Wednesday, 30 December 1998

THE WORST 10 OF 1998

To misquote a dead guy, "It was a very bad year." Or more accurately, it was a very good year for bad movies. As I was developing this list, it was hard to get it down to just 10, even cheating as I have. There are a number of movies that were uniquely bad in very specific ways. Celebrity (the worst Woody Allen movie ever), Dangerous Beauty (the male masturbatory feminist flick of the year), Knock Off (Hong Kong technology at Hollywood prices), A Perfect Murder (whither Andy Davis), The Siege (best performances in a confusing mess), Simon Birch (the worst "uplifting while overcoming a handicap" movie this year), Star Trek: Insurrection (the worst Star Trek movie ever), "The Rat Pack" (the worst HBO movie rip-off of a real movie ever and worst turn by Ray "Mr. Rage and Giggle" Liotta). There was even a film with nothing at all of interest except for a brilliant performance of self-indulgence (personally and in character) by Robert Downey Jr. That would be Two Girls and a Guy. (The women gave fine performances and were beautiful, but had little to do except to absorb the bouncing Downey.)

You will notice that some films that you may have expected to make the list, such as Armageddon. It didn't make the cut. Here's why: A) Armageddon does have some redeeming features. And B) I will see the film again. Every film that made the cut will require the use of a blowtorch and a death threat against other members of my family to get me to see the film again. Even on cable. Finally, there is a list of movies that seem sure to have competed for this "honor" had I actually seen them: (in alphabetical order) Dead Man on Campus, Desperate Measures, Dirty Work, Hard Rain, I'll Be Home For Christmas, Species II, Tarzan and the Lost City. You will note one similarity amongst all but one of these films (I'll Be Home For Christmas). Not a single one opened on its originally scheduled release date. Always a bad sign. (Sorry to you Val Kilmer fans who are so offended by my At First Sight comments. But take this ray of light to heart. By not being released in 1998, it guaranteed that it wouldn't get a slot on this list.)

10. Sphere: I can't tell you how happy I am that this film is 11 months old in my memory and how sad I am that cable TV is about to ruin it for me by throwing it in my face once again. Warner Bros. does lead this list with four full entries. And this would have probably been higher, had I not wanted to have a large WB block in the middle of the list. But how do you take Barry Levinson, Michael Crichton, Dustin Hoffman and Samuel L. Jackson and come up with absolute crap?! I think Mr. Jackson said it best, telling me, "Sphere actually turned out to be a monster picture that had no monster." It was its own monster.

9. The Replacement Killers: Chow Yun-Fat is one of the nicest humans I have ever met. He did his first American movie for his buddy John Woo, who produced this film. He shouldn't have been so nice. This film, along with The Big Hit, proves that regardless of who Woo hires to direct for him, there is no one who can really do what he does. Mira Sorvino apparently took advantage of her command of English and her big balls (figurative only, calm down!) to bend the script to her whims. And Antoine Fuqua didn't know f--k all about making a full two-hour film make any sense at all. This was a mess from start to finish.

8. Jack Frost: Mark Canton makes his triumphant return to Warner Bros. after being dumped by Sony and then turning out to be an executive genius as his films broke records for the new Sony team that had nothing to do with them except for marketing. So what's his first film? A dead guy turns into a snowman so he can "fix" his bad relationship with his young son. Huh? Say it again. A dead-dad-turns-snowman comedy. Are you sure he doesn't turn into a dog? No, that's been done before. Good God, what a hideous idea. Didn't Canton get the idea when no one would do the movie? Word on the WB lot is that the only reason the film was greenlit is that everyone is waiting for Lorenzo DiBonaventura to be fired and for Canton to ascend to his long-ago and highly successful job on top of the studio's film division. Superman 5. Batman 5. Snowman 2. Well, number 2.

7. The Faculty/I Still Know What You Did Last Summer/Urban Legend: I grouped this trio of retreads because coughing up three spots on this list would be adding injury to insult. Here's what America will take from these three films: Laura Harris' breasts. Rebecca Gayheart's breasts. Jennifer Love Hewitt's breasts. Welcome to the ranks of Jamie Blanks and Danny Cannon, Mr. Rodriguez. I never expected you to be here. It's an ugly year when the best horror movie of the year is the last 20 minutes of Halloween: H20.

