Worst of the Queue awards
General December 19th, 2005
In what should come as no surprise to anyone, American Wedding was one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long, long time. I make no excuses for the content in my Netflix queue - I don’t mind watching the bad along with the good. The only requirement is actually wanting to see the movie. I’d seen the previous movies and was in the mood for some potty humor. But this was just bad.
I had more fun reading about Tourette’s Syndrome on wikipedia during the movie, than watching Stiffler trying to act like he had TS.
Some of the movies are really tough to watch. I try to use awareness-of-time as a good indicator of how good a movie is. If I’m in the theater and I need to glance at my watch, that’s a bad thing. If I’m at home and I’m more interested in watching the DVD LCD tick away than watching the actual movie, that’s even worse. When 28 minutes in, I decide if it doesn’t get better, I need to yank it out of the player and drop kick it to the curb, I probably should… why I stuck around another twenty minutes, and eventually through the whole movie is beyond me. It had a few funny elements, but for the most part it sold out on everything that made the original movie hilarious.
So, I’ve decided somewhere on the website or blog I need to make an awards section for movies that are are either so good they should jump to the top of everyone’s queue (I haven’t seen one of those in a while,) or movies that are so, so bad you’re better off using the DVD as a coaster than putting it in the player. I’ll formalize more of that later, but right now in the running of “worst of” (think Razzies,) I would nominate American Wedding and Punch-Drunk Love.
About
‘Lost in Translation’ should be on the list as well.
I don’t quite disagree, but I had a lot of fun watching Lost in Translation and doing a drinking game out of it. So, for that reason, it had a redeeming quality and doesn’t belong the ‘worst of’ list. I considered Requiem for a Dream for that list too, but it’s got some dark creepy themes that by themselves aren’t bad. The fact I keep forgetting I’ve seen the movie and add it to my list again makes it bad. (Like LA Confidential)
The worst movie I’ve ever paid to see is - bar none - Blues Brothers 2000. My eyes are still not fully recovered from the self-gouging I inflicted on myself in the theater 5 years ago. This is what happens when the sequel to the greatest Chicago movie ever made gets filmed in Toronto.
I actually saw Punch-Drunk Love in the theater. I apologized profusely to the friend who bought my ticket afterwards.
Some of the worst movies I’ve Netflixed are “Swimming With Sharks,” “Bubble Boy” (which they sent me by accident), “The English Patient,” “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (the new one) and “28 Days Later.”
As for movies everyone should stop right now and rent, I was totally blown away by “Dancer in the Dark.”