THE WORST FILMS OF 2006
January 23rd will mark the one year anniversary of this blog, and thus I have revamped the page and changed the name. Like the new look? Lemme know.
I know, you’re stuck on that post title...it’s officially been almost a year since this same post came around where I specifically said I couldn’t possibly compile a worst of the year list because there’s simply so much shit that appears per year that I don’t see. I could call The Sentinel the worst thing I’ve seen this year, but who KNOWS if that’s the absolute worst of the year (it’s not). But no...I think THIS year I managed to see enough fucking bile to determine what was the worst. Without further ado...the bottom twenty.
20. Shadowboxer
Here’s a flick that’s so bafflingly terrible that you’re mystified as to how it actually came to be. Helen Mirren, Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr., Stephen Dorff, Monique, Macy Grey, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the same film together should manage to be interesting if in no other respect than acting. The thing is...it IS interesting, though not how it was likely intended. HOW was this cast roped in to such an abysmal failure? What did they read? Who did they owe a favor to? How much could they have possibly been paid? Cuba and Helen as hitmen/lovers??? Levitt and Monique as a COUPLE??? Macy Grey barely manages to be a saving grace as a lush, and everything else that happens in the film feels like some sort of bad dream that you’re having (yet can’t wake up from). There’s also a major fixation on Cuba’s bare ass (line up, ladies!), and Monique’s fat rolls (run away, fellas!). It’s simultaneously terrible and completely compelling viewing. It must be seen to be avoided at all costs. Or passed onto someone else and immediately watched again. I look forward to buying it.
19. The Covenant
Meet the 2nd most homoerotic film of the year! It’s as if Victor Salva directed this piece of cum-stained shit! Unfortunately, it’s from Renny Harlin, the go-to guy for generic action-horror pieces right now if you can’t find anyone else. The once great director of absolutely classic, fun films like The Long Kiss Goodnight (still one of the most expensive scripts ever purchased, FYI) and Deep Blue Sea has succumbed to making direct-to-video movies with bigger budgets. I honestly have no idea what the thing was about except for a family legacy of supernatural powers passed down from generation to generation, and it’s all placed on a group of pretty, WB-friendly faces who like to take their shirts off. There’s nary a strong female character in sight. Also add in a complete ripoff of Korean disaster Volcano High, and you have a film that I was bound to hate from the beginning. It’s the gayest version of The Craft that I could have possibly imagined.
18. The Black Dahlia
The casting and the bland script killed what should have been one of the best films of the year. Seriously, I anticipated this as much as I possibly could. I’m a huge De Palma fan (Carlito’s Way currently ranks as my favorite film of all time), and I anticipated a big return to form after the underrated and yet also underwhelming Femme Fatale. This had glimpses of style yet no actual substance, and it was the downfall of the entire piece. The charm of James Ellroy’s neo-noir classic L.A. Confidential was nowhere to be found in here, nor was there any discovery of hidden talent in Josh Hartnett (he sucks) and Scarlett Johansen (she sucks worse). Not even Aaron Eckhart or Mia Kirshner could manage to do shit to save this. Here’s hoping that Joe Carnahan (Narc) can do something with Ellroy’s White Jazz (due 2008) that De Palma couldn’t manage to do here. Also, let’s hope De Palma gets the ball rolling on that Untouchables prequel that’s been long in development so he can recapture the glory he so rightfully deserves.
17. See No Evil
There’s not much to say. Remember how grim and ugly that first house was in Se7en? Picture a whole movie that looks like that. It’s the ugliest 90 minutes I’ve ever seen on film matched with the single dumbest horror movie premise this century. Not even worth seeing to laugh.
16. Ice Age: The Meltdown
No, it’s not funny, GUYS! Stop fucking laughing!
