Birdman did not just disappoint me, it made me angry. Made by actors for actors and fuck you if you not in on it. I got the same impression from the buzz for La La Land, so I avoided it.
For the record, I liked both Doctor Detroit and Idiocracy.
I loved Joe Versus the Volcano. And I didn’t completely hate Highlander 2.
The worst movie I have ever seen in the theater was Heavenly Bodies.
Two hours of aerobic dancing.
Even the sex scenes were boring.
And I was a hormone-crazed teenager when I made that assessment.
I’ve seen plenty of bad movies, but automatically remove from consideration for title of The Worst, those films that were semi-deliberately bad and/or cheap exploitation films that had a bit of comedic value. For instance, “Them” (about giant ants in New Mexico spawned by nuclear testing) was fairly awful, but it was fun watching James Arness and James Whitmore trying to act their way out of it. “Wild In The Streets” (promo line: “If you’re thirty, you’re through!”) featured Hal Holbrook and (shudder) Shelley Winters and the putrid but entertaining theme song “Shape Of Things To Come”.
To be considered as my personal Worst, movies have to be enormously hyped as big-time productions or incredibly meaningful arty films, but be dreadful to sit through. #1 on my list is “New York, New York”, which Mrs. J. and I walked out on and immediately felt immense relief. Among arty disasters were “Three Women”, “Mulholland Drive” and “Barton Fink”, which were all a heady combination of depressing and massively boring.
Ebert was my man in '86. I saw 2.5/4 stars was a recommendation that I not see it, so I didn’t. Zero stars meant it would be fun, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls fun. One star meant it was lousy, two meant probably lousy, three meant it might be to my taste, and four stars was good, but it might bore me.
Amazing! I had precisely the same reaction when I saw Emnanuelle.
TCM sometimes airs this as a camp classic! It’s totally atrocious.
Some people thought “Forrest Gump” was a documentary, and “The Blair Witch Project” was really made from found footage. :dubious:
I’ll also nominate Brown Bunny, which was even more boring and stupid than Vegas Vacation, if that’s possible. Even the infamous fellatio scene was boring.
I’m not a big musical guy, and I enjoyed La La Land immensely.
The Blair Witch Project was occasionally annoying, but all in all I thought it worked. The final scene in the old house was chilling; sometimes less is more.
100% without a doubt worst movie I have ever seen was called Rubber. It was about a murderous car tire. Seriously, it rolled around and killed people by making their heads explode. Absolute shit!
Ooh…I just remembered Cool World with Brad Pitt and Kim Basinger.
Perhaps he didn’t get better at acting so much as he found his niche.
Some actors have success because they get roles which match the vibe they give off at a very basic, limbic level. They’re paid to be a part of themselves on camera. Think of how Jack Nicholson is given the role of abusive bastard in many movies because it clicks very well with his general way of being, including in interviews. Or Salmuel L Jackson with the roles of angry domineering people. Or Chris Pratt with boyish rogues.
Hanks happened upon an audition for a role that related to an archetype he’s very well suited to. Once people saw he was good at that specific shtick, he became highly sought-after to play that kind of role which was in high demand and where the only thing he needs to do is be himself on camera.
Perhaps Philadepphia might be the first flim where he was less a young goofy guy and more of a “kind innocent paladin” for lack of a better term. From that point onward, he had great success portraying the better side of Middle America beliefs. You can see him leading those values just enough with Philadelphia in 1993, then his “Baby Boomer Candide” with Forrest Gump then “Our country symbolised by this true gentleman can do great things” with Apollo 13 and Saving Private Ryan. Then leading those values a bit again with The Green Mile (race, death penalty, prison) and Cast Away (existential pounderings for middle-aged middle class midwesterners).
I don’t even need to think about this one. It’s Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video (1979), a tedious farrago of bizarre short films and unfunny comedy sketches assembled by Michael O’Donoghue. It was originally produced as a television special for NBC; they wisely rejected it. I saw it during its very brief theatrical run. I was one of a handful of people in the theater when the film started; when the lights came up at the end, I was alone. It is difficult to describe how utterly detestable this film is. One of the “comedy sketches” was footage of cats being tossed into a pool and forced to swim.
To add insult to injury, the film’s poster and opening credits listed reasonably well-known names such as Teri Garr, Margot Kidder, and Carrie Fisher. Most of them are on screen for only a few seconds.
I have friends who insist that The Phantom Menace is the worst film ever made, because “expectations.” :rolleyes: I tell them to check back in with me after watching Mondo Video. So far, none of them have accepted my challenge. They have no excuse, because it’s available on YouTube—nobody cares enough about the movie to file a copyright claim.
