Top 20 Movies of 2008: Part 1: The Worst Movies

Most critics release their best and worst movie lists at the end of a year or at the beginning of the following year. I decided to wait until the end of May to release mine. Why? I don’t know, it’s just what I did.

For those not familiar with the way I list movies, I only consider films released between January 1 and December 31, 2008 in the area where I’m able to watch movies. This means if a movie was screened in New York and Los Angeles on December 20, 2008 but didn’t open in Atlanta until January 5, 2009, it can win an Oscar for Best Picture of 2008 but it won’t appear on my list until the next year.

This is why ‘There Will Be Blood’ is on this year’s list and why ‘The Wrestler’ isn’t. If I was considering release dates in New York, then ‘The Wrestler’ would be number one on this list without a question but it didn’t come to Atlanta until January 16th (after being released on December 16th in NY and LA).

Like the last couple years, I compiled the list as I went through the year, rating each movie as I saw them. The past year, I’ve lost a little patience with dramas, which is probably why a) I didn’t see as many dramatic movies in the theater last year and b) my top list is crowded with comedies.

Of the movies released last year, I saw 73 of them. Notable movies I didn’t see include: ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,’ ‘The Reader,’ ‘The Visitor,’ ‘Snow Angels,’ ‘Traitor,’ ‘Man on a Wire’ and ‘Valkyrie.’ Those may or may not have been good movies but I just didn’t get around to seeing them yet.

Likewise, there are some movies that might’ve made my worst of list but I didn’t see them, such as: ‘Righteous Kill,’ ‘Postal,’ ‘Sex Drive,’ ‘The Longshots,’ ‘The Bucket List,’ ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still,’ ‘Death Race,’ ‘Extreme Movie’ and ‘The Love Guru.’

I’ve decided to make the list 20 movies deep for both the best and worst sides. So starting with the 20th worst movie that I saw from last year…

20. ‘Son of Rambow’

I saw the preview for this movie before ‘Rambo’ and it looked like a sweet, small budget film about two kids that were going to try to make their own movie. Except, it turned out that it wasn’t all that sweet. It wasn’t as funny or as engaging as I’d expected and worse, it was slow moving and tedious (almost as tedious as a San Francisco travel blog).

19. ‘Drillbit Taylor’

Coming into this movie, I had moderately high expectations. I’m a huge fan of anything Judd Apatow puts his name on. On the other hand, Owen Wilson’s in this. I don’t think Wilson was the worst problem about this movie. I mean, sure, did I want to punch him in the nose? Of course. I always feel that when I see him in a movie…even those that I like with him in there. The problem was that the kids looked like they were cast to resemble the main characters in ‘Superbad,’ which only served to point out what an inferior movie this was. There were a handful of funny scenes in the movie but most of it was mean-spirited…and not the funny kind of mean-spirited.

18. ‘The Bank Job’

There have been so many stylish movies about breaking into locations to steal stuff. But what if someone would make a movie with a bunch of characters you can’t keep track of, that’s disjointed (so it can look clever) and stilted dialogue? Well, then they would’ve made ‘The Bank Job,’ a movie that tries so hard to be relevant but instead flounders in a well of predictability.

17. ‘Semi-Pro’

I don’t know why I watched this movie. I don’t like Will Ferrell except in a small, handful of movies. I thought a few scenes in ‘Talladega Nights’ were funny. But this movie is so completely stale. Usually, Ferrell looks like he’s having fun in his movies (which is good, since at least one of us should be enjoying what he’s doing) but even he looks a little bored through much of this thing.

16. ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’

Maybe it’s an even numbered thing. I liked the first and third installments of the Indiana Jones franchise and didn’t like the second and fourth ones. Or maybe I just like Indiana going up against Nazis. Whatever it was, this outing for Indiana was so incredibly bad. I don’t know exactly when it lost me. Was it Shia LaBeouf playing a greaser (maybe slightly more convincing than C. Thomas Howell in ‘The Outsiders’) or Indiana surviving a nuclear blast because he stuffed himself in a refrigerator? I’m not sure but by the time it got to the ‘Aliens are involved’ twist, I’d been lost for a while. Oh and there are three endings to this movie, each one worse than the one before, culminating in a lame wedding sequence that made me throw up a little in my mouth.

15. ‘Nobel Son’

The best thing about this movie was that I had really good chicken wings afterwards. Every character in this film struck the same note from beginning to end. With the pulsing dance soundtrack (that inexplicably stops midway through), it was like someone saw all of Guy Ritchie’s movies in a row (which are basically the same movie made over and over again) and decided the world needed another one…but this time with Alan Rickman in it.

