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The Screengrab's Top Ten Worst...Movies...Ever!!!! (Part Seven)

Posted by Andrew Osborne

Hayden Childs' Worst Movies Ever (Part Two...plus 5 honorable mention bad movie haikus!)

6. LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1997)



Long ago I was happy and carefree, way back when Roberto Benigni was the sorta-annoying Italian guy from those Jim Jarmusch movies. He made funny jokes, I made funny jokes, everything was good, see?  But now that happiness is gone forever. The day that I saw Life Is Beautiful, my love - strike that, let’s say “tolerance” - of Benigni became a tearful nightmare. You could call it the day the clown cried. See, the premise of the movie is that Benigni is trying to convince his child that the Nazi concentration camp they are in is all a big, jokey game. Actually, that's only the second half of the movie. The first half is about Benigni trying to woo his lady through a bunch of wacky pratfalls. The second half is Benigni making light of the Holocaust through wacky pratfalls. It's the craziest genocide of a people ever! You'll laugh, cry, puke in horror, and never be able to watch Down By Law again!

7. HAPPINESS (1998)



This was the least repellent clip from this film that I could find. Todd Solondz thinks that he’s the most misanthropic man in movies, but his misanthropy is as meaningless as Natural Born Killers' satire because it has no center. It's one thing to be a misanthrope because you are deeply disappointed in humanity (as with, say, Louis-Ferdinand Céline or Michel Houellebecq), but it's a completely different thing to strive towards misanthropy just because...what?  Because deep down, we're all just using each other, right? We're all just biding time until we can rape children, right?  We're all just waiting for the numbness of age and indifference to envelope us, right?  We're all just wanting to get our own rocks off and to hell with everyone else, right?  Beneath contempt.

8. IN THE COMPANY OF MEN (1997)



Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone’s just waiting for the right moment to stab you in the back. A nation of creeps. Fuck you, LaBute.

9. HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING (1991)



"$34 million? They must have had a limousine every time they went to the john!" Ah, Roger Ebert, you slay me. Most of the movies on my list are repulsive due to their content rather than the complete incompetence of the filmmakers. This one is both! It makes no damn sense, looks like shit, cost the studio a ton of money, and stars Sean Connery! I had seen bad movies before, but this was the first really bad movie that I ever saw where I literally couldn't understand how it had come to be. For that, it'll always have a special place in my heart.

10. THE BROTHERS McMULLEN (1995)



Dimwitted Irish guys from Long Island who fuck around while women swoon all over them? Sign me up! They're going to talk about life and love and pseudo-profound heavy stuff like that, all with the same bada-bing inflection? Whoa nelly! They'll all learn to believe in love again? Warms the ol' cockles of the heart, it does, faith and begorrah! And boy howdy, that Ed Burns is dreamy, isn't he? Whoever made this movie sure thinks so! (HC)

Bonus 5, in haiku:

American Beauty (1999)

Suburbs: repression,
Sadness, revelation. Then
You're shot by a queer.

Armageddon (1998)

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Shazam! Whizz! Bang! Crash! Ba-donk!
Kablooey! KaBLAM!

Dead Poets Society (1989)

Oh, Robin Williams,
Bearded man with life lessons,
You ruined poetry.

You've Got Mail (1998)

Bloody thoughts! Only
One way to quell: watch The Shop
Around The Corner.

Memento (2000)

Start here. Smart conceit
Hides lacuna at the heart
Of story. Start here.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributor, Haikuist: Hayden Childs


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Posted May 07 2009, 07:00 PM
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Comments

LL said:

While I agree with You've Got Mail, Armageddon and Highlander 2, the rest of your list (well most of it) just wreaks of anti-popular hipster conservative bullshit. The fact that you can't even glean anything decent from Happiness...don't you find any merit whatsoever in trying to force an audience to deal with a pedophile that isn't one-dimensional? That they actually have to view it as someone who has the same tendencies to be attracted to children that hetero or homosexuals have to be with whomever they're attracted to? I think the position Solondz forces the audience into, makes it a pretty decent fucking film.

End scene.

May 11, 2009 12:49 AM

Hayden Childs said:

So, if I'm reading you correctly, your position is that I am one of these hipsters I keep hearing about, and moreover, I am a conservative anti-popular hipster who doesn't appreciate the work of Todd Solondz, which is, contrary to my viewpoint, presumably the work of a populist liberal, because like all populist liberals, he asks his audience to sympathize with a multi-dimensional pedophile.

I'm far too busy contributing to the National Review's 2009 Best Conservative Flicks Fund (because the free market will ultimately decide, natch) to answer that charge, but I will say that I don't have a problem in theory with a filmmaker asking his audience to sympathize with a well-rounded but deeply flawed character, even if that flaw is as repellent as molesting drugged children.  I do have a problem with Solondz's method of getting there, which is to load the rest of his movie with mostly unrealistic but similarly repellent characters, thus making his pedophile relatively easier for audiences to sympathize with (and Dylan Baker's fine acting chops don't hurt, either).  Solondz can't make his point without stacking his deck, which is why I despise his movies.  If I have to guess about my colleagues at the John Galt School of Elitist Film Criticism For Hipsters, though, I'd assume they would say he hates America because his movies don't make enough bank.  

May 11, 2009 2:48 PM