6. Very Bad Things/Your Friends and Neighbors: Wouldn't it be funny if we came up with the most disgusting things we could think of for people to say or do? Wouldn't that be funny? Forget about why they are saying it or doing it? Don't bother to give them human feelings or any variation from the singular pursuit of kink. Sawing up strangers' bodies! A laugh riot! Seducing and the abusing a less than brilliant woman! Wow, how edgy! I love black comedy. I don't demand redemption for or from characters, but I do like a little humanity. If you want to see the better versions of these films, rent the 1998 Brit comedy Consuming Passions and Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge.

5. The Avengers: I loved the series. Relatively low tech. Sexual SUBtext. SUB! We didn't need all the bells and whistles. The best sequence in the film was John Steed being attacked via hand-to-hand combat on a quiet street. THAT was The Avengers. Uma in a catsuit. THAT was The Avengers. (Ironically, the giant teddy bear suits were series-like, but hideously executed.) It's not easy to make Sean Connery look foolish, but they did. There is no end to what went wrong here. R.I.P.

4. Soldier : A second-tier lead (Kurt Russell) who's getting paid $20 million to say virtually nothing. (Rambo he wasn't.) An effects movie with terrible effects. A mano-a-mano confrontation that never really pays off. A garbage planet that looks like a garbage set. A camera that lingers on the breasts of the female lead, the beautiful Connie Nielsen. (Hey! Hey! I have eyes. Look at my eyes!) The kid who latches onto the mute stranger and makes The Postman look like a better multiplex option. Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat dreaming that I am in A Clockwork Orange and that Soldier is the movie they're going to make me watch.

3. BASEketball/Senseless: It's hard to say which film had funnier fart jokes. I guess Senseless at least had an idea that might have been interesting had it not been ground into dirt. David Zucker, a very funny and talented guy, convinced Universal that his backyard creation that was all but incomprehensible would make a funny movie. And those guys from "South Park!" Wow! They should stay on TV! With David Spade, who had no real movie career to hurt now that he is a TV star. Thank goodness for him. If Jenny McCarthy and Yasmine Bleeth are worth the price of a video rental to you, I suggest renting a Playmate video and watching a "Baywatch" rerun.

2. 54: A tragedy that occurs when a movie about sex, drugs and rock-'n'-roll has two of those elements removed. The only thing that was really like Studio 54 was that after the experience you can't/couldn't remember a single thing that had happened or why you ended up naked in a pond at a public park. In the old days, it was because you had done drugs and had sex with a dozen gorgeous people. After the movie, it was because you couldn't even wait to get home to try to get the stench off of you. But wasn't there something good about 54? Yes. The disco remake of "If You Could Read My Mind" is terrific, but I would gladly have lost that musical experience in exchange for the film's negative and a match.

1. Holy Man: Not funny. Not romantic. Not watchable. You have to hand it to a movie in which the big joke is Jeff Goldblum thinking he drank urine. Even lots of screen time for Kelly Preston didn't make this one remotely enjoyable. It's perhaps most reminiscent of Murphy's first huge payday for Best Defense in which he had a cameo, but then ended up ad-libbing about a quarter of the film because the producers realized they had absolutely nothing of value to offer except Eddie's antics. His performance in explaining the transvestite hooker in his car was better than this. Stephen Herek is a crass, commercial director, but this was miles even below his standards. The horror. The horror.

HOLIDAY SCHEDULE:
Thursday, Dec. 24: Hanukkah Special
Today: 'Twas The Night Before Christmas '98
Monday, Dec. 28: Weekend Review
Tuesday, Dec. 29: Top 10 Movies I Just Don't Get
Wednesday, Dec. 30: The Worst 10 of 1998
Thursday, Dec. 31: The Best 10 Films of 1998
Friday, Jan. 1: New Year's Resolutions

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E ME: all holiday long.