There are many evils in this world. Right after genocide? Making a political, environmental message film that is masquerading as a children’s adventure. Ferngully: The Last Rainforest shall never be topped; that’s light years more insulting and upsetting than any other children’s film I’ve ever witnessed. However, this one climbs awfully and dangerously close. It does for global warming what Ferngully managed to do for the death of the rainforest: jack shit. For those not aware, the movie deals comically with the melting of the polar ice caps (hint) and the extinction of the population (hint, hint). It also managed to be released on DVD the same week as An Inconvenient Truth(hint, hint, hint...double feature!). Kids won’t get the message, and the adults who see it get the phantom feeling that their children are being enlightened. They aren’t; this ain’t Sesame Street. Nobody asked for a sequel to the lackluster original, and it’s a mystery why people paid to see another one of these lame Disney copycats. It’s the same people who will try to show their kids the message (which is what exactly?...save the ice caps?...how?...wha...the fuck??) It’s the same people who drive gas guzzling, polluter SUVs and Hummers yet "recycle." "I’m doing my part!", they claim. It’s the same people who don’t appreciate Pixar for what they’ve done for family entertainment. This movie fucking sucked. Show your kids An Inconvenient Truth if you want to teach them something, and avoid this child propaganda.
15. Silent Hill
Still frame from the movie, or Rhada at the premiere?
A shitload of potential based on the highly disturbing and creepy videogame series...which is promptly misunderstood and misplaced into beautiful visuals...with zero atmosphere, or scares, or cohesion. Christophe Gans managed to forget that he was making a horror film, and decided to make a comedy. It doesn’t help that Roger Avary took dialogue straight from the game, and Gans decided to have them practically reenact the stiffness of a cutscene. The audience ended up laughing a lot more than they shrieked. An utter failure at every turn. It should also be noted that I was on a bizarre date while seeing this, and ended up getting blueballed. I'm not sure which hurt worse.
14. The Fountain
Let me start by saying this is visually one of the most beautiful films I’ve seen. It’s also a spotlight for Hugh Jackman to actually ACT. The music is terrific. Unfortunately it’s the rest of the picture that drags it all down. While not a particularly bad film, this one is a tangled mess. It’s a work of heart and soul from Darron Aronofsky that provides neither of either for the viewing audience. I understand a director (or auteur, as Darron’s often labeled) having a desire to make a personal film, but there’s a certain level of self indulgence that should be set aside in order to have the personal story actually make sense to an audience. I’ve pieced together what was intended, I think. But any movie that requires months of thought and/or multiple viewings to even be appreciated is one that probably isn’t very good. Time will tell, but for now it’s placed here, in the middle of the bad road.
13. Pulse
They managed to take Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Japanese film with artistic credibility (which I admittedly dislike a great deal) and remake it with absolutely no redeeming qualities, even going so far as to reshoot half of the movie after terrible test screenings, and bury its release. They turned a movie brewing atmosphere into a "BOO! It’s just KITTY ON THE MANTLE PLAYING WITH PAPER!" kinda horror flick. Kristen Bell should be ashamed. Christina Milian should be thrilled.
12. Art School Confidential
Terry Zwigoff directed the offensively charming Bad Santa three years ago. It’s a new holiday staple which is highly uneven, yet full of some genuinely hilarious laughs. Before that, there was Ghost World. This year I decided I didn’t like Ghost World. No, not one bit. This is ten times worse than that was. It's a movie that only art students will probably appreciate, and I doubt even they will be interested in a serial killer mystery set in the art school world. I haven’t shut off a single major movie this year that I can recall, but this one did get fast forwarded to the end simply to see what would happen. God awful.
11. Click
"Hey guys, let’s take It’s A Wonderful Life and mix it with Bruce Almighty! Let’s get Adam Sandler to star! Let’s blow our brains out and eat them! We’re soulless Hollywood whores! Let’s get Sandler in a fat suit and give him an impossibly gorgeous wife! And Hasslehoff can be his mean spirited boss!" Get fucked, Adam.
