Chewers' 10 Worst of 2006 - Page 2

The Omen
TCM: The Beginning

Both of which I saw out of morbid curiosity, rather than expecting anything good. As for being disappointed, I guess X3 could qualify, but I didn't walk out particularly passionate about it. Ditto for Superman Returns.

Small list, but I don't see every last fucking thing that comes out, so I thankfully missed a lot of the utter shit you guys are listing. Holy hell, you poor bastards. You'd have actually had to HURRY to see Grandma's Boy in a theater.

You said 10, but these 15 horrible films deserve a mention:

The Abandoned
American Hardcore
The Black Dahlia
Fast Food Nation
Flags of Our Fathers
Half Nelson
Inland Empire
Little Miss Sunshine
Lucky Number Slevin
Miami Vice
Nacho Libre
Saw III
A Scanner Darkly
Silent Hill
Ultraviolet

I really suck at this remembering what movies you've seen business. Cigarette Burn just reminded me that Silent Hill exists. I'd like to add it to my list.

Thus far, my cash has thankfully not been wasted except for a few moments of reckless ticket buying:

Ultraviolet--I saw it because, well, I liked Equilibrium. A lot. It was a fun, entertaining sci-fi flick, but Wimmer seems to have become best buddies with Uw Boll since 2002. Either that, or he just didn't have the budget to go fuck crazy like he did on Ultraviolet. Or maybe the simple presence of Bale, Diggs and Watson were enough to elevate the material. I don't know why Equilibrium was able to entertain while UV managed to bring me nothing but pain and confusion. I went in not knowing what the buzz was, which should've been the first indication, and only knowing that Wimmer directed it, Milla starred and lots of shit blew up. So I was hoping for a fun, Transporter 2-like romp. Not exactly expecting the world here. I got what might be the first ever example of CGI vomiting onto celluloid. I honestly didn't know what was happening for 45 minutes into this movie, and once I got it all sorted it out, I realized that the film didn't know what was happening either, and then took an incredible right turn towards Downs Syndrome-level stupidity, leading into one of the most brain-crushingly stupid endings in the history of ever.

The Omen--I never once thought this had a chance of being good, but the novelty of 6.6.06 and the fact that there was a very large group of friends going to see it and me being bored caused me to relent. That, and the tickets were only $4 (yay student discounts!). I also have and admiration for Schiber and Thewlis, and was hoping that their presence would anchor the film. About 15 minutes in I realized that this was the spiritual bastard child of VanSant's Psycho remake--I would've been better getting the same group of friends over to my place, ordering a pizza and watching the original. Thewlis' decapitation was a cool effect, but severely lacking in actual punch. The kid was annoying, too, and I'm still wondering how Julia Stiles got into this movie, and who exactly paralyzed her face into a blank, emotionless stare.

X-Men 3: The Last Stand-- I'm gonna go on a little rant for this one. I'm a huge X-Geek. Have been since I was a kid. Out of all the comic books I read as a kid, the X-Men series were always the ones that fascinated me. When I first learned of the original X-Men movie in 1999, I was pumped. The first teaser, as rough and unfinished as it was, made me giggle with excitement. And even though that movie had problems--mainly because of the small-ish budget and short shooting schedule--Singer nailed the characters, which was always the important part of the X-Men. X2 was a masterpiece, and I'll go down swingin with anyone who disagrees, and the conclusion, with that final shot of the Phoenix, promised another installment with similar degrees of amazing. Then the problems began. For some reason Rothman dragged his feet for a full year, even though X2 scored huge at the box office--he didn't want to give Singer $150 million for the third one, so Singer could finally have his Angel, his Beast, his Danger Room (a really neat concept that sadly will only have existence in the original X2 teaser). So Singer got tired of waiting and went to do his boyhood dream of Superman. All seemed lost. Then we hear that Matthew Vaughn has been hired and is working on the script. All well and good for me--Layer Cake was great and he had a good producing record. Then he quits, and I'm back to despairing. Rumors of Zack Snyder made my ears perk up--X-Men needs a visually interesting director who's also good with an ensemble--but the ultimate decision for Ratner filled me with dread.

