Worst Movies of the Decade

AKIE BERMISS: RottenTomatoes.com just came out with a list of the worst movies of the past decade. A list deserving to made, assuredly.  But only 100 and that leaves many of us with movies that still need mentioning.  While I enjoyed the list and agreed with many of the selections — I felt a little short-changed.  I watch a lot of movies.  And many of them I pay for.  And I think its only fair that since I’ve only been an adult for precisely a decade (and therefore responsible for all my own funds and the resulting wasting of said funds on some horrible films) that I get a few things off my chest.

Let’s start with the debacle that was the X-Men trilogy, shall we?  That was a group of movies that should have been SO much better than they were.  With Patrick Stewart AND Ian McKellen as the patriarchs and a host of middling to high-middle talent filling out the roster.  Those movies should have rocked my little comic-book-geek world.  Instead, the first movie was an utter disappointment.  It may have actually ended Halle Berry’s career (sure she won an oscar later for Monster’s Ball, but we all know what THAT was about), and it permanently ruined the X-Men franchise for me.  It turned out be a harbinger of woeful things to come because the other Marvel Comics movies (with the exception of a few like the first two Spiderman flicks and, more recently, Ironman) all sucked hardcore.  X-Men 2 was ok, but it was totally eclipsed by the supremely sucky third X-Men movie.  Daredevil blew immensely.  And Ang Lee probably made his worst movie with The Hulk (which also severely hobbled Eric Bana’s career — he’s now known chiefly as the poor man’s Christian Bale).  I gagged, I wept, and I had to move on.  What utter trash.

Moving right along, but keeping it in the geeky sci-fi realm there were two movies that really enjoyed that were complete, joyful camp.  The Mummy and The Mummy Returns.  I applaud you Brenden Fraiser for not sucking (we won’t mention your recent dubious outing wherein you attempted to decimate Jules Vernes’ Journey To The Center Of The Earth).  But when it came time for The Mummy 3: The Dragon Emperor, well, things just fell apart.  The camp became kitsch, then down-right slapstick horror.  I should have known something was up when Rachel Weisz didn’t sign on for the third film (she went places!).  Some may think this was just an crappy film not deserving of mention, but it ruined the trilogy.  Destroyed my boxed set hopes, and drove me to stop drinking.

I’d like to include a little ditty most people won’t remember at all.  It was called: Ghost of Mars.  In it Natasha Henstridge, Jason Statham, and Ice Cube appear to be trying to drive each other to suicide in order to stop the movie from being released.  Several people seemed to expire in the theater while watching it.  What a piece of unmitigated donkey shit!  I do not curse blithely — this is an award winner of schlock.  I knew something was wrong when the opening credits stated boldly “Music by John Carpenter.”  The director?  YES — the director.  He could even PAY someone  to write a score for that massive failure of a movie.  Was it horror or scifi or fantasy?  Does it matter?  And why is Ice Cube playing a prisoner from LA who has been incarcerated on Mars. WTF?!!!

Finally, I’d like to talk about the real McCoy when it comes to crappy films.  This man has almost, single-handed, ruined nearly every popular genre of film.  From action to espionage to Disney-adventure to horror to Rom-Coms.  He is simply an unstoppable scourge of crapitude, a spreading rash of ineffable wackness, a maelstrom of talentless under-exuberance.  And he should be made to pay.  In my head I think of him as the poor man’s poor man’s Bruce Willis.  He is none other than: Nicholas Cage.  If there was one actor who, if eliminated, would probably do all of Hollywood an immense favor — its Cage. I’ll admit to liking about three of his movies: Adaptation and Lord of War. But please, allow me to rattle off some of his titles and see if even one doesn’t make you gag:

Gone In Sixty Seconds

The Family Man

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

National Treasure

Windtalkers

Matchstick Men

The Weather Man

The World Trade

Wicker Man

Ghost Rider

Next

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Bangkok Dangerous

Knowing

… ’nuff said.  I’m through.

TED BERG: I saw Rollerball in the theater. This is something I intend to brag to my grandchildren about, as I’m certain this is true of fewer than 100 people on the planet.

It was back in 2002, and my girlfriend and I were asked, outside of a different movie, if we’d like to see a free movie “featuring LL Cool J.” At first I wondered if it was a trick question. I had seed Deep Blue Sea, so I knew about LL’s acting prowess and chiseled upper body. Who wouldn’t want another dose of that? Besides, we were at the very theater where Mr. Cool J had filmed his “Doin’ It” video, in Valley Stream, NY, so it seemed like fate.

