Most awful movies (in celebration of Hollywood's fourth declining revenue year in a row)

9/28/05 | ltn72

[pabianice]

Movie theater revenues are down 10% in the past three years because of home video technology and because movie quality has objectively continued to decline. We Freepers occasionally review a movie here for fun and to warn others not to waste their money.

So, for a change of pace, let's discuss really bad movies we've seen for one reason or another. I propose three classes of bad movie:

Class 1. A bad movie you sit through because of peer pressure

Class 2. A really bad movie you force yourself to watch because, darn it, you paid for it!

Class 3. Horrifyingly bad movies you simply leave, dragging yourself up the aisle with your arms because your legs have gone numb from shock.

Examples:

Class 1: "The Incredible Lightness of Being" -- stupifyingly bad writing and performances, polished off by a plot involving a serial adulterer physician ruining the lives of all around him for his own sexual gratification – won numerous awards in Europe

Class 2: "The Strawberry Statement" -- I still remember the poster: "The Vibes Were Good, but the Times Were Bad" -- horrifyingly bad performances around a story of beautiful, gentle hippies going to college in San Francisco and lovingly protesting the Vietnam War, only to have the experience ruined by Cylon-like police in riot gear gassing and clubbing them to death during a sit-in for peace; also includes some of the worst dehumanization of women ever portrayed on the screen

"Coming Home" -- what can you say about a movie with Jane Fonda that tells the tale of a maimed vet coming home from the Illegal Vietnam War on Terror to win the heart of a military officer's wife who realizes that her Marine husband is actually a monster (who's also lousy in bed, of course) and so leaves him for the maimed (but good in bed despite the loss of most of his appendages) and virtuous war-protesting vet; movie ends with Marine drowning self by walking into the ocean to atone for his evil acts of national defense

“War of the Worlds” (2005) – This is one big mess of a movie; Aliens have already visited Earth in the distant past to leave their Tripods but then wait until we have atomic weapons and armies before they decide to come back and wipe us out; they arrive at nearly the speed of light in capsules that burrow underground and would be instantly vaporized by the impact; they need human blood to fertilize their Martian Kudzu (“Soilent Red is People!”); it never occurs to the Martians that they need to get flu shots before invading another planet; as the aliens sicken, they conveniently lower their shields so as to be suddenly defenseless against anti-tank rockets; the list is almost endless; the 1954 movie was far superior

"Getting Straight" -- yet another Vietnam vet comes home to attend college and is faced with a school faculty who are all repressed homosexuals and psychotics who determine to drive him out of college; he's saved by heroine who encourages him to Stiock it To the Man!; story ends with the vet kissing his male teacher on the mouth, creating a riot on campus, and then having sex with the heroine on the staircase as the riot and tear gas swill about them in a wonderful collage of color and self-congratulation -- ah!

Class 3: "The Happy Hooker" -- no plot, no production, no acting, but lots of frontal nudity and smashed beds

"Darling" -- critically acclaimed piece of crap about a beautiful, talented, rich woman with the IQ of an end table struggling to make her way in a world of rich men who throw themselves at her feet and take her to fabulous vacation spots

Special Category – What Would Have Been Good Movies But Ruined by One Bad Scene: “A Few Good Men” – Very entertaining story about good and evil in uniform ruined in the courtroom climax, when LTJG Caffee says to the colonel: “I’m a Navy officer, and you are under arrest, you son of a bitch!” Those last five gratuitous words by a screenwriter clueless about the military instantly makes Caffee guilty of disrespect towards a superior officer (a court martial offense) and lower him to Jessup’s level

[dynachrome]

If you haven't all ready done so, you might want to check out a Johnny Depp movie called "Dead Man" It is a Jim Jaramusch film.(1997?) Robert Mitchum's last film. It also has old time punk rocker Iggy Pop as a cross dressing mountain man. Very weird. excellent cinematography.

