Andrew Osborne's Top Ten Worst Movies Ever
1. WIRED (1989)
2. SHOWGIRLS (1995)
3. THE LAST MOVIE (1971)
Even the worst movies at least attempt to be...y’know, movies. And by “movies,” I mean human behavior consciously recorded with a motion picture camera for the purpose of entertaining or engaging other humans...even if said “movie” is just a random series of unrelated images that are cool to look at when you’re stoned. Sadly, Dennis Hopper couldn’t even attract potheads (potheads!!!) with this legendary debacle, one of the films that helped to end the 1970s American film renaissance with its extreme, boring crappiness. I attempted to get through it once, and as far as I can tell, Hopper just accidentally left a camera running during a wild weekend in Peru . My in-laws’ old home movies are at least 17 times more interesting, relatable and dramatic, and cost about a million dollars less to produce.
4. REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000)
So...NONE of this movie’s fans ever saw Trainspotting? And the rave reviews and cult following were for...what, exactly? The daring, controversial idea that...gasp...drug addiction is bad? The hokey, sub-MTV visuals? The cartoonish, one-dimensional characters? The sneering condescension towards poor, sad, lonely people? Oh, I know, it must be the achingly self-conscious, utterly humorless pretension! I mean what is the point of this exercise in grim hopelessness, exactly? The characters are just as pathetic (and DULL!) when they're sober as when they're fucked-up -- they never even seem to get any pleasure out of their drugs of choice -- and there's no solution or alternative to all their misery. It's like the art film equivalent of a Friday the 13th movie: you meet some paper-thin characters with one trait each (one's sulky, one's pouty, one's black and one just wants to fit into an old red dress) and then wait for them to get knocked off, since it's the only interesting thing that's likely to happen. (And, excuse me, but wouldn't a trained medical doctor dealing with a pill-addicted middle-aged woman try, I dunno, placing her into a 12-step program or something before zapping 50,000 volts into her frontal lobe? Ooh...but that wouldn't be EDGY!)
5. FATHER OF THE BRIDE (1991)
I just double-checked the Internet Movie Database to confirm that, yes, here was the exact moment Lucifer ate Steve Martin’s soul. This movie represents an entire genre of cynical, deeply mediocre capitalist pig comedies -- most of them directed by Nora Ephron, though Bride was in fact directed by Charles “I Love Trouble” Shyer, who earns his place on my shit list for kicking off the current My Super Sweet 16 era of American horribleness by promoting the notion that you’re a terrible father if you don’t mortage your house and go deep into debt to buy your spoiled bitch daughter a bunch of ridiculously expensive shit nobody in the world really needs.
6. BLOODSUCKING FREAKS (1976)
It’s not that I have a problem with bloody movies or depictions of violence or even tortuous cinematic ultra-violence...but when blood, torture and suffering is the whole point of the exercise, I tend to get depressed...and then just bored and aggravated. I mean, hey, I got no beef with 2000 Maniacs or A Clockwork Orange or the various days and nights of the living dead or even Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Michael Madsen lopping off the cop’s ear in Reservoir Dogs? Fine. Running down innocent bystanders in Grand Theft Auto? Sign me up. And porn of the sexual variety? Ahem. But explain to me again why I’m supposed to watch a sobbing woman scream and scream as her teeth are yanked out and a drill is shoved into her brain for minutes on end? Oh, right...because I’m a friggin' sociopath who digs torture porn, and Bloodsucking Freaks was the first sad example I ever saw.
7. THE MEXICAN (2001)
Many bad movies are dull, annoying and profoundly unentertaining, but the truly heinous ones go that extra mile into the realm of the downright philosophically offensive. I'm not even especially P.C., but at the time of its release, The Mexican was the most blatantly racist movie I'd seen since The Phantom Menace (see below)...and that's not even the worst part: what the hell were Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt and Tony Soprano doing in this crap? With all their 2001 A-list clout, they chose to do THIS...exactly the type of Hollywood diarrhea that prevents far, far better projects from ever seeing the light of day.
8. BREAKING THE WAVES (1996)
9. LAST DAYS (2005)
Sooooooooooooooooo boooooooooooooooooorrrrriiiiinnnnngggg...
10. THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999)
I was a hardcore Star Wars geek from the second that Imperial Star Destroyer first flew over my head at the Westgate Cinema in Brockton, Massachusetts way back in 1977...and 22 years later, long after I should have known better, I stood in line outside Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California for untold hours to get myself into one of the first screenings of The Phantom Menace. Once inside, the atmosphere was like a carnival love-fest of excitement, with beach balls bouncing around the theater while the faithful screamed and ululated in joyful anticipation. And then...Binks.
Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight & Nine
Contributor: Andrew Osborne