The 10 Worst Films of 2005

Well, here it is, mid-December, so it's about time to start posting the Best of 2005 Lists. I'll be doing a Best Movies and Best Albums list, but I doubt I'll bother with a Best Concerts list this year. I think I only saw 3 or 4 actual concerts in all of 2005, mainly as a function of extreme poverty, but coupled with a growing apathy towards large-scale event attendance.

But before I get into all the actual lists of quality entertainment, let's dispense with perhaps the most fun year-end round-up of them all...The Worst Movies of 2005. This year, perhaps more than any other, I had the distinct opportunity to watch a shitload of awful films. Usually, you only rent movies with at least a 5% chance of providing you with some level of entertainment, because a movie rental will cost at least $2-3. But when you get free rentals, you will sometimes find yourself taking home a piece of surefire cinematic garbage. Maybe you just want to see how bad a movie can get, or you've been meaning to write a scathing blog review but haven't seen a truly atrocious film in a while. Sometimes, curiosity just gets the better of me, and I go home with a movie I know for a fact will suck. What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment.

Bear in mind, however, that even I have my limits. There aren't any atrocious romantic comedies, like A Lot Like Love or Monster-in-Law, on the list because out of all the genres in the movie rainbow, I can tolerate bad romantic comedies the least. Also, a number of the really awful movies I saw this year - titles like Fat Albert and Renny Harlin's Mindhunters were actually released officially in 2004, rendering them ineligible. Too bad...

10. Cursed

I'll be perfectly honest...I'm not really a huge fan of Wes Craven's 90's mega-hit Scream. Sure, the initial conceit is pretty clever - a self-aware horror movie with characters who know about all the genre's stale conventions. But the film itself is a horror-comedy that's neither scary or funny. There are no quotable lines, really, or funny characters, and the thing is far too goofy and lax to create any sort of genuine suspense.

So those were my problems with the original Scream film, that premiered nearly a decade ago in 1996. Screenwriter Kevin Williamson, who with Cursed attempts to meld his Scream concept with the werewolf genre, has only gotten far far worse with time. Yes, Kevin, we get it...It's really a whodunit disguised as a horror film. It purposefully includes all kinds of references to old horror movies. Its characters wisecrack about how movie characters might react to the situations in which they find themselves. I just have one question...

How on Earth am I supposed to give a shit about any of this stupid crap? It might not be the actual worst film of 2005, but Cursed absolutely ranks among the laziest. (Intriguingly, Wes Craven directed another, better-received 2005 film, Red Eye, that hints at a new direction for his entire career...Anything to keep him from lensing another pathetic Williamson retread ever again, I say...)

Here's what I said in my original review:

Anyway, Cursed blows. But I guess you already knew that...

But maybe you don't know how much it blows. Maybe you don't know that it's a werewolf movie in which you hardly get to see a werewolf, and when you do, it looks a lot like either a guy in a rented wolf suit thrashing about aimlessly or a CGI-enhanced wolfish blur. Maybe you don't know that it features a supporting performance by Scott Baio as himself. Maybe you don't know that it makes the exact same mistake as the Scream sequels by obviously casting an actor too famous to play a small supporting role, indicating that they will, in fact, be the killer at the end.

9. The Dukes of Hazzard

The promise of seeing Daisy Duke-clad Jessica Simpson was enough to get me to take this title home, and I was immediately sorry. Sure, Jess is a looker, but she's not even in that much of the film. The vast majority is taken up by a stale imitation of a TV show that wasn't any good in the first place. Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott are both guys who have made me laugh before, but neither of them can do a thing to elevate this insipid nonsense.

Honestly, they don't even try. No one does. This is a film that has moved beyond trying in any way, shape or form. There's no attempt to reinvent the Duke Boys, no attempt at humor that doesn't involve bad slapstick and no attempt to make this idiocy that was silly and dated in the 70's feel any more relevant. Director (and founding member of the bafflingly overrated Broken Lizard troupe) Jay Chandrasekhar contents himself to simply recreate an awful old sitcom on a sound stage with different actors. Way to aim high, everyone! I'd quote my original review, but this movie was so forgettable and lame, I didn't even bother writing one.

[Also, Chandrasekhar casts Burt Reynolds as Boss Hogg, even though that character's defininig characteristic is his obesity. The guy's name...is Boss...FUCKING HOGG YOU IDIOTS!]

