WORST movies of the year?- Page 3

[Jamie Hat]

Posted: 1/26/05 at 12:59pm

No, by the end I wasn't paying attention. I was just pissed I had wasted my ten dollars.

He should call his next movie "that which you should not see"

[Jamie Hat]

Posted: 1/26/05 at 1:02pm

The Village
BY ROGER EBERT / July 30, 2004
"The Village" is a colossal miscalculation, a movie based on a premise that cannot support it, a premise so transparent it would be laughable were the movie not so deadly solemn. It's a flimsy excuse for a plot, with characters who move below the one-dimensional and enter Flatland. M. Night Shyamalan, the writer-director, has been successful in evoking horror from minimalist stories, as in "Signs," which if you think about it rationally is absurd -- but you get too involved to think rationally. He is a director of considerable skill who evokes stories out of moods, but this time, alas, he took the day off.
Critics were enjoined after the screening to avoid revealing the plot secrets. That is not because we would spoil the movie for you. It's because if you knew them, you wouldn't want to go. The whole enterprise is a shaggy dog story, and in a way, it is all secrets. I can hardly discuss it at all without being maddingly vague.
Let us say that it takes place in an unspecified time and place, surrounded by a forest the characters never enter. The clothing of the characters and the absence of cars and telephones and suchlike suggest either the 1890s, or an Amish community. Everyone speaks as if they had studied "Friendly Persuasion." The chief civic virtues are probity and circumspection. Here is a village that desperately needs an East Village.
The story opens with a funeral attended by all the villagers, followed by a big outdoor meal at long tables groaning with corn on the cob and all the other fixin's. Everyone in the village does everything together, apparently, although it is never very clear what most of their jobs are. Some farming and baking goes on.
The movie is so somber, it's afraid to raise its voice in its own presence. That makes it dreary even during scenes of shameless melodrama. We meet the patriarch Edward Walker (William Hurt), who is so judicious in all things he sounds like a minister addressing the Rotary Club. His daughter Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard), is blind but spunky. The stalwart young man, Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix), petitions the elders to let him take a look into the forest. His widowed mother Alice (Sigourney Weaver), has feelings for Edward Walker. The village idiot (Adrien Brody), gambols about, and gamboling is not a word that I use lightly. There is a good and true man (Brendan Gleeson). And a bridegroom who is afraid his shirt will get wrinkled.
Surrounding the village is the forest. In the forest live vile, hostile creatures who dress in red and have claws of twigs. They are known as Those We Do Not Speak Of (except when we want to end a designation with a preposition). We see Those We Do Not Speak, etc., only in brief glimpses, like the water-fixated aliens in "Signs." They look better than the "Signs" aliens, who looked like large extras in long underwear, while Those We Do Not, etc., look like their costumes were designed at summer camp.
Watchtowers guard the periphery of the village, and flares burn through the night. But not to fear: Those We Do, etc., have arrived at a truce. They stay in the forest and the villagers stay in the village. Lucius wants to go into the forest and petitions the elders, who frown at this desire. Ivy would like to marry Lucius, and tells him so, but he is so reflective and funereal, it will take him another movie to get worked up enough to deal with her. Still, they love each other. The village idiot also has a thing for Ivy, and sometimes they gambol together.
Something terrible happens to somebody. I dare not reveal what, and to which, and by whom. Edward Walker decides reluctantly to send someone to "the towns" to bring back medicine for whoever was injured. And off goes his daughter Ivy, a blind girl walking through the forest inhabited by Those Who, etc. She wears her yellow riding hood, and it takes us a superhuman effort to keep from thinking about Grandmother's House.
Solemn violin dirges permeate the sound track. It is autumn, overcast and chilly. Girls find a red flower and bury it. Everyone speaks in the passive voice. The vitality has been drained from the characters; these are the Stepford Pilgrims. The elders have meetings from which the young are excluded. Someone finds something under the floorboards. Wouldn't you just know it would be there, exactly where it was needed, in order for someone to do something he couldn't do without it.
Eventually the secret of Those, etc., is revealed. To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore.
And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backward out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets.

[Jamie Hat]

Posted: 1/26/05 at 1:02pm

Thank you Roger, my thoughts exactly.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/26/05 at 3:30pm

From Rolling Stone on The Village:

If all you're looking for in the new nail-biter from suspense guru M. Night Shyamalan is an ending to out-twist The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs, The Village is no place to visit. The only way the climax of this blend of horror, romance and political allegory can come as a shock is to close your eyes and ears to everything that comes before it. That would be as butt-stupid as writing off Shyamalan as a trickster to be judged solely on how many rabbits he can pull out of his hat.
That hasn't stopped Internet fan boys, who snagged a script, from laughing off the film's evocation of an isolated community, with nineteenth-century dress and manners, being menaced by creatures on its borders. Then there's the recent Sci Fi Channel documentary that the director reportedly tried to shut down. It turns out Shyamalan was in on the scam -- a guerrilla marketing campaign gone awry.

