Over at Alternet Katha Pollitt seems to have found a real stinker.
Personally my nomination is:
(SHOW ME THE ATROCIOUS SCRIPT!!) Jerry Maguire
I actually left a first date with a guy I quite liked just to get out of the cinema to avoid watching any more of this awful film. In it Tom Cruise leaves his confident business-woman fiance who is bisexual (eww!) and offers him a threesome (guys hate threesomes apparently!) and sets up with his single-mum secretary (don't worry she's widowed, not divorced! Unlike Renee Zellweger who plays her...) who lives with her sister (childless, divorced and super-miserable). There's a scene where Tom and the secretary are out on the town and you see the divorced sister at a "divorced women's club" (are there such things? I find none on Google, possibly because divorced women are able to participate in normal society and don't need a special club) sat around complaining about their ex-husbands (if there were such clubs would they do this? couldn't they go drinking or join salsa classes?) and then sat alone smoking (evil! evil!) in a darkened kitchen while ms. widowed laughs with TC in the driveway.
Any more nominations?
Labels: film industry, media, smoking, TV, USA, women
Oh hey, the BBC is playing...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6238204.stm
Also over on alternet "Ghoulman" has a nomination:
Sideways, in which Paul Giamatti, an bitter, mean, alcoholic, very unattractive failed writer is saved by Virginia Madsen, a gorgeous kindhearted waitress.
... and this is why I hated it.
Hollywoodland is using the same marketing superhero comix use... slinky babes for every geek. Ever see a superhero comic lately? Like a MAXIM magazine. The movies are doing the same thing. That is, this is just a trashy, boyish, fantasy.
... and so was Sideways *shiver*, that movie drives me mad. At least it gave Sandra Oh a chance to slut herself for a better job. ;p
Iceman said...
Cruella's also a big fan of Boxing Helena, 8 Mile, the People vs. Larry Flynt, and the James Bond series!
The worst movies I've ever seen were Requiem for a Dream, the Blair Witch Project, 2001, Batman and Robin, and Fried Green Tomatoes.
Boxing Helena I really have a big problem with, yeah. I haven't seen the others although i saw loads of Bond Films when I was a kid - they were always on at Christmas so it was watch them or talk to my relatives - no contest!
I liked Fried Green Tomatos though, it was a bit different, a bit less hack.
Jennifer Ewing said...
Oh god, I sat through about half of Jerry Maguire and couldn't stand the endless twittering of all the various characters. Are you meant to sympathise with any of these people? Cause I wanted to track them down and shove socks down their throats just to shut them up. Also, isn't it supposed to be about the Tom Cruise character's ethical choice and that manifesto thing he's writing at the beginning? Cause it all seems to be about Renee Zellweger being ditzy and innocent and having a cute kid.
That and the fact that it's set in a world where Miles Davis constitutes "weirdy nerd music", and divorced women all stand around the kitchen saying "all men are scum, honey, don't fall for it".
My favourite film "The Maltese Falcon" doesn't stand up to any kind of 21st century feminist critique.
Mind if I continue to love the film if I promise to be as little like Humphrey Bogart as possible in real-life ?
i'll help you burn all copies of Jerry Maguire though - it has no redeeming merits.
Oh alright then Stan, I did veto the purchase of Gone With The Wind and Seven Brides For Seven Brothers a couple of years back which was proposed as a christmas present for my mum. I felt the "get raped and decide you like it" box set was not ideal!
Another offering - this one from the good folks at Shakesville:
http://www.shakesville.com/2007/07/try-not-to-upchuck/#more-1539
Morwen said...
Die Another Day.
A Bond movie with no redeeming features.
No snappy lines, no cool gadgets (there is a difference between "cool" and "ludicrous"), no "make Bond look like an idiot" scenes I can recall.
The plot is stolen from other Bond films. Apparently because it's an anniversary film this is okay. The thing is, they don't even pretend it's not a copy of older films. At the least they could copy bits that were good.
Multiple henchmen because it's trying to be bigger and better, so there has to be more than one (despite having a henchman with diamonds embedded in his face, that's apparently not cool enough so they needed more people to kill).
Halle Berry has to have a counterpart female villain so there can be a bared-midriff catfight (I reserve special hatred for the notion that there has to be a female villain for the heroine to fight in so many films - it's so women don't get shown being stronger, tougher, better than men).
Oh, wait.
I was just checking the spelling of Halle Berry's name and realised Swordfish is worse.
(Excuse the repost, the cursor jumped from the password box to the comment box. Well done. Blogger, I love for people to see my passwords)