12/30/08

It's crunch time here at the Palace, with my 10 Best List still unwritten and needing to go online before the calendar changes to January.   But before we get down to the serious business of praising the best of the year gone by, allow me to take a final kick at these titles while they're still down:  the biggest reasons I sometimes wonder why I go to the movies so often.

1.88 Minutes:  The low point of Al Pacino's long, distinguished career was this ugly, lurid and incoherent thriller designed to convince me that everyone, possibly even me sitting in the audience, might be the killer instead of the one totally obvious suspect.  The unflappable star never seemed to get off his cell phone, reading us a phone book worth of information and clues oblivious to just how little question there was about the identity of the real killer.  Worst of all (worse even than watching Al describe the gruesome murder of his baby sister in the Worst.  Secret Sorrow.  Ever.), it dragged on well past its' optimistically titled running time.

2.10,000 B.C.:  “Tic'Tic!” Many moons ago, Roland Emmerich directed my all-time favorite popcorn flick, Independence Day, so it was a tragedy indeed to see him deliver this inexplicable disaster of a talking cavemen movie.  When the Sabertooth Tigers just wanna be our pals, the Woolly Mammoths do nothing but run away and the only real menace comes from killer chickens and an inbred King guarded by a bunch of drag queen priests, there's nothing to say but “Come back, Mayor Ebert, all is forgiven!”

3.Star Wars:  The Clone Wars:  Jabba the Hutt's son has been kidnapped.  And Anakin Skywalker and his new Padawan Learner take to calling that tyke Stinky.  Stinky the Hutt:  it's come to this.  And that's pretty much the high point of the almost surreally awful pilot for a new Cartoon Network Star Wars series I mysteriously never got around to watching.

4.Australia:  The stuffed “Australian Gone With the Wind” exhibit in Baz Luhrman's Museum of Movies that Never Were.  Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman make an attractive couple but can't strike any sparks within the straightjacket of their methodically Old School acting, while the film twists itself into knots trying to acknowledge the sins of government relocation programs for Aboriginal children in the same awkward way a 1939 movie would have.  Why any of this was believed to be necessary, I have no idea.

5.Jumper:  Not since Star Wars, Episode 1 has a movie so confidently felt the need to give us absolutely nothing while it waited to actually tell its' story in a whole bunch of sequels.  An utterly unlikable Hayden Christensen has the power to jump all over the world and uses it to rob banks and not walk to the refrigerator, and he's our hero.  Edited beyond all comprehension:  if the producers has known Twilight would make Kristen Stewart a star before the end of the year, maybe they wouldn't have cut all her lines but one.

6.How to Lose Friends & Alienate People:  A weird love letter to trolls and haters that disdains Hollywood for not sharing the same level of self-loathing as those who make a career out of hating it.  Made me fear for Simon Pegg's future:  does he know how good he was in Hot Fuzz when he's cashing checks to sleepwalk through these sort of lovable loser roles?

7.Made of Honor:  Man, this sounded like such a good idea!  Patrick Dempsey plays a manly man who must endure the shame of being the Maid of Honor at his best friend's wedding because he secretly loves her and hopes to break it up.  Alas, the only shame was for the filmmakers behind this charmless comedy of self-absorption, although it did get me a couple of e-mails from the guy who invented the paper coffee cup sleeve (an invention attributed to Dempsey in the film), and that was cool.

8.Death Race:  If not for The Bank Job, it would be a year to weep for the career of awesome action star Jason Statham.  Its' low point was this grimy and lamebrained remake of Roger Corman's 70's drive-in classic that at least had the guts to be offensive.  Worth seeing only for the most ludicrous tacked-on happy ending I've ever seen (just what did happen to those scars on Tyrese Gibson's face, anyway?).

9.Seven Pounds:  Worst.  Inspirational Story.  Ever.  Will Smith does a bunch of random good deeds for a reason equal parts horrifying, egomaniacal and obvious.  Bottom line:  a movie this well made and acted should never be this ethically reprehensible.

10.Babylon A.D.:  All together now:  “Twenty years ago, I was drummed out of the medical community for trying to put artificial intelligence in babies.”  Nothing will send Vin Diesel running back to the Fast & The Furious franchise faster than sci-fi nonsense like this.  Even the director begged us not to go, but I had to go and ignore his advice...

Ahhhhh, my brain burns!  Get those visions of Bad Cinema past behind me!  After a few hours under the safety shower washing my eyes out, I'll be back tomorrow with that coolest of criticy rituals, my 2008 Ten Best List.