Know what? Let the film speak for itself. The Village, even when its step falters, is on to something more provocative than seeing dead people. Its power, unrelated to digital monsters, comes from the tension building inside the characters. Shyamalan benefits from a stellar cast, including William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver as emotionally bruised village elders, and Joaquin Phoenix and Oscar winner Adrien Brody -- doing a bizarro take on the village idiot -- as younger members of the tribe. And roll out a welcome for new star Bryce Dallas Howard, the daughter of director Ron Howard. She gives a breakout performance as a blind girl whose radiant innocence can't hide her independent spirit and scrappy wit.

Shyamalan and magician cinematographer Roger Deakins work wonders at suggesting a lurking menace in the sylvan beauty of the Pennsylvania countryside. To venture out, a villager needs permission that the elders, led by Edward Walker (Hurt) -- a teacher with a vast knowledge of the region's history -- refuse to grant. Lucius (Phoenix), the son of elder Alice Hunt (Weaver), is rebuffed. Only Ivy (Howard), Edward's blind, love-struck daughter, is given a pass because . . . well, no fair squealing. The elders fear the creatures on their borders, referred to as "those we do not speak of," who stage periodic raids. The rules are strict: "Never enter the woods -- that is where they wait." And, "Let the bad color not be seen -- it attracts them." The bad color is red, evoking blood and violence. There is one scene -- a stabbing superbly staged by Shyamalan -- that hits like a thunderbolt. There is also a love story, played with shimmering delicacy by Phoenix and Howard, that cuts to the heart. Brody makes up the third side of that triangle.

In crafting a film about the ways fear can manipulate -- are there really creatures of mass destruction in the woods? -- Shyamalan gives the film a metaphorical weight that goes deeper than goose bumps. He may find himself linked with Michael Moore as a political provocateur. "Do your best not to scream your loudest," Edward tells Ivy when he opens a woodshed and uncovers long-buried secrets. It's a wicked invitation for the audience to scream its head off. Go for it. But do your best not to miss the dark implications that empower The Village to haunt your dreams.


PETER TRAVERS
(Posted Jul 28, 2004)

To each his own.

And the Sky Captain visuals are fantastic. Far superior to those of Spiderman 2 or I, Robot.

[HeresJohnny]

Posted: 1/26/05 at 3:33pm

Worst:

1. Catwoman
2. The Alamo
3. Alexander
4. Sky Captain...

Best:
1. Finding Neverland
2. Million Dollar Baby
3. Phantom of the Opera (they did what they set out to do)

Most Over-rated:
1. The Passion of the Christ
2. Closer
3. Spider-man 2

The award for best performance in a crappy movie goes to Natalie Portman for Closer

[Jamie Hat]

Posted: 1/26/05 at 4:19pm

Touche..
From the NY Times ----------------------
"I suppose it is to his credit that he wants the audience to think -- about fear, security and the fine line between rationality and superstition -- as well as tremble, but his ideas are as sloppy and obvious as his direction is elegant and restrained. He turns an artful gothic tale into a homework assignment."
From the Washington Post -------------------------
"For his next movie, he should forget the big twist thing. He has only one surprise left, and it would be the best surprise: no surprise at all, only drama."
AND (apparently bad enough to earn two different reviews)
"The Village yields a trick ending quite lame, quite tame and quite old; Rod Serling thought of it 40 years ago and he did it better."
From Entertainment Weekly ---------------------------
"It gives nothing of the plot away to say that there's a fine line between an ''Aha!'' and an ''Oh, brother!'' Whether you feel The Village crosses that line may hinge on whether you think Shyamalan's screenwriting ability is beginning to lag behind his skill as a director. "
From The Chicago Tribune ---------------------------------
"A big, creepy dollhouse of a movie--a sometimes engrossing shocker with a surprise ending that isn't especially shocking or surprising."
From Variety ------------------------------------------
"A watchable film for awhile that unravels in a muddled last act likely to send many opening-weekend filmgoers home head-scratching and grumbling." -------------------------------
"The film's ridiculousness would not be so irksome if Mr. Shyamalan did not take his sleight of hand so seriously, if he did not insist on dressing this scary, silly, moderately clever fairy tale in a somber cloak of allegory."
From LA Weekly-------------------------
"This undeniably talented writer-director has been repeating himself with steadily decreasing potency ever since the wonderful "The Sixth Sense," and his latest excursion does nothing to buck the trend."
"The screwiest yarn yet from Shyamalan's metaphysical-Limburger career project, a non-horror horror film."
"It's exasperating watching so much top-drawer talent wasted in a film that wraps itself up with one of the most preposterous (not to mention obvious) endings the genre has ever seen.
It's tedious instead of provocative and so unconvincing as to be preposterous."
"It's bad enough to make parable a four-letter word."
"A colossal miscalculation, a movie based on a premise that cannot support it, a premise so transparent it would be laughable were the movie not so deadly solemn. It's a flimsy excuse for a plot, with characters who move below the one-dimensional and enter Flatland."

