Least Favorite Movies of 2002

<< 2001  2003>>

Favorite Movies of 2002

9. Resident Evil

D: Paul W.S. Anderson

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A mediocre film with some decent atmosphere and some good music.  I may not be all that familiar with the games, but I know bad movies.

 

8. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

D: George Lucas

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The prequels were problematic, but this is the one that I actually dislike.  I liked Obi-Wan and some of the action, but the story was a mess and it retconned logical fan deductions.  Anakin was whiny and half-psychotic.  Dialogue was forced.  The romance is the worst this side of Twilight.  The final act used too much grotesquely orange CGI.  I will, however, defend Hayden Christensen’s performance.  The terrible writing and direction were not his fault, and I’m not the first to point thatout.

7. Gangs of New York

D: Martin Scorsese

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I think Scorsese has a limited range as a director, and serious period pieces are not his forte.  This is probably because, while his movies are fun, he generally fails to create an emotional connection between me and the characters.  Also, it’s not one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s better performances.

6. Die Another Day

D: Lee Tamahori

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A Bond movie so bad that it fortunately made the franchise reboot with Casino Royale.  It’s still got some good action, and I’d honestly rather watch it than the more dull entries in the series (eg: Thunderball]

 

5. The Sum of All Fears

D: Phil Alden Robinson

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As a fan of the Jack Ryan movies, I was looking forward to this, but it was very disappointing.  Ben Affleck is certainly no worthy successor to Harrison Ford, or even Alec Baldwin for that matter.

 

4. Men in Black II

D: Barry Sonnenfeld

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Like T3, it depressingly retcons the previous movie’s happy ending.  Unlike T3, it’s not very fun.  The few funny moments don’t make up for all the awful attempts at humor.

 

3. Star Trek: Nemesis

D: Stuart Baird

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The movie that broke the even/odd rule of Star Trek movies.  The CGI would have been considered bad in the mid-90’s, and it’s made worse by the fact that the space scenes are dominated by a putrid green hue.  The Scimitar is like something a child would have built out of Legos, both in appearance and concept.  The worst part of the movie is the ending, in which Data is replaced. 

2. National Lampoon’s Van Wilder

D: Walt Becker

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This pathetic attempt at a spiritual sequel to Animal House has an annoying protagonist and a climax that is more disgusting than genuinely humorous.

1. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever

D: Wych Kaosayananda

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An amazingly clichéd action movie which is known for spawning a surprisingly decent game.  Has a rare 0% Rotten Tomatoes rating.  Some moments of action are good, but the characters are bland.  This film also has one of the most underwhelming attempts at a cool, gimmicky death I’ve ever seen.  One thing I particularly dislike is the sheer number of Caprices (I have a bit of a soft spot for these cars) that seem to get wrecked in order to make this waste of a movie.

<< 2001  2003>>

Favorite Movies of 2002

Least Favorite Movies of 2003

<< 2002  2004>>

Favorite Movies of 2003

8. Lost in Translation

D: Sofia Coppola

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This movie isn’t really bad, it’s just very boring and overrated.  I probably would have liked it more if it was a short film, but it had too much wordless, pointless filler.  I also would have been less disappointed if people had not gone around pretending it was a comedy when in reality it was a drama with some very, very mild comic relief.

 

7. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

D: Jonathan Mostow

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Its great action and funny comic relief makes it like a good parody of T2, but it’s a bastardization of that great movie that retcons its optimistic, life-affirming ending for the sake of cynical profit.

 

6. Bad Boys II

D: Michael Bay

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The movie has some good action (including an excellent car chase scene), but its vulgar sense of humor brings it down.  I might have been more prepared for the awfulness of “Transformers” if I had watched this movie beforehand.

5. Daredevil

D: Mark Steven Johnson

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Though visually stylish, it’s pretty much a low-quality rip-off of Batman (1989).

 

4. Underworld

D: Len Wiseman

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A waste of a good premise and visuals.  The characters, with the possible exception of Lucian, were not compelling and the design for the “werewolves” was terrible.

 

3. Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle

D: McG

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A terrible and grotesquely overstylized action movie only worth watching for The Thin Man (Crispin Glover).  It also plays a pretty good song at one point.

 

2. S.W.A.T.

D: Clark Johnson

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A forgettable action movie.

1. Bulletproof Monk

D: Paul Hunter

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A mediocre movie with an awesome title and some good moments of action.  Offensively, the movie asserts that people running Holocaust remembrance museums are secretly Nazis!

<< 2002   2004 >>

Favorite Movies of 2003

Least Favorite Movies of 2004

<< 2003   2005 >>

Favorite Movies of 2004

The #1 entry is probably going to shock some, but hopefully it will make the world a little less lonely for the few who agree with me on it.

10. Shark Tale

D: Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron, Rob Letterman

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This spiritual sequel to Antz has atrocious character design, terrible fish puns and cheap pop cultural references.  The presence of Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorsese playing lame self-parodies only makes it worse.  Frustratingly, the movie does have a good amount of funny moments that prevent me from completely writing it off.  At least DreamWorks learned not to make movies about animals with human faces after this.  It also has a decidedly inaccurate likeness of the Titanic’s wreck. 

9. Van Helsing

D: Stephen Sommers

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A mediocre film with an inappropriately long runtime.

 

8. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

D: Rawson Marshall Thurber

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The only part of this movie I remember being funny was David Hasselhoff’s cameo.

7. Troy

D: Wolfgang Petersen

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A bland and oversimplified version of The Iliad with all the mythology/interesting stuff cut out.  At one point Priam makes a speech about how thousands of people getting killed in war because of Paris’ selfish infatuation is somehow noble.  The only things I liked were Sean Bean as Odysseus (I’d like to see a faithful sequel starring him) and a cameo by Aeneas.  Watch Gladiator instead.