8. The Amityville Horror

My friend Brooke called me about a year ago from a video store, to ask about the quality of the original 70's Amityville Horror. I responded that it's good, a classic of 70's horror, even, without actually informing her that I had not seen the film in many, many, many years. She called me the next day to let me know that it sucked, and going back to rewatch the film, I've reached the same conclusion. It's an overwrought and flat imitation of other, better 70's horror films, in particular the suburban nightmare classic The Exorcist.

For the new remake of Amityville Horror, it's clear the decision was made to no longer simply rip off The Exorcist. This time around...they're blatantly ripping off The Shining. And did I mention the Jack Nicholson character from Stanley Kubrick's visionary original is now interpreted by acting titan Ryan Reynolds?
It doesn't really matter which classic movie you decide to rip off if all the elements of the film are so generic and workmanlike anyway. This was just another studio rush job, clearly....an attempt to cash in on a well-known property without worrying about actually amassing anyone talented to realize that property on screen. It's just worse than the average studio rush job because the original was so lame, the premise so tired and the budget so constrained. Oh, and because they cast Ryan Reynolds as the heavy, and he's about as horrifying as the guy in the bad werewolf suit in Cursed. To quote Adam Sandler..."Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?"

I could go on all day with the gaping plot holes and logical inconsistancies, but who cares? If the movie was scary or entertaining, I wouldn't have even bothered with them at all. But I was kind of bored, because everything in Amityville is so familiar and tired, that I started making mental notes about all the stuff that didn't make logical sense.

7. Mr. & Mrs. Smith

My good Lord, what a shitkicker. I had heard this movie was a disappointment, but I had no idea how utterly tone-deaf it would be, how bloodless and cold, how shrill and loud and chaotic and mean-spirited and pointless. It's hard to imagine, after watching them fail to spark any chemistry at all in 90 minutes, that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt would ever want to see each other again, let alone get married and raise a bunch of foreign-born infants together.

Audiences demand so little, really, out of a movie like this. They want to see two good-looking people looking good together. They want to see some violent mayhem and explosions. And they'd like a laugh or two along the way, just to keep things lively. That's it, really.

Director Doug Liman fails to deliver on a single one of these promises. Sure, Brangelina are an attractive pair, but the film rarely allows them to show it off. In the opening, they are bored with one another and frustrated. In the middle, they're too busy trying to maim one another to try and look sexy. And by the end, they are being shot at by approximately 100,000 unseen assailants. Dr. Jones, no time for love.

The fight and action scenes aren't exciting, either, because their outcome is so inevitable. Sure, you always know the hero will survive in the action movie, but there are usually some stakes involved during a large set piece. In other words, even if you know who will live and who will die, someone is actually trying to accomplish something in some way and there's some question about what will be accomplished and how. Mr. & Mrs. Smith contains a lot of Brad and Angie shooting at one another, but it's pretty clear they'll both be fine. And considering how they both repeatedly pass up opportunities to just axe one another, we kind of sense that their hearts aren't into the whole enterprise. This is a pretty major problem, considering that the entire first hour of the movie is consumed with these two trying to off one another.

So what we end up with are endless scenes of the two of them shooting guns at each other in a pointless display of firepower. There's more suspense in that "Girls With Guns" video Sam Jackson watches in Jackie Brown. The bullets never connect, and neither do the jokes for that matter.

Here was my review from a few weeks back:

I think the main characters, John and Jane Smith (Pitt and Jolie) are the main problem. Okay, fine, they are assassins. They are cold and cruel and nihilistic. That's one thing. But on top of that, they don't even care about each other until the very end of the film. Their marriage has grown stale at the opening, they're bored with one another, and so, of course, so are we. Even once the reveal has been made - they're professional killers! - their personalities don't get any more interesting. They just don't care about anything but murder. That they eventually stop trying to kill one another and focus their bloodlust outward doesn't really make this problem any better.

6. Silence Becomes You

I'm certain none of you have ever heard of this movie. It only has one user review on IMDB, even. And it only debuted on DVD this week, after having no real release in theaters. I'm bringing it up only because it is hilariously wrong-headed, pompous and awful. And because there is a hilarious website that explains why the movie is so completely numbingly bad.

