101 Movies to avoid watching before you die.

I was really surprised at what a bad movie House of Sand and Fog turned out to be — I loved the book and it seemed like it had potential to work really well as a movie. I liked Kingsley’s acting a lot though.

(Somewhat relatedly: I read Blindness this winter and was blown away by it, as how could anybody not be, and was excited when I heard the movie was being produced — as I was reading the book, I was imagining it as a movie, as a really good movie. But the review I read of them movie screened at Cannes makes it sound just awful.)

Crash, both of them Paul Haggis’ and David Cronenberg’s, are to be avoided, especially back to back.

About a bunch of Irish people who die. My family called it “The horse movie” because it opens with a dead horse floating in the ocean and each time someone dies they pan up past the horse to the dead people floating in the ocean. It is the standard against which all bad movies are compared in my household.

As in “Is it as bad as the horse movie?”

Sorry, Hidari, but I disagree: Signs is actually damn good. Yes, an alien invasion is way too large a plot device to effectively use as a simple McGuffin for the film’s actual story, with the probably to-be-expected result that the aliens and their invasion plans were ultimately cartoonish and lazily conceived. And Shyamalan’s insertion of himself into the movie was too much, clearly. Still, the family drama works on multiple levels, with the result that the movie’s tension is genuinely earned. Feel free the trash Shyamalan’s subsequent films, but I maintain that Signs stands as one of those Last-Decent-Film-Before-The-Director-Lost-His-Talent movies. (See Rob Reiner’s <A Few Good Men for another example.)

Now, if we’re talking about truly atrocious movies that one must avoid seeing at all costs, the answer is pretty simple: Superman III. The only movie that I have ever, after actually having paid the price of admission, walked out on.

Don’t see any recent serious movie set in Western Europe before the sixteenth century. They will get the Middle Ages totally wrong, they will get classical Greek or Rome wrong, and not in a so-bad-it’s funny-way, but in a ‘why are they such idiots way?’ I talked once to someone whose house had been used on the set for ‘Robin Hood Prince of Thieves’. The film-makers had brought mistletoe in from France, but they couldn’t work out the difference between a Saracen and an African-American. They are that stupid, they all are (except for the Pythons).

Ok, I screwed up the html there pretty badly. Let’s try again:

“(See Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men for another example.)”

And, of course, Superman III is still the nadir of modern crap moviemaking.

Nobody’s mentioned the most recent spate of Star Wars movies? Or maybe any Star Wars movie that is not Star Wars?

My Dinner with Andre. If you liked it, let’s be sure we never are seated next to each other on a trans-oceanic flight. We’ll both be happier that way.

I did like it. But partly that’s because I had a friend who actually attended the strange actor’s camp-in-the-woods in Poland with Jerzy Grotowski that Andre Gregory talks about in the film.

The new Indiana Jones, which is actually worse than the MacGyver film that it rips off, because Brian Blessed doesn’t appear in it.

Junebug billed as a “wise, bittersweet … comedy,” in reality none of the above. Just awful, leaving out the grotesque misrepresentations on the dvd jacket.

I had a friend who actually attended the strange actor’s camp-in-the-woods in Poland with Jerzy Grotowski that Andre Gregory talks about in the film.

I haven’t watched that movie in so long…was that the scene when Andre is talking about some monster emerging from the woods? Weird, great movie. (The thing that makes it for me is the waiter, whom I seem to recall reading somewhere was played by a prestigious Eastern European actor whose name I don’t remember. They way the camera would keep cutting to him, staring at Andre and Wallace Shawn as they talked…it was unnerving. Like having Banquo’s Ghost watching your meal.)

Hard to beat Superman III. But as for recent films:

—The Golden Compass, for being the worst insult against the book on which it’s based. I managed as far as when the Gyptians show up to rescue Lyra from the Gobblers before I started screaming. Never begrudge an author the right to make money from writing, but for God’s sake I hope Philip Pullman donated his cut to Amnesty International or something.

–Any Lars von Trier film, on principle. I couldn’t get a half-hour into either Breaking the Waves or Dancer in the Dark; I just couldn’t watch him keep shoving Emily Watson and Björk into his cinematic meat grinder.

—Gigli. ‘My eyes! The goggles do nothing!’

‘Signs’ is terrible too. Mind you it has Mel Gibson in it, so you probably didn’t need me to tell you that.

I enjoyed it, but that’s because I have a soft spots for movies with an accidentally mal-theistic cosmology.

Thanks, but I think I’ll still be able to enjoy movies that are set in the past, as long as I don’t A) become an expert on the particular time period of the movie, and B) devote most of my attention to looking for signs of accuracy or inaccuracy.

Likewise, almost any movie involving hacking, except maybe Sneakers is ruined if you’re a computer programmer.

My priest showed House of Sand and Fog as part of a film series to discuss the place of God in our lives. This movie was meant to show how all of the characters had opportunities to listen to each other, and to let God work through them, but never did. I disagree with the criticism of Jennifer Connelly’s acting. While she may have looked too nice (it is Hollywood, after all), her behaviors did seem plausibly depressive to me. And the cop was very disfunctional himself, desperate to help Connelly’s character but not listening to what kind of help she wanted. It isn’t a perfect movie, but it isn’t awful either.

I agree with Superman III, though. And I’d offer Julie Taynor’s Titus, a horribly brutal version of Titus Andronicus. The only movie I’ve rented that I refused to watch the second half.

Likewise, almost any movie involving hacking, except maybe Sneakers, is ruined if you’re a computer programmer.

I can remember, long ago, once asking some hacker friend of mine exactly what was impossible or unrealistic about War Games. He went on a rant which lasted for about 30 minutes. I felt, shall we say, rather foolish.

I thought I would just be the first person to mention ‘Titanic’.

Could have been worse. The good part is that almost everyone dies.

The Sixth Sense was pretty good though, and I would even be prepared to ‘stand up’ for ‘Unbreakable’ if only on the grounds that it’s not as bad as ‘Signs’.

I actually think that The Sixth Sense falls into the same “pretty damn good” category as Signs, where I think Unbreakable is one of the great films of the last 10 years or so. To each their own.

As for Woody Allen, the world lost an enormous talent when passed away sometime in the late 90s. Who that person making movies in London with his name is I have no idea.

Sorry, # 8, 13 and 17, but you can’t put a sequel on the list. Sequels aren’t movies. Sequels are brand extensions.

I once was a movie reviewer for a daily newspaper, for about three years in the early 70s. A golden age, in retrospect, though most of it looked liked crap at the time. The only movie I walked out on during that period was Ryan’s Daughter. They literally couldn’t pay me to sit through it to the end.

Everyone should be sure to die before having to see Dogma. If I could, I’d be tempted to go back in time and kill myself before I had to see it. Its preachiness is surpassed only by its stupidity, every line is an insult to the viewer’s intelligence and sense of humor, and its oh-so-controversial attempts to shock are the tamest, most cowardly bullshit imaginable. The only movie of which I’ve ever read the evangelical review on capalert.com and thought, “yeah, that’s a good point.”

Also, #14 above is crazy: not only should you watch Demolition Man as many times as possible before dying, you should all that after you die, you may be transported to an eternal movie theater where it is playing non-stop. One of the most delightfully silly movies ever.

Damn it. Replace “all” with “pray” in the second-to-last sentence of 39.

Here’s something: Life is Beautiful was a huge disappointment based on how great Benigni was in Johnny Stecchino.

You’ve Got Mail is a perfectly brilliant romantic comedy that is actually about the AOL Time Warner merger, and the American corporate media landscape in general. This is, we recall, about a romance between a Barnes & Noble executive and the manager of an independent bookstore. In order to enjoy it, you need to interpret it in that way.

Oliver Stone’s Alexander. Watched it thinking it would be mindless fun (and yes, I realize from the other comments that mindless fun is BAD…) – and it was incredibly booooooring.

Also, I’d say Battlefield Earth is a shoe-in.

Dan — I felt exactly the same way about another Jim Jarmusch movie which I can’t be bothered to look up the name of. BUT, brilliantly, just as I started getting ready to walk out, the film started burning up, and the projection room caught on fire.

aulus — Yes, I quit Dogma pretty early in the game. Awful.

miriam — I bet you anything you like that Good Morning Vietnam is even more awful. I haven’t seen either, on the principle that Robin Williams is unwatchable post-Mork and Mindy. But I just imagine that Good Morning Vietnam must be worse than any of the others.

I totally agree on:

The Hand the Rocks the Cradle. Awful, awful movie that manages to play in probably the greatest variety of offensive, negative racial and gender stereotypes in a single Hollywood film since Birth of a Nation. This was actually the first movie I thought of when I read this post.

Signs Unintentionally maltheistic is right! God kills Mel Gibson’s wife and then nearly slaughters all of humanity in order to reinforce his faith in Him. Wouldn’t a burning bush have been easier?

Titanic Three hours of my life I’ll never have back.

On the other hand…

House of Sand and Fog is a bad movie that I’d warn people away from, but I just wouldn’t quite put it in this category.

And I actually liked My Dinner with André and eXistenZ.

Other films that would make my list:

Out of Africa With apologies to the late Sidney Pollack, this stinker is up there with Titanic in the list of utterly undeserving Oscar® winners. And while we’re on that category….

Dances with Wolves

Maxie A horrible, unfunny, and implausible comedy ghost story in which the generally awful Glen Close is possessed by the ghost of a flapper.

Autumn in New York Attempted tear jerker May-October romance that’s awful even by disease-of-the-week movie standards.

Godfather, Part III If only Sofia could act as well as she can direct!

The Natural This was always infuriating, especially because of its tacked on happy ending. Became more so when I had to watch its climax repeatedly intercut with Gibby beating my A’s in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.

The Touch Ingmar Bergman’s first English language movie starring the often awful Eliot Gould. Potential saving grace: approaches unintentional self-parody.

The middle portion of the anthology film New York Stories. The first part, “Life Lessons,” directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Nick Nolte is quite good. The third part, “Oedipus Wrecks,” directed by Woody Allen is merely so-so. But the middle section, Francis Ford Coppola’s “Life Without Zoe” is one of the most insufferable, self-involved half hours of in all of world cinema.

Cabin Boy
Boat Trip
Unbreakable (Unbearable)

Since then, I’ve resolutely refused to watch another Jim Jarmusch film ever, on the “fool me once” principle.

Smart man. They’ve just gotten worse. If a bunch of right-wing movie critics were to gin up a pastiche of everything they imagine avant-garde, “politically correct” filmmakers are guilty of, they couldn’t do much better than Ghost Dog.

I successfully avoided seeing Highlander II when it came out. Good for me.

I’ve always hated “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” I thought Ferris was an insufferable little prick.

Bicentennial Man. Watch it twice? I’d rather be reincarnated as cat litter.

Still, it did provoke the best nul point movie review ever.

51: I thought the “Life Lessons” segment of New York Stories was better than “quite good.” I wish the format had caught on, in view of the number of mediocre-to-bad two-hour movies that have great half-hour movies embedded in them But the Coppola contribution, as you say, was beyond awful.

Now that I think about it, I’ve seen, in theaters, Dances with Wolves, Batman and Robin, First Knight (with Richard Gere!), the 1998 Godzilla, XXX and The Fast and the Furious (both with Vin Diesel – now there’s some potential squandered!), and Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes remake. There’s a hall of shame for you, altho in my defense(?) the last two were on dates. Anyway, thankfully there’s not much danger of any CT readers being exposed to any of them.

I meant to say above that I also kinda liked Demolition Man. The Taco Bell and no-toilet-paper jokes alone should spare it from this list.

And to be added to the list:

Howard the Duck Simply awful without being in the least bit unintentionally funny. A comedy in which the funniest joke is a sign that says “Cajun Sushi” (and, no, it’s not funnier in context). Saw this in a huge, largely empty theater in Boston on the weekend of its release. Apparently word traveled fast. One guy in the sparse audience actually liked the film and laughed loudly throughout, which made this an oddly socially awkward experience for the rest of us.

Something Wild Practically everyone I know liked this movie. I hated it. Go figure.

Angel Heart Ponderous puzzle pic that the writers clearly thought was really, really clever. Almost rescued by a great Robert DeNiro cameo as the devil and/or Martin Scorsese.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula Hate to keep adding Coppola to the list. When he’s good (e.g. first two Godfather films; The Conversation) he’s very, very good. But when he’s bad…you get this film. Watch Keanu Reeves lose a two-hour long battle with an English accent.

FWIW, I loved Taymor’s Titus. I thought the film was a really interesting (and visually stunning) reflection on male violence. It’s a mediocre play (at least for a Shakespeare play), but Taymor did everything one could possibly do with it.

These decommendations are all over the place, so I might as well add mine. I humbly suggest that one consider dying before watching West Side Story.

I’ve always hated “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” I thought Ferris was an insufferable little prick.

You’re not watching the movie for Ferris; you’re watching it for Cameron. He’s the only interesting person in the whole film (though why Starfleet later made the mistake of putting him in charge of a starship is anybody’s guess).

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Ah, no, it’s got its moments. “I have rossed oceans of time to find you”: that shit is funny, man.

You’ve Got Mail on this list? Why does it sound like a plausible candidate? Henry didn’t say anything to back up that nomination. I completely disagree. It’s a very good romantic comedy with lots of interesting commentary and witty script (plus a cute story).

And Star Wars? Puhlease.

Howard the Duck Simply awful without being in the least bit unintentionally funny.

Oh, sweet heavens–I’d hoped that I’d never remember that date again. When Howard crashes through the wall of the bathroom and they show you a nice full-frontal shot of the female duck showering…gaaaahhh. Possibly the worst moment of my entire 18th year.

Angel Heart…Almost rescued by a great Robert DeNiro cameo as the devil and/or Martin Scorsese.

Ok, Ben, thank you: now you’re making me laugh. (The “and/or” really does it.)

Never seen Demolition Man. But I have seen The Running Man which is super-duper awesome. And as for West Side Story, you can take the plot, the dialogue, the casting, even the music, but you can’t ignore the dancing. Best choreographed film musical ever, period.

No Way Out (the 1987 Kevin Costner thriller) A film that proves that a surprise twist isn’t so welcome when it relies on the film’s actively lying to you for two hours. Bonus points for including a gratuitously evil gay character and for featuring Sean Young, who’s awful when she’s not playing a cyborg, as a seductress.

forgot one:

Kingdom of Heaven

I forgot to second Vanilla Sky, which made me want to throw large objects at the screen.

I have a soft spot for Dario Argento, however, so I can’t agree with Suspiria.

I’ll see your Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula and raise you Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Unless you like seeing Helena Bonham Carter’s heart ripped out of her chest. And I’m just not that big a fan of Emma Thompson. Badda-bing!

No one has mentioned Contact yet? It let’s us in on that profound secret that faith and science can conflict, especially when faith is the dreamy Matthew McConoughy. Add the 4 or 5 false endings….man, that movie is bad.

Notwithstanding my call for standards, I have to say that “Battlefield Earth” is indeed very impressive. I only sneaked a 37-second peak on the way out from watching another film, but those are 37 seconds I’d desperately like to have back.

“Straw Dogs.” The bits that aren’t like “Home Alone” are cringeworthy. Before I saw it, I wouldn’t have believed Dustin Hoffman was capable of such bad acting.

Michael Winner’s remake of _The Big Sleep_ starring Robert Mitchum.

