What Is The Worst Movie You Have Ever Seen?

A couple unreleased indie films a friend acted in were worse, though.

Demolition Man: I wanted to throw Sandra Bullock into a festering septic tank.

Very Bad Things: Favreau & Vaughan back together again... Very Bad Movie.

Did anyone ever see Romeo Is Bleeding? I never saw it but my good friend said it was by far the worst he's seen.

Romeo Is Bleeding is pretty good actually. And I didn't mind The Mothman Prophecies either, though I feel slightly sheepish admitting it.

but, just so i'm remembering it right, is there a scene in "the mothman prophecies" where richard gere says goodbye to his dying wife who is actually pinned between a car and a tree and is in TWO PIECES, so that when he's done saying goodbye and sharing a tear they back the car back up so she can hurry on with the process of dying? because if i *am* rembering right, i'll give you that scene and that scene only.

Speaking of which: replace The Doom Generation with Signs.

Do not even pretend you've seen a bad film until you endure this.

I think I'd rather stick lit matches between my toes than have to watch that entire film. At first I thought "This would probably be a decent film if the acting wasn't so bad." Then I started listening to the dialogue & noticing the psedo-avant garde editing and realized, no, nothing could save that film.

Lost in Translation is a pernicious, evil film. One of the most empty cinematic experiences I've had. Fuck this movie.

Armegeddon. The cinematic equivalent of repeatedly being hit on the head with an anvil and being asked over and over, "ENTERTAINED YET?"

Big Daddy. Adam Sandler has his moments. But this movie is an abortion.

Of course plenty of Mystery Science Theater type grade Z movies I've seen have been unbelievably awful, but its not really worth the time attacking them. they're not the films wasting space at the local multiplex. and at least they can be amusing.

More than anything, atmosphere determines whether I like a film or not, and Sofia Coppola's films have done that for me thus far.

-- jay blanchard (kinojay3...), January 10th, 2005.

actually, atmosphere's a big thing for me too (one of the MOST important things for me, actually)! i just don't find the whole "spoiled, moping, homesick foreigners bonding in a strange land" thing compelling, no matter how pretty the scenery or the soundtrack is.

in fact it made me rather mad, because the film wants you to sympathize with these characters, and yet they're so unbearably grating! i'd probably like the film a little bit better if it had been more UNsymapthetc towards the characters.

but obviously thats just my own opinion:-)

:)

it's so dorky

maybe if their suffering made an interesting film! ;-)

I guess the only problem I'm having with the critiques I've heard of "Lost In Translation" so far is that some folks are having trouble feeling sympathy for or identifying with the characters. This is surely a suitable critique, but I wouldn't say this quality alone constitutes a bad film.

Of course, I'm a hypocrite in this regard---the only reason I hate the film Movern Callar is because the main character is about as worthless a human being that I can imagine.

Did you just not know what you were getting into?

I might consider it a mostly failed experiment, but it's better than most Leelee Sobieski vehicles.

i am anxiously awaiting a sequel to "joy ride"

A late (1970) Jerry Lewis WWII comedy, "Which Way to the Front?" Really painful.

I still haven't figured out how she was married and living in California for a couple of years, but just got her degree from Yale the previous semester.

Believe me, I really want to be able to hate this film with you, but you haven't given me a solid reason yet.

My comments are found on the ILE threads and I don't recall enough specifics now to really make a case, but I disliked it largely for the way Coppola tried her hardest to force your identification with Johannsen and Murray by presenting everyone else in shrill, irredeemable caricature - yet never made either Johannsen or Murray out to be a worthwhile, three-dimensional human being who deserves my empathy. "Oh, my photographer husband is a dick... because he loves his job and brought me along and I can't find anything worth doing in this teeming metropolis but hang out with these awesome Japanese hipsters who are so much cooler than those lame-os in the hotel bar. Check out this horrible, loud stupid starlet I WENT TO YALE." Feh.

It didn't even get atmosphere points from me (and I'll repeatedly watch films that are nothing but atmosphere, see also: Sleepy Hollow).

OTM, I wondered the same thing. I also wondered how she got her degree from Yale and yet always seemed so dumb.

I knew three things going into it: I knew the blue screen, I knew the dying, and I knew Tilda Swinton was in it. So I was excited. I didn't know about the insufferably pretentious style of reading(/writing), however, which was what made me walk out.

So the "privileged" aren't allowed to have angst & tragedy?

Angst and tragedy aren't inherently interesting, is the thing. (Which is exactly what latebloomer said, sure.)

I guess August Strindberg and William Shakespeare are out of a job...

I found the characters in LIT to have more dimension than most others I've seen lately. It's not as if they were presented as flawless characters, as both of them recognize their faults.