Filmmaker Stephanie Sinclaire obviously thinks that she is hot shit. Not just your garden-variety hot shit either, but white-hot, nuclear, center-of-the-sun-esque shit. She's the founder and president of Dragonfly Films, a small indie company dedicated to...Well, why not do yourself a favor and check out her batshit insane, self-aggrandizing website for yourself? Here's a small taste of what's in store for you there:

The films we are developing are classically structured stories, equally plot and character driven, which tell compelling stories with magic and beauty and a challenging subtext. Films which show the workings of the mind and the imagination, push the boundaries of the spirit and through keyed colour grading and music, effect the emotions in non-trivial ways. Scratch the surface of the grey world and not black and white but all the colours of the rainbow are revealed.

I'll admit, reading that paragraph, I got curious. I got even more curious when I discovered that Steph's first film was a direct-to-DVD effort starring none other than Ms. Alicia Silverstone. That and this description were enough motivation to inspire a free rental:

Silence Becomes You tells the story of two women who live in a self-created Dionysian paradise, living by the creative theories of their deceased father, a research scientist who hot-housed them to an almost abusive degree in their youth. They decide to capture a man with whom to become impregnated.

On the surface it is a straight-forward thriller plot. One sister and the man fall in love, which is not part of ‘the plan’. The other sister becomes increasingly unbalanced as their co-dependency is threatened and we are plunged into a scary and ultimately fatal journey of sexual and emotional intrigue. Supported by a strong score the shadows of the past confound the growing revelations of the present. Nothing is quite as it seemed.

Now that you've read the director's take, let me tell you my take on Silence Becomes You. This is one of the most ludicrous pleas for attention and respect I have ever seen in my life. Stephanie's directorial style can be described thusly: fill every single moment of every scene of your movie with pseudo-philosophical wankery, obvious imagery, horrible acting and bad camera tricks.

Silverstone and co-star Sienna Guillory play the sisters as if they have some kind of severe neurological disorder. They're constantly twirling around, giggling to themselves and having violent mood swings for no reason. They are not given a single line of reasonable dialogue. In fact, Sinclaire is so desperate to fill every moment of her film with deeply resonant meaning, she forgets to pay any attention at all to things like character, motivation, pacing or entertainment value.

If the movie were intensely deep, maybe such lapses could be forgiven. But Sinclaire's notion of depth is showing a man in a bathtub while soft women's voices whisper about sirens and mermaids on the soundtrack. She thinks the image of a man actually picking a star out of the sky and handing it to Alicia Silverstone, through the use of bad special effects, is romantic and subtle and somehow impressive. Ugh.

I can't resist...One more quote from Dragonfly Films:

We follow in the footsteps of storytellers old and new whose desire was also to create new myths or recreate ancient ones for a modern palate but we are also designing our own in-house style of heightened realism, painterly execution and modern myth making to create fabulous, rich, majestic modern classics which hold a mirror to the experience and which are highly commercial. It is possible to provide the shock value necessary for a contemporary audience to feel stimulated and entertained by other methods than extreme roller-coaster rides of recycled bathos.

Booyakasha!

5. The Ring Two

This movie is bad beyond all comprehension. Hideo Nakata has now been making Ring-themed films for nearly 8 years. You're telling me Ring 2 is the best he can come up with? Even if the American version of The Ring doesn't directly lead into a sequel, the door is obviously left open for a follow-up. Though Rachel (Naomi Watts) manages to save her son from the evil Samara, the demonic spirit behind the cursed videotape, the tape itself has survived intact.

And yet, Nakata's follow-up immediately disposes of the video tape altogether, to pursue a lame "possession" narrative. Basically, Samara escapes the tape and decides she'd like to start invading the bodies of children. But how? She couldn't do this sort of thing in the first movie. And why? Wouldn't being an ultra-powerful ghost capable of manipulating time and space and the physical properties of the universe be better than living in the body of a sunkeneyed, sickly little boy?

Beyond these sort of logical flaws, Ring Two is just a sloppily-made, poorly-handled production. Whole sequences seem amateurish and awkward, like the ill-advised deer attack on Rachel's car. And the film is droning and repetitive. Here was my take after seeing the movie on DVD:

Ring Two is a film lacking style. By the half-hour point, the film has become so ridiculous that it never again gets close to being at all chilling. Almost all of the attempts at scare scenes, in fact, rely on poor computer effects, including an odd sequence in which bathtub water defies gravity to rest against the ceiling. The technology, regrettably, isn't quite up to the task, and the result is a garbled and ill-defined liquidy mass. Not scary.

