This list was actually a lot easier than the Top Ten, because I deliberately avoided a lot of the films that would normally have annoyed me. (Hey, I'm not a professional critic. If you want me to see whatever incompetent drivel the likes of Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen have been up this year, give me banknotes. Otherwise: my dollar, my rules.) Still, the following managed to slip through the net:
10. MAPS TO THE STARS
David Cronenberg hasn't made a genuinely interesting movie for a very long time and this certainly isn't bucking the trend. Not as rubbish as Cosmopolis, but who are these people and why should I care? Might not have made the list if they'd cut the scene of Julianne Moore trying to take a dump.
9. WOLFCOP
Just because you have an absurd nostalgia for all those terrible Howling sequels from the 1980s is no reason to go out and make your own. Kudos for old-school practical effects work rather than shiny new digital ones, but that's it.
8. TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION
Yet more kaboom thud bang kaboom idiocy in which giant metal things destroy everything; matters are improved by not having Shia La Boeuf in it, but not much. Michael Bay directs with his boner, as usual.
7. RIDE ALONG
Idiotic cop comedy full of idiots and Laurence Fishburne.
6. MAGIC MAGIC
Intolerable psychological horror/drama/indie. I like Juno Temple, but this was a tiresome grind of a film.
5. THE CANYONS
Miserable sex drama in which everyone has a thoroughly rotten time, which is fair enough because they're all tedious whiners or obnoxious scumbags. Or both.
4. UNDER THE SKIN
A bad story, badly told, this cataclysmic bore was accompanied by a critical attitude of "if you didn't like it, you're clearly not intelligent enough to understand it". Worthless, artless and pretentious drivel, but incredibly it wasn't the worst Scarlett Johansson film of the year.
3. PLASTIC
An episode of Hustle with a bunch of repugnant leery scumbags trying to pull a massive con in order to pay off a gangster who I spent the entire film hoping would kill absolutely everyone, preferably with pliers. A film without a stroke of merit from start to finish and the worst British film in several years.
2. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES
I thought I'd poke my head round the door and see if the found-footage subgenre had managed to achieve anything remotely interesting in the last year or so. It hasn't.
1. HER
In a good-looking future, Joaquin Phoenix (with an inexplicable comedy moustache) is surrounded by glamorous and beautiful women but falls in love with the voice of his computer operating system (an unseen Scarlett Johansson). Irritating and stupid beyond measure. I ended up swearing at my TV set so much it sounded like The Wolf Of Wall Street.
As I mentioned, I missed a lot of the obvious crud (why on Earth would I submit myself to films like Pudsey and Postman Pat which hold absolutely no appeal for me?), so there aren't even any runners up although there's a special mention for Grudge Match, a dead-on-the-screen waste of Oscar-winning talent from which neither of the major stars escapes with credibility intact.
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