Top 15 Most Disappointing Albums of 2015:

The most immediate thing that stood out for me was how many of my best new artists class of 2013 made the list. It's not easy entering the scene in spectacular fashion, only to return with diminished results. But, this isn't to shame but more to encourage. For the first time, I've included albums that were not released, even though they were promised...in this social media era the fans want are promised to them and that includes new music.

Here's the list:










1. Jamaican Queens Downers: if I were Jewish, this is where I’d let out a huge ‘Oy…”





2. Cee-lo Green Heart Blanche: I blame ‘The Voice’ for this and his need to conform to modern pop expectations with some corny-ass lyrics.





3. Radkey Dark Black Makeup: punk mission detour? I hope not…





4. THEESatisfaction EarthEE: sometimes a groovy underground band stays too much—and too long—in character…





5. Mac Demarco Another One: an apt title, as opposed to The One.





6. Alabama Shakes Sound And Colour: three years is a long time between releases but, even with the band’s emerging fame, the sophomore, surprisingly, manages to box in Howard’s amazing vocals instead of setting fire to them.





7. Autre Ne Veut Age of Transparency: too early to shout one-trick pony but let’s hope when we look back on his career we won’t say ‘buy the debut and skip the rest’.





8. Lana del Rey Honeymoon: “Oh Lord, please don’t let/ me be misunderstood”, Lana croons on the ending track. I have the advice: quit with the sad, droopy music, love.





9. Charli XCX Sucker: kinda feels like a sell-out effort because we know, lyrically, she’s better than this.





10. Active Child Mercy: it’s always dismal when a talented act loses their plot and seemingly have no way of getting out of the mess. Pat Grossi used to produce mesmerizing electronic ditties but now all he cares about is expressing sadness—instead of realizing the dance genre cannot expand that way. He needs some rage and quick.





11. Summer Camp Bad Love: a perfectly charming album but we’ve heard the duo sound much arty so at this point of their career we expect much more.





12. Angel Haze Back To The Woods: technically a toss away mixtape before the real thing but it was still patchy at best.





13. Beach House Depression Cherry: when even indie critics who defend this band with their lives don’t have it in year-end top 10 lists, then you know it disappointed.





14. ASAP Rocky At Long Last ASAP: he’s started to get stuck.





15. No Kanye West or Frank Ocean album: the entire year was dominant of new work from these two and here we are still waiting.

2015 BEST NEW ARTISTS:

A lot of new bands but not many making a blimp on my radar. Here are the one that did:




THE YEAR'S BEST NEW ARTIST IS:



Meghan Remy: yea yea, she's not new but this is her new big label debut and, woosah, its smoking! We want U.S.Girls around always.




THE REST (in no particular order):



Young Thug:freaky talent.



James Petralli: his solo output (as Bop English) is so much better than when he's in his band.



Shamir:gender-smashing house/hop.



Will Butler: away from the proclaim of Arcade Fire but still shining with a promising solo LP.



Tobias Jesso Jr.:the new white soul class has arrived.



Tink: no shortage of female rappers but look out for this one.



Day Wave: real emotion.



Young Guv:little by little he's getting there.



Alessia Cara: only 19 but that voice, wow!

Top 15 Worst Films of 2015 (That I Saw):

It's been a dismal year so why waste time examining the carcass? Here are the films that made me cringe the most:






1. Knock Knock: an absurd tale of a married man not being able to resist two young seductresses. If the plot wasn’t hooey enough, Keanu Reeves completely messes up every single line of dialogue that spews from his lips. (DIRECTED BY ELI ROTH)




2. Lake Placid Vs. Anaconda: B-movie obviously but damn, the alligators’ jaws don’t even move when eating human prey… (DIRECTED BY A.B. STONE)






3. The Boy Next Door: Jenny from the block in search of young white jock peen and it costs her far more than she thought it would, including nutty, wooden dialogue... over and over again. (DIRECTED BY ROB COHEN)