Resevoir Dogs:

Ever since I saw it in a theater full of frat boy types who were vocally thrilled to see the police officer tortured, I have had trepidations about watching films in public.

And, having seen and read about Tarantino’s more recent “work,” I wonder if I misunderstood the intent behind Resevoir Dogs–perhaps Tarantino really was simply trying to gratify his audience’s baser urges.

I probably shouldn’t say this, but man, are you people young. There are some awful movies cited, but two, in my memory, stand out.

When I saw it, I thought “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” (1962) had to be the worst movie ever made that was intended to be good. Starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (the rest of the cast is pretty forgettable, and, perhaps, best forgotten), directed by Robert Aldrich (who had a long, if not distinguished career: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000736/). Someone thought this would be a major movie. As it turned out, it became, quite quickly, the butt of a billion jokes.

But then, two years later–and directed by Robert Aldrich (he sure had a bad couple of years)–“Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte,” which was essentially the same movie, but not as well done. 7 Academy Award nominations! Bette Davis (also having a bad couple of years, Olivia deHaviland, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Morehead. If this isn’t the worst-intended-to-be-good movie of all time, I hope I never see the champion.

Perhaps notably, both screenplays were by Henry Farrell…also having a bad couple of years.

Its more than 20 year since I’ve seen it, but The Bride Wore Black is one I’d have really liked to walk out on, except it was a date with a guy I liked…

I thought ‘House of Sand and Fog’ was a vile book for just the reason you mention, the gratuitously unpleasant plotting. It was well written, didn’t hurt to read the prose, but I found nothing edifying in it.

Starship Troopers gets my vote for appalling brain-sucking movie horror. It’s closely followed by Last Tango in Paris: though here again it may be revulsion from nastiness, rather than a considered response to the art of the thing: though the movie was immensely tedious as well as nasty.

I have a soft spot for Dario Argento, however, so I can’t agree with Suspiria.

I only checked out Argento recently and thought Tenebrae was entertaining if clumsy, which I didn’t really mind. But Suspiria – sorry, no.

E.T. the Extraterrestrial

nothing personal, but you have no heart ;) – also,
Drew Barrymore as Gertie is the best child actor ever!

I thought “Grave of the Fireflies” was beautifully made, from an aesthetic standpoint, but ultimately a manipulative, heavy-handed downer.

I agree, it is beautifully made, but the latter part of your description made me turn it off, I just couldn’t stand it. I kinda liked Spirited Away though.

do you mean the original version of Insomnia

No the Nolan/Pacino version, nothing really worked in that movie at all. Is the original worth getting? I like Skarsgård.

When I saw it, I thought “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” (1962) had to be the worst movie ever made that was intended to be good.

Same here, totally over the top, seems to be some sort of gay cult film though.

I loved My Dinner with Andre, and have enjoyed most of the Jim Jarmusch I’ve seen. (I’m not too keen on trans-Atlantic conversations anyway, thanks very much.) I highly recommend Dead Man as one of Jarmusch’s best.

I’ve seen so many really bad movies, the titles have mercifully melted away. I do think that Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil was unredeemable though. In all fairness, it may have been because of studio editing but my impression was that Charlton Heston acting in the manner of Victor Mature had its effect.

Troy

And the worst thing about it was watching the emaciated and nearly lifeless corpse of Peter O’Toole, looking not all there, and making a damn, sad fool of himself in such a clunker.

I second the badness votes for A Few Good Men.

I happen to like Eyes Wide Shut very much. And I don’t think Coppola’s Dracula was bad at all.

Pretty much anything by Catherine Breillat. Titanic. Visitor Q. Irreversible. The Skin by Liliana Cavani. Pretty much anything by Lina Wertmuller. Any remake of a Lina Wertmuller film. Cousin, Cousine.

Re: Howard the Duck and general topic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucxqC8sH83Q

The HtD part starts at about 5:37 and gets really funny/creepy at 6:57
(not really sfw (I mean, this is HtD) but nothing really bad either)

It shouldn’t. I just remember when it first came out everyone raved about it and I thought it was absolute crap.

Ben Alpers at 84: You thirded Vanilla Sky. I firsted it at 37.

Somewhere near the end (but not near enough), Tom Cruise ran out into the lobby of an office building. Someone behind me said at the top of his voice, “Please somebody shoot him, so this movie will be over!” Everybody cheered.

Speaking of Kevin Costner, what was the the name of the one where he was an escaped convict? And got shot, and took about ten very long minutes to die? That was a bad movie. Eastwood was in it, and Laura Dern.

And Hook, oh God yes. As Pauline Kael said, positively drenched in flop sweat.

I haven’t seen the Robert Mitchum remake of The Big Sleep (strange movie to remake, although I guess Lauren Bacall sort of did), but his version of Farewell, My Lovely is almost good. The really bad Philip Marlowe in the movies is Elliott Gould. I saw part of his version on an airplane and was ready to be let off in midair.

Cabin Boy was the only movie I’ve ever paid for only to walk out on. And it was the last five minutes. I decided that if anything, at least I could salvage those.
I thought Titus was visually beautiful, which counted for a lot. Vanilla Sky, as well, I found visually appealing.
Thanks for mentioning Forrest Gump, too ;)

O Lucky Man.

Not for the viewer.

Of course Star Trek V must be included. I have never watched First Contact all the way to the end, but my husband tells me it was watchable.

The people who made Field of Dreams made it too sentimental and a father/son story when it was only in part. Eddie/Kid Scissons should have stayed in the movie even if J.D. Salinger could not under his own name.

re 118: This may be why Dave Marsh preferred the Crystals/neighborhood kids to the mannered choreography of “West Side Story”.

Speaking of Kevin Costner, what was the the name of the one where he was an escaped convict?

A Perfect World. Costner has been in rather a lot of these, hasn’t he?

Dear #54,

There is no one who would (willingly) watch Cabin Boy and not love it. Lighten up.

Baby Mama.
Boondock Saints.
El Topo.

130:

No; and no.

Christ Almighty. By now I thought at least someone would have proposed Natural Borne Killers. I hope this is because no one has seen it. It was the only/worst movie I was ashamed of myself for not walking out of. I kept promising myself I would leave when the protagonists were killed. Dumbass! Nothing could have kept that crapfest going but the survival of the miserable protagonists. I hope that film failed financially or we are all in big trouble.

I too loathed “Being John Malkovich”. Truly nasty and depressing.

“I Heart Huckabees” was soul-vacuuming.

Finally, “Arsenic and Old Lace” is highly unpleasant – no mean feat with Cary Grant on the set.

Second to Troy. I just watched it on tv last week. It’s basically poorly made soft core porn for women, but not even a naked Brad Pitt can make up for the overall crappiness of the movie.

As for the person who mentioned Arthur, I assume you mean Jerry Bruckheimer’s Arthur movie? Because that’d be a top contender. Clive Owens doesn’t utter a single line that isn’t a cliche (we kept track), the movie is completely self serious, yet the plot is laughably implausible, e.g. Kiera Knightly, a Wiccan priestess fights of multiple 300 lb Saxons in hand to hand combat.

My parents should get an honorary award for picking out obscure European dud after dud. In 20 years, my mother’s never yet not rented a clunker. One was a French movie that involved nuns, and pigs farting (or maybe it was the nuns?), anyways, it’s our equivalent of the “horse movie.”

Finally, I wouldn’t say not watch it, but think twice before you rent a 3 hour movie described as a “Japanese Icelandic vision quest.”

…which is how some of us felt after viewing The Usual Suspects.

Don’t watch “The Usual Suspects” before reading the Foundation Trilogy.

And I’d offer Julie Taynor’s Titus, a horribly brutal version of Titus Andronicus.

I’d argue that, given that she’d decided to film Titus Andronicus in the first place, it wasn’t a bad effort.

The worst movies are the disappointments, so I think these would belong on any list: Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, Gangs of New York, The Darjeeling Limited

3- Sweeny Todd (the recent one with Johnny Depp)

A bit more on Black Book… the review in the NYT (I think) said something along the lines of “it was not really a serious movie”, yet a lot of it was about the holocaust, the main character is a Jewish woman in hiding from the Nazis, and the story was framed at the beginning and end by idyllic scenes of Israel, complete with blooming desert. Then, at the very end, there is gunfire from unseen attackers as the holocaust survivors take refuge (the year is given as 1956). The NYT reviewer loved the movie, but they wished that the current “struggle for Jewish survival” in Israel got more attention. So, The Holocaust = not something a movie has to treat seriously. Israel = the real struggle for Jewish survival. Go figure.

I guess you could say there were a lot of good things about how the ambiguities of war were portrayed (few clear goodguys and badguys), but I didn’t see anything all that special there, to me it seemed more like just a big mess where everybody was crooked or at least very misguided and most of them ended up shooting at each other anyway. Perhaps the most endearing character in of all was the S S officer (or was it gestapo?) who has a romance with the main character lasting most of the movie (provided you put his job title out of your mind).

Oh! I want to play!

Two stinkers from 1991: Queens Logic, Meeting Venus. Films so hopelessly corrupt they could have had Robin Williams in them and it wouldn’t have made them any worse.

I thought I had a hat trick for that year, but I just checked IMDB and it turns out Mr. Holland’s Opus was 1995.

And Zora–I’ll see your Aap Mujhe Acche Lagne Lage and raise you one Ham Dil De Chuke Sanam. Although my fellow victim and I amused ourselves by hypothesizing that the censors cut the scene towards the end when Ajay gives Salman a big ol’ BJ in a Budapest public urninal, which would have given the story some semblance of coherence. And class.

Pushing Tin.
Walked out, and got my money back.

Waking Life. Pretty to look at, but people offer bullshit through the entire film. Like My Dinner With 100 Stoned Andres.

Or am I the guy who ruined the thread with italics?

Gone With The Wind.

The following films should be nowhere remotely near this conversation, IMO (that is, I regularly actually recommend them to people):

Touch of Evil
Being John Malkovich
I Walked With a Zombie
After Hours
Magnolia
The Usual Suspects (a character lying to you is different from the movie lying to you, fwiw)
Requiem for a Dream (though I’d only recommend this to certain people)
Bringing Up Baby

Ned Kelly

2001: A Space Odyssey, whilst perhaps not as absolutely awful as some others mentioned, is my all-time most overrated movie. Admittedly, there is one good jump cut from the bone to the spacecraft, but the rest is pretentious drivel.

Some apes, a couple of black monoliths, a screwy computer, and this is deep?

Hers more the usual suspects…

Japanese Story/The Well/The Winter Dark etc, etc -half an hour of story packed into 90 minutes of meaningful looks and tortured landscape.

Captain Coreilli’s Mandolin – like eating warm ice-cream.

Planet of The Apes (Burton version) – killer premise, good actors, unlimited budget and one of Hollywood’s most original directors. Yet ended up as bonobo poopoo. Michael Caine was right. “Why don’t they remake bad movies instead?”.

Signs – artful and suspenseful allegory of lost faith and redemption or aliens spraying poison gas from within cheap bodysuits, taken down by an all-American, faith-based baseball bat? I’ve decided. And if these malevolent and covalent ETs are allergic to water, what are they doing invading a planet where the ecosystem and top species all depend on water?

The Village – even dumber and dumberer.

The Magnificent Ambersons – let’s face it, we’d all rather watch Touch of Evil again.

Eyes Wide Shut – I’m a real Kubrick aficionado but that really stretched my patience. Mind you, I’m inclined to blame Cruise and Kidman. They were excruciatingly smug and boring together. OK, Stan cast them, so he should share the blame.

A.I. – and it’s a sad thing Stan’s dead, otherwise we could have been treated to some of the old ultra violence visited upon Spielberg after Artificial Idiot. Like Burton’s Ape Planet, all the ingredients were there but utterly cocked up. And like all bad Spielberg films, it ended with a cute kid staring winsomely into a bright light. I can see the Spielberg memorial now.

Reality Bites – a film that commodified youth culture to make the point commodifying youth culture is bad. Bad faith indeed.

The Matrix series. Whether launched, refried or revolting, it’s still well worn old SF ideas, beautifully art directed though, lifted without credit to drive a mythos that just disappeared up its own Trojan Horse’s arse.

Other awful aspects of Dances with Wolves:

Though the film presents the Sioux as “noble,” the Pawnee appear as classic, cardboard-cutout evil Hollywood Injuns.

The film concludes with an end title that invokes the tragic-vanishing-Indians meme and more or less suggests that there aren’t any Sioux anymore.

And the film’s Civil War prelude is particularly phony and grandiose.

American Beauty got a brief mention above which deserves to be expanded upon.

It deserves the moniker of truly nasty – it is a thoroughly depressing account of US sexual morality which is entirely without redeeeming features, for craps sake why doesn’t Kevin spacey screw the girl, not to mention the nastily homophobic sub plot (the homophobe next door turns out to be gay really! Quelle surprise!) The dilemmas posed by the film are entirely false (wholesome vs. sex for example) that the only response is to run sreaming: get out of this frame.

And that plastic bag (nicely parodied since though).

Ooooh, yeah, <i)Requiem for a Dream. That’s got to get a top spot on the “Die First” list.

The fact that Ben Alpers liked this movie is making me reevaluate my whole commitment rationalizing the US primary system.

Planet of The Apes (Burton version) – killer premise, good actors, unlimited budget and one of Hollywood’s most original directors.

Good lord that guy sucks as a director. Technically he’s got all the verve and imagination of a soap-opera hack; his strength is that he has the art and design sense of a morbid 14-year old girl, which I suppose deserves on-screen representation somewhere or other.

Pee Wee’s Big Adventure was good despite him, same for Ed Wood.

THE GRADUATE

and

DEAD POETS SOCIETY

Don’t watch “The Usual Suspects” before reading the Foundation Trilogy.

Don’t read the Foundation trilogy before sinking yourself in a concrete foundation.

As someone said upthread, gosh you people are young.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Trip with Teacher. The Devil’s Rain. Love Story.

This is an embarrassing and disheartening thread. Like a firstyear undergrad discussion. “Plato sucks! He’s hard and boring!”

I note two surprising and particularly saddening trends:

1. The tendency to list arguably mediocre films that made an effort to be good, but that are thought by many knowledgeable people to be very good. And, at the same time, a tendency to defend choices (e.g., You’ve Got Mail) that are equally mediocre, but try not to be more.
2. To equate sad or depressing with “don’t watch it.” Have I got a Disney library to sell you people.

At the very least, it’s a good argument in favor of respect for specialized expertise in knowledge, since clearly the high level of general intelligence doesn’t make its opinions about film any better than the average.

Cousin, Cousine

Does this have an audience outside high school French classes?

Point taken, but without it we would not have had Les Cousins dangereux.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? WTF

But on no account attempt to watch Dogville.

Why hasn’t anyone mentioned Prince’s movie “Under the Cherry Moon” yet? Or was I the only person who saw it?

Juno..one of the worst movies with a female idiot. Forrest Gump for chicks.

Anything Woody Allen after he decided that ‘artists’ should have sex with their daughters.

Most of the movies listed as bad are simply time-wasters with little mental nutrition. Think of them as Harlequin Romances and don’t affect pretense that these flicks are Great Art. Buncha posers!

It’s telling that I didn’t see a single film mentioned above that I feel the need to defend, but one in particular – The Golden Compass, first mentioned by #24 – stands out as being particularly dreadful, perhaps because it’s fresh in my mind. Fans of the books will hate it because it will soil the memory of the story for them, while newcomers will bemoan the convoluted and confused plot.