14. ‘Flash of Genius’

Let’s stop for a moment and agree that Greg Kinnear seems like a nice guy. To use my mom’s terminology, he’s someone you root for. He’s not the problem with most of this movie (although when he appears to start having cotton stuffed behind his lower lip in the second half of the movie, it is somewhat disconcerting). The problem with this film is that it’s like someone wrote an outline for a book and then just shot the outline. Every scene building to the next scene and it’s this focus on moving the story ahead (while leaving character development behind) that makes you feel like you’re not watching a movie but rather a documentary…a very boring documentary. By the time the movie starts employing the device of ‘8 months later,’ ‘2 years later’ and ‘3 years later,’ you’ll feel that time is moving as slowly for you as it is for Greg Kinnear’s character. And the near final court room scene, I half expected someone to bring in a bag of letters to Santa and dump them in front of the judge. But that would’ve been funny.

One last note: The plot of the movie is about a guy that claims to have invented the intermittent windshield wiper. The novelty, I figured, would be they would take a boring idea and make it interesting. Instead, they took an uninteresting topic and made it even more uninteresting.

13. ‘War, Inc.’

Okay, so John Cusack’s playing a conflicted hitman and the costars include Joan Cusack and Dan Akroyd but this isn’t a sequel to ‘Grosse Pointe Blank?’ This movie’s an absolute mess. I could make a compelling argument why this is the worst movie of the year…until I look at what else is on this list. This attempted satire falls completely flat and becomes a mashup that’s almost painful to watch. Alright, so the military industrial complex is evil, is that an excuse for some director to force me to watch Hilary Duff hold a snake and talk in a Russian accent while sticking scorpions down her pants? Maybe super-hardcore liberals can tolerate a movie because it’s anti-Iraq War but the heavy-handedness is going to turn off everyone else (including many who agree with the bottom line thesis of the film).

12. ‘Seven Pounds’

Speaking of heavy-handed… Isn’t it interesting how Will Smith keeps finding himself in movies where he is depicted as a savior of sorts? This movie is called ‘Seven Pounds’ because that sounds better than ‘3.175 Kilograms’ or maybe it’s because it’s so contrived and gimmicky, you’ll want to hit yourself in the head with a seven pound hammer after seeing it. The movie is intentionally oblique in its storytelling because it wouldn’t have a movie if it laid its cards on the table. Once you figure out what the filmmakers are hiding from you, the rest of the movie becomes painfully obvious…painful because you still have an hour left to go before the ending. And in the end, always root for the jellyfish.

11. ‘Towelhead’

The preview of this movie seemed to suggest the story of a Muslim girl in America, a coming of age story set against the backdrop of prejudice in a small town. Turns out, not exactly a small town (it’s Houston) and it’s more about the pedophile living next door. The racism aspect of the film is a relatively minor subplot. Instead, it’s a creepy little narrative about adult men who want to have sex with a 13 year old girl from Lebanon.

10. ‘What Just Happened’

That’s exactly what you’ll be asking yourself after this movie’s over, followed by ‘And why did I just watch this?’ Every now and then, a movie comes out that Hollywood insiders love because it’s full of in-jokes and because it’s about them, their favorite subject. Watching from the outside looking in, it’s not nearly as funny as what it could’ve been, which is a shame. They had the people there to make it work. Robert DeNiro as an agent for the bearded Bruce Willis could’ve been really good. I mean, they certainly had a funny scene together. They even showed that one scene in the commercial so you could go and realize how the whole movie is nothing like the one scene that made you go in the first place. As for the idea that Hollywood is full of back-stabbers and sycophants…what an amazingly obvious insight.

One note: Credit though to Sean Penn. His performance was as close to self-deprecating as he gets.

9. ‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army’

I liked the original ‘Hellboy’ because it was charming and visually different than other movies that were playing. The second ‘Hellboy’ wants to make sure it’s visually different while neglecting the charm that made the first movie special. The previews for this movie used the term ‘From the visionary director…’ and that was the problem. The movie was filled with effects but it lacked any heart.

8. ‘Rambo’

This might sound stupid but even though I didn’t like the first three Rambo movies, I thought the fourth one would be good because I liked ‘Rocky Balboa.’ I mean, the logic is completely flawed but I watched it anyway. Through much of the movie, Rambo would grunt or spread out his dialogue with a sentence here, a sentence there. Mainly, he seemed like a man that wanted to be left alone…and I wish that I’d left him alone. The only reason to watch this movie is to see people get killed in gruesome ways, which is what the ‘Saw’ series is for.

7. ‘Quantum of Solace’

I enjoy the Bond series a lot and, while I wasn’t thrilled by the choice of Daniel Craig as the new 007, he won me over in ‘Casino Royale.’ In this movie though, the action starts off mindless and goes from there. The plot was pointlessly convoluted and I was completely bored through the entire movie.

6. ‘Saw V’

I was okay with the first movie in the franchise. The second movie was terrible. The third one was better than the second one but not as good as the first. And why exactly do I keep watching these awful things. I don’t know. The preview had something about how I wouldn’t believe how it ends. Yes, there’s a gimmick ending that sets up ‘Saw VI,’ which will probably have an ending that sets up ‘Saw VII’ and this is how we go. The series has twisted into basically making Jigsaw, if not the good guy, certainly on par with the good guys and better than ‘the really bad guys.’ Debates on moral relativism are fun, torture porn is not.