Regardless, I went into the theatre with an open mind. Ratner wanted to prove he could handle this, and I went in asking him, allowing him the chance, to show me. With a $200 million+ budget and an awesome storyline all lined up for him, his for the taking...he botched it. He delivers the limpest, most narratively boring superhero flick in the last decade. Everyone's a thinly sketched caricature, Berry's ego waddles throughout the movie, and then they start killing people off. This should've been Cyclops' time to shine as the leader of the X-Men having to do battle with one of their own, his own wife. So what happens? He vanishes five minutes in. Wolverine was the backbone of the first two, but has nothing to do here. Will he step up and become the leader? Who cares? Not Ratner. He's too busy shoving in so many mutants that it's hard to tell what most of their powers are (Callisto's power is to look like Michelle Rodriguez and spout off RPG stats). I feel bad for Anna Paquin--an actress as talented as she is, who has carved out a really excellent Rogue in the last two, has a glorified cameo in this one, copping out at the end so she can sleep with a high school crush. Then they turn Professor X into a hypocrite, and then can't commit to Magneto losing his powers. I don't think I've ever had a movie frustrate me as much as X3--I literally came out of the theatre fuming.

Man of the Year--This is another "I should've known better", but I was really hoping that the man who brought me Good Morning Vietnam and Wag the Dog would be able to bring the goods again in another comedy/satire. And really, since his brief run of actually good movies in 2002, I've been waiting for Robin Williams to impress me again. I came out disappointed, wondering who in the wild world of sports thought that a satire whose message was "Politicians are corrupt, they're only there to help private interest groups and they suck...but they're the only ones qualified for the job! Fuck being the voice of the people!" And it's a truly sad day when not only was Williams utterly unfunny, he gets upstaged by Lewis Black and Christopher Walken every step of the way. Also, why put Jeff Goldblum in a comedy and then give him nothing funny to do? And what Sydney Pollack political thriller got intercut with this movie--something about voter fraud starring Laura Linney kept getting spliced in.

I usually avoid seeing obviously terrible movies, so, no DATE MOVIE or LITTLE MAN on my list. The worst that I did see, however, was GLORY ROAD. It takes some effort to make what should be a by-the-numbers sports movie truly awful.

I've seen a couple of not great movies this year. But X-Men 3 is the only one that stands out in my mind as a truly honest-to-god BAD movie (and Miami Vice, but I'm not getting into that again). Haven't seen Ultraviolet, but I feel vindicated for the amount of bitching I did after seeing Equilibrium about how Wimmer is a styleless, soulless poo.

I didn't see all that many movies that were released this year, but out of the 20 or so that I did, Ultraviolet is hands down the worst. Absolutely awful.

X-Men: The Last Stand was pretty stinky as well, but it was more mediocre than it was terrible.

Yeah, Ultraviolet was so bad that I was, during several scenes, embarressed to be in the same room with it. X3 was also a big disappointment, but beyond that I've chosen my movies pretty well this year.

I don't see how people can keep listing films like Miami Vice and X3 as worst of the year, when there's at least 20 far inferior films out there this year (or in the case of Miami Vice, Hundreds - since it's one of the best movies of the year). Not even talking about the oft-mentioned bullshit like Ultraviolet, and the obvious but less-mentioned Wicker Man...but Glory Road, Click, Man of the Year, Failure to Launch, The Santa Clause 3, RV, The Lake House, The Grudge 2, She's the Man, The Covenant, and now Eragon. ALL of these movies are much worse than X3, M:I:III, or Miami Vice.

Maybe some of us aren't dumb enough to see all those awful movies? In my case, NONE OF THEM!

Movies I saw this year

good/great: V for Vendetta, Inside Man, Casino Royale

mediocre: MI:3, 16 Blocks

shit: Da Vinci Code, Superman Returns, X3, Saw 3

I hated Little Children more than any movie I've seen all year. It's not the worst, but I can't remember the last time I walked out of a theater so angry.

It's like Cigarette Burn said, I didn't see any of those movies you listed. The looked terrible so I didn't waste my money on any of them. Out of the movies I DID see, Ultraviolet and X3 were the worst.