A special hell is reserved by me for The Da Vinci Code. This is hardly surprising, given how much I hated the book, but when I flicked through the book I felt it would at least make a watchable film. As Steven Fry called it: “complete loose stool-water…arse gravy of the worst kind.”

I’m with CK Dexter on this one. Grave of the Fireflies was too much of a “downer”? Good Lord. That’s the sort of thing you should be embarrassed to say (or type) in public.

And I know any movie thread will eventually end in every possible film that can be called to mind being denounced by somebody-or-other, but one might suggest that calling down Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, Gangs of New York, The Magnificent Ambersons, and The Graduate (just for starters) is perhaps trying just a little too hard.

it was based on All the King’s Men, for god’s sake—how could you so thoroughly screw up material like that?

Cf. the Sean Penn film version of All the King’s Men.

Also Juno, fashionable backlash target-of-the-moment. It’s obviously a fable, which is not the same thing as a bad or odious movie, and the lead character is precisely the opposite of a “female idiot”: we’re supposed to be hating on her because she’s too precocious and says things too mature for any teenager to say, remember? At least keep the backlash straight.

Dr S: Ok, for “overrated” please substitute “terrible movies made with apparent utter contempt for their audiences”. “Die before seeing” can also be understood to mean “under no circumstances waste several hours of your life watching” if you so desire, or may be ratcheted down to “films you will wish you had walked out on if, for unfathomable reasons you watch them despite this warning, and, for equally unknowable causes, you should sit through them in their entirety.”

I hear you, Doug, but you’re going to have to admit that’s just not going to be many people’s reaction to either Pulp Fiction or The Princess and the Warrior. Who knows but there may even be a good reason for that. (I’m not sure what “apparent utter contempt for their audiences” is supposed to mean… I’m curious, but apprehensive.) I’d never heard of In the Realm of the Senses before this thread, but based on the anti-recommendation will probably give it a try.

Could you describe the fashionable backlash, sir?

The process whereby a small-budget film garners widespread critical and audience praise, wins an Oscar or two and thereby forces film geeks to distance themselves from it at all costs, no matter what absurdities this requires. The cinematic version of the sort of thing that happens when an indie band hits the big time. A certain breed of film geek will confess to liking Juno or The Blair Witch Project as readily as a certain breed of rock snob will admit to liking The White Stripes.

Dammit ds. So what the hell am I supposed to do with all these Moldy Peaches albums.

I’m figuring the film geeks don’t pile on The Hottest State in the same way as Juno b/c, y’know, tits? But the White Stripes really only got played out after a “meg white sex tape” search started returning hits. Never underestimate the jiggle factor, I guess. I haven’t heard much about Forgetting Sarah Marshall so I don’t know if penis is the new black, yet.

Still think Juno was crap though.

Also with dexter on this one. Requiem for a Dream wasn’t a bad movie, it was a movie that made you feel bad. Though not nearly as much as the book, which in turn didn’t make you feel nearly as bad as Hubert Selby’s other books, like Last Exit to Brooklyn or Song of the Silent Snow. Seriously, the director SPARED you people in Requiem.

Is there really a movie in which California invades Buenos Aires? As a former Californian, I must point out that Argentina invaded California first (in 1818, as a matter of fact). Which is how (I almost said) we got more flags than Texas.

When it comes to films I watched this year, it has to be I am Legend. I have found few that agree with me, but I thought the movie was terrible and went nowhere.

Is there really a movie in which California invades Buenos Aires?

No, what he means is that the movie is supposedly set in Buenos Aires, but the characters aren’t very authentically Argentinian.

Lots of movies I like up here, esp. Eyes Wide Shut. Luv the post-apocalyptic stuff, no matter how bad (Warriors of the Wasteland!). Liquid Sky was epic. I have a poster of that one.

On the bad side, anything with Adam Sandler or Paulie Shore. Looking for Mr Goodbar. Hustle and Flow. Spike Lee’s Son of Sam film. Nicholas Cage seems to come up a lot. Couldn’t sit through Ghost Rider. Wicker Man, bad. National Treasure, yuck. Jarmusch, awful.

Here are some beloved movies that I think are terrible, and that I haven’t seen mentioned:

Rosemary’s Baby (though the part where the old lady said “hail, Satan” was pretty hilarious, I will admit; however, it wasn’t supposed to be)
The Paper Chase (unbelievably stupid)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (so precious I wanted to kill myself and everyone else)

Here are some justly hated movies that have not gotten mention:

The Devil’s Rejects (the most morally repugnant movie I have ever seen; made me want to destroy decadent Western culture)
Turistas (PC–in the justly pejorative sense of that term, not the sense in which right wingers complain that they can’t call women “broads”–gone amok)
Higher Learning (PC gone even more amok)

The worst sequels of all time:

Highlander 3, Matrix 3, Batman & Robin

What a bunch of nonsense.

American Beauty is a satire, you fucking idiot!

Exactly, GG. When you have a film whose climax is child soldiers gleefully shouting ‘Huzzah’ when a guy in an SS-style greatcoat announces that the foe knows fear…

high school hormones led me to the theater to see “Black Orchid” with Mickey Rourke the ‘hott’ follow up to 9 1/2 Weeks… another strike against rational choice theory…

Crybaby!

That’s not meant to be directed at anybody. It was simply a terrible film.

Starship Troopers is good and funny work. On the other hand it’s easy to see why nobody wants to waste two hours on Nazi 90210 in Space.

Angel Heart – I wholeheartedly agree. That ending had me shouting “FOR FUCKS SAKE!!” out loud in the theatre.

Other noteables:

Every Robert Rodriguez movie since El Mariachi. The dialogue is sooo awful in everyone of them. All first-takes spliced together. They’re all like watching long episodes of the A-Team.
Any movie featuring Ryan Reynolds. Even gravity-bong hits can’t make him funny. Same goes for Dane Cook- you wonder if they’re the same person. Oh yeah, Rob Schnieder too.

Indiana Jones 4 (yep, its a steamer)
The Spanish Prisoner
The Sea Inside (oh, go ahead film school tools, start bitching!!)
Stranger Than Fiction

I have to disagree somewhat on “300”. The comparison between the film and the comic that inspires it provides proof positive of the slow, inexorable descent into madness of Frank Miller’s mind. Now, as a comic buff, I find that to be a most fascinating train wreck.

Plus, it’s a handy summation of the features of contemporary Orientalism cum Islamophobia. For example, things like the depiction of Rodrigo Santoro’s i.e. Xerxes’s serraglio show that some well-meaning left-wing commentators
are falling well short of the goal of plumbing the depths, of capturing the multifarious manifestations, of the animosity towards the swarthies which prevails in warmongering circles.

The film is a gem due its unintended humour, of course. These days, who is the underdog, and who wields the craven weapons that kill from a safe distance, or the heavy war beasts?

Last but not least, my reptile brain tells me that the ripped abs and the stylised bloodletting are yummy. What can I say, I don’t hold myself to high standards.

Oh God, 300. Triumph of the Will as remade by someone with an aesthetic sense more suited to Man O’War album covers.

I think it’s more in line with the original poster’s intent to say that “the list” should NOT include films merely bad, or merely dull. There are thousands of those. It should be a list of films that are so deeply, morally, factually or historically inaccurate, so mistaken about so many basic life issues that when you’re trying to tell someone why the film is bad you don’t know where to start. So given over to the madness of a fixed idea, or mired in some idiot’s concept of Pure Art, or so pandering to a depraved and narrow view of what some ethnic or social group (e.g blacks, gays, women) might want to see, that every scene presents multiple levels of pure awfulness.

It’s easy to think of dull or obnoxious films, but those that actually poison the springs of humanity are thankfully somewhat rarer, and more worthy of the list.

Oh God, 300. Triumph of the Will as remade by someone with an aesthetic sense more suited to Man O’War album covers.

Exactly.

Just to add an international perspective: As a rule, Danish folkekomedier should be avoided at all costs. Fortunately, only very few ever reached the international market and by the mid-1990s the genre was almost extinct. But I do remember Min søsters børn i sneen, a 1990s remake of a 1960s disaster (the 1960s version is reactionary humour at its most pathetic, the 1990s version does not have any reason to exist except to rip off the reputation of some otherwise good actors), being shown on a route bus between Umeå and Sundsvall.

In case any Germans read this I will make an exception for Olsenbanden, although Olsensbandens sidste stik was and is a terrible misunderstanding. All copies of this film should be deposited in the Mariana Trench.

those that actually poison the springs of humanity

Well put. That’s why my first suggestion was Kids.

“Exactly, GG. When you have a film whose climax is child soldiers gleefully shouting ‘Huzzah’ when a guy in an SS-style greatcoat announces that the foe knows fear…”

And isn’t they guy in the coat Doogie Howser? That was great!

The BIG BRAIN BUG!

Not my favorite but certainly not the worst.

Expectations and money spent really matter. I thought Planet of Apes would actually be good and saw it in a theatre with my wife. I still feel ripped off.

Van Helsing(way unthread 35 and 55) was like the third free video, watched late at night, and I thought it would be incredible stupid but maybe stupid fun. I enjoyed it.

A lot of good nominations.

Using the standard of a movie that purports to be high art but fails seriously (e.g., House of Sand and Fog), I would list:

eXistenZ – I was confused rather than puzzled, and bored; I like his Crash

Spider – ditto

Italian for Beginners – bored, bored, bored

The Piano – woman doesn’t talk for no apparent reason (though hint of abuse) and gets sexually harassed into love?!

Titus – pretentious, violent w/o motivation. If the play is bad, then DON’T MAKE A MOVIE OF IT.

Though it does not belong in this category, I agree that Chasing Amy was lousy.

Coming Home. God what an odious compendium of cliches and the subtlety of anthrax wrapped as an alleged anti-war film.

When Bruce Dern has sex with Jane Fonda, the music on the soundtrack is Hey Jude. But when Jon Voight does it, it’s Strawberry Field Forever!

I remember when Dern finds out about Fonda and Voight sleeping together, confronts them with his M-16 and Voight says to Dern, “I’m a brother,” I turned to my girlfriend at the time and said “Give me the weapon, Bruce. This one’s on me.”

The Deer Hunter. They should have ended it after the wedding scene. The Russian Roulette scenes were nothing but racist claptrap. Three hours of sheer tedium and macho posturing.

You all have a weird threshold for what constitutes a bad movie. The Dark Wind, an adaptation of a Tony Hillerman novel is so bad that you can see the boom mic in a bunch of the shots. Most of the rest of what you all have mentioned are at least technically competent. Okay, Liquid Sky was really bad but I saw it for free. There is a difference between bad and cliche. For example, whatever it’s other faults in terms of narrative or message Titanic was at least startlingly well-made in it’s attention to detail, design etc..

Of course, I did love Starship Troopers when I saw it on TV.

I loathed Crash, violent, sexist, homophobic. stoopid…It was supposed to be a black comedy, but gloried in bloodletting too much.
And Chronicles of Riddick was in incoherent mess. I hope Judi Dench got good money for being in that stinker.

And I actually won two tickets to Howard the Duck. I was embarrassed for the actors. (The original comic was, in fact, great…)

‘Batman and Robin’. Hideous.

I can’t believe nobody has mentioned Monkeybone. If you think that Brendan Fraser sucks in his other movies (and he does, btw), you have yet to endure this epic failure of a movie.

Love Story

The epitome of treacly awfulness. Speaking of really bad 70’s films, nobody has mentioned the phenomenally awful Billy Jack.

I’m also surprised nobody has mentioned the epitome of bad 80’s films Rambo: First Blood Part 2. I managed to avoid this film for over 20 years but finally saw it on “Encore” a few weeks ago (2 hours of my life I’ll never get back)

Funny Games
I am a lesser human for watching that.

Any film with Michael Ironside in it. Yes, even Scanners.

I’m glad I only watch low-budget exploitation films.

I saw an interview a year or so ago with Jorge Grau, director of 1973’s The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (aka a whole bunch of other titles), who, thanks to DVD, has been recently making the rounds at fan conventions all over the world. He said something like,* “I hate film buffs, but I love horror fans. You see, a film buff will watch a new, 80-million-dollar movie and point out everything that’s wrong with it. And he will be exactly right. But a horror fan will watch a 30-year-old, 20,000-dollar movie and find the one thing that’s good about it, and love it for that.”

You all sound like a bunch of film buffs.

Re. Dario Argento — I don’t know why, but for some reason nobody outside fandom seems to be aware of his undisputed masterpiece, Profundo rosso. It is for me the apotheosis of the giallo, and the first film I would recommend to Argento newbies. After that, probably his debut film, and arguably the first giallo, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, which is the film that Hitchcock said made him “nervous.” It’s nowhere near as flawless as Deep Red, but it does have the vastly superior score by Morricone.

* From memory, and questionable translation from Castilian. But the essence of it is correct.

Thanks hp, I had not heard of Dario Argento before. I added Crystal Plumage to my Netflix queue; they don’t seem to have Deep Red yet.

Happiness. Utterly loathsome film. Kind of surprised nobody’s mentioned it till now.

I think Happiness is great. Though I realize this is a minority opinion.

Toys with Robin Williams and LL Cool J.

“Pulp Fiction A very good film, imo. Lots of fun”

This is obviously some strange usage of the word “fun” that I wasn’t previously aware of.

Chasing Amy? What kind of humorless 50 year old pantywaists hate that movie? Actually it’s not really very good, but it’s certainly nowhere near the 101 worst movies of all time. The characters in the movie may not be all that likable, they may kind of stupid, but, for better or worse, they resemble a lot of people I know. Chasing Amy is a more “realistic” movie than almost anything Hollywood puts out, if you can’t deal with that, too bad.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band yup, now this is a good candidate. Nothing redeemable at all.

The Hulk. Dullest comic-book adaptation ever.

Perfume. Without question the stupidest ending to ever movie ever made. Narrated it to my husband after he gave up (2-plus hours in). Here’s how it went: “Perfume murder puts a dot of perfume on a piece of cloth. Waves it around just before being executed. Everyone’s entranced; everyone gets naked. Everyone starts having sex! While that should be a *good* thing, somehow in this movie it’s not. Then something else and something else happens, and the dude gets eaten by rats.

Sure, some awful movies mentioned here, but still IMHO nothing beats Prince’s Under the Cherry Moon

Actually it’s not really very good, but it’s certainly nowhere near the 101 worst movies of all time.

The category is movies to avoid. I think almost everybody acknowledges that there is entertainment value in the awful.

Let me plug Heironymous Merkin Blah Blah Blah again, a movie so wonderfully off-putting that the trailer does not mention anything meaningful about it except that it provides boners:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdTAYk9f1_g

Introducing Trampolina Whambang!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otry9dTltR8&feature=related

Notice that Anthony Newley is explaining his yearnings to HIS ACTUAL CHILDREN. Wife Joan Collins is in the film – as his wife – but is renamed Polyester Poontang.

“The Man in the Iron Mask”. Thrill to the wonderment of Leonardo di Caprio, Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Gerard Depardieu and Gabriel Bryne all phoning it in as 18th century Frenchmen speaking in US, British, US, French and Irish accents. The best of the bad is John Malkovich, who slogs through his lines like a sullen teen being forced to eat dinner at grandma’s. And the script will sear itself into your memory. (Not in a good way.)

The only thing good about You’ve Got Mail were the Godfather references.

