WORST FILMS OF 2007:
The Abandoned, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Are We Done Yet?, The Astronaut Farmer, August Rush, Awake, Balls of Fury, Because I Said So, Blood and Chocolate, Bratz, Captivity, Codename The Cleaner, The Comebacks, The Condemned, Daddy Day Camp, Dead Silence, Delta Farce, D.O.A. Dead or Alive, Dragon Wars, El Cantante, Epic Movie, Evening, Feel the Noise, Firehouse Dog, Fred Claus, The Game Plan, Good Luck Chuck, Hannibal Rising, Happily N'Ever After, Hatchet, The Heartbreak Kid, The Hitcher, Hitman, Hot Rod, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Kickin' It Old Skool, The Invisible, The Last Mimzy, License to Wed, The Messengers, Mr. Bean's Holiday, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, Mr. Woodcock, Norbit, P2, Pathfinder, The Perfect Holiday, Redline, Saw IV, The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, Skinwalkers, Stomp the Yard, Sydney White, This Christmas, Underdog, War, Who's Your Caddy
Now onto the big list. These aren't the worst films of the year per se, many of those above are far worse than these in terms of quality, but these are the ones that will be remembered for far longer. These are the titles that had more opportunity to succeed, in some cases they had everything going for them, and in being bad have consequences that will last for years and put a stain on the names of those involved or the franchise they're a part of.
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS AND EMBARASSMENTS OF 2007:
1. I Know Who Killed Me
Every major female star has at least one predictable and slightly sexual thriller on their resume they'd rather forget - Julia Roberts had "Sleeping with the Enemy," Demi Moore had "Striptease", and for Nicole Kidman it was "Malice". Yet those dismissible pictures seem like 'Citizen Kane' in comparison to the Lindsay Lohan thriller "I Know Who Killed Me" - a film which opened on a busy July weekend during the absolute height of Lohan's tabloid scandal days, and yet not only bombed but completely bypassed the awareness of most of the public.
'Killed' has the high-minded premise of Lohan as quaint school girl Audrey who is kidnapped and tortured by a serial killer who likes freezing off appendages. Later she's found on the road having passed out, but upon awakening claims she's Dakota - a stripper who just started sprouting spontaneous injuries - and that Audrey is still out there. Thus as an audience we're supposed to be kept guessing if the girl is telling the truth or if it really is Audrey and she's simply had a psychotic break.
It's a silly premise even in the best of hands, and for the most part its simply an excuse to combine footage of Lohan in skimpy outfits prowling a stage with torture porn footage of fingers and blackened legs being frozen off. But the film pushes into the ludicrous with its painfully predictable whodunit mystery and amateur visual aesthetic which paints every scene in either deep blue or blood red to distinguish between the two Lohans. A touch of color is nice, but all of Audrey's outfits, linens, curtains, etc. are the same dark blue - its gets to the point where you know actor Neal McDonough was hired to play her father solely due to his eyes being sparkling blue.
Then there's the resolution which deals with some sort of psychic phenomenon which pushes things way past the point of incredulity. Lohan herself spends much of the film's runtime as an amputee complete with CG-removed leg or plastic limb (doesn't stop her from wearing boostiers), whilst the other half of the time struts about trying to look sexy. Her real life outside of the film world however has robbed her of much of that ability as despite her less than flexible gyrations, she now seems like a door handle in a Calcutta public toilet - something you would only touch with your elbows and would even then wipe them clean.
It's good she's finally seeking treatment and past efforts have shown that when she tries she can be a dynamite little actress. Ultimately though this will be seen as the worst effort of her career. It's a film of such a bad quality that it can only be enjoyed on a camp level along such esteemed efforts as "Catwoman" and "Battlefield Earth" - truly one for the record books.
