Contrary to most opinion, I thought Kinsey was a big yawner.
I kept watching Irma in “Ladykillers,” and thinking, “They’ve put my grandma in a movie!” Except for the fact that Irma was black, she was exactly like my grandmother. So I got a kick out of the movie for that reason.
I can’t think of any truly awful movies I saw in the theater this year, though I rented a few stinkers.
The only thing I liked about The Ladykillers was J.K. Simmons’ performance, but that guy is always good. I thought it was a pretty abysmal movie otherwise, probably the worst from the Coen Brothers.
I’d definetly agree that the Ladykillers is the worst Coen brothers movies. In now way do I think it belongs on the list of the worst movies of 2004. I thought it was a fun movie. I liked tom hanks performance, and unlike most movies you see where they make the bad guys the good guys, all the bad men got what they deserved in the end.
Watch the chronicles of riddick and then tell me that the ladykillers belong on this list.
I’d completely forgotten about Ladykillers. The original is on of my favourite films.
The only truly HORRIBLE movie I saw this year was Team America.
I wanted to like that movie. I am a HUGE Parker/Stone fan and the type of comedy shoudl have rung my bell.
I wanted to leave halfway through (I did laugh hard at a few parts…like Puppet pile-driver.)
I actually liked Sky Captain because of the cheesy acting and silly storyline. I felt like the hamminess was perfect, considering the movie’s setting. I don’t think this was a “you get it or you don’t” film - I mean, there’s nothing subtle or especially clever about it - but I think that if you’re intrigued by the antique aesthetic of the movie, you’ll like it. And the chase scene through New York is sweet.
The worst 2004 movie that I can think of is Ocean’s Twelve. I liked the first movie quite a bit, but this one was just a mess. I get the feeling that the makers felt they were being clever by
having Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis play themselves, and not having a proper heist as expected
but instead it just felt stupid. I’d be angry if I spent money on it, but I got in on a free ticket.
Although I haven’t seen it, I’ll include Shrek 2 as well because there’s no way they could possibly have improved on the original enough to make it worthwhile.
I guess I’ll be the only one to mention Collateral . I saw it not knowing anything about it and was amazed to come home and read good reviews. Anybody who couldn’t figure out the final twist at the time of the intial set up has never been to a movie before. It was ridiculously implausable…which is a fine thing for a movie to be, but it tries to be just gritty and realistic enough that the implausability is really annoying. And the whole Cruise character’s Hip Existential Killer thing that people have praised? C’mon, it’s been done.
And it was so damned obvious. Julia Roberts doesn’t look like anybody except Julia Roberts. With another actress maybe it wouldn’t seemed clever, but not her.
Just caught Ebert & Roeper’s Worst Films of 2004 show.
Their picks (many of which have already been mentioned here) are:
Roeper
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Connie and Carla
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Taxi
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Saw
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Thunderbirds
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Catwoman
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The Stepford Wives
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Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
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Godsend
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The Whole Ten Yards
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White Chicks
Ebert -
The Village
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The Whole Ten Yards
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Resident Evil: Apocalypse
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White Chicks
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The Grudge
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New York Minute
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Dogville
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The Girl Next Door
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Christmas With the Kranks
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Tie: Troy and Alexander
Of these, I’ve only seen Stepford Wives, The Village, and Troy. I actually liked Troy, and though The Village is truly awful I would watch it again just for Bryce Dallas Howard. Stepford Wives is one of the worst movies I’ve EVER seen.
Oh my. How could I possibly have forgotten The Village? I suppose I must have blocked it out immediately after viewing that piece of utter, utter garbage. When I saw it I thought it might have been the worst theatrical movie I’ve ever seen. Of course, passions tend to run high right after watching a film. Now that I’ve had time to cool off and take a calm, rational look at the movie…well, I still think it might be the worst film I’ve ever seen in a theater.
I liked several of the films mentioned. Ladykillers was fun. Team America was a scream.
But Troy? Troy would’ve been overblown and stupid even without the horrible miscasting of Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom.
And Anchorman was gawdawful. And I like Will Ferrell.