1. The Wicker Man
2. Attack Force
3. Lady in the Water
4. Stay Alive
5. Waist Deep
6. Miami Vice*
7. John Tucker Must Die
8. Click
9. Silent Hill
10. For Your Consideration

For the most part I'm pretty good at avoiding bad movies (There are so many Amazing movies I have yet to watch, so why waste the time?) but these slipped through the cracks.

*I fell asleep in the middle of this, so I'm willing to give it another go someday, in the name of fairness.

I just watched Waist Deep becuase stupid Stephen King had it in his top 10 of the year list in EW and it peaked my interest.I'm down for some violence,shootouts...nope.A couple of guys got shot but it was very anti-climactic.Squib porn this is not.

Also,Tears of the Sun didn't come out this year but it deserves a mention.

C'est la vie. I've now seen 75 films released in 2006, not counting the 5 - 10 that were finally released this year that I saw in '05. Unlike you, I don't watch masochistic shit. I didn't go into any of these movies expecting trash, but in many cases, that's what I received. Some of these films do not belong on a traditional "Worst of" (since they are all on the whole well-made) but out of the films I saw, these are the bad apples, if you will.

The Abandoned was an overlong, poorly acted, sometimes beautiful, though incomprehensible, story about doppelgangers. Nacho Cerda failed at his first attempt at a full-length feature as far as I’m concerned.

Flags of Our Fathers was another beautiful-looking film, with lush cinematography and some unique compositions on the battlefield, but the script was terrible. The film’s strength, which was following the horrors of guerrilla warfare on Iwo Jima, is replaced by repetitive scenes of our few lucky flag raisers hocking war bonds. Plus, the film uses the hackneyed bookend device in an attempt to garner sympathy. Flags is the perfect example of how not to write a script. If a high school student (me) knows better from a fucking “advanced film” class, Haggis should know better too.

My professor loved Half Nelson, probably because he’s a disgruntled (underpaid) liberal teacher. I, on the other hand, could not find anything other than Gosling’s performance worthwhile. Gosling is able to keep these entire film afloat, crafting one of the better after-school specials I’ve ever seen, but it’s still just an after-school special. I feel exactly the same way about American History X, and I hate Dead Man Walking, for what it’s worth.

Inland Empire can best be described as a three-hour odyssey that goes absolutely nowhere. It never quite achieves the dark humor or nightmarish quality (or at least the narrative) of Mullholland Drive (or Lost Highway, for that matter) which prevents it from being entertaining even if you can’t tell what’s going on. The problem is, I could tell what was going on, and I just didn’t care. Fab, you really enjoy experimental films, I can tell. I sometimes enjoy them, but when I go into them, they must do something more than look cool and be moody. Also, when I don’t understand something, I don’t automatically assume it’s meaningful.

Miami Vice was billed as a deconstruction of the popular cop show of which I’ve seen less than five episodes, so its total disregard for the source material didn’t bother me. I can’t deny I’m not exactly a huge fan of Mann (I find Heat to be very overrated, though undeniably well-made and overall a good film, just not the masterpiece it’s painted out to be), but his films are all at least technically impressive. Not so this time around. Miami Vice’s visuals were very muddy and grainy due to the HD photography, which didn’t make it very exciting. Most of the acting was terrible (especially Gong Li, who was utterly unconvincing as Crockett’s lover), and the team aspect of the show was wholly ignored making Jamie Fox the under-used sidekick to Farrell’s (who gave the sole great performance in the film) white trash Crockett. While Miami Vice might have had one of the year’s best scenes (The grungy reality television feel of the trailer park sequence is breath-taking) the rest of the film just kind of meandered around without saying anything new or worthwhile on the genre. Just a cheap imitation my friends.