My problem is, I actually try to avoid seeing movies I *know* in my soul are gonna suck rhino. So I don’t personally see a lot of the trashy crap that everyone else reveals to be crap. Of the ones I did go out of my way to see, even with truckloads of dread about them, were: Batman and Robin, Highlander II (the first sequel to openly screw the concept of continuity), Star Trek V, Mission Impossibles I and II, Tomb Raider (I wisely avoided the sequel), and 3000 Miles to Graceland . If I had to rank the worst of the worst, 3000 Miles would do it for sheer lack of likable characters and waste of a concept.

I call bullshit. Most of these are really good movies that certain trendy-types have determined that you can’t like and still be “cool.” Nothing can be great to such people if other people like it.

“[‘Pulp Fiction’ is] so deeply, morally, factually or historically inaccurate, so mistaken about so many basic life issues that when you’re trying to tell someone why the film is bad you don’t know where to start.”

“’Pulp Fiction’ is excellent as a reference standard for jerky American culture”

You do realize, don’t you, that “Pulp Fiction” is just pulp fiction?

My Dinner with Andre demonstrates why actors are the most boring and uninsightful people alive.

American Beauty, Forrest Gump, and The Shawshank Redemption are all middlebrow vacuities.

V for Vendetta, Full Metal Jacket, any of the Star Wars films except ESB.

“…an adaptation of a Tony Hillerman novel is so bad that you can see the boom mic in a bunch of the shots.”

This is essentially never the fault of anyone who made the film. It is almost always the fault of the projectionist for failing to set the masking on the projection equipment correctly.

Before this thread gets out of hand (oops – too late), it should be pointed out that the title of the post is “101 Movies to avoid watching before you die,” with examples given which include both the “gratuitously nasty” (House of Sand and Fog) and the merely unfunny (You’ve Got Mail – my description, though I haven’t seen the film).

Both actual moral decay and simply being a waste of time are good reasons not to see a film. But the former is a more convincing and substantial reason, while the latter is more a matter of (aesthetic or comedic) sensibility, and leads to people simply listing films they didn’t like, and thus to pained disagreement, and eventually to a free-for-all.

So maybe the thread might have been entitled “Films which will leach away your humanity” or something; but it wasn’t. That means that if someone mentions a film they thought to be a mere waste of time, that does not mean that they think it degrading or reprehensible.

So I agree, Batman and Robin, which I must again stress to have been just awful and a complete failure, is not in remotely the same category as what I imagine 8MM to have been (based on the trailer and reviews). (Nor, of course, is Bringing Up Baby.)

Still, just as great art is in some sense ennobling, aesthetic disaster can’t be so easily dismissed as harmless, especially when it passes for art. I see we all have our favorite examples of this phenomenon from the Miramax catalog – thanks, I guess, to smaug for reminding me of The Piano. Anyway, perhaps a more positive cinematic thread is in order?

260 posts and no mention of Heaven’s Gate? Joe Queenan:

I am firmly in the camp that believes that Heaven’s Gate is the worst movie ever made. For my money, none of these other films can hold a candle to Michael Cimino’s 1980 apocalyptic disaster. This is a movie that destroyed the director’s career. This is a movie that lost so much money it literally drove a major American studio out of business. This is a movie about Harvard-educated gunslingers who face off against eastern European sodbusters in an epic struggle for the soul of America. This is a movie that stars Isabelle Huppert as a shotgun-toting cowgirl. This is a movie in which Jeff Bridges pukes while mounted on roller skates. This is a movie that has five minutes of uninterrupted fiddle-playing by a fiddler who is also mounted on roller skates. This is a movie that defies belief.

None of my posts are showing up for some reason. They are all still waiting for moderator approval. What’s that about? Any advice? In the meantime, someone actually beat me to the punch in saying that someone “who can’t recognize the brilliance of his work deserves to have their eyes gouged out—preferably as executed, choreographed, and filmed by Argento.”

NO FAIR!

“What Dreams May Come.” Robin Williams at his most annoyingly saccarine, which is saying a lot. Cuba Gooding as an equally cloying angel. Heroic dead doctor, bound for heaven, decides to risk a trip to hell to save his wife from the punishment for suicide! I left after 20 minutes, once I realized this was the “story.” 20 minutes I will never get back. Please don’t tell me how it ends. I bet I know!

Saw does provide opportunity for inappropriate Princess Bride quotations. Saw II does one clever thing, I’m going to spoil it: the villain does actually tell the literal truth, and the trouble that happens in movie present time happens because the cops don’t believe it. Not enough to make the movie worth watching, but a nice touch.

Aim higher folks.

When you see a film and its makes you look back on every previous work of the directors with suspicion, when a film makes you discount the collective wisdom of your peers and feel like a stranger among them, when a film leaves you worried for the fate of humanity then you know it has made the list.

For me the top contender for most morally reprehensible film of the last twenty years has to be Saving Private Ryan, a film that actually got people killed. I left the cinema snarling at its simple minded bellicosity and horrified that it had been so generously reviewed. I am utterly convinced that the film and its attendant TV series really laid the ground culturally for the Bush wars and the general conviction that invading abroad was just a perfect way to emulate the “greatest generation”. It amazed me that it was more racist and less humane then propaganda films made during the second world war. A completely unironic paean to killing, mercilessness and the evil of the other. Amazing.

On the other hand Van Helsing needs to be taken seriously as a bad film as it was so wilfully stupid, incoherent, visually messy and loud that it hurt to be in the cinema. The Saint and Snake Eye’s also deserve to be wiped from the page of history. Saving Private Ryan though, that film could convince benevolent aliens not to contact us, even if they were bored.

I’m just going to go on record that Moulin Rouge is brilliant, gorgeous excess. It’s the only movie I’ve paid to see twice in a day.

Unbreakable is also hugely underrated, by far Shyamalan’s best movie, and the Bruce Willis’ best work since Moonlighting (in part because the character plays so well at a right angle to Willis’ persona). The scene with the handgun is amazing. If not for terrible marketing and the precedent of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable’s ending would be interpreted completely differently; I thought it was perfect.

Other movies mentioned so far by people whose taste I consider suspect: Titus, The Island (Michael Bay’s most enjoyable effort since The Rock, for whatever that’s worth), Coppola’s Dracula, Cabin Boy, Being John Malkovich, Black Book, Pulp Fiction, and The Princess and the Warrior — if Franka Potente wants to make a movie where she reads the phone book, I will buy that DVD.

Chasing Amy was hilarious. You people haven’t seen enough bad movies.

I can’t believe no one’s mentioned Chronicles of Narnia. Horrifying.

that Jack Nicholson movie with Diane Keaton (how are you supposed to remember the difference between the names As Good As It Gets and Something’s Got to Give). Whichever, Diane Keaton was embarassingly hideous and every element of the plot was pitiful (two grown women see a strange man in their kitchen–in broad daylight==and scream??????) and Keanu Reeves can’t act, and old women liked it. Disgusting movie.

So, at least one category of Filmi Avertendi is the antinomian, soul-sucking anti-humanist kind. Hearing 8MM mentioned reminds me of the existence of Se7en. It sounds like the Saw things are similar.

But it’s possible to mistake films for this whose virtues aren’t in the uplifting story but in the portrait of unsavory characters or in formalist play. Pulp Fiction has no real characters, but it’s got lots of formalist play. It makes one wonder why it is we humans love pulp stories, and it strongly implies, the way pulp detective fiction does, a continuity between modern trashy fare and Arthurian legend. The hit men, etc., are on quests in which they follow codes of honor, and the macguffin fits the profile of the Grail.

I had a longer comment stuck in moderation, but seriously, no Heaven’s Gate? This far into the thread? Google Joe Queenan Worst Movies and click the first link.

I love schlock sci-fi, so all of the Starship Troopers and Event Horizons, while objectively bad, are so delightfully corny that I enjoy ’em.

You want a film to never see? Batman Forever. It happened to be at a rental house on the beach, and I watched 15 minutes of it with family while a storm was passing. For about a week afterward, I was embarrassed to admit that I’d ever seen a movie before.

Oh, and Fever Pitch. Take a dumb, formulaic romantic comedy with a script that’s stupid even as dumb, formulaic romantic comedies go, thrown in poorly conceived Red Sox allusions and saturate with BoSox merch. Now dudes from New England don’t mind going with a girl. Worst. Movie. Ever. Shoulda been banned in Boston.

Joe Queenan is clueless, predictable and boring.

And Argento has made some good bad movies and some bad bad movies, but I’m afraid all of his movies that I’ve seen are full of basic, technical errors. I think the sad truth is he wouldn’t be talented enough to even make a mediocre Hollywood thriller and nobody outside his rather large and devoted fan-base is really taking him seriously as a film-maker. De Palma had some of the same problems, but at least he has proven that he can deliver ever so often. I wish it were different, since he has some good ideas.

I can’t believe there is only one mention of “Pearl Harbor” a movie where you can’t believe the pilots are pilots, the nurses are nurses or the Japanese are Japanese.

The action scenes are boring and stupid. The only way to enjoy this movie is to realize that the 2 leads (Ben Affleck and Josh Harnett) are closeted gay lovers. Then, the scenes almost make sense.

I was disappointed with The Village. Lady in the water was awful.

I like Signs a lot. After two hours of being harassed, frightened and picked on by aliens, grabbing a bat and beating the shit out of one was very satisfying. I thought Mel did good as a depressed man gritting his teeth to get through the day. In one scene he’s fortifying the house and he pauses and sighs a little. “Jesus Christ, with all the shit I have to worry about, now this ridiculous crap.” he seems to be thinking. Now that’s a little thing I call acting.

that said, the satire was not quite over the top enough for the movie to shine for what it was, because virtually every reviewer missed it.

This is why Starship Troopers is such a popular cult movie. You instantly feel intellectually superior to anyone who criticizes the film, because the criticism usually only shows to what extent they completely missed the point of the film. ST is really one of the best comedies of the 90s.

#240 is spot on with 8mm, to which I would add Very Bad Things, two movies that made me really want to shower for a week and then use a brain scrub.

“Fur”
“The English Patient” – as per skywater post #145

Twister (1996). Really terrible. I swore off Hollywood blockbuster after seeing this. Really inane. If you think you might be excited by seeing a cow fly through the air, then perhaps you’d appreciate it more than I did.

Funny Games
I am a lesser human for watching that.

Bartkid,

The original or the remake?

The French Lieutenant’s Woman

“How terribly fashionable of you. And what I especially love about this sort of fashionability is the superpowers it confers on its representatives. Here, c m r displays astonishing telepathy—they Know What Lurks in the Hearts of Filmmakers and can just tell these movies were “calculated” and “insincere”—alongside the Neo-esque power to redefine the Matrix by sheer willpower, hence “mediocre” is what they it is, because they say so, dammit. As Keanu Reeves would say: whoa.”

If you think $10 spent on Juno or Napoleon Dynamite is worth the money, good for you.

But do me a favor: stop rationalizing and just embrace the films. You don’t need to call someone names when you feel uncomfortable with your own taste in movies.

I’m not calling them junk based on some desire to seem hip or fashionable or prescient. I’m calling them junk because, to me, they’re junk. Sorry if I touched a nerve!

Mission to Mars
Red Planet
Doom
War of the Worlds

Love Story – utter crap, especially the idea that getting cancer makes you more beautiful the sicker you get.

Thelma and Louise – I was misled into believing that this was a “female buddy movie” and then was appalled to watch the rape scene 10 minutes in and then the ending with the heroines dying… yuck.

To answer Eszter’s defense of You’ve Got Mail–it was the laziness of the whole concept that makes it worse than the average remake. Efron simply hijacked the plot to “The Shop Around The Corner,” stripped it of everything that made the not-quite-star-crossed lovers story poignant (our romantic couple’s fear of unemployment, the infidelity, the attempted suicide), and then stuck Hanks and Ryan in there to charm us all to death. I don’t have a problem if you play a tune by Mozart on a music box–just don’t make me sit through it for two hours.

I know it’s too far down the thread to propose another category, but here’s mine: movies that convince you that you married the right person. When we came out of sitting through “The English Patient” my wife delivered the verdict–“Casablanca but the Nazis won.” Of course I knew by then that I was luckier than I deserved to be.

329: Inevitable in a thread like this with such poorly defined criteria for ‘worst’. Shoddily made? Poor craftsmenship? Does a brilliantly made, morally bankrupt film such as Birth of a Nation come out better or worse than the horrifically poorly edited, but basically innocuous Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? Do we ding 300 because the easiest interpretation is the ‘heroic manly military men defend the women and the wussies from the darkie hordes’, even though you can actually dig around in it a bit more and come up with some much more subversive takes (Frank Miller is one part simple fear of female sexuality, one part testosterone poisoning, and one part gender bending genius interpretations of heroism)?

Does a movie have to be both bad and morally bankrupt before it fits? It’s intellectually consistant, but then we can just start with Saw IV and Hostel II and work our way from there. Not really insightful, doesn’t tell us much.

For my personal experience, Starship Troopers is great. Heinlein wrote a book in which militarism and fascism save us from the scary bug aliens. Verheoven made a movie based on the book about his thoughts as a guy who grew up in Nazi-occupied Holland about fascism and militarism.

You’ve Got Mail is morally corrupt. Am I the only person that noticed that Tom Hanks’ character is a nearly sociopathic serial liar? And that the central premise of the movie, that both characters are unaware of their secret romance, is violated about a third of the way through, leaving the last two thirds of the movie to Hanks creepily manipulating Ryan like a puppetmaster? Ew ew ew.

Two for the most awful of all time: Inchon made by the Moonies and pulled permanently after 1 day in the theaters, and
The Three Amigos for a movie that anyone may have actually seen. I keep a copy of Amigos in my first aid kit in case I have to induce vomiting…

I almost forgot the English Patient. I stayed until the bitter end, since so many people had said it was good and I kept thinking it had to improve. What a waste of almost 3 hours.

And I can’t believe I almost forgot The Deer Hunter. That movie enraged me: it was pretentious, it condescended to the people it was about (none of whom seemed to learn anything–the scene at the end of them singing “God Bless America” made me want to throw large, heavy, sharp objects at the screen). And again, I stuck with it to the bitter end. I was only about 19 at the time, that’s my excuse.

Is there ever an explanation in The English Patient for why a person seriously wounded in a plane crash in North Africa is being lugged about behind the front line in Italy, instead of being transported on a hospital ship back to England?

For what it’s worth, no one is naming REAL absolute trash here.

I’m talking things like Look Who’s Talking III. Freddy Krueger 4. Halloween Six.

Come on – if you are going to name BAD HORRIBLE movies, name bad horrible movies. Not just sorta bad movies…

I remember, back when I was 16 or so, About Last Night came out. I was going with a friend to the movies, and since I had the hots at that point for Demi Moore – in a REALLY bad way, I had the hots for her – I wanted to see that.

He convince me to go see this sci-fi movie, on the basis that we both like, even bad sci-fi.

It was the WORST. It was some italian movie, translated, happening in a house, with just absurd special effects (you could see every prop), horrendous over-acting – just bad bad bad bad bad. I can’t even convey how horrible this picture was.

We walked out after about 45 minutes – all I could stand without gouging my eyes out.

Since then, NO movie has reached the nadir of that particular excrement. So my tolerance for sort-bad movies, is clearly higher than a lot of commenters here.

Two letters:
A.I.

