Monday, May 07, 2007

The Worst of 2006

Crap de la Crap

3 Needles - It's clumsily-made and shoves the Message in your face every five minutes or so. The scenes set in China have different Chinese dialects flying all over the place, which is rather insulting.
Eragon - It looks cheap, has horrible acting and was written by a kid who stole every trick in the book, but lacked the skill to put it all together.
Hard Candy - After the brilliant opening scenes, it lurches downhill to become disgusting, exploitative and shamefully manipulative.
The High Cost of Living - It looks cheap, has horrible acting and seemed to be written by a kid who stole every trick in the book, but lacked the skill to put it all together.
Lady in the Water - Stars M. Night Shyamalan's Ego, and lacks any narrative sense whatsoever.
The Libertine - Tantalizes with a juicy opening monologue, but fails to deliver on all counts. Even Johnny Depp looks lost, as if he can't remember why he signed on for this piece of crap.
La Vida es silbar (Life Is to Whistle) - Magic realism and overt symbolism combine to form a long, painful, drawn-out mess of a film.
Open Season - The horror of fart jokes and lame cultural references overwhelm everything that could possibly be good about the movie. Not that there was anything that could have been good about it, since Ashton Kutcher is involved.
Question - Has the dubious honor of the film with the most sex I saw all year, but yet is one of the most boring.
人魚朵朵 (The Shoe Fairy) - This movie was Cute, so Cute I wanted to throw up. It also went nowhere at all.


Disappointments

American Dreamz - From the brothers that brought you About a Boy comes... a satire with no bite.
Cidade Baixa (Lower City) - The producer of City of God brings us this fine piece of trash with stupid, annoying characters running around having sex with each other and beating one another up.
傷城 (Confession of Pain) - I confess, I felt a great deal of pain while watching this pointless exercise in mopey navel-gazing, by the crack team that brought us Infernal Affairs.
Invisible Waves - The director's last film was well received by critics. However, this is complete shit, which was also shot shittily by Chris Doyle.
Nacho Libre - Jack Black playing a Mexican wrestler! What could be funnier? Actually, lots of things...
Snakes on a Plane - Didn't quite go far enough to enter the realm of Great Bad Movies, probably because it was so self-consciously trying to do so.
トニー滝谷 (Tony Takitani) - A Haruki Murakami adaptation, how exciting. Actually, some stories are better left on the page.
臥虎 (Wo Hu, a.k.a. Operation Undercover) - A cast that reads like a Who's Who of Hong Kong cinema doesn't disguise the fact that Wong Jing, the King of Crap, is involved in this.
World Trade Center - A sanitized Oliver Stone makes for really boring moviegoing.
X-Men: The Last Stand - Brett Ratner fucked it up. 'Nuff said.


Overrated

The Da Vinci Code - Tom Hanks' hair was alive, but unfortunately the movie flatlined. How on Earth did it make so much fucking money?
The Departed - Marty, I know you won an Oscar for this, but Infernal Affairs did it so much better, and with far less showboating (then again, Jack Nicholson wasn't in its cast)
Glastonbury - An overlong and pointless documentary that has no focus besides "Look, isn't Glastonbury cool as fuck?"
Indigènes (Days of Glory) - Sure, it made the French government sit up and make amends for screwing people over, but it's still a rote war flick with no imagination.
Jarhead - Like the war, ultimately rather pointless.
Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (The Last Communist) - Rambling and unfocused; I don't know what the big fuss about it was.
NAGASAKI・1945 アンゼラスの鐘 (Nagasaki 1945 - The Angelus Bells) - Comes highly recommended by lots of Japanese government agencies. Then again, that should've been a warning to me. Dull, preachy and repetitive.
North Country - By the book and boring. Charlize Theron didn't make a difference at all.
Transamerica - Besides the lead actress, there's nothing to shout about.
U-Carmen eKhayelitsha - Sounds like an interesting idea, but falls flat in execution due to overlong song and dance numbers, as well as awkward, abrupt narrative choices.

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1 Comments:

At 1:44 AM, May 08, 2007, Blogger Tim said...

Of all the films on this list that I've seen, I agree with you on every single point you make about every single one of them. Great minds, and all that.

(Except for Snakes on a Plane, which remains precious to me).

 

gimme some mindfuckery

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