole thing. Besides Furiosa I can't remember caring about a single character. Tom Hardy, who can be terrific in the right role, gets almost nothing to work with. Max is uninteresting and one-note as a character. After I saw the first one with Mel Gibson years later I wondered even more why they turned him into a grunting grump. He had a lot more depth and likability in the original portrayal.
I really like the music. But yeah, generally not a fan.
Man Trouble - Okay, I know it didn't get the greatest reviews. But considering Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson teamed up again, not to mention the rest of the cast... I expected a little more. Nicholson is solid in the role (he's been better, but even when he's not a total knockout he's entertaining), while Michael McKean, Lauren Tom and Harry Dean Stanton also deliver good performances. Ellen Barkin is not very good however (and gets worse when she has to act angry as well), while Veronica Cartwright is straight up awful. The tone is uneven, going between comedy and suspense thriller very clunkily. The mystery makes less sense the more you dissect it. Overall it's mostly for diehard Nicholson fans.
High-level disappointments
The Night Before - It starts off well enough and I was excited to see the director behind 50/50 and Long Shot together with Seth Rogen again (I know Long Shot came out later, but I saw that one before this), not to mention Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But after a while it starts getting tedious and relies so much on drugs for humor that even for a Seth Rogen movie it's ridiculous. Most of the characters besides Levitt's are both stupid and unlikable. And don't even get me started on the drug dealer plot twist. Incredibly stupid. It does have its chuckles, and even a less sympathetic Rogen character will still get smiles out of me, but out of the ones I've seen with him this is so far the one I like the least.
Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives - Even for a Friday movie this one contains too much idiocy for me to take. The acting is terrible across the board, the characters behave in ways that make no sense, and the humor falls into the category of eyerollworthy or irritating for the most part. The most overrated in the series by a long mile. The end credits song by Alice Cooper is cool though, and Jason is the one character who doesn't act like an idiot. But that's about it.
P.S. I Love You - Calling this a heartfelt and realistic depiction of grief is like calling Barney The Dinosaur an accurate representation of dinosaurs. Unless you want to cringe at awful dialogue and scenes so absurd you want to puke, don't watch this.
Margot At The Wedding & Greenberg - I lump these two together because they share the same director and have the same problems. I love the actors involved and I love dark comedy. But these characters are obnoxious and impossible to give a **** about, and the "humor" if you can call it that is non-existent. I did see a Baumbach movie later on I really dug (De Palma), but black comedy doesn't seem to be his strongest suit.
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