10. Hard Candy
Castration usually makes a movie better, except for when watching the film emotes the exact feeling of such. The concept of a child predator getting his from a potential victim is decent enough, so where did this go wrong? By playing everything by the book and by the numbers. There’s nary a moment of intensity in this thing that can’t be promptly ruined if you try to figure out how the moment will end. It wasn’t until a week of thought after viewing that I discovered I had been duped into liking this moronic piece of exploitative and manipulative trash. I promptly hated everything I thought I had enjoyed. Even the overexposed and flashy style did nothing for me anymore. Ellen Page and ... may have a good acting career within their grasp, but it’s gonna take something that tries a lot harder than this one to get me to bite for either of them. Avoid this thing at all costs.
9. Barnyard
Nickelodeon is for stupid kids. Forgive me if I’m stepping on toes here and hurting feelings. Perhaps you grew up on Nickelodeon. I didn’t. Perhaps their prestige and clout was higher when you were growing up. Maybe their shows had some sort of value. And don’t get me wrong...I understand the value of entertaining children with something mindless and fun. That’s as important as anything else in my book, but there’s a balance to be found. Now Nickelodeon entertainment has become the beast that babysits the child and violently shakes it while the parent stops caring about learning and development, and takes up paint huffing. The latest offering to turn your children into prison-bound, fart machines is Steve Odenkirk’s abortion Barnyard. Not only is it the ugliest CG animated film I’ve witnessed (yes, even above cheapie Hoodwinked and fellow Nickelodeon vomit Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius), but it manages to crib just about every fucking Disney film in one fell swoop...poorly. Most obvious is The Lion King, but even something as recent (and awful) as Home On The Range manages to show up. It’s derivative and isn’t even one bit clever or entertaining. It’s jokes that not even children would write. I’m sure on paper that the idea of cows tipping a boy out of bed SOUNDS like a pretty funny idea (it’s what we do to COWS, you see?), but in the execution winds up being boring and feels as if it’s been done before. I really wanted the cows to analy rape the young lad as revenge. That’s much funnier to ME, and, like, totally better revenge. Like this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7PD4jhcArw
"This is called BOY FUCKING! HAAA-HAAA-HAAA!"
Unfortunately, that would have been the only thing to save this. It’s hillbilly entertainment at its lowest form, the kind that those Blue Collar comics would slap together, and you can literally feel your own IQ drop as you watch it. Imagine what it’s doing to your pudding brained 8-year-old who’s sticking his dick in the toaster to "see what it do." GIT-R-DUN! If you do see this for some fucking reason, don’t forget to listen for Danny Glover’s voice – if you turn up the volume loud enough, you can actually hear that not only is he phoning it in, but he’s counting his money at the same time! It's all acting is to a has-been.
8. Poseidon
The need to remake The Poseidon Adventure? None. The need to remake it WITHOUT a large woman who’s a former swimming champ? Much, much less. The results? Pretty laughable and boring. How can you tell for sure? It’s probably a bad drama when you’re rooting like it's a slasher film to see people bite it. Whoever told Wolfgang Peterson he was a good director is a fucking liar. Thank God this is one of the biggest failures of the year.
7. Ultraviolet
Shit Sandwich.
6. X-Men: The Last Stand
It takes a hell of a bad movie to completely ruin what could have been the first (mostly) awesome comic book trilogy. Instead that honor will have to be bestowed upon Spider Man (fingers crossed) in place of my favorite mutants. When Bryan Singer left the project to pursue Superman Returns I knew there would be rough waters ahead. Then Matthew Vaughn of L4yer Cake and Guy Ritchie fame took the reins and things suddenly looked up. It would be a fresh approach from a foreign director. This has worked wonders for the Harry Potter franchise! Sadly, it’s neck was broken when Vaughn left the project because he didn’t want to spend so much time away from his family. Kudos to that, and I hope whatever he directs next shall be great. Unfortunately, brainless hack artist Brett Ratner showed up at the 11th hour to direct the thing. There was no prep time outside of what other people had done for him. To his credit, he did the best he could to make it an action packed affair. The effects are surprisingly quite nice given how rushed the production was, and the final action sequence at least looks nice. It couldn’t save what had turned into a soulless action movie instead of an interesting character based drama with action pieces like the first two.
