WORST OF 2008
10. Stop Loss
Some people thought this story about soldiers returning from Iraq, only to discover they have been "stop-lossed" and are now being sent back, would be the first great Iraq War Movie. Instead, writer-director Kimberly Peirce stuffed her movie with every war movie cliche in the book and proved she had nothing interesting to say about the entire Iraq conflict. Every twist and turn of the script introduces another uninspired narrative element, such as a soldier having hallucinations about a fallen comrade, or another being so messed up he turns to alocohol to cope. But this movie still could have made an impact if only the characters were the slightest bit believable. By casting the movie with actors unable to rise to the challenge (especially Channing Tatum and Abbie Cornish), Peirce has already doomed the movie's emotional epicentre before the footage begins to roll. And the best actor in the bunch (Joseph Gordon Levitt) is given the needlessly contrived "drunk idiot" storyline, resulting in a forced performance. We all know War Is Hell, but that message works best when coupled with some originality.
9. Burn After Reading
The Coen Brothers have to be the most maddening pair of filmmakers making movies today. With ever grand step forward, they take a lazy, self-congratulatory step back. Just a few years ago, it looked like another Coen Brothers masterpiece was a long way off, as they were busy wasting their talents in the clumsy, unfunny comedies Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. But then, they stormed back last year with the grim and haunting No Country for Old Men. Suddenly, they were in top form again, recalling past achievements such as Blood Simple and Fargo. For the briefest of moments, it looked like the Coen's had emerged from their slump, ready to unleash more brilliant and challenging art. Unfortunately, the brothers came crashing back down to Earth just a year later with this pointless, mean-spirited nonsense about a disgraced CIA agent and the moronic fitness gym workers trying to blackmail him. As is the usual case when the Coen Brothers tackle comedy, the characters are soulless jerks wandering through a goofy (yet dangerously violent!) world. Nothing in this movie resonates or matters, marking Burn After Reading as yet another creative misstep in the Coen Brothers' careers.
8. The X-Files: I Want to Believe
Ten years since the first movie and six years since the series ended and no one noticed, The X-Files creator Chris Carter decided to unload this unnecessary sequel for anyone stupid enough to pay money to see it. Unfortunately, I was stupid enough to pay money and watch it and was quickly reminded that The X-Files is a franchise best left buried. After such a long hiatus, it would be safe to assume that Carter had a truly intriguing idea that spawned his burning desire to revive the franchise. But no, he simply wanted to do a throwaway two-hour television episode that is among the most uninspired things I have ever seen associated with Scully and Mulder. I was never very excited about this dreadful sequel, so I hesitate to call it a disappointment. Instead, I'll just call it a waste of time and dwindling talent.
7. 88 Minutes
This real-time thriller starring Al Pacino as a professor told via cell phone that he has only 88 minutes to live was dumped into theatres in 2008 and I am sure that everyone involved was hoping no one would notice. This deplorable movie operates like a vacuum, sucking all of the talent out of everyone in front of and behind the camera. The movie is atrocious to look at, the acting is laughable, and the mystery plot is never really that mysterious. To add insult to injury, cheesy flashbacks keep appearing throughout the story and feel as though they were stolen from another movie. Pacino's manic energy is hilarious to watch, but 88 Minutes could only work if it were a comedy. As a thriller, it’s an absolute mess in search of a punchline.
6. Bangkok Dangerous
Beating up on Nicolas Cage might as well be an international sport, since the man seems content to continually fill his resume with all sorts of crap. Last year, he was in the dopey sci-fi thriller Next and this year things got worse (actually, a lot worse) with the incoherent nonsense known as Bangkok Dangerous. Cage plays a hit man who doesn't ask questions, until he decides that maybe he should ask questions and gets in trouble for doing so. The movie is directed by the Pang Brothers (remaking their own movie from 1999), who pathetically rip off John Woo for the majority of the movie, never once achieving any of the balletic beauty of Woo's action sequences. You'd think that two guys who had already made this movie nine years earlier would have some idea of how to stage and shoot an action sequence, but apparently that's too much to ask. The combination of the Pang Brothers' aimless direction and Cage's ridiculously bad acting is occasionally entertaining in a horribly junky way, but not even unintentional laughter can save this clunker.