Actually, Heaven’s Gate really is really bad.

But, as I said, jc points at some of the same things I was trying to get at. Saw IV, Birth of a Nation, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Look Who’s Talking III, and Manos: The Hands of Fate are all really bad movies. To have a intellectually serious conversation, we need a better basis for discussion other than ‘But what is THE WURST!!11!’

the pacifier with van diesel it was like being visually nauseas

the fountain it was unnecessarily confusing it was on verge good cinema then turned to crap it’s hour and 30 minutes of my life i want back! hugh jackman was still a good actor

and any thing that won award had to be good for someone. also i love margert chow but her movie kiki bang bang or what ever it was called was awful and poorly acted not very funny at all . but i do love her stand up.

Whoops! What Chet said at 10:05.

oo also i remember i could only tolerate 15 minutes dukes of hazards. Legally blond 2 was pretty awful it made me loose IQ points. i would had more fun soiling myself. if it didn’t have Reese Withespoon and bunch half naked girls in it would have not sold any tickets. Never try to make sequel out of a semi ok movie.Also adam sandler and polly shore movies not the best movies but not exactly the worst. Exception 8 crazy night what the hell was that is it kids moive no was dark comedy no cartoons cussing vulgarity and poorly written songs and story made this movie one worst things i have ever seen i cant’ believe any one would watch this movie twice unless under the influence pot or hallucinogenics.It should come with warning label do not drink and watch this movie, it my cause depression and suicidal thoughts.

300! The only movie review I’ve ever read that name-checked Tom of Finland!

In the NYRB, no less…

road house 2 if you can’t get the actors that made the movie form first don’t do a second one.Also the same guy who wrote clueless also gave birth to the bastard child of pride prejudice we call Emma with Gweneth paltrow. If you didn’t like clueless you will hate Emma clueless is Shakesspear to Emma

sequel to the blair witch project whats the point? another film that was good cause it was different but don’t make a sequel! you know i never saw that movie with Anna Nicole with the super hot aliens form outer space but i bet it was pretty bad sense no one else saw it either . I think it was called illegal aliens.

New Rose Hotel Really, really the worst movie I have ever seen.
Also, I remember despising The Adjuster, but in retrospect it’s not nearly as bad.

In no particular order:

Natural Born Killers
I have this theory about Oliver Stone, when he is allowed to do whatever the hell he wants, he puts out dreck like this and U-Turn. I have no actual knowledge of how the producer/director dynamic has played out for various Stone films, it’s just a gut feeling. Kind of like when Robin Williams is cast in a film with a director who doesn’t know how to rein him in.

Highlander 2
The Terminal
Spielberg at his most schmaltzy and sappy. I was surprised I didn’t lapse into a diabetic coma. Made even worse by completely obnoxious and very frequent product placement. I felt like they should have paid me to watch it. I took to announcing out loud the name of each brand, which was about every two minutes. Walked out halfway through.

Cabin Boy
I am a complete nut for Chris Elliot, so imagine my surprise when I could not make it more than halfway through this piece of shit.

Oh yeah. Watch “Spellbound” again some time. It actually sucks. Ingrid Bergmann is alternately prissy, mushy, and hysterical without any noticeable transitions between. The music is unbelievably overbearing. And the psychoanalysis stuff is of course ludicrous.

commando was Ahrnold.

Ben affleck lives through armageddon, which IS a shame.

I don’t mind bad movies, it feels so good when they stop. They refresh the ability to appreciate the less bad.

Evil movies, I can’t abide, unless they are also really well done.

To die for… for example.

Frank Miller is one part simple fear of female sexuality, one part testosterone poisoning, and one part gender bending genius interpretations of heroism…

The gender-bending is to be found mostly in the comics, though. In the film version of 300 it clearly takes a back seat to the testosterone. That being said…

300 (a future text for “proto-fascism in American cinema” courses)

This is not the definition of a film to be avoided; this is the definition of a (reprehensible) film to be studied. Both the film and its enthusiastic reception in wingnut circles.

As I said, its portrayal of “Oriental” depravity is less obvious than it seems. In the “Persian” host, freakishness and faceless uniformity fight side by side; the sexuality in Xerxes’s camp is deviant and joyous, but at the same time it is controlled with extreme violence (i.e. mutilation) by a “monopolist” (the film tries only half-heartedly to distance itself from the notion of sex as a commodity); “freedom” is treated almost exclusively as that moral ointment that ennobles the very same acts of suicidal bravery that among the Persians are a sign of abject bondage, etc, etc.

People in Iran got very angry when the film was released. With good reason: it’s a potent, poisonous brew.

Most of these movies are bad but not really bad.

I haven’t seen them all, but of those nominated that I have seen, I’d only agree with Cabin Boy so far, which was simply unwatchable. I didn’t walk out of the theatre, but I checked my watch about a dozen times.

My nominees, in addition to Cabin Boy

The Kris Kristopheron non-classic, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea

Ultraviolet — this movie just couldn’t hold my attention

“’Bringing up Baby’. It was hard watching Hepburn play a dumbass airhead.”

Again. Is this the third time? This will not stand. Let’s get this straight. There’s a lot of room for reasonable disagreement about art, but there are limits. If you think this film belongs on the top of a list of lifelong avoidance, there’s something wrong with you. Like there’s something wrong with the vision of the colorblind, or the tastesbuds of someone who thinks vinegar tastes sweet.

A bit of perspective, a random selection of critic’s best films lists, and Bringing Up Baby’s place on each:
http://www.filmsite.org/mrshowbz.html – 36/100
http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_top100films76-100.htm – 88/1000
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/movies/features/afi100list.htm (American Film Institute) – 97/100
http://www.filmsite.org/afi100laughs.html (American Film Institute’s best comedies) – 14/100

Of course, critics can be wrong. Maybe it’s not one of the best 100 movies of all time, maybe it’s even mediocre or bad. But top movies to devote a lifetime to avoiding? That’s irrational. It’s objectively, hilariously false. Get your tastebuds checked. There is something wrong with you. It’s called, to use an old-fashioned word, “bad taste.”

World Traveler. Absolute dross. No plot (man walks out on family and travels round, meets homeless woman).

Van Helsing definitely gets a nod.

I second the post about Freddie 4.

This is not the definition of a film to be avoided; this is the definition of a (reprehensible) film to be studied.

A fair point.

Yet more additions to the overkill files:

Match Point‘s reworking of themes from Crime and Misdemeanors cannot be plausibly painted as “bad” cinema in any sense but that it marks a departure from the Woody Allen “whimsical films” brand. Which was, for a very great many critics and audience members alike apparently, an enormous relief. Allen in whimsical mode is many years past his sell-by date. (Too bad it didn’t last; Scoop doesn’t belong on a 101 worst films list or anything but was pretty painful nonetheless.)

Leaving Las Vegas is not a great film by any means, but I’ll second the person upthread who noted how depressing it is that people think the word “depressing” passes as aesthetic judgment.

Match Point’s reworking of themes from Crime and Misdemeanors cannot be plausibly painted as “bad” cinema in any sense but that it marks a departure from the Woody Allen “whimsical films” brand.

Virtually the first shot of Match Point was of Jonathan Rhys Meyers lying on his bed reading “Crime and Punishment”, the book being held up RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA as though the audience were a female arts student that Meyers was trying to impress in a coffee shop.

Given the plot of the film, the only less subtle piece of foreshadowing I have ever seen was in Wayne’s World:

Wayne walks past two men stacking up crates and asks “What are you guys doing?”
“Oh, we’re just stacking up these empty crates in the middle of the road.”
(turns to camera) “Hmm, I can’t help feeling this is going to pay off later on”.
Of course, when the car chase happens, they go straight through the stack…

So glad to see both Chasing Amy and Dogma mentioned. For a while I felt like the only person who thought Kevin Smith movies sucked. His scripts are so self-consciously clever that every character seems to be constantly delivering a rehearsed monologue. people don’t talk like that. All his movies drive me nuts. Clerks included. Dogma is by far the worst.

1. I can’t remember the name of it, but it’s an Irish movie about a spoiled, thoroughly unpleasant lad played by Cillian Murphy who ends up in a mental institution and his romance with a fellow patient. Couldn’t watch it or think about people who would find the lead appealing.

2. “Storytelling”. It’s weird, because all the other Todd Solondz movies are very good, but this one is just dehumanizing crap.

3. “The Life Aquatic”. The needle that broke the camel’s back as far as mopey Bill Murray goes. Precious bullshit, harmful to the soul.

4. “Redbelt”. Really dumb world-view on full display.

5. “U2 in 3D”. Frightening to be that close to Bono’s sunglasses. Will give you nightmares for weeks.

6. “Velvet Goldmine”. Encourages preening.

7. “Brothers Karamazov” (with Yul Brenner). The best book becomes the worst movie. Especially don’t watch this if you ever want to enjoy the book.

8. “Crash”. A 3rd-grader’s view of racial conflict. But only a 3rd-grader raised in LA would make it so vapid.

9. “Rising Sun”. Anti-Japanese paranoia and auto-erotic asphyxiation. What’s to like?

10. “In the Company of Men”. More completely unreal “realism”. The mirror image of a sappy rom-com, and just as fake. People just aren’t like that.

11. “Short Cuts”. I love many David Altman films but this one just drains your will to live.

12. “Shakespeare in Love”. OK, it’s not really harmful, but god is it unbearable.

Waterworld is actually quite watchable. It isn’t worth its budget, but as a stupid effects show, it could be much worse. At least the makers bothered to create a somewhat interesting setting.

Seconding “Billy Jack” in #259.

I had the advantage of watching it in 1987 with my parents (I was 15, they were 45), who recommended it to me and rented the video.

The growing look of horror on their faces as the first 20 or so minutes past, and it slowly (but not that slowly) dawned on them that this movie that they claimed had moved them as youths was the most unbelievably wretched, unwatchable piece of crap in the history of creation was absolutely PRICELESS.

For years after that, whenever my parents recommended a movie from “before me time” that they liked, I could respond, “Yes, but you also liked Billy Jack,” and that would shut them up.

I agree with 279. Perfume is the worst film ever made. It isn’t just bad, it is a colossal, towering monument to badness. I watched it all the way through, it transfixed me with its beautiful, stylish awfulness. ‘Basta!’

Has anyone seen Master Of Disguise with Dana Carvey? I knew it was going to be a bad movie, but more like pure crap. Also, I hate, just absolutley hate Cry Baby by John Watters. Most recently I rented Resident Evil- Extinction. Pure crap. There are many others, but I try to forget I spent my time and money on watching garbage.

I love Short Circuit, but Short Circuit 2 broke my heart.

400+ comments and neither hide nor hair of Uwe Boll’s work?

a fascinatingly bad movie is one that is made by a bunch of really talented people, but turns out pear-shaped nonetheless.

“The Man in the Iron Mask” qualifies here. I’m not sure how you put Jeremy Irons, Gerard Depardieu, John Malkovich and Gabriel Byrne in front of a camera and not get something at least watchable, but they managed.

407: I think there should certainly be a convention that actors should use their real accents for all roles. Partly because this would have made “Gladiator” so much funnier.

The two worst movies ever made, bar none: Interiors, and Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean (there may be yet another ‘Jimmy Dean’ there, but this movie is so awful it isn’t even worth reading through the title). Interiors poisoned my view of every subsequent movie by Woody Allen, which is a shame, because some of them are intermittently funny. Come Back etc. etc. etc. didn’t have a comparable effect on my view of Altman, possibly because Altman wasn’t constantly re-making the same damn movie.

It’s worth noting that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is still entirely without defenders, not only on this thread but, so far as I know, anywhere else.

Even Heaven’s Gate inspired a decade or so of revisionist defenses before everyone more or less came to their senses and realized that it was, after all, dreck.

I meant to write that Showgirls is so bad it’s good, btw. And it is.

Although I agree that sequals shouldn’t really count, I can only admire the sheer mental stamina of those who actually sat through Legally Blonde 2 and Look Who’s Talking 3.

I’d nominate The Thin Red Line.
The Thin Red Very Very Long Positively Coma-Inducing Line.

@417: I actually think that a lot of Altman movies suffer from a certain contempt for their characters. That’s always been my beef with Nashville (though, to be clear, I’m not suggesting it belongs on this list at all).

In the category of films that have actually caused public harm (e.g. Private Ryan killing people, an analysis I agree with, fwiw; or Birth of a Nation), you gotta include JFK, a pack of utter nonsense passing itself of as historically accurate docudrama. Helped worsen the historical consciousness of a an already functionally historically illiterate nation.

i have always believed that a special level of cinematic hell is reserved for movies of the developmentally-disabled-savant genre. i see that “forrest gump” has already been mentioned. it is, undoubtedly, the worst of the bunch. but, i would add “sling blade” and “rain man” to the list as well. for a decent movie featuring a disabled character, try “what’s eating gilbert grape.”

i also find the i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings genre to be a fertile source of bad film. “shawshank redemption” and “dead man walking” come to mind, but there are others.

I only saw the last two minutes of JFK, when Costner and Spacek and their kids walk off into the sunset. Now that’s entertainment!

Cruel Intentions, the 1999 remake of Dangerous Liaisons starring Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Reese Witherspoon’s ex-husband. I’m still bitter over having been dragged to see it in the theater.

Cabin Boy was pretty awful, too.

Romy and Michelle
Supertroopers

Both of those movies blow.

Pretty Woman

I have 3:
Twister
Congo
Dune (The original david lynch version).

Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow, anything produced by Golan/Globus, or anything directed by Greg Araki.

“New York, New York”

Worst. Movie. EVAR.

I’m glad someone said “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. I do not get this movie’s appeal. I rememeber being thirteen and thinking “why is the kid with the mansion, pool and sports car whining so much”.

Also hate “Easy Rider”. I doubt many people have really tried to watch it- it is brutal sixties self-congratulation. Makes me more mad that this overshadows the terrific “Five Easy Peices,” which really is about all the great things people think “Easy Rider” is about.

Finally, “American Beauty”. So Kevin Spacey is such a good guy because he only looked at the naked little girl, but didn’t go all the way. Way to go. And that annoying dork next door! The most pretentious “faux intellectual” movie ever. Except for maybe “Easy Rider”.

I know nobody remembers “The Road to Wellville” but I walked out of that. And then there was the Disney animated remake of “The King and I.”

Please, please, please avoid these movies.

I’m glad someone said “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. I do not get this movie’s appeal. I rememeber being thirteen and thinking “why is the kid with the mansion, pool and sports car whining so much”.

Also hate “Easy Rider”. I doubt many people have really tried to watch it- it is brutal sixties self-congratulation. Makes me more mad that this overshadows the terrific “Five Easy Peices,” which really is about all the great things people think “Easy Rider” is about.

Finally, “American Beauty”. So Kevin Spacey is such a good guy because he only looked at the naked little girl, but didn’t go all the way. Way to go. And that annoying dork next door! The most pretentious “faux intellectual” movie ever. Except for maybe “Easy Rider”.

“Also Juno, fashionable backlash target-of-the-moment…we’re supposed to be hating on her because she’s too precocious and says things too mature for any teenager to say, remember? At least keep the backlash straight.”

Actually the problem is not that she’s too mature, the problem is she’s so goddamn smug and full of smuggy one-liners. How droll. Spare me.

The Crow! Kill me now!
Crash (the one about sex and automobile accidents)
Anything with Kevin Costner is to be avoided at all costs.

