Daily Times

‘Suicide Squad’ – like a lot of folks, we couldn’t wait to see what Hollywood would do when it gathered a top-notch group of DC Comics supervillains together in one movie and went deep, dark and dazzling in the manner of Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy.

It’s a great idea, right? Not a bit. Director-writer David Ayer, who should know better based on his solid work on End of Watch and Fury, went over to the light side and sold out a daring premise to a limp-dick, PG-13 crowdpleaser. Will Smith was a too jokey Deadshot, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje was a truly unscary Killer Croc, and Jared Leto was barely there as the Joker; only Margot Robbie, as shrink-turned-nutjob Harley Quinn, caught the nasty spirit of the comic. If you want to see the soul-killing trend in the film industry to cynically suck the life out of movies for a quick buck, it’s all distilled here in the 123 minutes of grinding monotony that is this superdud.

‘Warcraft’ – Duncan Jones – son of the late David Bowie and the expert mind behind Moon and Source Code – let the train run away from him in this awful film version of the online video game most people have wisely stopped playing. ‘Warcraft’ features humans and orcs battling for dominance in a world that looks like digital scraps left over from Avatar. The orc chief Durotan, acted in motion capture by Toby Kebbell, speaks in voiceover about his reason for invading: “Our world was dying.” Too late. The movie they’re in is already dead on arrival.

‘Collateral Beauty’ – some movies are so madly wrong from first scene to last that you wonder why the actors didn’t revolt during filming, screaming, “I can’t say these lines. I won’t say these lines.” Such a movie is ‘Collateral Beauty’, a titanically terrible tearjerker that stars Will Smith as father who grieves over his daughter’s death by writing notes to the abstract concept of Love, Death and Time. It’s a wonder Smith and co-stars Kate Winslet, Edward Norton, Keira Knightley and Helen Mirren didn’t choke on the dialogue in Allan Loeb’s script. I wanted to text these words to the Movies God while watching this turd: “Make it stop.”

‘Allied’ – the lack of chemistry between co-stars has killed many a movie – and this World War II romance, one that director Robert Zemeckis wants to turn into this generation’s Casablanca, is doomed from the start. Brad Pitt, working for British special ops, falls hard for Marion Cotillard as the maybe-possibly spy who loves him. Their amour scenes are as sexy as a soggy sweat sock.

‘Inferno’ – for some reason, director Ron Howard and star Tom Hanks keep trying to transform Dan Brown’s bestselling page-turners – about the adventures of Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon – into decent movie thrillers. The first two attempts, with 2006’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and 2009’s ‘Angels & Demons’, were lifeless and colourless duds that did nothing but make money. With ‘Inferno’, even the box-office took a hit. We’re assuming the public wised up. It’s about time.

‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ – admit it: We all thought that 1996’s ‘Independence Day’ had some cool effects featuring aliens attacking famous world monuments, and Will Smith got in some licks as a hero pilot. Smith wisely bolted from this way-too-late-to-the-party sequel, along with the fun and the freshness. The special effects – retreads every one – just lay there onscreen, dying from repetition and dullness. Who says you can’t go home again? This movie is proof positive.

‘Alice through the Looking Glass’ – Tim Burton made something visually arresting in 2010’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’. But the wizard of odd sat out this follow up, leaving the director’s chair to James Bobin. Burton is an artist with style and swirl to spare, who brought Lewis Carroll’s tale to vivid life. Bobin, however, lacks his predecessor’s vision, and his colour scheme mostly suggests what it would like if a candy-stuffed kid threw up all over the screen. It’s not pretty.