I imagine I see 50 to 100 movies a year and cleverly I have only seen:
Ocean’s 12
Troy
Van Helsing
Christmas With The Kranks
all while on outings with my 15 year old son. I thought the first 3 were not great but were serviceable entertainment.
By a long way the worst movie I saw was Christmas With The Kranks with it’s almost psychotic reverence for conformity. I told anyone thinking of seeing it to get the large popcorn - you’ll need the bucket to vomit in.
Ocean’s Twelve was so irritating – the cool part of Ocean’s Eleven was seeing how the heist all came together and how the details were all worked out and how everything got pulled off. There was none of that in Ocean’s Twelve. Did they think that people who enjoyed the first movie would LIKE it if they completely changed the second movie around? If you’re going to try something like that you have to make it better than the first movie, not just different. What, we’re just supposed to have grown to love those quirky characters so much that we’ll watch a movie just to see what zany escapades they get into? Criminy.
Troy was just so boring, I couldn’t watch more than half an hour of it. I don’t know, maybe it got better after that.
The Village was irritating as well. Like Ocean’s Twelve, it was completely different than what we’ve grown to expect from an M. Night Shyamalan movie. In his previous movies (well, the previous three big movies, that is: The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs), there actually WERE strange things going on – dead people WERE speaking to the kid, the guy WAS a superhero, there really WERE aliens… but this movie ruined all that and only had the instantly-obvious SETTING as the twist. Not cool!
Plus there was that whole business about the story being stolen from a book. What was the verdict on that – was it really a stolen plotline? I stumbled onto an essay by Orson Scott Card claiming that it absolutely definitely 100% positively was, but he first claimed that The Sixth Sense was stolen from his book Lost Boys, which was a hilariously ridiculous claim, so I don’t know how accurate his assessment of The Village being stolen is.
The Grudge was highly disappointing after seeing Ju-On. And I say this as somebody who liked The Ring better than Ringu – The Ring was just scarier to me, with its better special effects. The Grudge was insufficiently better than Ju-On; in fact, it was barely different at all. The better special effects were just not put to very good use. Grumble.
While on a plane and having nowhere to run I was subjected to Garfield. Boy, was that ever awful, I can’t even begin to describe it. Then again, you probably weren’t going to watch it anyway so I don’t HAVE to describe the awfulness of Garfield breakdancing, Breckin “Ham” Meyer and Jennifer “Love” Hewitt. And I guess Bill Murray really really needed some extra cash.
Heh heh … I actually didn’t think Garfield was too bad. Obviously it was incredibly stupid, but I went into it having read all the reviews and I was expecting it to be the worst movie I had ever seen. It was dumb, and it irritated me that Garfield was CGI while Odie and Nermal were not, and I found it totally counter to the Garfield universe that LIZ actually had a crush on JON!!! … but then I realized that the real Garfield universe is kind of depressing[sup]1[/sup], and the movie was much more upbeat. I liked that aspect of it.
[sup]1[/sup]In the same way that the universe is kind of big.
Heh, I’ve only seen two of the movies mentioned thus far: Resident Evil: Apocalypse (the first one was fun, this one was…meh) and Collateral (agree that it was implausible, though it was well-done).
One disappointment: The Terminal
Overlong and manipulative dreck, but damn did Catherine Zeta-Jones look fine.
??? I realize that it won’t make the 10-best list of anyone who isn’t a 16-22 year old male, but it was pretty darn entertaining for what it was, and it was very honest about what it was going to be. I fail to see how one could look at the ads, think that it would be worth watching, and then go and see it and be disappointed by the end result.
Unless you were pissed that Dawn kept her top on 
-lv
Any tweener movie with Hillary Duff/Lindsey Lohan/any other overly made up wannabe popstar.
Garfield sucked rocks.
Little Black Book was ba-a-a-d
Scooby Doo 2
(I try so hard to get the kid into decent movies, but I’m still stuck with the parental obligation to see the “cool” movies, which almost always blow chunks)
Starsky & Hutch meh
Well, this thread is only about a week old, but if it was three years old it would still be worth resurrecting just to have an opportunity to say what a reeking pile of steaming shit Ocean’s 12 is. I finally got around to seeing it today and I want my money and my time refunded. What dreck. What unmitigated crap.