Biggest Letdowns of the Last Decade

[Stefen]

Have you seen a Wes Anderson movie? Yes? Well, then you've seen Fantastic Mr. Fox, except in stop-motion. He makes the same movie over and over again. They're fun little movies.

[Gamblour.]

I second Darjeeling Limited and Children of Men.

Also, Manderlay.

[Stefen]

Agreed on Manderlay, but Children of Men? What were you letdown by? I think it was one of the best of the decade.

[Alexandro]

Darjeeling!!! How could I forget that one. The way I was mostly bored and asking myself throughout why wasn't this funny, why it all felt like a deja vu, why I knew 20 minutes in that there would be some sort of dramatic moment a la Richie's suicide at one point...

[Gamblour.]

Agreed on Manderlay, but Children of Men? What were you letdown by? I think it was one of the best of the decade.

I was amazed by it technically, but Clive Owen's performance is not so much understated as it is boring, the feats and long-shots are too showy to be any good (except the one inside the car, and I'm generally not a fan of these anyway), the writing bored me, I dunno. It left me pretty damn underwhelmed (hell, I think I even put it in my top ten of that year, but these things take time).

Oh, while I'm at it, let me go ahead and add EVERY fucking Harry Potter movie, except for the Prisoner of Azkaban (point back to Cuaron).

[pete]

fuck you all who mentioned darjeeling.

[polkablues]

Leatherheads, The Ladykillers, Shoot 'Em Up, Be Kind Rewind, Smokin' Aces...

Richard Kelly, Alex Proyas, and Bart Freundlich.

People who think Children of Men was a letdown.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

no one's expecting it to be any good.

Um... I am.  I mean, I guess from an animation point of view, it looks really good.  I can't really speak for the story yet, and I'm not sure what exactly you expect from a movie based on a children's book with children as its demographic.  Who can say if it'll live up to Where The Wild Things Are, which I don't fully expect it to, but the stop motion looks really fucking great in the trailer.

[pete]

I actually thought the stop motion didn't look very good - they didn't move funny I guess - but I saw the second trailer and I liked it a lot.

[MacGuffin]

I guess this can go here:

Going 'Ballistic' on the Decade's Worst Movies

Movie critics are, by definition, folks with strong opinions about movies. But opinions are personal and subjective, so usually critical response to any movie is split between the positive and the negative. Still, there are a few extraordinary films every year that unite reviewers. When they all uniformly praise a movie, it's probably close to a masterpiece. When they all hate a flick, it probably stinks worse than week-old Limburger.

RottenTomatoes.com, which aggregates the opinions of over 100 professional movie critics and distills them down to a single numeric "freshness" rating, has compiled the "Worst of the Worst," a list of the absolute dredges of cinema over the past decade. By looking at the movies with the highest percentages of negative reviews, they have ranked the 100 worst-reviewed films of the last ten years. The list encompasses a whole range of critically-reviled movies, from the John Travolta sci-fi fiasco "Battlefield Earth" in 2000 to Sandra Bullock's unfunny stalker comedy "All About Steve," which opened just a few weeks ago.

Looking over the list, there are plenty of memorably terrible flicks listed: Mariah Carey's first (and hopefully last) leading role in "Glitter," Madonna's most recent (and hopefully last) star turn "Swept Away," three "Larry the Cable Guy" movies, and Eddie Murphy's "The Adventures of Pluto Nash," which ranks as one of the all-time biggest box-office bombs. Even "Gigli," the Ben Affleck/Jennifer Lopez catastrophe that's currently Yahoo! users' lowest-rated film of all time, only ranks 73rd on their list. Think about that: 72 movies are actually worse than "Gigli."

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer -- who Slate once called "evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization's decline" for their relentless output of depressingly disposable parodies like "Epic Movie" -- tied German schlock auteur Uwe Boll ("Bloodrayne") for being responsible for the most movies on the list, cranking out four each.

Carmen Electra, who has been in all of Friedberg and Seltzer's movies, has appeared in a whopping six stinkers on the list, the most of any other star. However, you don't have to be a D-lister to wind up in a dud. A surprising number of Oscar-winners found themselves in critically savaged films, from Robert De Niro ("Godsend") and Al Pacino ("88 Minutes") to Diane Keaton ("Because I Said So") and Ben Kingsley ("A Sound of Thunder").

So what wound up being the worst of the worst? That honor goes to the 2002 explosion fest "Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever," starring Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu. The movie -- which earned a rare 0% freshness rating -- was described by critics as being "an ungainly mess," "loud and boring," "flat, stale, confusing and lazy," and "a picture for idiots." Though the flick damaged but didn't completely ruin both Banderas' and Liu's careers, Thai-born director Wych Kaosyananda (aka Kaos) hasn't directed a movie since.

Here's the bottom ten from RottenTomatoes's "Worst of the Worst":

10. Witless Protection (2008)
9. Redline (2007)
8. 3 Strikes (2000)
7. Strange Wilderness (2008)
6. Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004)
5. National Lampoon's Gold Diggers (2004)
4. King's Ransom (2005)
3. Pinocchio (2002)
2. One Missed Call (2008)
1. Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever (2002)


http://www.rottentomatoes.com/guides/worst_of_the_worst/

[Gamblour.]

Leatherheads, The Ladykillers, Shoot 'Em Up, Be Kind Rewind, Smokin' Aces...

Richard Kelly, Alex Proyas, and Bart Freundlich.

People who think Children of Men was a letdown.

At least I'm up there with Alex Proyas (lest we forget, I loved Know1ng).

[New Feeling]

There Will Be Blood (but still pretty good)

[squints]

BLASPHEMER!