The script is filled with needless cameos and nameless, forgettable additional characters, many of which have never existed in the books. This leaves little to no time for pre-established characters to grow at all, let alone try to function at the same level they were at before. What could have been an epic, 120+ minute, Sentinel filled conclusion to the story wound up a 100 minute, Sentinel cameo-ed, half baked solution to the story. Yes, it works to wrap things up, but it kills characters as if they were nothing, and ruins all the dramatic groundwork that had been laid by the excellent X2. I hated this thing with a fucking passion, and I pray to all that is holy that none of the people involved with how bad this turned out has anything to do with the Wolverine film planned for 2008, nor any future X-productions.
5. You, Me and Dupree
I can’t stand films that try to pass off annoying characters as lead material. What About Bob is probably the only film that manages to accomplish the task, and that’s entirely due to Bill Murray’s abilities. Owen Wilson is no Bill Murray. Hell, he’s not even the GOOD Wilson brother. This thing is the least funny and most anger inducing comedy I’ve seen in about a decade. It all banks on your ability to embrace and tolerate Dupree despite all of his flaws. The problem with that is it’s virtually impossible! He’s the most pathetic fuck you’ve ever seen, and there’s no factor beisdes Wilson’s charm that they’re relying on...it’s not even close to enough. The other major factor to appreciate the film banks on your ability to feel sympathy and empathy for Dillon and Hudson’s characters who are stuck with this lovable oaf simply because they don’t have the heart to send him packing and because his intentions are good. I beg of you to try to think of someone you’ve been friends with that has annoyed you to the point of no return, yet you have been willing to embrace despite it. These people don’t EXIST! Am I so heartless thinking this? Believe me, I have some pretty annoying friends who do some pretty stupid and self centered things, and in this situation they would have been out on their homeless ass before they could even blink. Zero on the funny scale, with minor exception to Seth Rogen’s hilarious take on such boring material as a whipped man. The supporting of the supporting actor is the highlight!? Fuck this.
4. Date Movie
You’ve seen good parodies, right? Stuff that the Zucker-Abrahams team did throughout the past three decades like The Naked Gun and Airplane!, or even the guilty pleasure work that the Wayans brothers did with the first installments of the Scary Movie series? This is a prime example of how NOT to do a parody. Simply placing characters from other movies into the same situations they were in the first time through isn’t a parody. It’s a homage, really. And pointless. And unfunny.
3. The Wicker Man
There goes Nic, waving bye bye to his once lucrative career...
Meet the best comedy of the year! 102 minutes of non-stop hilarity! What happens when a former cop tries to find his missing daughter ends up in a small town in the middle of nowhere? It’s a mismatched adventure with laughs galore! HE’S not used to their ways of life, and THEY just want some company! Can they work out their differences and find a way to get along?? Go see The Wicker Man! It’s Nic Cage’s funniest performance since Honeymoon in Vegas! It’ll have you quoting "AHH, MY LEGS" and "NO, NOT THE BEES" until the cows come home. Jeepers!
I thought the remake of Poseidon was pointless. I had no idea what pointless was.