5. ‘Batman: Gotham Knight’

I rented this because I heard it was written by the screenwriter of ‘Batman Begins’ and another guy who wrote ‘A History of Violence.’ I was picturing a gritty graphic novel type of movie. Instead, I got this ridiculous mess that was a combination of a four or five separate chapters, including one that imagined Batman as a Transformer. A couple of the segments were okay but weren’t developed enough. It was essentially an anthology of different imaginings of Batman, not really a coherent story.

4. ‘Yes Man’

I went into this movie expecting it to be bad and it was actually so much worse than I’d expected. First thought in every scene: Jim Carrey looks really old. I mean, REALLY old. That’s not to say he should go hang himself or anything but every scene seemed to zoom in on his face, underlining just how old he is (he was 46 during filming but could’ve passed for older) and it’s made worse because the love interest is Zooey Deschanel (28 during filming but could’ve passed for younger). The plot is that a guy takes a vow to never say no and always say yes. How can this not be horrible?

Jim Carrey looks like he’s trying too hard in every scene, summoning all the zany energy he can but it resembles a man who can’t swim, flailing around in the water helplessly. I mean, I think there was something funny in the movie somewhere, I just don’t remember it.

3. ‘Hamlet 2’

Steve Coogan is great and I especially loved him in ‘Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.’ In this movie, it takes a promising premise, a drama teacher on the way out who’s going to direct one last play, a sequel to a play in which everyone pretty much died in the first one. The movie relegates Coogan to such comedic bits as getting a hand stuck in a locked door. The comedy is broad and not nearly as edgy as it thinks. And for a while, it forgets that it’s a comedy and becomes a drama. It wasn’t much better at being that either.

2. ‘Chapter 27’

Jared Leto gained a bunch of weight to play Mark David Chapman, the person who murdered John Lennon. I’m not sure what I was expecting with this one. Leto walks around New York wearing glasses and whispering a lot. He meets Lindsay Lohan, whose character is soon freaked out by him. Then it shows him killing John Lennon. There’s nothing to be gained from watching this, no insights that are added and ultimately, no reason to watch this shallow biopic of sorts. As for Leto’s performance: He gained weight and added body-mass doesn’t make for a better acting job. For a film that’s entirely about one person and follows that person everywhere and includes narration from inside of his head, I learned nothing that I didn’t know going in.

1. ‘Zombie Strippers’

I almost hesitated to even include this in the list at all. Whereas ‘Chapter 27’ thought of itself as a good film, ‘Zombie Strippers’ is a joke movie. A gag. But I’d heard it likened to ‘Shaun of the Dead,’ which I liked. So I rented ‘Zombie Strippers’ expecting a movie that was corny, didn’t take itself too serious and was silly. The problem was, it wasn’t funny. I mean, like a B-movie, it had the cornball plot and the bad acting but there wasn’t the self-awareness that ‘Shaun of the Dead’ had. And then there were the unnecessary but ever-present George W. Bush shots. Okay, he was shitty president but when that’s a movie’s go-to device for a laugh, it’s in trouble. The reason this movie is the worst movie is because it had absolutely nothing going for it and a hell of a lot going against it. The best thing I can say about it is that it made me pull out ‘Shaun of the Dead.’

Upcoming Posts

Obviously the next post will be the Top 20 Best Movies and some notable movies left off both lists.

Final Thoughts: Workplace Edition

I met someone face-to-face at work that I’ve spoken to numerous times on the phone. She said that I looked nothing like what I sounded like. She exclaimed that she never would’ve picked me out in a crowd. I don’t know what this means. I later asked a coworker who was there when this happened and she didn’t understand it either. I obsessed about it a lot until I decided that it means I have a good voice but an ugly face. I mean, I felt depressed about it but at least I wasn’t obsessing.

I heard a story at work about a guy who married a woman three weeks after they started dating (and they started dating three weeks after they met). They’ve been married over 20 years but I swear, I can’t imagine doing that. Maybe my decision making skills are slow.

Something that seems to have increased lately are the number of women who paint their toenails in the nearby area to where I sit. The smell is nauseating but the idea people are doing this at work is bizarre. I wasn’t a huge fan of clipping nails at work but this is even worse.

There’s this one coworker who plays opera-type music kinda loud. I don’t like that style of music, or any music where the emphasis is on the singer’s talent as a vocalist and nothing else. It seems like it’s not about what’s being said, it’s about how it’s being sung. Words just break down into syllables that are used to hit certain notes. That and I don’t like people playing music loud in a workplace.

Overheard at work: “I don’t believe no guy over 20 don’t have kids somewhere. He may not know about it but there’s no way they be dodging that bullet. Unless they’re gay. But all heterosexual men over 20 have at least one child somewhere.”