Punch Drunk Love. Gawdawful.

I Heart Hukabees

Romy and Michelle

You, sir, have no heart.

I have to preface this by saying I only saw this film because I was a part-time professional movie reviewer at the time:

Wing Commander

I saw an entire audience’s suspension of disbelief crushed under its own weight.

I’ve only read down thru 250, but cannot believe that no one has mentioned Top Gun. Are our collective memories that shallow? Have we all forgotten the beach volleyball scene, or Val Kilmer inexplicably snapping his teeth upon being introduced to Maverick. The very worst in Tom Cruise’s misbegotten career.

The Unforgiven — This film managed a trifecta of badness. Boring story, incredibly wooden acting (particularly by Gene Hackman and costumes that looked like they came from the Gap! The final insult was that it won the Best Picture Oscar.

Oh be serious people:

Father of the Bride (Steve Martin)
Top Gun
No Way Out
Titanic
Arthur (Dudley Moore)
Failure to Launch, with human oilslick Matthew McConaughey

Uh, Shoot em’ Up was absolutely, the worst movie I’ve ever watched. Thank God I didn’t go see it in theaters, but I did waste my money, and time, on it. Also The Village was horrible.

Any movie starring Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, or Ben Stiller.

Avoid these and your life will be way better for it.

Having spent most of the thread kvetching, some further suggestions:

Operation: Dumbo Drop and Delta Farce, both built around the horrifically misconceived notion that war is a fabulous backdrop for wacky hijinks.

The Pink Panther, the thuddingly unfunny Steve Martin version, which could potentially contaminate the very funny legacy of Peter Sellers’ work in the original.

Team America: World Police, Bush-era Republican propaganda trying lamely to pass itself off as satire, in which most of the humour is about how much the filmmakers suck with puppets when they aren’t retreading old South Park jokes or (har! har!) noting that foreign accents sound funny.

Bamboozled, a nigh-unwatchable film whose sledgehammer sensibilities fatally undermine its political message.

Cool World, Ralph Bakshi’s profoundly ugly and misogynistic attempt to cash in on the success of Roger Rabbit.

Let’s Go To Prison, because prison rape is totally hilarious.

Snoop Dogg’s Soul Plane, resurrecting minstrelsy for the Oughties.

Naked, a poisonous brew of unreflective misogyny and misanthropy dressed up in art-house rags.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which may yet convince future filmmakers that their movies don’t need scripts, just really kickass digital backgrounds.

I’m Not There and Masked and Anonymous, from the flaccid, pretentious Dylanolatry genre.

Every Which Way But Loose, an important pioneer in the art of dragging apes onto movie sets to be laughed at.

Okay, so I wondered earlier why we’re singling out SPR as having “killed people,” and I’m still wondering. It’s a drop in the bucket of American WWII myth-mongering, remembered largely for its opening sequence. So it’s really hard to see how that makes sense.

I didn’t bring up this notion first on this thread, but I did endorse it. Here’s why.

I think the D-Day sequence of SPR significantly ups the graphic-violence ante of the WWII combat film (of which SPR is, in many other ways, an extremely typical example). As such, it does take an important step toward normalizing (the actually normal) extreme violence of modern warfare. During the Vietnam War, images of such violence could still shock the American public. Now, I’d argue, they really can’t. We’ve turned against the War in Iraq, but largely because it seems pointless and going nowhere. SPR helped spread the blanket of justification over a greater range of horrors. That’s the short version of the argument, at any rate.

“Kids” revolted me to the point of throwing up; I walked out of “Airport II”; “The Golden Compass” insulted the book it was based on.

Wilson (1944)
The Beast With Five Fingers (1946)
Strategic Air Command (1955)
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961)
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
Krakatoa, East of Java (1969)
The Hindenburg (1975)
Eraserhead (1977)
The Boy in Blue (1986)
Priest (1994)
Bicentennial Man (1999)

Forrest Gump is the worst movie of all time. What makes it the worst is that so many people loved its message, which is that it’s perfectly fine not to understand any of the complicated events that are going on around you and instead happily sail through life with the aid of a few simplistic platitudes. This is a message that must give hope to tyrants and dictators, and must therefore be extremely disheartening to anyone concerned about fostering an educated and engaged citizenry.

OH, OH, I have it. The Gods Must be Crazy. Pee Yew!
Pigmy finds coke bottle and profoundness ensues.

ok romy any michelle rocks. ill just say that.

Also, you guys are missing out on some reeeal gems. Holla back if you feel me on these:

-Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
I watched this movie. I really did. Granted, I was going for the its-so-bad-its-funny tack, but what I got was a black portal into a blood-slicked dimension of purest terror. The director’s name is K-Os. Honestly.

-Shoot ‘Em Up
Paul Giamatti?!?!? Surely, not you! I can believe Clive Owen, and that women who plays the Merovingian’s wife in the Matrix . . . but Paul Giamatti?? “Tit for Tat” has to be THE worst villainous tagline of all movie times.

-Deep Impact
Nothing hurt my soul more than this movie. I actually, completely out of reflex, said “Thank God!” in the theater when Tea Leone and her dad are finally killed by the giant tsunami. I was initially embarassed, but I was quickly cheered by most of the theater.

Any other winners?

I saw a movie called Dungeon Master with Blackie Lawless (W.A.S.P. HORRIBLE 80’s band). Worst movie ever. However, seeing it in the theater (I’m retarded), they showed film of snowmobiles going over open water and ice and that was the memory that stuck with me.

Dungeon Master was awful.

To qualify my comment, I loved Hudson Hawk (second worst movie ever, apparently)…

Hey, how come nobody’s mentioned Erin Brockovitch?
A terrible concept for a movie and disingenuous at best.

Les Boys I, II, III, IV.

Criminal destruction of the French language.

Howzabout ‘Big Jim McLain’? Not exactly Marian’s masterpiece….

For me, these are the three most overrated movies in recent memory:
Lost in Translation
Little Miss Sunshine
The Blair Witch Project

I disagree with those who give thumbs down to Juno, A.I., Magnolia, and Bram Stokers Dracula.

@478: The Hollywood version of The Vanishing definitely goes in the winner’s circle of films with awful, tacked-on happy endings (previously mentioned: About Last Night… and The Natural). Spoorloos (the Dutch original, the English title of which is also The Vanishing), on the other hand, is one of the best thrillers of the last thirty years. If you haven’t seen it, put it in your Netflix queue now!

There’s clearly no way to agree on “worst,” or even “bad”: the problem is, different flaws are more irritating to different people. I get really irritated when movies get preachy, and try to pass off really stupid ideas as brilliant and thought-provoking: so Dogma absolutely enrages me (and I can only enjoy Starship Troopers by NOT thinking about the subversive meaning). On the other hand, I really love silliness and throwaway stupid jokes, and am not too bothered if they’re surrounded by mediocre writing and a clumsy plot: so I liked Wild Wild West a whole lot. Can’t really blame anyone for disagreeing. (About the latter, anyway. If you like Dogma, I hate you.)

FYI, this thread has spawned a copycat thread over on the Great Orange Satan.

Bertrand Blier’s “Merci La Vie”

Marco Ferreri’s “La Chair”

… and any number of other flicks by these 2 pseudo-liberated crap makers.

Adrian Lyn’s “9 1/2 Weeks” should be included as well.

And for those who put “Bringing up Baby” or “Touch of Evil”, and “Magnificient Ambersons” on the list:
you need to get around a lot.

American History X

I mean come on, it’s just so stupid.

Worst movies? Well arguably one could include virtually anything done on “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” (Of those, “Manos: The Hands of Fate” probably takes the cake, because even the mad scientists apologized to Joel & the ‘Bots for sending them such a loathsome stinkpile.)

But among those I actually sat through and wished afterwards I had brain bleach…or, at the least the those minutes back?

Top for me was “Seven.” A nasty piece of work. Yes, yes, the acting was superb, especially Kevin Spacey (as always). But the imagery and situations so awful I find I wish I had never seen it.

Second? “The Phantom.” Alec Baldwin. One of only two theater movies that I actually walked out on.

Third: “Dressed to Kill.” Michael Caine & Angie Dickinson. The other movie I walked out on.

I read that someone wrote that “The ShawShank Redemption” was one of his/hers worst ever movie experiences.

I am sorry, but I then have to say, that you probably ain’t got a clue of good movies…

Besides brilliant acting and a well elated storyline, the pictures and use of music plus the dialogues are just excellent.

This is not a matter of personal opinion, this is a matter of knowing on which details you should pay attetntion when you watch a movie to determine if it is good or really bad.

And also: Requiem For a Dream is also a brilliant pic.
I don’t understand why there are so many folks out ther who just don’t like it or who just don’t understand it.
It is no film to entertain you by any means, the movie wants to reflect on things that make you addicted and how that changes you from good to worse.
The performance of Ellen Burstyn, a killer performance as someone wrote at IMD, is outstanding and should state an example for all the young, beautiful AND DUMD knightleys, etc. etc. out there.

Worst movies ever, in my personal opinion:

Twin Peaks – Fire Walk With Me:

Absolutely incomprehensible, absolutely superfluous.

The Marathon Man:

Besides bad acting and outdated filmmaking and sound engineering, the plot is weak, the actors are badly directed, etc. etc.
Just close to Worst movie No. 1

The Last Legion:

Poorly acted, poorly directed, poorly written, poorly outfitted, poorly, poorly, poorly.

It will take some time until a new movie about the roman era will come close to the all-time-number-one: “Gladiator”, which really IS among the few best movie we all should have seen during the last 50 years!

I hate Gone With The Wind more than any other film I’ve ever seen. I wanted to walk out of it, but I didn’t have a way to get home without my friend, who loved the movie.

Anything with the Toms (Cruise or Hanks); Juno (just what we don’t need…another pregnant teenager!! Hated, “The English Patient”, “Ghost”, anything with Stallone in it.

Geez, people! No mention yet of the excesses of Brian De Palma? The Bonfire of the Vanities immediately comes to mind. Oliver Stone’s Platoon has to be the worst film ever made about Vietnam.

Others that I wish I could erase from memory:
Bertolucci’s La Luna, Robert Altman’s Quintet, Edward Norton’s Keeping The Faith.

Aliens 3 and Aliens 4, Hustle (Burt Reynolds), Slap Shot (Paul Newman), Matrix, Point Break, The Postman, Waterworld, Wyatt Earp, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Wild Wild West (extremely cringe-worthy), The Piano…

House of Sand and Fog actually was nominated for awards

OK! BattleField Earth. crap. Unadulterated crap. John Travolta made a horrific movie that boggles the senses. It is 3000 AD and aliens have conquered Earth and enslaved almost all of humanity for a millennium. Humans have DE-EVOLVED into a near neanderthal, with constant grunting(very annoying) and the clincher of stupidity, the humans fight the advanced aliens with ANCIENT American technology, even though it is a thousand years old. So, recap, the enslaved (grunting) humans are using ancient aircraft grunting and smashing controls beating advanced alien technology. To overthrow the alien (John Travolta) which is two hours of my life that I’ll never get back. Don’t watch.

Walked out of 2 movies in my life. A Night In The Life Of Jimmy Reardon starring River Phoenix. Maybe he turned to drugs to try to forget that gem. And the most recent The Hills Have Eyes. Gratuitous violence and an idiotic family just begging to be killed do not a good movie make.

Crash by Paul Haggis
Das Experiment
Derailed

Juno – I’ve been praying for a backlash because at the time, everybody I knew was raving about how it was brilliant. I’d like to join them in “hooray for strong female protagonists” and “lol shes so wise and clever”, but I know girls like that and they are neither wise or clever, they are annoying as hell because they wipe their arse with Socrates. It took me at least a month to find somebody to bitch with about how full of shit it was. Less Junos, more Ripleys please?

The Other Boleyn Girl – I loved the book. I was sure I’d hate it, but I completely fell in love with Anne’s ambition and arrogance and how that was her downfall. The movie? A Lifetime Movie of the Week piece of crap about sisterhood and “the sufferings of teh womens” and modern thinking in olden times. Where’s the family ruthlessness? Big fat Henry VIII (I am I am)?

A Streetcar Named Desire – I know I’m going to hell for this, but I only liked it for Marlon Brando’s half nekkidness, when he’s not bellowing like a rogue elephant “STELLAYOODUMBITCH!” I really tried liking this, but I’ve never been a fan of Tennessee Williams.

Ma Vie en Rose – not the Edith Piaf movie. Much worse. A little French boy wants to be a girl, but his family’s neighbours are very, “we are French! We do not do these sorts of things here!” There’s potential for it to be interesting, but it’s just very boring.

Blue Velvet – I’m sorry. I want to like David Lynch, but…eh. (However Elephant Man was fantastic)

Speed Racer – I expected it to suck, but not this badly. >.o “What about it sucked?” EVERYTHING.

Becoming Jane – “Yay! Bio-fiction! This sounds like fu-OH MY GOD.” I’m still not sure what was so “omg furbidden” about their affair, or why I needed to give a crap.

the cook,the thief his wife and her lover. i think this came out 15 years as the first NR rating that replaced X rated.anyway a total gross out movie with nudity you want to forget. add in canabilism and uncomfortable violence and you can actual walk out the theater – like i did. ( still the only time i’ve done that)

I almost forgot:

The Boy Who Could Fly, Starman, Troy, and The Butterfly Effect. The last two were so horrible I left the theater in a rage and unleashed verbal plagues on both retards who not only recommended it, but stood by the films as “great piece of art”. Bastards.

““There Will Be Blood” was boring and had no plot and none of the characters were particularly interesting. It’s only redeeming value was a mildely interesting look into oil drilling early in the 20th century.”

Oh man, TWBB is one of my new favorite movies. What got me in love with the film is that (probably spoilers ahead) it’s about this competition between two greedy people. Normally, they would be the villains of a film, but they’re the lead characters. There is no righteous do-gooder who is out to stop them. It’s this race to get the oil and it will never be used for something good. Plainview embraces his greed and Eli has to force himself to believe his faith is driving him, when it’s his greed. It is all worth it for the ending. I loved it. I thought it was brilliant. (But this is from someone who can barely sit through ‘Streetcar’ so maybe I shouldn’t be talking. Lol)

482: there was (so it is said) a live stage version of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in London, with Anne played by Pia Zadora. She was so appallingly bad that when the Nazis stormed into the Frank house at the start of Act II, a voice from the audience shouted “She’s in the attic!”

Stranger Than Paradise? Really? I thought it was great fun.

Me, I nominate Bolero. Bo Derek on a worldwide search for sexual ecstasy. Doesn’t sound too bad, huh? Unbelievably, the filmmaking is so terrible that there is no eroticism at all, and because they can’t get across via any usual methods the idea that she found what she was looking for, a fucking neon sign lights up saying “ecstasy”. It’s the standard against which I measure all other bad movies.

Oh, and whatever jackass posted “Unforgiven” must be kidding. Seriously, did you miss the last half hour? Jesus christ.

Who the fuck said that we should avoid any Star Wars?

One of the worst films I can think at the moment is “The Grudge”

Oh my God, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry has got to be one of the worst movies ever produced. I turned it off after about five minutes. Awful. Absolutely awful.

Speed Racer
Cold Mountain
12 Monkeys
Blue Streak
National Security

Don’t ever capitalize the word “but”.