4. Seventh Son: the countless delays of this project was warning enough how putrid it is but even the global box office intake confirmed that the public didn’t care for Julianne Moore (who should have known better) as Mother Malkin, a witch who has a ridiculous decades-old battle with a hunter named Gregory, a drunk-sounding Jeff Bridges (working hella hard to land a Razzie). He’s, by far, the worst thing here—in a minefield of pretty horrible action all around. (DIRECTED BY SERGEI BODROV)






5. #Horror: shockingly senseless. (DIRECTED BY TARA SUBKOFF)






6. Zombieworld: gutter-level foolishness. 9DIRECTED BY VARIOUS PERSONS)






7. Mortdecai: the point at which the end of Johnny Depp’s box office appeal began. For once, the parody he performs runs flat and takes everyone out with him. Rated SU for severely unfunny. (DIRECTED BY DAVID KOEPP)






8. The Last Witch Hunter: for Vin Diesel, less should always be more, as in the words he speaks. (DIRECTED BY BRECK EISNER)






9. Ted 2: admittedly not as horrible as its prequel but even so the political incorrectness has long run thin. (DIRECTED BY SETH MACFARLANE)






10. The Ouija Experiment 2: insipid and basic. (DIRECTED BY ISRAEL LUNA)





11. Paul Blart Mall Cop 2: blah blah blah… (DIRECTED BY ANDY FICKMAN)





12. Poltergeist: taking an iconic scary 80s flick and cleansing it of any genuine scares in the name of modernism is just plain dumb. (DIRECTED BY GIL KENAN)





13. Vice: came out early in the year but its cheap-looking narrative hasn’t been forgotten nor Bruce Willis forgiven. (DIRECTED BY BRIAN A. MILLER)





14. Pay The Ghost: no year-end worst films list would be complete without Cage and he doesn’t disappoint in this B tepid pot-boiler. (DIRECTED BY ULI EDEL)





15. Terminator: Genisys: let’s hope Arnold won’t be back. (DIRECTED BY ALAN TAYLOR)

The Top 15 Worst Songs of 2015:

Here we get listomana off this year with the fun list...and these songs are God-awful.

Enjoy, or rather, run away from them:





1. Alana Thompson Moving Up: I wasn’t even sure this obese child was really singing like, for serious music, you know like her reality TV show. Honey Boo Boo is a Big No No.





2. Danielle D.I. Wuk Out Mi Hole: Jamaicans tend to get touchy when its pointed out that sex isn’t all—and here is the monstrous proof. I’m no prude but even I blush, in embarrassment when the line, “a you a wuk out mi bloodclaat hole” spins.





3. Zeke Don A1 Class: more porno reggae jams poorly done. Yawn.





4. Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em Hurricane: generally awful but infinitely so when one realizes, in horror, that the slurps throughout are not studio-made but purposely done by the rapper. This is a new type of wretched never heard before.





5. Chief Keef feat. Andy Milonakis Hot Shit: well, the title says it all except the hot part. This is a tired throwback to when rappers were frighteningly just embrace stardom. Best to be forgotten.





6. Magic! Sunday Funday: I thought Magic! couldn’t possibly sink lower than last year’s “Rude” but here any aspersions of a positive vibe is cast aside right away with a stereotypical reggae beat and white privilege masquerading as lyrics. A sure staple for country club karaoke participants no doubt.





7. I Love Makonnen feat. Migos Whip It: lazy-sounding and, lyrically, nonsensical.





8. Macka Diamond My Prayer: one generally can’t fuck up gospel too much—well, except if one is Macka Diamond apparently.





9. Matt and Kim Hoodie On: what the hell happened to this duo to result in this tepid Sesame Street-esque learning tool?!





10. Pitbull feat. Mohombi & Wisin Baddest Girl In Town: I thought these bi-lingual track ideas were seasonal and extinct.





11. Lunchmoney Lewis Bills: though the horns and hi-claps are groovy, the corny lyrics torpedo this paean to providing.





12. Chris Brown feat. Tyga Ayo: even if we could excuse the lame lyrics by Brown, Tyga makes the song worse with, well, even lamer lyrics.