And I think the whole thing with the Japanese hipsters was more of a metaphor on communication--the main characters are so distanced from their spouses (either geographically or emotionally) that even hanging out with people who speak a different language is preferrable.

I also don't agree with the secondary characters being mere "caricatures"--they mainly show their faults & their shallowness (hey, they are "secondary" characters), but they do show moments of insight & even the actress shows moments of intellect.

I really don't know why I'm going to lengths to defend this film--it's not one of my favorites. But I'm just having a difficult time with the criticism; it seems like either classism or hipsters condemning hipsters.

The best are touchstones in American cinema, esp The Ladies Man and The Nutty Professor.

At the Toronto Fest 2003, of some 35 films the only one I walked out on was a witless comedy called "Easy." (Tho Dumont's "Twentynine Palms" was quite lousy.)

At least Strindberg has Helium to fall back on.

(I'm not sure Shakespeare did angst well.)

That's an incredibly bold statement!

Ok, so what makes a character "interesting" to you then? Internal conflict seems to be out...

MWWWHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!

It didn't even get atmosphere points from me (and I'll repeatedly watch films that are nothing but atmosphere, see also: Sleepy Hollow).

-- milozauckerman (wooderso...), January 12th, 2005.

OTFM

Plenty more, but those two came to mind as true visitations to 90 minute hell.

please don't say you loved "magnolia"

ok, i give up; we're playing in completely different ballparks--we'll just have to agree to disagree.

So, to unravel the incredibly rickety staircase of logic that got to this point- does that mean you DO like Lost in Translation after all, milozaukerman?
I'd like LiT much better if she contemplated suicide and/or poisoned Bill Murray for sleeping with the lounger singer.

No, Hamlet's angst is annoying because it's bullshit, a transparent theatrical device to keep the plot chugging along, completely implausible and unjustified. The angst over justifying this that critics have indulged in for fewer centuries than you'd think -- that is a much more influential angst!

no offense, just riffing.

I'm really disillusioned by the fact that some folks can't seem to tell the difference between good-natured debate & personal assaults. If this board turns into PC "let's all get along" group, you can count me out. We're all grown-ups here; we should be able to take some healthy intellectual sparring. In other words, grow some thicker skin.

Anyway, that's my arsehole, hope you like it

and if it is indeed the worst movie ever what does that make 'the whole ten yards' or 'swept away' or motherfucking 'gigli'????

"Peter Bradshaw, Guardian film critic
There are some films that are awful in an obvious way, like Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in Gigli. Being in the audience was like being in a crashing plane. There are other films like the British comedy Sex Lives of the Potato Men, which was dire. But it's so abject you don't feel like kicking it when it's down. The most insidiously awful type of film, however, is Arthouse Lite. A key example is The Piano by Jane Campion. It is middlebrow, pseudo-literary cinema, which is shallow and prissy and genteel. Those self-regarding pretty-pretty compositions of Holly Hunter on the beach, drove me up the wall. She's mute: which manages to be such a smug passive-aggressive idea. That's my thing about bad films. Honest dreck is fine. It's straight-to-video rubbish and I don't get upset about it, but I can get upset about middleweight nonsense. "

IMHO...OTM

I understand your point, but I still don't think "The Piano" was quite that bad. It was derrivative & pretentious, sure, but it was at least still watchable.

No tits, no pussy

re: Lost in translation -- having only seen the trailer,
I would guess that the movie is only 60-70% as hilarious and
effective at telegraphing alienation/Middle-aged angst as the "Mr. Sparkeru" episode
of the Simpsons. Can those who've watched confirm?

i caught man on fire on hbo a couple nights ago and it was definitely the worst movie i've seen from this decade so far. any 10 or so minute stretch would be fine, but taken as a whole it's an offense to humanity.

-- Scott McFarland (hiddenfire8...) (webmail), January 10th, 2005 12:05 PM.

I have to flat-out disagree. Ang Lee's (despite Taiwanese exctraction) as American a director as they come. And I think his encapsulation of '70s Connecticut is of the same quality and social magnitude as Spike Lee's encapsulation of Bedford-Stuy in Do The Right Thing as in it's a reduction-sauce of a representation but one that's broadly accessible. And having grown up in a town really close to where the movie takes place, I have to identify with the characters - emotionally closed, New England reserved, internally raw - and the timid "de-vilification" of sexuality the rich whites are almost pathologically trying to accomplish while laying the burden of sex-guilt on their children. Presuming that movie is more about a time/place than about an incident locked fundamentally into that time place is inaccurate and facile, IMHO.

How can something about an incident locked fundamentally in a particular time and place not be fundamentally about that particular time and place?

All of those movies are bad for different reasons, and "Girl With A Pearl Earring" certainly qualifies as the most boring film I have EVER seen.

GothGirl stabbing lippy clerk in the ear - classic!