Two days later, before us unfolded the single worst movie in the history of eyes. I have not seen many of the 27 movies ahead of Rollerball on Rotten Tomatoes’ recent list of the 100 worst movies of the decade, but I can personally guarantee that none of them is anywhere close to as bad.

I’d sum up the plot here, but I’ve blocked most of it. Chris Klein, you know, ‘Nova — like Casanova — from American Pie starred as some complete moron who hooked up with LL Cool J, playing some other complete moron, to go play rollerball in some unnamed, post-Soviet shithole. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos was in it, and she took her shirt off.

That didn’t even come close to redeeming it. Amazingly, amidst mind-numbing and not-even-cool-to-watch action, it made overtures to social commentary, starring Chris Klein as the Martin Luther King of the fake country’s fake sport.

Shockingly, it turned out the rollerball league was corrupt. And in some third-world hellhole! Who would’ve guessed? But the sinister rollerball kingpin guy turned out to be sinister, and his henchmen killed LL Cool J. I think. Honestly, it’s not just that I’m suppressing memories of this movie, it’s also that it was one of the most convoluted films I’ve ever seen.

Hilariously enough, my girlfriend and I were paid $10 each to sit in a focus group after the movie — since it was a preview — to discuss what we liked and didn’t like about it. The session was about three pitchforks short of a lynch mob, and got so heated that I actually felt bad for the people conducting the focus group.

People hated Rollerball. People hated Rollerball so much that they ignored the fact that they had actually been paid to see it and lashed out at the unsuspecting pollsters who had just handed them cash.

It was the worst movie of all time. I promise.

MOLLY SCHOEMANN: I love bad movies. It could be argued that I like them better than good movies. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is true. I have low self-esteem, and I like to feel superior to as many things as possible. A movie that stars Nicholas Cage as a motorcycling daredevil makes me feel a lot better about myself than a film like Michael Clayton, in which even the lighting design leaves me feeling inadequate.

That said, I do prefer my bad movies to be REALLY bad. If a movie is going to suck, it should do so to the fullest extent of the law. I’m talking I want a horrible script, z-list actors, craptastic costumes, a useless plot—the whole nine lousy yards. A just so-so mediocre movie wastes the time of all involved (although I’m generally less sad about Dane Cook’s time being wasted than my own). I don’t want to sit there wondering whether a movie is bad or truly bad-bad—my time is better spent pointing out plot inconsistencies and wondering if Keanu Reeves will ever get his wish to become a real boy. Just like a good movie, a truly terrible film can be transcendentally uplifting, if you’re like me and something in your childhood wasn’t right.

So it was with great excitement that I turned to the Rotten Tomatoes list of the 100 worst movies of the last decade—which seems like a strange list to compile in the year 2009, but I digress. Imagine my shock and disappointment when I realized, while scrolling through the movies, that I had only seen ONE of them. Just one! And it was Gigli! And I’m sorry I admitted that! Even I’m embarrassed to say that I lost two hours of my sweet life to that hackfest.

Rotten Tomatoes, wherefore did you compile this list? Where is Maid in Manhattan, in which a politician played by Ralph Fiennes falls in love with a hotel maid played by Jennifer Lopez? It hurt my hands to even type that. What about The Core, in which a group of sexy scientists travel to the center of the earth to fix some electromagnetic thingey that’s making birds fly into windows and shit? They go to the earth’s core and live to tell about it! How wrong is that? What about Jurassic Park 3, which exists at all?

Where was Be Cool, the anticipated sequel to Get Shorty, which deserves a place in the ninth circle of Bad Movie Hell for squandering all of its potential? (Namely, an all-star cast, and being based on a book by Elmore Leonard.) I hated Be Cool for what it could have been. What about Déjà vu, whose plot involved an incomprehensibly half-baked explanation of travel which made no sense? Or a little picture called I Know Who Killed Me?  Where indeed?

WHERE WAS TRANSFORMERS 2?

Rotten Tomatoes, I respect the devotion it took to compile this ambitious list, but I have to question your choices. You had 100 chances but still failed to include From Justin to Kelly. I’m just not sure I can trust your bad taste.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Arts & Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.