13. Silento Watch Me (Whip / Nae Nae): if Erykah Badu can tell Iggy Azealia that what she does is “definitely not hip/hop” then I think I can tell Silento, unequivocally, that what he does is definitely not music at all. This dude has over 400 million Youtube views for merely reciting lines (describing dance moves) repeatedly.





14. Kid Rock First Kiss: first, who even knew Kid Rock was still recording music? Now, the actual song sounds stuck in that previous decade where he and his inspiration belong.





15. Meghan Trainor Your Lips Are Movin’: pop music’s current white one-trick female pony finally created a big enough mess to earn her spot on the list. So, what did her in: the God-awful chorus. Welcome home, Meghan.

Black Mass (2015)

Monomania



First, the obvious: yes, this film will remind you of Martin Scorsese’s Oscar winner, 'The Departed'. As it should because both are inspired by the same source material; the 2001 book 'Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob' by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill.

And if you still had any doubt, director Scott Cooper ('Crazy Heart', 'Out Of The Furnace') fills every scene with reminiscent shots, so we get the obligatory Irish bag pipes and heavy Brooklyn accents on heavy-set men who all look a little too familiar with murder. The difference between the two films is as fascinating as what both omitted. Whereas 'The Departed' was merely influenced by James “Whitey” Bulger’s notorious rise, 'Black Mass' totally sacrifices everything human about him to elevate monstrously into a criminal caricature.

In such caricature, Johnny Depp shines as Bulger, totally convincing with slicked-back balding hair, bad teeth and piercing bluish contact lenses. Given that his career is in the doldrums, it’s great to see the slide halted (hello Nicholas Cage!) with this role that is sure to delight his many fans. He devours every scene with his presence and hint of uncontrollable rage. This rage we see early one, making 'Black Mass' successful as we see his slipping from a semblance of a family man into a web of destruction. The more hideous he becomes, the more Depp throws everything into it--at times the tension in his body evidently under the mental strain it must take for such hardened men to operate.

The downward spiral of Bulger however is where 'Black Mass' falters. This is, chiefly, because Depp is the only one given an unrestricted leash and every leash eventually needs to be reeled back in. The rest of the actors, including Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays William his powerful brother, wastes away in offices, seated by the film’s writers, literally stuck, just as how whole 'Game Of Thrones' characters had to sit out this season because George R.R. Martin hasn't figured out just what to do with them yet. The writers, Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, decide to throw whole parts of Bulger's life out, thus making the other actors feel tacked-on: Peter Saarsgard has a memorable introduction then goes out inexplicably without much of a fight. Ditto for the FBI agent, John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), the man who helped protect Bulger’s cover as an informant. The context of behaviour is missing in 'Black Mass', making it engrossing but one-dimentional when one really stops to consider what would make these men act oe react they way they did.

Maybe because the book on Bulger is still fairly fresh the writers wanted to focus on him primarily but biopics don’t have to be based on ancient material to incorporate a great script—look how great United 93 turned out and that was released just five years after 9/11.
It’s interesting that Bulger’s long-time girlfriend Catherine Greig is absent from the film, as if to indicate his notoriety was so beyond any outsider influence by that period on his life. As if he was already beyond vulnerability. That’s what this film needed a little more of when Depp was not on screen to help unravel all the mysteries surrounding his life, which he keep so well hidden under those sad eyes and hollow cheeks.

As for the other obvious question that will linger long after the credits roll: will Johnny Depp land an Oscar nomination for his performance, the jury is still out on that for several reasons. Yes, he carries the film, dominating every frame but when it collapses into moments of disconnect and weirdness, it drags him down too: trying to reconcile his humanity at the loss of his son or when confronted in a situation beyond his power. Unlike when Jack Nicholson tore Frank Costello into pieces of sublime madness in The Departed, Depp has one shade throughout Black Mass. If Nicholson, clearly the superior actor didn’t snare what seemed like a sure nomination then it is likely Depp will fail as well. Don’t bet your house just yet, is what I’m saying.

RATING: 7/10