1 July 2000

THE WORST OF THE FIRST HALF OF 2000

10. The Skulls - Meaningless crap attempting to be commercial. You'd be better off with an episode of "Dawson's Creek" on an old black & white TV. Pathetic on every level except production design, which was crafty but so far over the top, that it should have been in 3-D to really makes its point.

9. Mission To Mars - Brian DePalma tries to rob Kubrick's grave, but Kubrick has all the good stuff hidden. A kind of movie where the most important story elements that are set up in the first act NEVER are paid off. Instead we get a weightless dance sequence. It looked good, but then again, it meant NOTHING. What a waste.

8. Reindeer Games - How the Frankenheimer has fallen. Critics, desperate to remind readers that he was once a great filmmaker, reviewed Frankenheimer's career and not this pointless, logic-free non-thriller. One thing you can say...it was unpredictable. Because nothing that should have happened ever happened. It was so busy trying to twist that it became an undercooked poached egg of a movie.

7. Chuck & Buck - Call me homophobic, but I hated this film. Why? Because this film is homophobic. And heterophobic as well. The lead character is a gay obsessive with nary a single positive quality about him The man he's obsessed with is engaged to marry a woman, but apparently really wants to be gay, he just can't accept that. The movie also abuses the hell out of women. I don't find any of that funny. And I don't think the gay community would cheer a movie about a crazed woman who had a fling with a man who turned out to be gay and then stalked the gay man when he was about to get married until he slept with her and he acknowledged that he really likes women, but that being gay is better for his career. This is pretentious arthouse crap of the lowest order.

6. Hamlet - Speaking of pretentious crap, I still haven't found a critic who can tell me why anyone is giving any credit to Michael Almereyda's Hamlet other than to say, "there were some great ideas there." Absolutely. I agree. Great ideas. All left dangling. This is a movie for people who want to think they are smart. It is an intellectual bit of deconstruction, but it is so sloppy that it simply does not work. Except as an outline for the real movie. Whether Mr. Almereyda has the skills to make that movie, no one knows. All I know is that I would have preferred a 9-hour trip to a dentist rather than 90-minutes of this thing.

5. What Planet Are You From? - Mike Nichols, one of my very favorite filmmakers, made his worst film ever this year. Worse than Wolf. At least that film took itself seriously. Outside of a nice performance by Annette Bening and the opportunity to see Judy Greer work and work naked, there was nary a frame of this film fit for cable TV. It's just not funny, folks. And Garry Shandling as sexual bait is like dangling arugala in front of hungry dogs. They're going to bite your hand off.

4. Love's Labours Lost - Okay folks, I like Shakespeare adaptations. I have no problem with playing around with the Bard, even to extremes. But Ken Branagh took a soft Shakespeare play and added great music that he clearly didn't understand the meaning of and made a movie that was like listening to the same song mis-sung over and over until your ears were bloodied. And I put ALL the blame on Branagh. Even when he had a great "tool" like Nathan Lane, he had to muck it up in this ultimate vanity production.

3. Battlefield Earth - It was hideous. It was ugly to watch. And it never should have happened. But enough about that Good Housekeeping cover with John Travolta and his son, Jett. Let's talk about Battlefield Earth. What can one really say? Just say no.

2. Supernova - Yes, it was actually worse than Battlefield Earth because it was more boring than Battlefield Earth. And the scene in which they used CG to color the floating sex-having bodies of Robin Tunney and Peter Facinelli so that they looked, in another scene, like James Spader and Angela Bassett having sex,in the same exact way we had previously seen, was one of the truly horrific moments in the history of motion pictures. And all for no reason. Too worthless to be laughable. This was special.

1. The Next Best Thing - What could be uglier than a superstar doing a vanity project in which she looks worse than Richard Harris in Gladiator? Well, taking Rupert Everett's still-evolving career down for the count with you, I suppose. This movie looked bad, it was stupid, it made women look evil and calculating, it indulged gay bashing, it had a cheap AIDS-related subplot, it had dramatic scenes that got laughs, it made me claw the screening room door trying to escape. This was one of the worst film experiences I have ever had. And the idea of even passing its name on the listings on the satellite makes me want to disconnect everything and move to Tibet.

THE ALL-DELAYED WATCH-YOUR-BACK TEAM OF 2000
All The Pretty Horses
Daddy & Them
Dieter
Duets
D-Tox
Texas Rangers
The Million Dollar Hotel
Town & Country
The Yards

THE MOVIES I AM MOST ANTICIPATING THE REST OF THE WAY
Bedazzled
Castaway
The Contender
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Grinch
The Girl on the Bridge
Hollow Man
Moulin Rouge
Dancer
Dancer In The Dark
Family Man
O Brother Where Art Thou
Prozac Nation
The Replacements
Requiem For A Dream
Shadow of the Vampire
Space Cowboys
Traffic
The Uncool/Untitled Cameron Crowe
Vertical Limit

E ME: You have four days...send me your lists!