A Scanner Darkly was another (you guessed it) great-looking film, but on any kind of thematic or plot level it was totally lacking (This is not to say that films need a plot, but there needs to be something more than a few random scenes strung together, especially when the random scenes are on the whole very, very uninteresting). Other than Downey Jr. and Harrelson, the acting consisted of a bunch of unlikable junkies, who I just didn’t give a fuck about. While portraying psychedelic drug abusees as paranoid fucks may be accurate, it doesn’t make for a very good movie. There’s a reason the junkies in Trainspotting and Requiem for a Dream (to name a few fantastic recent films dealing with drug addiction) are somewhat likable and definitely interesting. Whatever the case may be, it never really drew me in until the ending which hinted at this amazingly cool spy operation. Too bad that’s where the film ended. True, this may be the source material’s fault, but Linklater wasn’t able to make the paranoia of a bunch of junkies very interesting, but hey maybe it just wasn’t my type of film.

It snuck in just under the wire, but Black Christmas just might take the crown as 2006's worst.

Good assessment. I agree about Gong Li, who is one of my favorite actresses when she's speaking her native language. Both performances where I've seen her use mainly English (Vice and Geshia) have been god awful.

A Night at the Museum, without a doubt the worst theater experience I had in 2006, beating out Deck the Halls by a hair.

Didn't you see ULTRAVIOLET ten or fifteen times last year?

Now that it has hit cable I finally thought I owed it to myself to watch ULTRAVIOLET this morning. That was some shit to be sure. It's like UNDERWORLD with a diverse color palette.

Nope, should I have?

Night at the Museum was probably great until the studio took over the editing.

Well, I hear the Blood Chinois sequence was really great!

If you say so...I don't eat bait.

Last month I was trying to convince a guy that, despite his belief to the contrary, Deadwood was a freaking awesome show. The kind of arguments he was throwing at me were really idiotic ("Moves too slow", "What's with the way they talk?"), but he completely took my prize for Dumbest Guy of 2006 with this:

"Man, Basic Instinct 2 is actually quite good. You know, the first movie was only about the scene with the legs, but this one has so much more..."
(at this point I wondered if the plot had really been overlooked by the naysayers)
"... so much more than just legs! It's got everything! Her butt, her boobs, and it's got an awesome car chase."

I won't list all the DTV stinkers, but the very worst deserve to take their lumps:

Attack Force
Easily Steven Seagal's most agonizingly tedious flick yet, and that's saying a lot. It takes nerves of steel to make it all the way to his climactic slap fight with a 100 pound fashion model.

The Hunt For Eagle One
Mark Dacascos must be praying for a Brotherhood of the Wolves sequel to rescue him from these high school film projects. At least he got to meet Rutger Hauer (praying for the Sin City sequel).

Behind Enemy Lines: Axis of Evil
Another "film" where the hiring of a professional DP would have been a great benefit. Random blue-tinted closeups of people shooting at who knows what do not excitement make. And as with The Chronicles of Riddick having Keith David on screen for only 5 minutes is just plain retarded.

Waist Deep
Paper thin story or not, there might have been some interest here if the cast had the slightest acting ability. Tyrese could have desperately used a visit from his three brothers.

Grandma's Boy
Just hideously bad. Full of "jokes" that not even teenage National Lampoon interns would dare put to paper. Handily beats out There's Something About Mary for "most tasteless masturbation scene" though.

The Benchwarmers
The film's about a bunch of athletic rejects, and it's fittingly cast with a bunch of comedic rejects. Maybe one decent line from David Spade and that's it. Reggie Jackson peaked with The Naked Gun.

Ultraviolet
It does have a huge amount of action and Milla Jovovich looks great, but it's all so shallow, pointless, and tacky that one can't be bothered to care. Invulnerable heroes are a bore Hollywood, even in purple. Unless it's transparent maybe.

Doogal
You couldn't really expect this cheaply animated kiddie fantasy to be good, but it does have Jon Stewart. And Jimmy Fallon, and Whoopi Goldberg. Never mind.

The Pink Panther
Peter Sellers isn't losing any sleep over Steve Martin's disastrous performance here. Watch out for the wacky Clive Owens "I should have been 007" cameo though, and the opening credits are a nice throwback.

Poseidon
How can a life and death disaster movie with an effects budget this big possibly be boring? I guess a total lack of interest in which faceless characters live or die helps.