#1
Posted: 12/31/06 at 5:24pm
Related to the thread about "worst movie you walked out on"--this is your personal bid for Worst Freaking Movie of All Time--which you know because you suffered all the way through it. And I'm not talking SHOWGIRLS or ISHTAR fun-bad--just BAD.
I have three candidates (I think this is harder to choose than a "best movie")--
ROMANTIC COMEDY--Early '80s abomination (and prime example of false advertising, as it is anti-romantic and humorless) that pairs Dudley Moore with Mary Steenburgen. Vomiting yet? I had the exact same reaction to this film as critic Pauline Kael--I didn't walk out because the movie actually drained me of the strength needed to get up and leave.
CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK--Screechy, ugly, completely incoherent sci-fi fantasy which makes you feel as if your head is being ground through the floor. Being a Dame of the British Empire does not guarantee dignified film roles, as poor Judi Dench demonstrates with her performance as an ectoplasmic sage-spirit who at one point is CAPTURED AND CHAINED UP (couldn't she just float through the chains and disappear?) I passed the time hoping Dame Judi kept a journal during the making of this one.
LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD--60s French "art movie" (not art, and hardly a movie) in which glamorous French world-weary types alternate between striking department-store mannequin poses and redundant arguments about whether they met last year at Marienbad (or Fredericksbad, or Baden-Salsa, or...). For insomniacs resistant to treatment. I'm not kidding--people barely MOVE in this movie, they just stand in tableaux while the camera pans around them and disembodied voiceovers babble on about the meaningless of existence. (I only WISH I could prove this movie didn't actually exist.)
I have three candidates (I think this is harder to choose than a "best movie")--
ROMANTIC COMEDY--Early '80s abomination (and prime example of false advertising, as it is anti-romantic and humorless) that pairs Dudley Moore with Mary Steenburgen. Vomiting yet? I had the exact same reaction to this film as critic Pauline Kael--I didn't walk out because the movie actually drained me of the strength needed to get up and leave.
CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK--Screechy, ugly, completely incoherent sci-fi fantasy which makes you feel as if your head is being ground through the floor. Being a Dame of the British Empire does not guarantee dignified film roles, as poor Judi Dench demonstrates with her performance as an ectoplasmic sage-spirit who at one point is CAPTURED AND CHAINED UP (couldn't she just float through the chains and disappear?) I passed the time hoping Dame Judi kept a journal during the making of this one.
LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD--60s French "art movie" (not art, and hardly a movie) in which glamorous French world-weary types alternate between striking department-store mannequin poses and redundant arguments about whether they met last year at Marienbad (or Fredericksbad, or Baden-Salsa, or...). For insomniacs resistant to treatment. I'm not kidding--people barely MOVE in this movie, they just stand in tableaux while the camera pans around them and disembodied voiceovers babble on about the meaningless of existence. (I only WISH I could prove this movie didn't actually exist.)
I ask in all honesty/What would life be?/Without a song and a dance, what are we?/So I say "Thank you for the music/For giving it to me."
