You will notice there is more written about the worst movies than the good ones. Since some people actually like the drivel below, I feel I must be complete in my crushing. A "Worst" list is easy you say? Is is quite the opposite. It is easy to say a movie is bad, and there are plenty of bad movies (Glitter, Leonard Part 6, etc). When filmmakers make a movie and think they did a great job, or when they are bad and no one seems to notice, or when people embrace bad movies for reasons even they don't understand, THAT kind of movie belongs on a list somewhere. The makers of Gigli freely admit they messed up, and that would be too easy to list here.
1. My Dinner With Andre - Holy fuck. This is the absolute worst excuse for a movie to ever hit the screen. Andre is a boring guy whose stories are bizarre, uninteresting, and sound really made up. On top of all that, this guy is a horrible actor, simply repeating lines off a page with no inflection. I tried to watch this movie, twice, and tried to like it, twice. The only saving grace was Wallace Shawn - only a great actor could pretend to be interested in Andre's bullcrap. His reactions to Andre's stories were as though anything he said was worth listening to, (but none of it was). Shawn's face was comical at times when his "starkly interested" reactions would come after the most pedestrian, flat comments from Andre. The reviews on imdb.com are confounding in that almost all of them praise this dookie as if it were Amelie or something, and made me realize that all other people are stupid.
2. American History X - Ignorant propoganda. If you, the reader, are intelligent and wish for an end to all racism, then read on. If you are an ignorant fuck, please read no further or else you will have to convince yourself I am a racist. Aside from begin totaly unfocused, I don't like this movie because it shows stereotypes as a product of racist white people whose motives are 100% ignorance, when it is so much deeper and in fact quite the reverse - but this is what the filmmakers know the audience expects to hear (they might even believe it themselves and think they have made a responsible movie). This is another example of irresponsible catering to ignorant masses, and all it does is confuse and confound intelligent people while it keeps racism alive in the hearts of everyone else. What they are talking about isn't even really racism, because it doesn't exist in real life they way they have portrayed it on the screen. The movie finally broke down and lost any credibility it may have had going during the "Rodney King" argument at the dinner table. It went from a semi-reasonable argument where you could actually, just for a second, almost start to have some insight into Der's racism and maybe even see his point, to being total catering when Der says: "HE attacked the COPS first!". This is what the modern American audience wanted to hear - no - what they EXPECTED Der to say, what they felt comfortable with. We all knew what he said was not true, but the movie says the white guy is a racist, so that means the only reason racism exists is because of ignorance. If racism were that simple, it would never have existed in the first place. Der only hates black people because he doesn't understand that King didn't hit the cops first? And then they explain Der's racism away by simply saying his dad was killed by a black guy? They've oversimplified again, and again in most irresponsible fashion. What if Der had said the cops were wrong to beat Rod, but they were probably tired of repeatedly chasing down a recidivist wife beater with several prior (and post) arrests? The movie probably would have been banned and picketed! Since we have movies like this to fuel the masses, I am going to have to ask people to take a moment to think for themselves for just a minute, realize the ignorant ones are the ones who think like these filmakers, and simply comprehend once and for all that it is irresponsible catering like this, much in the same way why the NAACP would never have as their spokesperson THE most important black American man of our time, Dr. Ben Carson, (http://www.drbencarson.com/), that keeps minorities down.
