21. “Alice Through the Looking Glass” (2016)
Pros: Director James Bobin’s “Alice Through the Looking Glass” — a follow-up to Tim Burton’s 2010 box office smash “Alice in Wonderland” — is very colorful. Also, an exceptionally over-it Sacha Baron Cohen plays a sentient clock, so that’s fun.
Cons: Pretty much every other thing about this exhausting mistake of a movie is vexing. Not only does “Alice Through the Looking Glass” offer next to nothing for fans of Lewis Carroll, but it also manages to spectacularly mangle the “female hysteria” plot introduced in its Victorian-era prologue by smashing together a bunch of nonsensical scenes, sticking Mia Wasikowska in the middle of them, and blindly hoping for a feminist adventure epic. The 2016 sequel is a classic example of a filmmaker confusing a poorly spent, bloated budget with psychedelic maximalism: It’s not trippy, just annoying.
Read IndieWire’s review of “Alice Through the Looking Glass.”