The Worst Movies Starring This Year’s Oscar Nominees
Good news for fans of cinematic excellence and genital-less gold men, the nominations for this year’s Academy Awards were just announced. While we’ll still have to wait several months (and endure several hours of Jimmy Kimmel shtick) before we find out who all the winners are, it’s certainly an honor just to be nominated.
That being said, many of these actors have also made a ton of crap. So out of pure unadulterated pettiness, we’d like to use this occasion to highlight some of the most god-awful movies that appear on the filmographies of the most recent crop of acting nominees, starting with…
Paul Giamatti, ‘Thunderpants’
A favorite to win Best Actor for his work in The Holdovers, Paul Giamatti also lent his talents to a movie about a child with super-sized farts. Let me say that again: Paul Giamatti was in a movie about a kid with super-farts. The British film Thunderpants told the story of a small boy with abnormally powerful farts who gets kidnapped by the U.S. government so that he can help launch their space shuttles.
Robert Downey Jr., ‘Dolittle’
Robert Downey Jr. may take home an award for his supporting role in Oppenheimer, but he’ll never be able to erase the sight of him giving an enema to a CGI dragon in Dolittle.
Bradley Cooper, ‘All About Steve’
Bradley Cooper reportedly spent six years learning how to conduct an orchestra for one “crucial scene” in his Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, and presumably he spent a grand total of 38 seconds preppin’ for his role as Steve the cameraman in All About Steve, the Sandra Bullock romcom seemingly written by aliens who have only ever heard vague rumors about how human beings behave.
Emma Stone, ‘Marmaduke’
Emma Stone may very well win a second Oscar for her impressive work in Poor Things. Thankfully, the Academy has yet to institute a policy disqualifying actors who appeared in talking dog movies, because Stone previously lent her voice to 2010’s Marmaduke, the Owen Wilson-starring adaptation of the comic strip absolutely nobody likes.
Ryan Gosling, ‘Frankenstein & Me’
A teenage Ryan Gosling, a stolen corpse and a 60-year-old Burt Reynolds walk into a Canadian TV movie — the result is 1996’s Frankenstein and Me. There’s not an ounce of Kenergy to be found here.
Sandra Hüller, ‘Suck Me Shakespeer 3’
To be totally honest, I’ve never seen Suck Me Shakespeer 3 – the German comedy about a bank robber who becomes a schoolteacher –but judging from the trailer it’s probably not the highlight of Anatomy of a Fall star Sandra Hüller’s career.
Jeffrey Wright, ‘Celebrity’
Jeffrey Wright is one of our greatest living actors. Back in 1998 he took a job in Celebrity, perhaps the most grating, self-indulgent film ever made by Woody Allen (and that’s saying something). Did we mention that it co-starred Donald Trump and was produced by Harvey Weinstein?
Cillian Murphy, ‘Transcendence’
Cillian Murphy has received a lot of accolades for his lead performance in Oppenheimer, but only 10 years ago he showed up in another movie about a genius scientist making ethically-questionable decisions: Transcendence (aka the movie where Johnny Depp dies thanks to a radiation-laced bullet and gets turned into computer program). Presumably Depp signed on knowing that he could literally phone in most of his part from the Viper Room men’s room.
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