2. American Dreamz
Satire is such a loose term, so we add the word biting in front of it to make it seem more edgy. Paul Weitz certainly thought he was making a biting satire of American culture with this ensemble piece. It’s every bit as mind numbing as Love Actually with all of its lukewarm mini-plots, only it doesn’t even have the pleasure of Christmas themes to fall back on as a crutch. What better way to do make a biting satire than to make fun of that hillbilly President -- did y’all know he’s STEEEEUUUUPID? Hey, y’all ever heard of a pet rock? -- and pop-culture phenomenon American Idol at the SAME TIME! Uh-oh...Weitz never seems to be able to mock either subject as he’s too preoccupied with tying them together. Aww, schucks! We understand that more votes come in for a finale of Idol than they do for most presidential elections. Weitz never seems to understand that if people were able to vote a few hundred times for an election that the turnout might be a little better, but I digress. He thinks that since the two correlate that he should combine them. What is left after the dust clears is nothing more than a shamefully bad comedy on every level. Production values are so poor to begin with that the set of this supposedly mega-hit TV program American Dreamz (the z stands for hip) is limited to the size of, say, your local theater playhouse. It looks so much unlike American Idol that you can barely correlate that it’s what Weitz is mocking! To make matters worse, Hugh Grant’s version of Simon Cowell is infuriatingly uninformed and bares no resemblance to the actual person, thus pulling us further out of getting the joke.
Then there’s the Bush parody as done by an overacting Dennis Quaid. In this one-note, lame duck joke, the President decides to read the paper one day instead of having his right hand man (an especially hammy Willem Dafoe) give him the jist of it. Cute! In order to boost the President’s popularity, they line up an appearance for him on American Dreamz! The idea that the President of the United States making a special judging appearance on a TV show is absolutely absurd. No matter how low we may be sinking for entertainment and political involvement boosts, this is out of the realm of possibility. To make things worse, there’s the idea that the security would be light enough for a terrorist group to sneak a bomb into the theater to have one of the contestants (a Muslim man with aspirations of stardom) suicide bomb the President. I’m not even gonna bother going into how awful this idea is, nor am I going to touch on how absurd it ends up getting after this premise shows up. What I will say is that if you’re going to make a satire retain its bite, perhaps it’s not the best idea to attempt to redeem the President character you’ve spent a good 80 minutes buttfucking. It sorta takes away that whole biting part, and all you’re left with is a big pile of shitty writing and absurd premises. Now, Mr. Weitz, go make About Another Boy or About A Man (whichever cheesy title you prefer) so I can respect you again. Don’t forget to pick up your credibility and dignity on the way out.
1. The Last Kiss
This represents everything that I hate about the Hollywood machine in one tidy package. Hot off the heels of Garden State, which is a flawed flick that seriously touched me, Zach Braff was set to star in this romantic comedy, a remake of the Italian film of the same name. There’s red flag #1 for me. Remakes predominately suck, and remakes of foreign comedies are NEVER good. It was a script written by Hollywood darling (and emotionally by-the-book) Paul Haggis (flag #2), set to be directed by actor Tony Goldwyn (directed by an actor? Flag #3). Jacinda Barrett, Rachel Bilson (flag #4, bitch can’t act), Casey Affleck, Tom Wilkinson, Blythe Danner, etc...it was all gravy, baby. The synopsis provided by the IMDB: anxieties threaten the future of a domestic couple (flag #5). Braff did a punch up on the script to make it funnier, and the cameras rolled. The result is simply infuriating. What you end up with is a movie that tries to get your emotions running by having the lead cheat on his pregnant fiancé with a younger woman. The younger woman is exciting, new, and attractive (which I don't think Bilson is). The rub is that there’s nothing unappealing about his life with his girlfriend except for the fact that she’s unexpectedly pregnant. HE’S just not ready to grow up yet. Boo-fucking-hoo. Sorry, folks, that Peter Pan shit has NEVER fucking gotten me to feel anything other than disdain and hatred. Growing up is a part of life, and defiance of such is the way of immature brats who watch Nickelodeon. Now I ask you – why would I want to watch a movie about an immature brat who just can’t deal with his life and grow up to accept responsibility? For symmetry, his girlfriend’s mother cheated on her husband. See? So now the girlfriend sees the problem from BOTH sides! It’s so perfect! Man, it’s like it’s just so middle of the road that you don’t know which way to feel!