Signs is feces.

fools gold…. worst movie i’ve seen in a while

and the house of sand and fog..yeah i watched like 5 minutes and went to bed.

but signs… on a scale of one to ten… signs is raptor jesus!

“full of basic, technical errors.”

Because that’s what I watch out for in a work of art, as well as in my car mechanic. There’s more soul and beauty and real humanity, with all its horror and wonder and hatred and joy, in Argento’s little severed gloved pinky, or in a 30 second clip of Suspiria, than in the last 10 years of Oscars.

Film is first and foremost a craft and a very difficult one at that. Argento is not a master of this craft, since he makes basic errors, errors that one can see in the output of young, inexperienced film school students. A juxtaposition of more or less clever set pieces with boring and badly acted dialogue scenes doesn’t make a good film. Funky, multicolored lighting and extravagant camera moves and angles do not make a good film. Argento has little sense of rhythm or visual coherence and both are essential to the film craft. You are confusing showy ineptness with genius.

Entrapment.
They had to cut all the love scenes between Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones out of the film. Curiously (and thankfully) they have not been “restored” to a DVD… I think they just wouldn’t stick to a DVD.

Sex and the City
Two hours too long.

The Constant Gardner

Critic Anthony Lane really nails why this film was truly dreadful:

We see Justin and Tessa’s first meeting, back in London, where she rises to her feet after a lecture, delivered by Justin, and launches into a formless, flaming rant about Iraq. After which, needless to say, he has no option but to sleep with her; you can’t walk away from flames like that.

That was, indeed, the most inexplicable part of the film. But if this actually works we should have considered sending a fleet of hookers to the Pentagon and the Project for a New American Century think-tank.

My favorite scene was the threadbare cinematic shorthand to indicate a psychological state of isolation/separation: the begrimaced face flattening on the windows of his former happy home. It didn’t help matters that the very next scene was The Constant Gardener himself, sitting inside the flat, looking at photos. He must have needed a bath after raking, fertilizing, and treating his garden for pests.

The whole thing read like one of those Victorian serial narratives where the author writes himself into a tight spot and then MacGyvers a completely implausible, but necessary, solution. Just think of all the late-arriving information that patches up plot holes at the very last moment:

1. Why would a government official send a letter detailing his own crimes in his own handwriting? And why would someone keep said incriminating letter? And even if he did, why would he risk his marriage, family, job, reputation, and potentially jail time for a fling with a marginally beautiful tart? Of course, as the Downing Street Memos indicate, the British are really are bad at this. If only we could get Rumsfeld to do this. “Dear Diary, today I ordered the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and I feel spotless as a lamb…”

2. Why is it that just when the Constant Gardner asks the indelicate question about his wife’s possible black lover that a picture can be produced instantly from the nearest purse proving that he was, in fact, gay? And now that I think of it, the photo wasn’t even in a wallet or in any kind of protective sheath…the Indian woman just reached in and pulled it out like the contestants on the Price is Right game “Punchboard.”

3. How many people have access to a “dodgy” individual who can manufacture fake passports on a moments notice?

4. As Anthony Lane already indicated, how do you get a neocon ambassador and a firebrand leftist crusader together for the purposes of the narrative? Obviously in the most impossible way ever: the flaming liberal calls the Blair apologist a murdering warmonger then they immediately go on an insane sportfuck bender at her flat.

5. How many people have a webcam with a 50 foot cord?

We must also consider the moral arithmetic the film articulates: Big Pharma = Arms Dealers. We might have a CFP here friends.

Oh, a few come to mind about some really bad movies… anything by Uwe Boll (Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead, Bloodrayne etc…)

Sequels don’t count, but what about remakes? Stallone’s remake of Get Carter. One reason why Sly should direct his own movies, and not let something as important as Get Carter in the hands of a novice.

Death Proof – I’m not a fan of Tarantino, I think he is highly overrated, but Death Proof was immensely boring. The far superior Planet Terror was so much better.

I have to throw the Clint Eastwood piece of mindless dribble, Blood Work, out there. There are three well known actors in the movie: Eastwood, Angelica Houston, and Jeff Daniels. Logic says that Eastwood is going to be the hero (he has a life threatening problem, is in a constant struggle, the whole sappy sob story). Logic also says that Angelica Houston, Eastwood’s doctor, is there to help him. Besides, we can’t have a woman being the villian, that doesn’t jive with the chivalry of Clint. So that leaves Jeff Daniels. Can’t have the almighty Clint taking on some nobody in the struggle of G vs. E.

During the opening credits I looked at the guy I was with and said: “Jesus tap-dancing Christ, Jeff Daniels did it! Can I go home now?” He insisted that I stay. I spent the rest of the movie trying to keep my snickering, snoring, and yawning to a minimum. I rolled my eyes so much I’m surprised I didn’t have to have them surgically realigned. Turned out I was right, by the way.

Clint Eastwood owes me two hours of my life back. If you’re gonna do a crime thriller, please hire some more real actors to flesh out the possibilities pool. I shouldn’t be able to figure it out during the opening credits. I’d rather watch paint dry in the dark.

Never watched Cinderella II: Dreams Come True after sometime in September 2006. (It’s a direct-to-video sequel from Disney; does that count here?)

Also, beware of Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1992).

Seems like a lot of people are listing overrated movies, not truly bad ones. The hall of shame surely includes …

Quicksilver
Patch Adams
Enemy Mine
Speed 2
Hook (Julia Roberts as Tinker Bell? Someone should die for that.)

My daughter suggests a terrible South African-made horror movie, The Breed, which keeps showing up on cable.

The Brown Bunny..except for the one famous scene,this was the absolute worst movie ever. Vincent Gallo tries to be artistic,but all he really wanted was to have someone give him oral on screen.

respectfully folks, none of you are true fans of truly bad movies, nothing compares to “tits in trouble movies” a under appreciated genre of all the drive in movies that repeat the same thing over and over. The big tits come out and then the killer gets her. Bad writing, bad acting, no plot, just good old sex and fear. I used to rent four at a time for a dollar, my finger stuck on the fast forward until the utterly rediculous happened, then I’d rewind and watch that again. My all time favorite worst tits in trouble movie? Girls With Guns. Las vegas show girls have been recruited to go kill dirty arabs. The scenes alternate between topless girls relaxing in a big hot tub and gun slaughter sequences where all arabs die and all babes live.

you are so profoundly wrong about Naked that all your other opinions are preemptively discredited.

Tell me why. Give me, for just one instance, a convincing account of what purpose the hair-whipping scene served. I’m picking on it because it was by that time that I stopped trying to interpret the movie generously and decided it was swill.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry is probably a great choice; deliberately avoided that one. So also Speed Racer and The Last Legion and, no doubt, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, whose title alone is nausea-inducing. Once Upon a Time in Mexico is definitely a great choice.

Memento is a bit overrated — after a few viewings you realize how stupid this story would seem played forward — but far from horrible. (Following, Nolan’s first film, is actually much better.) Troy is underrated, which doesn’t mean it isn’t cheese — and anyone calling it a great work of art should be slapped with a fish — but does mean that it can be entertaining cheese. But there are some unintentionally hilarious moments to be sure, like the sun apparently rising in the west in one scene.

More from the trying-way-too-hard files: Gandhi, of all things. (“Too long” is a fairly laughable criticism here; if you couldn’t notice anything happening during the running time, maybe you weren’t watching the screen? It has been more plausibly criticized as being too much of a hagiography, but even those critics had the sense not to try to claim it was a poorly-crafted film.)

I agree with Yosef about SPR. I think that to diagnose apathy about actual atrocity in Iraq as coming out of the first 20 minutes of that film is a) giving it way too much credit, and b) getting the reality exactly backwards. Inasmuch as a certain fragment of the American populace is desensitized to atrocity, the Internet can claim far more credit than that movie. More importantly, I think the reality is that far more people still think of war in terms of the sanitized versions of WWII presented by many iconic films in the several decades prior.

I know girls like [Juno] and they are neither wise or clever, they are annoying as hell because they wipe their arse with Socrates.

Except the point of fables is not that their heroes would be cool to know in real life. In real life, Amelie of Amelie would be a sociopathic stalker; she’s only charming in the context of the fable.

Oh, didn’t put in mine…

1. Forrest Gump: Stupid premise focused on making the idiots feel proud to be stupid and american
2. Dude, Where’s My Car: Well, it makes me proud to be british, I guess
3. Saw: PTSD generating. A film from the moral abyss.

And whoever it was above who noted the creepy “ignorance is virtue” message at the core of Forrest Gump is exactly right, as well.

THERE’s NO ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE

and never has it been more obvious than in this thread.
I own some 4,000 movies, started collecting on Beta Tape, switched to VHS, added Laser Disks, and finally DVD’s.

Panning a movie after one viewing or walkout is dangerous. So much has to do with one’s mood and state of mind. There are few if any movies in my collection that have not been screened at least 4 times. I am homebound for the most part and average about 5 movies a day as I multi-task on computers. The movies serve up the background and soundtrack to days of book writing, blogging, or research.
I cannot fall asleep without a movie playing.
I exercise on a recumbent bicycle with movies playing. I subscribe to HBO, Showtime, TMC, Starz, and Cinemax. At 62 years of age I would bet that I have watched more movies more times than anyone on the planet. So let me tell you this.
I am constantly amazed when I find something I could not get through on first viewing – eg Moulin Rouge – that becomes over time a favorite.
Vanilla Sky has it’s Prelude to a Dream that explains that you are required to view it several times.
The ‘I want my time back’ folks must be very special. I want more movies to fill my time. I’m a block from my local Blockbuster and I have rented and bought more of their movies than any customer in history. 35 movies a week and 1800 a year find their way onto one of three HDTV’s with impressive surround systems here at the house. I built subwoofers and sold them to Malco Cinemas for a living
When someone writes that they walked out on Forrest Gump, Dances with Wolves, or even Contact, I just have to laugh out loud, and The Shawshank Redemption is one of if not the greatest movie of our time. Folks who put Star Wars, Close Encounters, or ET on a list of movies no body should ever see shouldn’t be viewing movies. Anything by Stone, Shyamalan, Zemeckis, or Kubrick has some redeeming value.
I am constantly amazed at these multi-million dollar works of art – these photographs in motion. I am constantly spotting something I missed the first few times the movement of light in technicolor danced across my screen.
Some poor soul or souls poured years of work into the celluloid that eventually showed up on a digital disk and you want your 1:30 back?
I always look for one thing good about a film and I amost always find it.

I am appalled by the number of people who think “Signs” is a good movie. It is not a good movie. It is the opposite of a good movie. The writing is utterly lazy and hackneyed. There isn’t room here to discuss even a fraction of the examples one could lay out, but two of the most egregious instances that leap to mind are are:

The method by which Mel Gibson’s wife meets her tragic end. The whole “cut in half by a heavy thing but you’re still alive enough to call your family” urban legend thing? COME ON! Was Shyamalan cruising Snopes.com looking for plot devices? Lame. Improbable. Lazy. Bad writing. It might work if you were 8 years old and hadn’t heard that urban legend before. As it was, going with such a played out gag robbed the scene of any emotional impact. The only way that scene could have been any dumber was having her meet her untimely and tragic end by downing a bunch of pop rocks and soda.

The second, and even less forgivable, example of bad, lazy writing is the secret weakness of the aliens. Water is like acid to them. And what planet do they choose to invade? Earth. Which is mostly made up of water. So the aliens, this ultra intelligent and hyper advanced race of intergalactic beings, have decided to try and conquer Acid World. Oh, and they go down to the surface of this planet which features seas of acid where acid regularly rains from the sky, and acid is found in standing pools and lakes, and is inhabited by a race of creatures who are made of up 50-60% acid, without so much as an umbrella or rain jacket. Oh, also, this hyper advanced race cannot operate door knobs. Gimme a &#^@ing break.

And the whole movie is full of stuff like that. Kind of wrecks the suspension of disbelief. And yeah, those were two spoilers up there. Don’t like it? Tough. I’m trying to save you the trouble of sitting through this cinematic atrocity. Trust me, it’s for your own good.

Not the movie to avoid, but certainly one to avoid if you memorized and believe in the AFI top 100:

The Third Man

People say that the scene where Welles makes his appearance is great.
I saw this film first, then ‘Touch of Evil’, so I didn’t get that moment. It shouldn’t have to be so elitist to enjoy.
In all fairness, I did like Joseph Cotten in ‘Shadow of a doubt’, though not the ending and I did like the over-the-top ‘Touch of Evil’.

Grey Gardens – this interminable and depressing exploitation of two ladies who are obviously both seriously mentally ill but have the fortune/misfortune of being related to Jackie O is excreble. This is the only movie I have walked out on after paying for it. In fact; me and my friends made it further than most; leaving onlt 3 people in the theater when we departed about 30 minutes in.

“Now, The Brown Bunny, that’s a bad movie.”

Oh yes, how could I forget…perhaps because I wanted to?

And speaking of ‘The Sound of Music’, apparently a version was released in South Korea with all the songs edited out. Your mileage may vary on whether that would have been an improvement or not.

I like the attempts to capture the list in rules but then find movies outside the rules. Avoid all SNL-based movies that aren’t The Blues Brothers. Avoid all Rob Schneider and Pauly Shore movies; all Kevin Costner or Robin Williams movies after 1990; and Shyamalan movies after Unbreakable; all genre sequels other than Lord of the Rings movies, Harry Potter movies, Aliens, Empire Strikes Back, Superman II, and Batman Returns; Ben Affleck movies that aren’t directed by Kevin Smith– these are all important rules to know and live by, but we also all already know them.

Like paving, I’m interested in the ways that “a truly awful movie actually makes you like the previous work of the director and actors less after seeing it.” The hateful Haggis-directed Crash is in that category for me– makes it hard even for me to watch one of my onetime favorite movies, Flirting, even though I adored Thandie Newton in Flirting, just because she was in Crash. Of course, Jefferson in Paris had already done some of that damage, too. Took me a while to be able to enjoy *any* of the great actors from Titanic again.

I certainly wish I had back the time I spent watching Into The Wild. It was purty and all, and I don’t begrudge other people how much they seem to enjoy it, but I found the lead character both thoroughly unsympathetic and dumb. If I hadn’t been so sure that the filmmakers thought they were making an uplifting tribute to the human spirit I would have enjoyed it more– because I could have at least wondered whether it was meant to be an extended Darwin Awards sketch.

AI. Underlined, in bold and highlighted.
All copies should be incinerated.

No one has yet to mention the most torturous experience the cinema had unleashed upon mankind know as Mrs. Doubtfire?!!!

A/I Artifical Intelligence – dumb AND depressing

Scent of a Woman – turned me off Pacino FOREVER

Neighbors – Belushi/Ackroyd – maybe I was too young but only movie I ever walked out on in my life

Showgirls – bad movie but good sex

Eurotrip, I still can’t believe that I paid to see this movie and full, evening price too! The only thing that sorta makes it not a complete piece of crap is Matt Damon singing “Scott doesn’t know”…at least I think that’s the name of the song.

As for some of these movies…geez if one really thought hard, I am sure that someone could come up with a reason that Seven Samurai stinks or The Godfather. I agree that the “it’s too depressing, violent, (insert other descriptive term here)” is just a little too I don’t know now right. I mean take Grave of the Fireflies. The movie is really depressing. It’s one of the biggest downers that I can think of, but it’s also one of the best movies that I can think of when it comes to people’s actions during wartime. Taymor’s “Titus” is another one that’s called bad because there’s a lot of bad violent things happened, but it’s still a really intriguing movie and quite well done. But then of course, I actually really like the play and hate to see fellow Shakespeareans knock it. I mean how can you listen to Aaron say “If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul,” especially when performed by an actor of Lennix’s caliber, and not be moved in sme way?