[Borges]

I guess I don't really care about acting all that much. The dread I'm talking about comes from the mise-en-scene and constant sense of movement that Spielberg gave it.

[Alouette]

Here is my list of Worst. Movies. Ever. In no particular order of awfulness:

The Contender
Storm Trackers (Idaho weatherman's tinfoil conspiracy made into a really bad movie)
The Blair Witch Project
Any Movie Starring the Olson Twins
Sin City
Ash Wednesday
Life of David Gale
Spirit, Stallion of the Cimmaron

[PigRigger]

That movie was called, "ENOUGH!"....I enjoyed that movie because we watched it with our daughter's fiance, and my granddaughter's sperm donor.....He was an abuser, we knew it but my wife and my daughter were not allowing me to rip out his nuts and feed them to him.....But, he got the message after seeing the movie. He moved out the next day.

I'm glad to hear the film served at least one worth while purpose.....

[Alouette]

I thought Constantine was the worst movie I've ever seen.

All the "special effects" looked like "Lord of the Rings" Gollum outtakes.

[SoothingDave]

Spirit, Stallion of the Cimmaron

Why this movie? Is it Bryan Adams? My 4-year-old loves it, though she mostly uses it as an excuse to gallop around the house.

SD

[geopyg]

Thank you - Kathy Ireland (how could I forget?!)

[ssaftler]

Whoa, there! You're getting too much into the esoteric crap for most of us. I go to movies for the entertainment or historical view of things. The technical background of the movie itself is a foreign subject to me, and adds nothing to my enjoyment (or lack thereof) of a picture.

It's sort of like trying to explain to my father why one computer is better than another based on the speed of the CPU and the internal cache memory of the chip.

[YaYa123]

Any Woody Allen movie qualifies as the worst movie ever made.

[Romish_Papist]

Fair enough, but Paxton... how does he get work? "Game over man! Game over!"

[Borges]

You've never seen 'Love and Death' or 'Manhattan' then have you?

[qam1]

"What was I thinking?" Yea ... I had a moment like that when I saw "Animal House" last summer for the first time in 20 years.

That was the 1st thing that popped into my mind when I saw the question. I know I used to think it was funny, but I when it replayed this summer I couldn't believe how utterly stupid that whole movie is.

My Class 1 movie is The Lord of the Rings, It's like watching other people play Gauntlet - Wizard, shot the food.

[Artemis Webb]

No arguement here...except on Sin City, which I loved!

Cardinal Rourk: What the hell do you know?
Marv: I know it's pretty damn weird to eat people."

[macrahanish #1]

"You get to drink from the firehose!!!!"

Weird Al is the greatest mind of our time.

[Borges]

I'm speaking of the 'movieness' of a movie. If you can talk about the finer points of acting or writing why not the finer points of direction and editing? Themes are conveyed that way (where the characters are in the frame in relation to each other and the background and foreground) just as much as they are through dialogue.

[Alouette]

That would be "Enough" which starred J-Ho and Jesus, er, Jim Caviezel.

I think that was Billy Campbell, not Jim Caviezel.

[Artemis Webb]

Radio Days, Zelig, Bullets Over Broadway ("You're a terrible actress" Bang Bang)

Great Stuff

[Borges]

Zelig was great and quite prophetic.

[Alouette]

Why this movie? Is it Bryan Adams?

Actually I thought the Bryan Adams song was the only good thing about the movie.

No, it is the political correctness and historical revisionism that oozes from the screen. White men=evil, progress=eeeville, brown men=good, horses=running free on the prairie since the dawn of time (no dumbass, the eeeeville white men brought horses to the western hemisphere, before that the natives used women for beasts of burden)

[Woman on Caroline Street]

Sin City-

Just rented and watched it three times. I'm curious to see what the graphic novel looks like that it was based on. A good movie to watch more than once. Some things were left a bit unexplained, though, in my opinion. Like the relationship between Clive Owen's character and the head hooker. Could it be that it was explained more fully in the novel?