I got tired of citing my sources as they were so eay to find.
But hey, what do I know, Rolling Stone knows movies best.

To each his own movie. I'll be in the theatre next door.

[Jamie Hat]

Posted: 1/26/05 at 4:24pm

To be fair, I realize that I left one movie off my list that really should have made the cut as well, big #4 worst of the year...
ALEXANDER
And I thought TROY was bad...
ALEXANDER made TROY look like Ben Hur.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/26/05 at 5:33pm

Why didn't you include Boston Globe or E! Online? Because they also gave the film good reviews, but I guess I don't have to tell YOU that.

[Jamie Hat]

Posted: 1/26/05 at 11:54pm

Oh, my bad. I must have missed those two glimmers of light in the dark sea.

[redhotinnyc2]

Posted: 1/27/05 at 9:04am

Good lord, how could I have forgotten to mention Closer??? I have never been so disgusted by language in a film - and I'm no prude. The concept of the piece is great, and Mike Nichols is a wonderful director, not to mention great performances by all actors involved - but really - how many times can a person say "fu*k" in a sentence?

[popcultureboy]

Posted: 1/27/05 at 9:06am

I take it you don't watch The Sopranos or The Wire then, Redhot?

[redhotinnyc2]

Posted: 1/27/05 at 9:16am

absolutely not. first of all I don't have HBO - and secondly - I don't actually have much appreciation for theater that celebrates the lowest of Man's value system. (or lack thereof)...I look for the positive in life and desire to see up-lifting theatre with a good moral base and a message of hope.

[Marquise]

Posted: 1/27/05 at 10:02am

have i mentioned that THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA was a piece of crap unlike any other?

[Jamie Hat]

Posted: 1/27/05 at 10:03am

You'd better steer clear of "Deadwood" too, I haven't heard that many "mother*@^#!*'s" since Eddie Murphy's Raw.

[redhotinnyc2]

Posted: 1/27/05 at 10:06am

oh dear God, don't get me started on how awful Phantom of the Opera was...and Deadwood is definitely not on my must-see list.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/27/05 at 3:20pm

I saw about 5 minutes of Deadwood and found it obscenely ridiculous. One of the worst series in a long long time.

[Marquise]

Posted: 1/27/05 at 3:22pm

I LOVE YOUR AVATAR MISTER MATT Updated On: 1/27/05 at 03:22 PM

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/27/05 at 3:29pm

Thanks! It's Louise Brooks taken in the 30s. Also the subject of my previous angel avatar. It's hard to believe such lascivious photos were taken back then. It looks pretty modern and risque by even today's standards.

[Jamie Hat]

Posted: 1/27/05 at 4:08pm

I really wanted to be into Deadwood...but it just sucked.

[MusicMan]

Posted: 1/27/05 at 5:37pm

COLLATERAL=brain-dead, Hollywood junk.

[rent1988]

Posted: 1/30/05 at 10:21pm

HELL BOY.
the secret window.

[Broadway_Baby]

Posted: 1/30/05 at 11:04pm

redhotinnyc2,do you aprove of Avenue Q? That is by far raunchier that much of what we see on TV, however it is a great musical. Just curious on your thoughts...

Edit: Sorry, i'm, such a threadjacker!

Updated On: 1/30/05 at 11:04 PM

[broadway86]

Posted: 1/31/05 at 8:34am

"COLLATERAL=brain-dead, Hollywood junk."

It's sad that you say that, considering it's much better than most of the stuff that Hollywood shoves out.

[redhotinnyc2]

Posted: 1/31/05 at 8:57am

Broadway Baby - I loved Avenue Q...but it is not raunchier than most of what you see on tv - by far the opposite. It may be raunchier than the average Broadway Musical, but it has relevance and if you go knowing what to expect - its a pleasant evening.