Who the fuck cares at this point, though? Maybe it’s my lack of many emotional relationships with women thus far in life that leads me to not understand domestic squabbles. I’ve had a happy home life with parents who are still married. Is this geared toward me? Do you have to be dysfunctional to enjoy this? Haggis takes everything in such a literal fashion, and feels the need to spell every minute detail out for the viewer (who at this point would be a complete idiot to not understand) in a montage/quick cut sequences set to some of Braff’s favorite indie bands you’ve never heard of like Coldplay, Snow Patrol and Imogen Heap. Who ARE these new artists you've discovered, Zach? Braff sits on the poarch day and night in effort to win back his girlfriend after he realizes the mistake he made. We’re supposed to feel emotion for this man desperate to win back the love of his life after he was too immature to be with her in the first place, which is fuckin’ ridiculous. I like Braff; I appreciate his ability as an actor, and I love Jacinda Barrett to pieces, too, but when they’re together I can’t find any reason to care about either of them. She flips out before even knowing that he’s cheated, and he flips out when he’s caught in a lie. I’m bored and annoyed. Meanwhile, Braff’s friends are also having trouble growing up and being mature when it comes to relationships in useless, tired, boring subplots filled with trite situations (except maybe for Eric Chritsian Olsen’s). Perhaps, just perhaps, these lifeless, boring people shouldn’t BE interacting with the other sex. Perhaps they should be fucking each other and quarantined on Whore Island. That’s the message I took home from this one, and let us never speak of this cocksucking movie ever again. It’s the worst piece of shit that came out this year.
(DIS)HONORABLE MENTIONS
The Protector (aka Tom Yum Goong)
This is the reason black people love kung-fu movies – they’ll get to say "daaayamn" about 80 fucking times. It’s true that Tony Jaa’s abilities are well on display here, though maybe not as much as Ong Bak: Thai Warrior. Some of the action sequences are downright awesome, but the problem is there’s actually no story, and from what I’ve heard there’s even less in the Weinstein’s cut of the movie. I love a good brainless movie as much as the next guy, but everything in this that doesn’t involve action makes you sleepy and bored, not to mention that if Jaa weren’t in this, it’d be a Segal or a Van Damme vehicle; for every moment that Jaa makes you go "wow,"it’s followed or preceded by an action cliche that even Hollywood has given up on using. Example: Jaa runs up a glass wall...in order to avoid being hit by a man on a four-wheeler who’s driving straight at him. The man crashes through the glass and plummets to his death. In this same sequence there’s a box of florescent bulbs just sitting around, and also an attack by men on bikes and roller blades. Cool idea that’s executed without any rational explanation = fucking dumb. Jaa needs to get his ass to America so we can plop him in something a little better. I can’t believe I just said that.
When A Stranger Calls
What do you do when a stranger calls? You pick up and say hello, silly!
The absurdity of remaking a 70s "classic" whose big twist is not only spelled out in the trailer, but is also already known by every man, woman and child who’s old enough to see the fucking thing...it's off the charts. One need only see the first five minutes of this one to know that they’ve picked up the wrong title, as its so over the top in its epic approach to being a slasher movie (dig that full symphony and choir!) that you wind up laughing out loud.
Stick It
Oh, I can tell you where to stick it all right. Those expecting something as wonderful as Bring It On will be broken in half by this lame, uninspired pseudo-sequel full of terrible jokes and sub-par writing (even for a teen movie!).
Let’s Go To Prison
Yeah, let’s not.
Lady In The Water
It’s not the abysmal failure I was expecting it to be. I didn’t hate it, but it sure wasn’t something I’ll ever want to see again. So self indulgent on just about every level that it’s nearly impossible for an audience to enjoy this. On the upside, Christopher Doyle's cinematography makes it really interesting to look at. Hmm...maybe M. Night should team up with Darron Aronofsky to make the ultimate personal film that nobody else will understand. Would you see it?
See you in a few for the best list(s)!
-M
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