15 showstopping performances in movies that completely sucked

Based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates, Blonde is less a biopic and more an operatic horror, spiked with expressionist flourishes that many viewers found exploitative. Amid all the trauma and phantasmagoria, though, Ana de Armas brings Norma Jeane Baker to life with as much intensity, sincerity and sorrow as the film will allow. However, Monroe is given little agency and even less credit for the ecstasy she brought to the screen time and again. Speaking of…

Best line: ‘Marilyn doesn’t exist. When I come out of my dressing room, I’m Norma Jeane. I’m still her when the camera is rolling. Marilyn Monroe only exists on the screen.’

The Puerto Rican actor commanded attention in every role – especially his final one. To play the megalomaniacal General M Bison, the Shakespearean actor studied the mannerisms of Mussolini, Stalin and more. His enormous, electromagnetic performance is the highlight of a hot mess and helps clarify Street Fighter’s goofy tone. Given the circumstances – countless production issues; Jean-Claude Van Damme’s out-of-control ego; Julia’s own stomach cancer – it’s possible no actor has ever been this good before.

Best line: ‘For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday.’

Say what you will about this hysterical performance, it’s nothing if not fiercely committed. Faye Dunaway dials everything up to ‘unhinged’ in this biopic of Joan Crawford, one of Hollywood’s most histrionic personalities. But the line between lauded and laughable is often wire-thin. Had Mommie Dearest been handled (totally) differently, we might look upon this as one of the silver screen’s finest showings. Instead, it’s one of its campest and most quotable. 

Best line: ‘No wire hangers – ever!’

Between the limp writing, lack of ensemble chemistry and Jared Leto’s edgelord Joker, DC’s rogues’-gallery-gone-wrong had its issues. But Margot Robbie wasn’t one of them. Harley Quinn’s bubblegum-grot pops in a world of muddy, grumbling men with little to say and less to do. The Aussie actor makes her love-drunk character feel lived in and unstable. Most importantly, though, she brings to the film an ingredient so sorely missing from the mix: fun. 

Best line: ‘We’re bad guys. It’s what we do.’

Martin Scorsese’s meatiest movie needed a butcher to make sense of it. Fortunately it had Daniel Day-Lewis. As Bill the Butcher, the actor is relentlessly compelling even as the ambitious film strays off course. That an English actor born to an Irish father can deliver a performance this menacing and complex while maintaining a pitch-perfect facsimile of a 150-year-old New York accent makes it doubly sour that none of his co-stars bothered to muster a passable Irish one.

Best line: ‘I took the father. Now I’ll take the son. I’m gonna paint Paradise Square with his blood. Two coats. I’ll festoon my bedchamber with his guts.’

The Iron Lady is a tepid biopic doomed by its attempts to humanise a leader for whom humanism was never a priority. Realising characters with as much humanity as possible, however, has always been a hallmark of Meryl Streep. The actor’s remarkable powers of mimicry are on full display, as she evokes Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in minute detail and finds unexpected sympathy for an often unsympathetic figure.

Best line: ‘We will stand on principle... or we will not stand at all.’

Tim Burton made monkeys out of everyone with his much-maligned (but financially successful) spin on the 1968 classic. Paul Giamatti, David Warner and Michael Clarke Duncan fare well beneath Rick Baker’s amazing prosthetics. But it’s Tim Roth who steals the show, acting everyone from chimpan-A to chimpanzee right off the screen. As the simian sovereign General Thade, he’s nasty, intimidating and unpredictable. If ever an antagonist deserved better opposition than Marky Mark, it was this one.

Best line: ‘Everything in the human culture takes place below the waist.’

Between its neckbreak editing and insipid artist-approved story, Bohemian Rhapsody has more problems than Queen had Top 40 UK singles (that’ll be more than 50). But despite the film’s straight eye for the queer guy sanding down Freddie Mercury’s quirks and sexuality, the great man is brought to life with admirable verve by Rami Malek. Buoyed by the actor’s studied, spirited, Academy Award-winning performance, the concert scenes sing. Mercury deserved a better film but perhaps nobody else could have filled his yellow jacket as well as Malek.

Best line: ‘Ayyyy-ohh!’

The first four X-Men flicks suffered from diminishing returns before the prequels brought some much-needed class to proceedings. Unfortunately, they would follow the same formula. Anchored by Michael Fassbender’s performance as the vengeful metal fetishist Magneto, First Class and Days of Future Past were solid. Apocalypse, however, was an overstuffed, wheel-spinning farce sorely lacking in rizz. Still, Fassbender bends emotions like Erik Lehnsherr bends steel, and demonstrates how repeated turns as the same character can yield positive results, even if the surrounding movie stinks. See also: Dark Phoenix.

Best line: ‘You think because you can see into my head you know how it feels? You’re looking in the wrong place, Charles.’

Sacha Baron Cohen couldn’t recapture Borat’s lightning-in-a-bottle lunacy with this belated sequel. But he did give us the next best thing: Maria Bakalova as Borat’s 15-year-old daughter, Tutar. Whether devouring a cupcake or deadpanning near-the-knuckle gags, her comedic timing is impeccable.

Best line: ‘My daddy is the smartest person in the whole flat world!’

Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings cast a shadow so long that even the light of Eärendil couldn’t have lifted it from the follow-up trilogy. The latter’s litany of flaws didn’t help either. Extending a single book over three films meant it was always going to feel like butter scraped over too much bread. But Martin Freeman brings wide-eyed wonder and underdog exuberance to Bilbo Baggins, traits that are vital to the character and his story, and resonate with Ian Holm’s definitive performance as the little hobbit who could.

Best line: ‘An adventure? No, I don’t imagine anyone west of Bree would have much interest in adventures. Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner.’

Tensions ran high on the set of this saggy English comedy. Producer and director Laurence Olivier’s thespian austerity clashes with Marilyn Monroe’s effortless effervescence. They didn’t like each other. It shows. The couple have as much screen chemistry as a brick and a banana on a corporate-mandated team-building exercise. Individually, though, the showgirl runs rings around the doddering old prince.

Best line: ‘Yes, I speak German. I was born in Milwaukee.’

Defend melodrama at all costs! Based on the 1995 novel of the same name, this trashy southern gothic is packed with sordid performances. None more so than Nicole Kidman’s.  The Aussie actor is exhilarating as Charlotte Bless, a swampy southern belle with the hots for a convicted killer and a penchant for drawling vowels, slinging piss and blue-balling Zac Efron. The Paperboy was met with wildly mixed reviews but Kidman was rightly nominated for multiple awards. Let her cook!

Best line: ‘If anyone’s gonna piss on him, it’s gonna be me.’

A box-office smash built on sand, Spider-Man 3 was a sorry sequel to two of the finest superhero movies ever made. It’s best remembered for two things: Peter Parker embracing his dark (read: dork) side and Thomas Hayden Church’s plaintive performance as one of the film’s 275 villains. He brings real emotional heft to the Sandman, a classic sympathetic monster whose sins are underscored by desperation and sadness. 

Best line: ‘I didn’t choose to be this.’

Time has been kinder to this live-action cartoon than critics were in 2002. Alongside an extremely well cast ensemble, a massive part of the mystery comedy’s appeal is Matthew Lillard’s uncanny Shaggy. The actor recreates the character’s stoner idiosyncrasies with zoinks-worthy authenticity and makes the most of James Gunn’s screenplay. Even more impressive is that, when acting opposite the computer-generated Scoob, he didn’t even have a proper scene partner.

Best line: ‘We don’t go anywhere with “scary”, “spooky”, “haunted” or “forbidden” in the title. Or hydrocolonic, but that’s for a whole different reason.’