4. Cinderella Man

Ron Howard may be the single most underwhelming filmmaker in Hollywood. Notice, I didn't say worse. There are directors out there with far more appalling resumes. Let's face it...The only reason Brett Ratner and Joel Schumacher aren't on this list is that neither of them released a movie in 2005. (Look for Ratner to make an appearance next year after the inevitable X3 crash and burn).

But Howard is underwhelming. He takes on projects of great scope and ambition, works with great actors and craftsmen, and then churns out the most predictable, saccharine and condescending entertainments imaginable. Cinderella Man not only lacks subtlety, nuance and artistry...It lacks any sort of intelligence or purpose whatsoever. I'd argue that the movie doesn't have a clear idea to express about boxing or the Great Depression, but Howard's movies aren't about ideas in the first place. They're about corralling popular actors together and playing dress-up.

If A Beautiful Mind was his attempt to reduce the horrors of schizophrenia into a high-school play about triumph over adversity, Cinderella Man is his attempt to reduce the horrors of the Great Depression into a Hallmark Card. "Darling, I love you the way Russell Crowe loves his malnourished, asthmatic offspring..."

Here's my immediate reaction:

And though the sets are large and impressive in their detail, the costumes period accurate and the cinematography appropriately honeyed and gauzy and bright, the world of Depression-Era Jersey and New York never really comes alive. Because it's a romanticized notion of poverty, and of the Depression. It's Ron Howard's Magical Poverty Simulator, capable of giving you a visual sense of being impoverished but without a clue as to evoking the true, gritty reality of being cold, hungry and hopeless.

3. Bewitched

I think Bewitched director Nora Ephron may, herself, be a witch. She has managed to repeatedly convince studio executives to greenlight terrible, ridiculous, unfunny films with no appeal to anyone. A string of movies as consistently painful as Michael, Mixed Nuts, Hanging Up (written and produced by Ms. Ephron and her equally unfunny sister Delia, but directed by Diane Keaton!), and Lucky Numbers is not simply evidence of a powerful, influential woman finding support for middling work. It's clear-cut evidence of powerful black magic.

Ephron, unlike Jay Chandrasekhar, actually does try to reinvent her sitcom's concept...Rather than just recreate the old show "Bewitched" with Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell in the main roles, she comes up with a convoluted, bizarre, confusing and unsatisfying post-modern mindfuck, in which witches are real, and offended by the show "Bewitched," except for one witch who is giving up her powers so she can star in a new version of the show. Huh?

Here is a brief list of essential summer comedy components that Ephron studiously avoids throughout Bewitched:

- Funny or likable characters
- Relatable comic situations
- Some narrative sense or logic
- Jokes

Bear in mind, this film is not at all funny, and it stars Will Ferrell, Michael Caine, Steve Carrell and Jason Schwartzman. That's no easy feat. Here's what I said initially:

Why even try to make a real movie about a stuck-up actor whose co-star is a witch, filled with all these generic, half-baked "behind-the-scenes" Hollywood industry parodies? I mean, why even ask a really funny, engaging actor like Jason Schwartzman to play a slick asshole talent agent? That part is so tired, those jokes are so ancient, having him play the character any other way would be better.

2. Serenity

What more can I say about Joss Whedon? Regular readers know how I feel about the man's work. He's a TV writer who has never really moved beyond sitcom format. His foray into science-fiction filmmaking, a spin-off of his failed sci-fi TV show "Firefly," is little more than a tired Star Wars retread crammed full of faux-witty banter.

I can't tell you how much I hated the dialogue in this movie. Every character speaks in the same jaded, sarcastic voice. They constantly (and badly) crack wise. It's just all so mannered, forced and unnatural. At one point, the villain is given a long-windeed speech about the nature of evil, the kind of self-aware "This I Believe" speech that characters often recite in bad movies but which no one would ever think to speak aloud in real life. Whedon-ites apparently mistake this for depth.

And, yes, Browncoats, it's all ripped directly from Star Wars. The evil, fascistic organization that claims to promote Galactic peace while stomping on individual liberty. (The Empire) The bloodthirsty savages who populate the galaxy's outlying, desert-like planets. (The Sand People) The mysterious, superhuman powers that include ESP and fierce fighting skills. (The Force) The smart-aleck smuggler who unknowingly becomes embroiled in the freedom-obsessed rebellion. (Han Solo) Rather than sleek, futuristic spacecraft, the heroes tool around in a beat-up, post-industrial wreck that's always on the verge of breaking down. (The Millennium...Should I keep going? Isn't that enough?)

