Doesn't exactly roll of the tongue, does it?
So, I bring you:
The Five Suckiest Movies of 2009!
As I write this, the 82nd annual Academy Awards ceremony is well underway. So far, Christoph Waltz has won for his awesome breakthrough roll as Hans Landa, The Jew Hunter, in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds (YAY!), Up, to the surprise of no one, has been awarded best Animated Film, and Mark Boal walked away with the Best Original Screenplay award for my beloved The Hurt Locker.
Sorry Quentin.
So, onto the list!
Coming in at number five is a film that I had extremely high hopes for, a film that I tried my damndest to like, but wound up hating:
Terminator Salvation, oh why, oh why did you have to suck so bad? This film, directed by the ego-maniacal, utterly visionless, ridiculously named McG is an abject failure and a disgrace to James Cameron's original two films.
I'm not exactly sure who deserves the majority of the blame here. Supposedly the original script centered around Sam Worthington's character, Marcus Something-or-other, and the character of future messiah John Connor was supposed to be nothing more than a cameo. Then along comes Christian Bale, fresh out of the bat-suit, with enough industry clout to do pretty much anything he wants. Bale sent the script out to some writer friends of his who beefed up the role of John Connor to be that of a main character. So what we are left with is a bloated mess of a film, one that devotes equal time to the boring and pointless story of Marcus and Anton Yelchin trying to reach the resistance to warn them about.....something, and to another boring and ultimately pointless story about John Connor yelling and growling at people about something else.
I don't even remember what anybody was yelling about or trying to accomplish in this film. Whatever it was, it wasn't very intriguing. I think they were trying to stop production of the Schwarzeneger model Terminators, but they didn't. This added nothing even remotely interesting to the Terminator mythos.
Oh, there was a really big robot, and motorcycle terminators. And Helena Bonham Carter.
Fail.
Next up is a film by a director that at one point in time had an awful lot of "promise" (what a dumb thing to say....I'm sorry...) but who, for whatever reason, hasn't been able to make a really good movie in the past thirteen years or so:
Alex Proyas' Knowing is the first of two (see if you can guess what the second one will be!) films on this list that deals with the "end of the world as we know it". The gist of this movie is that Nicolas Cage finds some long list of numbers, then somehow figures out that each of the numbers represents a disaster. He is able, through means beyond my comprehension, to deduce that the final number on the list represents an impending cataclysmic event that will eradicate all life on Earth.
Also, there are some weird angels/aliens running around in black trench coats, up to something mysterious.
At the end of the movie the world ends, the angels/aliens take a bunch of kids to heaven/another planet, and the viewer is left wishing that the world had ended before he/she had wasted two hours watching this terrible movie.
Number three on our list is a film that you likely haven't heard of, let alone seen:
Somehow, this is the only horror movie to make it on to this list. I find that a little surprising since 2009 wasn't exactly the best year for the genre...but I have decided that this film is the worst of the worst.
The Collector falls into the sub-genre not-so-affectionately referred to as "torture porn." There are films that fall into this category that I have a lot of respect for. This style of filmmaking has been huge in Japan for decades, and there are some quality films out there that can be dubbed "torture porn."
This is not one of them.
The film's villain is amongst the least scary that I have ever seen, and even the gore, which, let's be honest, is why you watch a movie like this, is almost entirely boring and cliche. There's one *almost* creative scene that involves a knife, a dude's stomach and a jar of cockroaches, but even that ends up being stupid.
Number two on our list is another movie that I really wanted to like. I went into this movie with an open mind, and I did my absolute best to appreciate it. There was so much about it that I *almost* liked:
The Box was directed by Richard Kelly, of Donny Darko fame, and based on a short story written by the legendary Richard Matheson. In my mind, this is a pretty impressive pedigree.
The film's premise is this: a stranger (the brilliant Frank Langella, with half of his face missing!) presents a married couple with a box . On this box is a button. If either the husband or the wife chooses to push this button within 24 hours two things will happen, 1) a man will show up at their house with a million dollars, cash, and 2) someone, somewhere in the world, someone they don't know, will die.
AWESOME! I love stuff like this. Crazy morality plays coupled with weird science-fictiony devices and horribly deformed people, how can this go wrong? I'm not sure, but it does. Horribly.
This is absolutely one of the weirdest movies I have ever seen. Not weird in the good Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks sort of way, weird in the too much barbeque before bed nightmarish kind of way. I'm still not exactly sure what I saw going on in this movie. It had something to do with Mars, and lightning, and the judgment of all mankind...
There are people out there who love this film. I'm pretty sure it's one of those divisive movies where people feel strongly one way or another. I can respect that, but it made my head hurt and gave me weird dreams.
Finally, we have our second end of the world opus. The number one worst movie, seen by me, of 2009 is:
See what it says at the top of this poster for Roland Emmerich's latest disaster film, 2012? It says "We Were Warned." I think that is a sort of apology from Columbia Pictures to the audience for allowing this film to be made.
"We were warned, after The Day After Tomorrow came out, we were warned not to let Roland make any more disaster pictures. I'm sorry, someone was asleep at the wheel. We forgot. It won't happen again."
Alright, imaginary studio executive. It had better not!
How many times does one movie need to show us a plane taking off just as the earth crumbles beneath it? According to this film, the answer is three.
The only thing slightly enjoyable in this movie was Woody Harelson as a lunatic, but even that was really pretty lame. Every time a new disaster movie comes out I get tricked into seeing it, because there's a part of my brain that loves watching things fall down and blow up. Well, I'm not falling for it anymore. I've already seen plenty of things fall down and blow up, and if you expect me to sit through a disaster film again then I demand that you write some sort of cohesive narrative and at least one character who I can care about. Thank you.
Alright, that wraps up my list. As stated above, there was an awful lot that I didn't see this year, so I'm sure there's quite a bit of crap that I've omitted. I will do my best to watch more movies so that next year my list can be more conclusive.
While I've been typing this a bunch of other people have won some awards.
Good job!
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