3. Agnes Browne - Don't let Huston direct ever again. I have never seen a movie quite like this one. Some of the scenes and situations were brilliantly crafted, and others were complete junk. The end result are brilliant scenes speckled with garbage, and the garbage scenes are very, very confused and confusing. Some reviews I have read have a very different idea than what I had about what this movie was even about! This movie is the story of Agnes Browne, and her budding friendship with a neighboring woman, Marion. I suppose they knew each other before Agnes' husband's death (movie starts with the funeral), but apparently they didn't become best friends until after the funeral. Unbeknownst to Agnes, but knownst to us, her friend has cancer. Here follows several touching scenes, brilliantly crafted, with perfect dialogue, etc...: Agnes runs into Marion's husband, who sort of tells Agnes what is going on. Agnes tells him it's not the end of the world, and he replies, "It is for me". Later, Marion says her one wish is to learn to drive a car, and they both are sitting in a car waiting for the instructor. He comes around to the driver's window and gesticulates in what could either be interpereted as an obscene gesture or sign language for Marion to roll the window down. The women assume the former is the case, Agnes says he wants a "wank", and they laugh. He then asks Marion to turn the "knob", and they again laugh. They guess his name is "Dick" and are dissapointed to find out his name is Tom. They fall into absolute hysterics when he announces his full name, "Tom O'Toole". At the beginning, Agnes has no money because she hadn't yet started getting her husband's death benefits. She is forced to borrow from a loan shark briefly. Soon after she gets her retroactive death benefits, and there is a bizarre scene where she pays him back in a lump sum and they are both ungrateful to each other. At this point, I felt it was very clear Agnes had a good amount of money, as she even bragged a little about it. Further proof of this occurs when we see Agnes and Marion go out bar hopping. Then suddenly, the next day, she cries when her 7 kids complain and she is upset she doesn't have the money to feed them all. Then, in stark contrast again, Agnes and Marion take a day off from their fruit and flower stands and go to the coast, they go shopping for expensive clothes for Agnes' daughter, they take expensive driving lessons... not exactly money problems here. All of these scenes do exist however to show us the bond of friendship that is building between these two women and again we see specs of brilliance. I thought the money problems were long since over. When one of Agnes' kids borrows 6 pounds from the earlier loan shark, the money problems mysteriously reappear when payment time comes. 6 pounds! Agnes tries to scrape up the 10 pounds owed (interest) and seemingly can't come up with that, despite the money being offered to her by a Frenchman named Pierre who is in love with her, and despite her doing several things, including selling her wedding ring! She bravely tells Pierre she refuses to be reliant on a man. Then she gets money out of nowhere from her late husband's work union, and also Tom Jones bizarrely helps save the day (making her reliant on Tom Jones, who I believe is a man). I really like Anjelica Huston. But in this movie, you really notice her terrible attempt at an Irish accent, which faded in and out, was never really right, and was extremely distracting. Her acting at points was also very bad, as in the funeral scene at the beginning where she realizes she is at the wrong grave. There were many points where it seemed as though she was concentrating too hard on just trying to get the accent right. In other scenes she had a look on her face that seemed she was just pleased she got the accent right for a change. She produced this movie, and should have known better than to put herself in it. She should have known it needed a severe re-write before production. It makes me think she doesn't quite have the minerals to do this many jobs on one production.
4. Mean Streets - Say it with me: "Steady-Cam Technology". Just about the whole movie was hand-held, and it was filmed before "Return of the Jedi". The result is the "Blair Witch" vomit trip of the 70's. Every time the camera jiggled I was taken right out of this movie - which was every few seconds. That wasn't so bad though, considering the movie sucked as completely as anything could ever suck. For 2 hours I watched a guy try to wriggle, six or seven different times, out of the same uncomfortable conversation about money he owed to different characters over and over until he finally shoots a particularly insulting creditor. He wasn't even all that insulting, the guy just took his jabs the wrong way, for no good reason. It was a completely ape-like reaction that didn't fit the movie, making for an ending more contrived than the ending of Last Tango in Paris.
5. The Ice Storm - I don't know where to begin. I think this was supposed to be an interesting movie about the most uninteresting characters ever created. These characters are background. The only potentially interesting character was 14 year-old Christina Ricci as the sex obsessed little girl, but I never really got to see a scene with her I could figure out... Elijah Wood brings his blank face to this film as well, even when Ricci starts sexing around with him. There was great potential with the key-swapping party scene, but this fizzled as well with a failed dry-hump in the car, in the driveway.
6. Cinema Paradiso - Fake arthouse junk. I really like foreign films. For a long while in my movie watching career, I thought just the "good ones" made it over to the U.S. Cinema Paradiso has thrown a monkey wrench into my theory. I laughed out loud when the trailer for Life is Beautiful said, "...in the tradition of Cinema Paradiso...". This is a terrible movie with bizarre events that made no sense, even in an artsy way. Part of it might be my hatred for "the life of" movies, where some terrible child actor plays the first 1/3, another actor plays the adult, and another actor plays the "old man" at the end. As a side note, I have an extreme hatred for the "old man makeup" trick (like in "A Beautiful Mind"), which is ALWAYS distracting - much more distracting than the changing actors trick. Part of it might be the fact there are too many moviehouse scenes - I think I got the point (or something like it) after 4 or 5 moviehouse scenes. Part of it was the bizarre contrived sentimentality the filmakers tried to force into the movie with the boy and the old projectionist character, especially towards the end. I really wanted to be pretentious and like yet another foreign film, but I couldn't even pretend on this one. There was one very very cool scene that was so out of place, it felt like I was watching a different movie (the scene with the mirror and the projector). Oddly enough, about a week after seeing this one, I saw a similar film that was far superior to this one: "La Lengua de las Mariposas". Search for it on IMDB.com, watch it, and compare. The acting done by the child is on of the best I have ever seen, especially at the end. It has the unforced dynamic the filmakers in "Cinema Paradiso" were trying for. "Cinema Paradiso" has taught me one important thing: bad movies don't just come from Hollywood.