 

6. The Dawn of the Dead

D: Zack Snyder

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I didn’t like the original, but I would probably dislike this remake more if I did.  All the B-movie charm of it is replaced by Zack Snyder’s tacky style, and the movie seems too much like a generic Hollywood blockbuster.  The movie also features one of the most idiotic actions ever done in a horror movie.  Some woman gets a whole bunch of people killed in an utterly moronic attempt to save a dog.  Even worse, the dog was clearly being ignored by the zombies and was in no immediate danger whatsoever.

5. Saw

D: James Wan

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A grungy, dark and violent movie about a serial killer with a twisted sense of justice who traps people and kills them in symbolically gimmicky ways.  Doesn’t sound familiar at all.  The twist ending is so insulting that it makes me wonder why anyone took this movie seriously.  I didn’t see the sequels because I learned my lesson, but I hear they at least deliver on the gore.

 

4. Resident Evil: Apocalypse

D: Alexander Witt

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An aggressively bad vixen movie with fight scenes that are either painfully ripped-off or incoherent.  Also has an extremely bland villain.  PWSA delegated directing duties since he was busy with an even more underwhelming movie:

 

3. Alien vs. Predator

D: Paul W.S. Anderson

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Some interesting design, but the movie was mostly defined by nonexistent characterization and horribly edited action.  When I saw this I thought it was one of the worst movies I had ever seen, but that was in a happier, more innocent time before AVP:R and “Transformers.”

2. Tentacolino

D: Kim J. Ok

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A sequel to The Legend of Titanic.  That’s right a sequel to the animated Titanic movie.  The one that’s not the one with the rapping dog and is somehow worse.  Despite having some pretty scenery, it’s absurd and poorly paced.  The understandable motivations of the “villains” and the petty and sometimes sadistic tendencies of the “heroes” make it one of the worst-framed movies I’ve seen since 300.

1. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

D: Adam McKay

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Man, everybody likes this movie.  Hipsters, Jocks, Goths, my brothers, the pope.  Everyone except me.  I like absurd humor when it’s done well, but I find this movie’s humor to be a really forced version of that.  I’ll make a review in which I elaborate on my feelings. 

<< 2003   2005 >>

Favorite Movies of 2004

Least Favorite Movies of 2005

<< 2004   2006 >>

Favorite Movies of 2005

10. Æon Flux

D: Karyn Kusama

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It completely misses the point of the show, its characters aren’t that great and it uses the dreadful cloned memories as a twist.  It does have a little style a little and some great sci-fi gimmicks, but that’s not enough.  It would at least be fun if the action scenes weren’t so horrendously edited.  I still loved the excellent score by Graeme Revell.

 

9. Stealth

D: Rob Cohen

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I don’t think I ever cared less about a character dying than I did with this movie, and then there was that pointless filler scene with the shore leave.  At least the planes looked cool.

 

8. Red Eye

D: Wes Craven

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A woman falls victim to a ridiculously contrived evil plan, but is saved by the villain’s third act stupidity.  Recommended only for die-hard Cillian Murphy fans. 

7. The Island

D: Michael Bay

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How can you waste a cast that includes Steve Buscemi, Sean Bean, Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johanssen and Djimon Hounsou?  Well, you do if you’re Michael Bay.  Particularly bad is the movie’s team of moronic team of mercenaries who all have the collective intelligence of one domestic turkey.  The movie’s premise is also suspiciously similar to that of an MST3K movie, and the MST3K movie is better.  At least the score is very good.

 

6. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

D: Tetsuya Nomura, Takashi Nozue

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Aside from the soundtrack, I’ve never been interested in Final Fantasy.  This movie didn’t exactly help.

 

5. The Forty-Year-Old Virgin

D: Judd Apatow

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Although the characterization in this movie was better than that of most comedies, it had one fatal flaw: it wasn’t funny.  I didn’t like the banally crude humor of this movie.  I remember being in the theater with everyone laughing their butts off and I was thinking, "Wait, was that supposed to be a joke?" the whole time.  Oddly enough, I did enjoy Knocked Up.  I guess I have a fickle sense of humor.

4. Chicken Little

D: Mark Dindal

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I went to this once for the sole reason of avoiding a college roommate, and I was the only person in the campus theater aside from one couple.  It had some funny moments, but it was very underwhelming.

 

3. The Dukes of Hazzard

D: Jay Chandrasekhar

**********

I watched the show as a kid, and I can attest to how little respect this adaptation seems to have for it.  The movie tries to turn the story into a comedy with forced humor, and the characters are transformed into fools. Billy Bob Thornton and Willie Nelson are absurdly miscast as Boss Hog and Uncle Jesse.  I only remember one funny moment.

2. Cinderella Man

D: Ron Howard

**********

A competent, if typical, period movie ruined by slander. 

1. Thank You for Smoking

D: Jason Reitman

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I know I tend to push this issue a lot, but this movie would have been fine if not for the gun lobby straw man.  Of all the “Merchants of Death,” he’s depicted as the worst when that group contains a freaking tobacco lobbyist.  The movie also features one of the most egregious examples of this trope I have ever seen in a movie.  The lobbyist provides what seems to be an argument that, while anecdotal, is a perfectly legitimate counterpoint an anti-gun equivalent and calls it a “spin.”  Also, why is alcohol included as a designated villain?  Is alcohol considered an evil special interest now?  When did this happen?  Did we not learn our lesson in the 20’s? 

<< 2004   2006 >>

Favorite Movies of 2005