Worst movie, MST3K division: Manos: Hands of Fate
Worst movie, walked out of a theater: On the Right Track. Gary Coleman as a psychic shoeshine boy who could tell which horse would win a race because its name would (to him) glow when he saw the list of entrants in a race.
Worst movie, trapped, forced to watch most of the whole pile of garbage while waiting for my car’s tires to be changed, then complaining and finding out they’d forgotten to do them at all so I had to watch the rest of it: Nothing But Trouble.
So overall, Nothing But Trouble.
Some Call It Loving Back in the VHS days I was in the rental store and spotted it on the rack. Picked it up, noticed Richard Pryor was in it and was going to give it a shot but changed my mind and put it back. Got home and discovered I had put the wrong tape back and had actually rented it. Decided to watch and holy shit, what a disaster!
The previously mentioned Prometheus and John Carter Of Mars get my vote for most disappointing. I was really hoping they would be great.
I never heard of most of the movies mentioned, fortunately, and also vaguely recall *Avatar *as too bad to even finish. I did think The Thin Red Line was worth a star or two, but then I’m a fan of Nolte, Penn and war movies in general.
Two of my nominee for worst movie are The Ladykillers with Tom Hanks, and Plan B with Diane Keaton. Neither has any redeeming value at all. De Niro’s Meet the Fockers is also unusually bad. They made a sequel to this disgusting movie? The mind boggles.
Perhaps there should be a whole subthread just to discuss bad John Travolta movies. One of the worst, and rife with stupid plot holes, is Basic. Roger Ebert described it succinctly: “not a film that could be understood … all smoke and no mirrors. If I were to see it again and again, I might be able to extract an underlying logic from it, but the problem is, when a movie’s not worth seeing twice, it had better get the job done the first time through”.
I usually like suspense mysteries; they’re fun even if I don’t try to figure out the solution or twist. But there has to be a solution or twist, not just jumbled nonsense like Basic. In a similar category is Mulholland Drive, though I almost recommend watching it! It has all the pieces of an elaborate suspense jigsaw, and would be a good movie if there were some way to assemble that jigsaw. But David Lynch himself admits it was a hodge-podge (starting life as a rejected TV series pilot) and that it has no rhyme or reason.
Count me in with those who liked Joe vs the Volcano. It’s not a great movie, but it has its charms. I had occasion to visit the Boston City Hall a few years ago, and inside it has exactly the same creepy vibe as inside the condom factory. If I had to work there I might think throwing myself into an erupting volcano was a reasonable alternative.
Likewise, I liked The Thin Red Line. I think it is a great piece of cinematography. I also like the study of what makes a good combat commander. You don’t see that kind of raw honesty very often in war movies. They are usually about heroes.
As far as really bad movies, I agree about Smokin’ Aces. I found it absurd.
My contribution would be The Avengers (the Ralph Fiennes/Uma Thurman/Sean Connery version of the '60’s TV show.) Sean Connery as the bad guy with henchmen bouncing around the landscape dressed to look like a cross between Teletubbies and the Everready Bunny! A female superior known as Father and a male superior known as Mother! Give me a break. This was one of several movies that have left me wondering what exactly a fine actor like Connery was thinking when he took the part.
Most of all, the TV show was really all about the unspoken sexual tension between Emma Peel and Mr. Steed. Even as an 8 year-old who didn’t yet like girls, I understood that. Fiennes and Thurman had all the chemistry of a turnip and a lump of coal.
Blair Witch Project - It’s one thing to put people in a stressful situation, but then have them always behaving in exactly the worst, most foolish, dangerous way? I mean really, you’re out in the woods hunting for something spooky. You don’t know what it is, or even if it’s real. So when you hear strange noises in the night your first reaction is to grab a camera and go running off into the dark with no means of protecting yourself? Never mind supernatural spooks, what if it’s a bear!?!? How will you protect yourself with your camera?
Frankly, I was rooting for the witch or whatever it was, as those people didn’t deserve to live. I walked out of the movie thinking it was a triumph of marketing, but nothing else.
I’d probably go with Citizen Kane - nowhere near enough sleds.
However, Uma did look quite fetching in that leather jumpsuit.
I can’t use “I fell asleep during it” as a reason to call a movie bad as I’ve fallen asleep through plenty of quality, though completely uninterested in seeing them, movies. By the time I was dragged to the sixth Harry Potter movie, for example, I was looking forward to my upcoming nap.
And I liked BWProject, but I decided to buy into the premise, that these were a bunch of dipshits who didn’t know what the F*** they were doing but still ended up doing something interesting, so that helped. It also helped that the premise works on many, many levels. 