5. The Happening
I was a supporter of M. Night Shyamalan up until his egocentric effort Lady in the Water. That means I am a fan of even his much-maligned work in Signs and The Village. Long after many film lovers had turned their backs on Shyamalan, I was still completely on board, loving his mixture of Spielbergian sensibilities and Twilight Zone chills. But even I had to admit that Lady in the Water was drowning in self-absorbed hokum. However, despite the problems with that movie, nothing could prepare me (or anyone, for that matter) for what Shyamalan would do next. In 2008, he hit rock bottom with The Happening, an atrocious, hilarious disaster about people running away from some unseen killing force. The movie is laced with a message about protecting and respecting the environment, but the movie's morality is quickly lost in a flurry of silliness, as Shyamalan delivers images of "menacing" trees and "dangerous" grass blowing in the "frightening" wind. The problem is that villainous plants and weather are no scarier than what's in our own backyards and Shyamalan seems to be under the impression that he is making The Exorcist of angry plant movies. Things are only made worse by the mind-numbingly awful performances of leads Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, who wander around as though they are in a trance. This is the kind of movie that will be mercilessly mocked for decades to come and may just be the final nail in the coffin of Shyamalan's career.
4. Wanted
In a summer of such inspired and entertaining action movies as Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, this brain-dead adaptation of Mark Millar's graphic novel by the same name stuck out like a sore thumb. Directed by Timur Bekmembatov (whose only two previous directing credits are for a pair of Russian fantasy movies that are beyond incomprehensible), Wanted represents everything I hate about soulless action movies. Pitiful characters, bad acting (including from the horribly miscast lead James McAvoy, who should never, ever attempt an action hero role again), lame villains, and frantically edited action sequences are all on display here. Bekmembatov is clearly from the school of thought that style trumps substance, but even that would not be so frustrating if he could lay claim to some style of his own. Instead, he simply steals from other action directors and rips off The Matrix whenever he gets the chance. At least his Russian fantasy movies (Nightwatch and Daywatch) showed a filmmaker with some semblance of imagination. Wanted is simply nonsensical action sequences cobbled together to form a laughably ridiculous plot involving a mysterious group of assassins that think a loom speaks to them. Perhaps if this crap were not delivered with such smug seriousness, it would be easier to swallow. But with Bekmembatov at the helm, this is action movie idiocy at its worst.
3. Star Wars: Clone Wars
As a Star Wars fan, it is depressing to feel that the possibility of a Star Wars movie being bad is something akin to inevitable now. Even throughout the disastrous prequels, I held out hope that George Lucas was hiding something up his sleeve, something that would make Jar Jar Binks and all that syrupy romantic dialogue actually worth sitting through. But once the curtain had fallen on the second trilogy, it was obvious that Lucas's storytelling abilities had been swallowed up by his own greed and seemingly sudden lack of imagination. So to say that I walked in to the animated summer flick Star Wars: Clone Wars with low expectations would be an understatement. I figured at least then I might find something to mildly admire. But instead, I was treated to cheap animation, stiff dialogue, and a lame plot that has no dramatic weight, since we all know the outcome anyway. Star Wars is no longer about the swashbuckling fantasy of that galaxy far, far away, but rather the merchandise tie-ins that such an idea can exploit.
2. The Love Guru
If making dreadful movies was considered a genuine crime against humanity, then Mike Myers would be castrated for his participation in this laugh-free debacle. At the very least, he would have a hand chopped off. Myers plays the Guru Pitka, who is brought from his small town in India to the United States to help the Toronto Maple Leafs star player reconcile with his girlfriend in time for the Leafs to win the Stanley Cup. It's your usual fish-out-of-water story, except with zero laughs. Imagine a terrible Saturday Night Live skit stretched out to 80 minutes and you start to get the idea. If you have not seen this movie, pat yourself on the back and take my word for it when I say that Myers deserves whatever retribution awaits him. The Love Guru, in all its scatologically obsessed inanity, really is that bad.
1. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Woody Allen has been churning out slight variations of the same movie for over forty years now, but never before has he stooped to such lazy lows as he did in 2008 with the excruciatingly awful Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The dialogue is stale, the plot a meandering mess, and Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall offer up two of the most clueless performances of the year. Capturing steamy sensuality on screen has never been one of Allen's gifts, but it still comes as a surprise to me that the sex scenes in a movie about sexual encounters and adventures are as flaccidly unexciting as a Wilford Brimley Oatmeal commercial. All of the movies on this list are examples of pathetically useless cinema, but Vicky Cristina Barcelona is my definitive pick for the most infuriatingly lazy trash of 2008.