Here's a paragraph from my scathing original review:

This is pathetic. Seriously. A pathetic excuse for science fiction. The generally-reliable Moriarty on Aint It Cool News stated in his review that "Firefly" was informed by "SF literature." I have no way of knowing if this is true. Perhaps "Firefly" was a more literate, astute, intelligent show. If so, I can't help but wonder why fans of the show have so embraced this new film version, which seemingly has no influences that extend beyond A New Hope and Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. There's more Card, Gibson, Dick and Heinlein influence in a random episode of "Tiny Toon Adventures" than Serenity.

1. Crash

My least-favorite movies attack not only my aesthetic sensibilites but my entire worldview and perspective on life. 2004's Worst Film, Garden State, was a fraudulent, utterly incompetant and shallow take on one of my favorite genres - the coming of age story - and reflected a notion of the universe that's diametricalyl opposed to my own...A world where everyone's adorable and quirky and fun, where beautiful girls are just waiting to fall in love with hapless self-obsessed losers and where the answers to all of life's problems can be found in listening to The Shins and having a heart-to-heart talk with your Daddy.

I didn't hate 2005's worst film, Crash, quite so much, but it presents a view on race relations that's in even greater opposition to my own perspective than Garden State's take on modern romance. Paul Haggis' hackneyed, overwrought, inaccurate and haughty screed on race relations seems to imply that racism is an inherited, natural, human trait afflicting everyone of all races equally. This is utterly offensive bullshit, and the fact that Haggis argues for it so passionately indicates that's he's a poor source for insight into this particular problem.

Haggis continually ties racist behavior to the frustrations of living in a big, modern city like Los Angeles. Matt Dillon (who is unthinkably nominated for a Golden Globe for this piece of trash) plays, for example, a racist cop who is only racist because a blkack woman has refused medical assistance to his father. And the rest of the cast as well is rounded out with obvious "types" and cheap, generic placeholders. There's Ludacris as an angry, hypocritical black man. There's an angry Persian shop owner threatening an angry Latin locksmith. And then there's the film's most embarrassing character, Sandra Bullock as an egregiously offensive "trophy wife" character, who is racist against her Mexican maid until she declares, Driving Miss Daisy style, that the cleaning woman is her "best friend."

Haggis' unpleasant, clumsy and thoroughly unrealistic nightmare-movie quite simply has no idea what it's talking about. Whether it's daily life in Los Angeles, race relations in America or more simple observations about the way people communicate, his movie is utterly clueless, not to mention shameless. And it's not at all satisfying, purely on the level of cinema. The cinematography is bland and obvious and the use of filters derivative of better movies, particularly Steven Soderbergh's Traffic. Mark Isham's Middle-Eastern inflected score is ludicrous and overheated enough to elicit actual laughter. Even usually reliable performers like Don Cheadle seem hopelessly lost and adrift with this material, seemingly aware that there's no way to make these thin, faintly-sketched caricatures come to life in any meaningful way. And the entire film relies upon the most ridiculous and unlikely coincidences imaginable - vans crammed full of slaves waiting to be saved, repeated chance encounters on the streets of Los Angeles and, most egregiously, a conveniently-timed fall down a flight of stairs. Absolutely insulting.

I knew from about 20 minutes in that Crash would be my pick for Worst Film of 2005. I'm pretty sure, at this point, it's my pick for second-worst film of the decade thus far (behind that Braffsterpiece, Garden State). Here were my first thoughts after turning off the DVD player:

Haggis thinks that, by giving Ludacris dialogue about how everyone thinks of black men as criminals, and about how hip hop passes on negative messages to black youth about criminality, that he somehow undoes the stereotype of casting a rapper as a criminal. It doesn't work. It's still racist. It just lets the audience know you're smart enough to know better.

Maybe if Haggis was a more inventive, thoughtful writer, some of this stuff would be more acceptable. But this script is obvious, clunky and above all gob-smackingly silly. SILLY! Now, I know LA has a reputation as a dangerous city full of criminals, high-speed pursuits, horrific car accidents, street crime and vandalism. But come on! Rarely to 4 or more of these things happen to the same people in a single night!

And that was the year that was. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more Year End Wrap Up 2005 Type Bullshit, right here on Crushed by Inertia!