7. Igby Goes Down - Total failure. Poor Igby has it so rough with his overbearing (so I'm told) mother, crazy dad, and pain in the ass brother that he is very sad, refuses to finish school, and runs away. He gets out of his LIMO (life is so hard) and runs three blocks (when he runs away, he really runs away, doesn't he?) to his stepdad's girlfriend's apartment. I think I was supposed to feel sorry for Igby but I'm not sure why. His mother seemed eccentric, but she wasn't overbearing. In fact, she was quite funny and interesting. The crazy dad really is too bad, but every family I know has at least one messed up/retarded/crippled memeber. And who of us didn't have a brother who was a pain in the ass? This guy was a load of fun compared to my brother. Maybe I was supposed to feel sorry for him after stepdad's hot model girlfriend fucked his brains out, or when he met a hot girl on his own who fucked his brains out. Did I mention Igby, the one these hot 22 year-olds are fucking, is an ugly 16 year-old who can't possibly have anything to contribute to a sexual relationship other than premature ejaculation? Poor Igby had it real rough. I think I had trouble with this guy because I used to DREAM of having it this rough when I was 16 (for those not paying attention, the dream is: being rich and constantly fucked by hot chicks). Big trouble happened when stepdad found Igby's hideout though! He... told the brother... and the brother... something... No, wait, nothing happened after all. Igby went home. The last 5 minutes of the movie were apparently filmed for some other movie - nothing led up to the final events, and the brother was, all of a sudden, not a pain in the ass anymore, and none of it made any sense anyway.
8. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - This could have been one of the best movies ever made. That's right, I'm saying it is not. Even the casual movie fan (movie fan, not one of the mindless herd) has to admit that he/she can sense the fear in the producer's hearts behind every scene in this movie. They took a great risk in making an expensive trilogy like this, and they did not want to get the short end of the stick. The result is a compromise; a combination of good effects and good acting counterpointed with unnecessary cheeze-ball action and, well, bad acting. The result is a bizarre movie with brilliant scenes followed by terrible scenes. Every cool scene of dialogue, every touching moment between old friends, and every time we felt the pull of evil, we were quickly (before any of the sheep dozed off), bombarded with a scene of the gang struggling along on their trek fighting creatures and getting blown up. Apparently, according to my friends, I was the only person who noticed the tragedy in the cave troll. After slowly being disappointed for several hours, I was quite pleased to see the action take an interesting turn like this. When the cave troll was led into the room, and had a collar on with a "leash" (a chain). Right away I assumed he was a trained beast, made ferocious by being beaten and tortured over time by his master, much like some people do with pit bull dogs, etc... When the troll was fatally shot through the mouth by the arrow, he had on his face a moment of unexpected (for me) realization of the wrongness of his actions. Perhaps this was brought on by his own severe pain and sense that his life would be over in a few moments. When I was ridiculed for this by my friends, I said perhaps I was just trying to read something interesting into this piece of shit. Elijah Wood. I had trouble at first putting a description to his particular form of bad acting. I came up with the phrase, "blank acting", because he always has that one blank look on his face. You know the one, and the example that comes to mind is the look on his face in the scene where the ring "accidentally falls through the air and lands directly over his finger". A friend of mine found a review that had a better description than mine: "What he does is not acting, it is face-making, and anyone can do it". Is this a good movie? As much as "Gladiator" was a good movie, so is this one. I know the mass herd of movie go-ers return over and over again to see John Woo (and Ridley Scott) and whoever else who claim to have a "new" movie where they just blow stuff up in the same old predictable way, and the people that made this movie know it too. In order to preserve their bank accounts, they put the explosions in for the sheep to wow over. My plea for the future is this: If you are going to take a risk, take it and don't compromise. Make a great film. Don't let Hollywood or anyone shape all of your craft into one boring blob. If you can't do that, then you are not a real movie maker.
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