I’ve always thought that inclusion of a scene – apparently cut from the shooting script – wherein Dillon and Bacon get it in on the shower, would have gingered “Wild Things” up immeasurably.

Can’t think of the title, but there is a film in which Lesley Ann Warren scratches her seven yesr itch in the form of the bloke who was in “The Blue Lagoon”. I recall a Bryan Adams song over the end credits (you’ll all be pleased to know that she and hubby reconcile) and a bit in which the object of her affections (high school pupil by day, appalling stripper by night) rhythmically jams his crotch in her face. It’s just charming, it really is.

And, I’m sorry, but I thought “Battle Royale” was one of the biggest piles of toss I have ever seen. Particularly hated the girl with bunches in the infomercial at the beginning, sort of remonstrating with them “Now don’t go trying to take off those necklaces, you hear?” while waggling her finger. Ugghh. Hated it.

Amores Perros was a long dark night of the soul. It had amazing reviews, but was just dreary and horrible.

I have never seen a movie with Nicholas Cage in it that was any good. I am not sure this is coincidence.

Robin Hood Prince of Thieves is high on my list of diabolically awful timewasting flicks. Along with the latest version of King Kong.

Whoever dissed “The African Queen” above was profoundly misguided. Even if you didn’t like the rest of the movie, seeing Katharine Hepburn say, “Nev-ah-theless” to the German captain makes the whole movie worthwhile.

Someone else wondered about the failure to mention DePalma’s excesses. Good point! Horrible stuff, that.

Has anyone else seen “Star Crash?”

Junebug billed as a “wise, bittersweet … comedy,” in reality none of the above. Just awful, leaving out the grotesque misrepresentations on the dvd jacket.

No, Junebug is anything but a Comedy and is loaded with people with negative I.Q.’s, but it’s still a decent movie in light doses. And I agree with #420 about JFK. In fact, I called it communist propaganda on IMDb and got flamed for it royally!

Joysticks was the worst of the 1980’s.
Howard the Duck is better off in the comics where it originated.
Funny About Love was anything but funny.
The Pickle made me want to puke!
The Fox and the original version of Sweet November. Between those two, I’d tolerate Sandy Dennis’ bad British accent in Thank You All Very Much before I see those again.
The only thing good abou Napoleon Dynamite was Tina Majorino.
The only thing good about Ginger Ale Afternoon was Yeardley Smith and not just because of her nude scene.
The only good things about Hook were the original concept, and Rufio.

I like Kevin Smith, but I thought Chasing Amy sucked, and Dogma was worse. The only thing I liked about Dogma was Alan Rickman’s speech about God’s attitude towards us humans during sex. Well, that and Chris Rock’s speech about the crap being carried out presumably in Jesus’ name.

Also, I didn’t see 300 but just because the enemies were Persian, doesn’t make the movie “proto-fascist.”

I would say the worst films I ever saw are War of the Worlds and Batman Begins… I’m pretty sure most people will disagree but Kathie Holmes definitely ruined Batman Begins, which without her could have been pretty good…

Thelma and Louise : I was on a date, and in the first few minutes, we had watched something like 3 commercial ads. The scenes had no heart, they looked like a jeans ad, an AT&T ad and whatnot. We left.
The only other movie I ever walked out of was El Topo, but I did watch La montagne sacrée in its entirety.
Transformers was pretty bad too, and then Armageddon…

Firewalker urch….

Bug
Ashley Judd. One of the rare movies I’ve seen where half the crowd literally booed at the end; the other half clapped wildly.

American Pyscho. I cannot watch any movie with Christian Bale because of that piece of crap….

I think that everyone who saw Vanilla Sky and Minority Report should be able to bring a class action lawsuit against Tom Cruise for robbing us of the time it took out of our lives to watch those truly awful movies

Brians Song…..I thought it was supposed to be a musical, but no…

apocalypse now was the worst piece of trash i have ever seen… who else in here thinks marlon brando cant act his way out of a paper bag…ooh “the horror…” and “lets wash my bald head and look off into the distance, with light across half of my face so you cant see how fat im getting”
you wanna see a good coppola film watch JACK… with robin williams and bill cosby… now there is a pair that can act…

As a former film critic, I’ve seen a lot of terrible movies, but there are lousy and incompetent films released all the time, so it doesn’t seem fair to rip something like “Exterminator 2” or “Meatballs 3.”

No, for truly horrible failures, you need to grasp a movie that is TRYING to be great, but just misses the mark so profoundly it’s an insult to humanity.

For that, I offer “Kalifonia,” starring Brad Pitt as a grungy serial killer who catches a ride cross country with David Duchovny, who just happens to be a serial killer expert! Ludicrous, stupid, gory, mean-spirited and naive (message: Serial killers are Just Like Us!), of course Roger Ebert gave it a rave review.

I will second the nomination of Armageddon, the only movie that has ever made me question my own humanity.

Given the plot of the film, the only less subtle piece of foreshadowing I have ever seen was in Wayne’s World:

Wayne walks past two men stacking up crates and asks “What are you guys doing?”

“Oh, we’re just stacking up these empty crates in the middle of the road.”
(turns to camera) “Hmm, I can’t help feeling this is going to pay off later on”.
Of course, when the car chase happens, they go straight through the stack…

Thanks for reminding me, in the midst of this slog through decades of heartless crap, of how wonderful movies can be.

Movies I’m amazed no one has mentioned yet:

Popeye – I was 11 when this came out, and I still walked out on this movie. After less than 15 minutes!

Against All Odds – Every character was unlikeable, every line cliched. When a Phil Collins song is by far the best part of a movie, it’s not a good sign.

The Fifth Element – The English language will not describe how dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, DUMB this film is.

All those who said “House of Sand and Fog” is a bad movie are WRONG WRONG WRONG. Those of you who have been turned off of that movie due to this site, PLEASE reconsider! It was a compelling movie that had top-notch acting and will absolutely break your heart, it’s so sad. Watch it!

I have postponed watching Paul Haggis’s “Crash”, although my sister said it was really good, because so many other people online seem to hate it. But David Cronenberg’s “Crash” was really a very good film. Definitely not for everyone (it’s about people with a car crash fetish, and it’s rated NC-17), but since Cronenberg can give a humane element to such a grotesque abberance, he deserves his place as one of my three favorite directors (along with Alfonso Cuaron and Stanley Kubrick).

Speaking of Stanley Kubrick, I didn’t get through the entire list, but I’m sure someone put “Eyes Wide Shut” on there, because people love ripping on a movie they don’t understand. Well, “Eyes Wide Shut” is definitely in my Top 5 movies of all time, if not Top 3. It is, in one word, breathtaking. Don’t let any haters tell you differently.

I don’t like this 101 movies to avoid list. It seems people are just listing movies based purely off their own opinions, instead of picking out movies that a large portion of general audiences will hate. Haggis’s “Crash” and “Juno” happen to be on IMDB’s Top 250, so they don’t deserve to be vilified on this list, because too many people like them. I personally despise “Raging Bull” and “From Here to Eternity”, but I’d refrain from putting them on a list like this, because I know so many other people DO like them.

I would place The Blair Witch Project at the top of the list. Sure, it’s not the worst movie while you’re watching it because you expect something really nuts to happen at the end. What you get instead is…nothing.

A great big scam that fooled the world.

I’m sorry if I missed it in an earlier comment, but at all costs avoid Gregg Araki’s “Nowhere.”

Only movie I’ve ever walked out of: Prizzi’s Honor. The most mind-numbingly boring cinematic experience in history. I walked out when I realized I was losing the will to live. The movie almost killed me.

Ok, here is my list of movies I wish I had avoided. Or as I say to my friends: “If someone suggests you watch this movie, get up and leave immediately. And don’t be friends with that person anymore.”
-Spiderman 3
-Dan in Real Life
-Mars Attacks
-Broken Bridges (If you’ve never heard of it, all you need to know is that it’s Toby Keith’s acting debut.)
-Jumper

And yes, this will probably cause the world to explode, but I think Casablanca is the most overrated, overblown piece of cinema EVER. I mean honestly, how can so many people like a movie with such a ridiculous group of characters? It’s baffling.

Red Dawn

My vote (for movies to avoid) is Red Dawn

I’ve read through the entire gd thread, and only TWO mentions of Billy Jack! People, this one is so bad it’s almost worth Netflixxing. Made in 1976 or so, combining the dying 60s hippie consciousness with a foreshadowing of the karate boom AND the Bushian “sometimes ya just have ta kick ASS” milieu we just lived through. So relentlessly earnest, self-important, utterly offensive, and off-putting on so many levels.

And where’s Used Cars (Zemeckis) and The 12 Chairs (Mel Brooks)?? High water marks of relentless directorial/writerly self-indulgence, both of them. Probably just me, but I left the theatre feeling as if I’d been pummeled for 2 hours by a shrieking guy in a hideous clown suit. Of course, Billy Jack has both of them beat, but still.

426 posts and not one of you mentions the atrocity that was Ishtar. Anyone remember a Gary Larson cartoon depicting “hell’s video store”? Where the only movie available for rent was Ishtar? There’s a reason folks. I’d almost want to go to church in order to avoid hell JUST so I’d never see that movie again. I can live with fire/brimstone/torture, but not Ishtar!!

“Elvira Madigan” Oh God…ELVIRA MADIGAN! It’s been decades, a LIFETIME, since I saw this. I was living in London. I was surrounded by bright, erudite people. Many of them advised me to see it. I am a sensitive, articulate, caring person. Within an hour of this film hitting my retinas I wanted to kill. I wanted the central character to just plain DIE…DIE horribly. The finally do, thank God, but getting there was no fun.

“Starship Troopers is good and funny work. On the other hand it’s easy to see why nobody wants to waste two hours on Nazi 90210 in Space.”

Such people have no soul. Seriously, the only way Nazi 90210 in Space could be made any better would be the addition of zombies.

The island was cool, demolition man was flawed but awesomely futuristic, dances with wolves was excellent for the numbskull who said it wasnt and robin hood men in tights was interesting. Obviously none of you have ever had the grave misfortune of watching: 18 fingers of death(couldnt finish it), casshern(thought it would be cool but was so wrong), dark blue (cornball or a predictable mess) and the grand prize goes to Ghosts of mars…thank you carpenter!

Romy and Michelle/ is absolutely the worst “modern” film I have seen. As for films that recieved critical acclaim they didn’t deserve, Closer/ was awful!

Gotta chime in on Signs; I too think it sucked.

But there’s an interesting side story.

I’ve got a buddy; we would meet at juggling club and pass pins. He likes movies, as do I, and we would often talk film.

He liked Signs and I thought it sucked.

We were at a conversational impasse; he’d pulled out all his guns, I did too, and neither of us were budging. Finally, he resorted to, “Well, the critics liked it, so it may be you’re just out of sync on this one!”

I went home, got on the IMDb, and started riffling thru the external reviews, keeping a running document with thumbnails. Then I did a quick summary analysis.

Here’s what I found: 30% liked it. 30% hated it. And the remaining 40% felt it had all the same flaws I felt it had, but didn’t think those flaws “downed” the film; they liked it nonetheless.

So next time I saw my friend, I reported to him: 70% agreed with him (either liked it or “liked” it), and 70% agreed with me (either didn’t like it, or “liked” it in spite of issues that I personally think downed it).

I’ll never understand how that 40% would see the same stupidities I saw in “Signs”, yet think they didn’t impinge on its quality.

My entry – “Sorority Babes at the Slimeball Bowlerama” – an excuse for a teen slasher movie where the monster is hidden in a bowling alley trophy.

I haven’t the time to review this entire post, but feel the need to mention Michael Moore passing off his Op-Ed pieces as ‘documentary filmmaking.’ While I am not any great fan of the Bush administration or, obviously, teen gun violence, Moore’s heavy handed one-sidedness in his movies inspire me to warn people off. I wholeheartedly support Moore’s right to present his opinions in his films, and probably agree with some of his views, but documentaries they are not.

Showgirls and Tough Guys Don’t Dance would make a great double bill. Two films made by misogynists who were obviously heavily intoxicated — coke and alcohol is my guess.
Then there’s The Fifth Element, the movie Ed Wood would have made if he’d had unlimited resources.

While I have in the past defended movies that others have considered godawful, there are a few that not even I could tolerate. First, I am in wholehearted agreement about Napolean Dynamite, Dr. T and the Women, Catwoman, Daredevil, and American Beauty. Second, I’d like to add The Pursuit of Happyness (the Will Smith one) for having the most depressing “happy ending” I have ever seen; The New World because if I wanted to look at a field for 10 straight minutes I’d buy a house in the prairies and look out the window; and 16 Blocks for attempting to be an action movie and failing so miserably that I actually got excited when someone was finally shot in the foot (also, for being the only Bruce Willis movie that I have ever truly hated).

“300” was absolutely terrible. Horrible dialogue, worse acting. Painful to watch in every way.

Children, children — you all don’t know bad movies. Let me lay some hubris upon y’all:

(1) JAWS 4 THE REVENGE “THIS TIME ITS PERSONAL” an incredibly bad film. Bad plot (“preternatural shark decides to go after the Brody family, who, rather than moving to Arizona, decide to live by the ocean”). Bad filming (man devoured by shark to Christmas carols). Bad Acting (“Come and get me, you bastard.”) Bad stunts (attempting to kill shark by crashing small plane upon it). Bad logic (People who crash plane into ocean emerge from ocean without getting wet).

(2) JENNIFER THE SNAKE GODDESS. Yes, a real movie. Girl (Jennifer) is member of weird appalachian snake-handling religion. Mom dies, and Jennifer won’t use her power any more because she lacks faith. Jennifer is captured by eveil teen gang who decide to terrorize her by driving her to a remote location and driving around her. Jennifer, captured and in trunk of car, decides to pray. When she is let out of the car, snakes attack all of the evil teenagers.

(3) WILLARD. A boy and his lizard. Totally screwed up.

(4) WILD THINGS: Soft core porn masquerading as a movie with a plot. Avoid: better porn is available free on-line, and better acting is available at most middle schools.

Dead Poet’s Society

I’ll defend Sgt. Pepper’s.

It’s a cheesy movie with some good music and fun performances.

This thread has deteriorated into “films I don’t like,” which is not the same thing as “films that nobody will like and should thus be avoided” (a category that I continue to believe Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band may well be dominate….612 comments and not one defender to be found).

That said, The Third Man is not only a great film, it’s a great film that nearly everyone who sees it likes (I’ve shown it to half a dozen classes and in one film series, so I speak from some experience). That doesn’t make you a cretin for not liking it. There’s no accounting for taste and different people like different things. But I think it’s wrong to suggest that it’s a film to avoid from the AFI 100. This is, of course, a different topic from the question Harry asked way, way up thread. But my nominee for AFI 100 film most likely to produce a negative reaction in a randomly selected viewer would far and away be Birth of a Nation, a film that unquestionably belongs on the list, but that seems to most modern viewers not only long and boring, but politically vile.

I quite liked American Psycho. I thought that it, like the also maligned Titus, was an interesting exploration of male violence by a female director. And the business card scene is great!