2. The Hills Have Eyes 2
Torture porn finally got its comeuppance this year. After hijacking the horror genre and robbing it of scares and atmosphere in favor of cheap gory make-up trickery, several bombs ranging from the odious "Captivity" to the half-decent "Hostel" sequel signaled a seemingly thankful winding down of crass bloodletting whilst more effective cerebral chills from the likes of "1408" and the superb (until its 'f*%k you' last five minutes) "The Mist" have begun to steer things back on the right track.
Yet the films didn't go without a fight, the endless series of decreasingly popular "Saw" sequels ensure that, and on the way out the genre deposited this little turd in our laps. 'Hills 2' is the lackluster follow-up to last year's half-decent remake of the early Wes Craven chiller tale of mutants in the foothills of the deserts of New Mexico. This time around the "Aliens" aesthetic was adopted with a team of soldiers sent in to wipe out the mutants and soon discovering they're out of their league.
It's a dismissible film that would easily go up on the earlier 'absolute worst' list above, but it gets a special highlight here for one reason only - the opening sequence. The first five minutes of the film are quite frankly the single worst moment in film not only for this year but maybe the decade. In the setup a woman who has been kidnapped, raped and held in restraint for an obvious long time gives graphical birth to a mutant baby and when it dies soon after, she gets beaten to death by a big mutant with a club. That is not horror ladies and gents, it's not in the least bit scary, tense or shocking - it's simply disgusting (and believe me it takes a lot to gross me out).
3. Premonition
Best described as the manic depressive's version of "Groundhog Day," "Premonition" starts off with an interesting setup - the wife (Bullock) in a seemingly idyllic family learns that her husband (Julian McMahon) has died in a car accident whilst on a trip. Then every time she wakes up from a night of sleep she's either in one of two scenarios - life seemingly back to normal with her husband being alive, or her grief has driven her nuts enough to disfigure her own kid and get her institutionalized.
It's an interesting 'what the hell?' kind of scenario, let down initially by the rather lame horror touches. Sadly though it all falls apart after the first act as things move from interesting psychological potential to an unnecessarily convoluted, more faith-based explanation. The last 20 minutes in particular descend into utter ridiculousness with militant family value morals shoved down our throats in a way that logically and emotionally undermines the story that came before it.
In fact, the film's message throughout much of its second half seems to be that those without faith are prone to higher powers meddling with their heads. That message though is hard to read thanks to a convoluted script utterly strewn with red herrings, and a director with a good eye for visuals but not a good brain for coherent storytelling. For those who love hardcore Christian preaching and women in peril movies in equal measure.
4. The Invasion
The fourth and notably worst version so far of the classic sci-fi story "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" seemed like a solid idea on paper back in 2005 when it began filming. The famed cautionary tale's paranoia allegory seemed ripe for fitting in with the fear mongering of terrorism that pervades today's global political environment.
Daniel Craig was signed on for the male lead, a hot property as he'd just been signed on a few months before to play James Bond, whilst Nicole Kidman still had a decent track record with the hits (Cold Mountain, The Interpreter) balancing out the flops (Bewitched, Stepford Wives). Even better was that acclaimed German director Oliver Hirschbiegel ("Downfall") planned to make it a low-key psychological thriller.
Then the infamy began. The film got delayed a full 14 months, Hirschbiegel was kicked off the project and replaced by the Wachowski Brothers and cohort James McTeigue ("V for Vendetta") to reshoot as much as 40% of the feature to make it more of an action film. When it finally hit in August this year, no-one was sure who was responsible for what was on screen but what was there was an absolute mess. The final hybrid has a tone that frequently shifts in radical directions, whilst the narrative falls apart by the mid-point and never recovers.
Glimmers of an effective slow-burn thriller can be seen under the bombast, with Veronica Cartwright turning in a great supporting role whilst some of the dialogue nicely stirs the pot about our fears of pandemics and terrorism. Yet these small moments are overwhelmed by some atrocious acting such as the normally solid Jeremy Northam giving his worst performance to date.
Craig and Jeffrey Wright simply look bored and Nicole, armed with porcelain skin and the puffiest lips she's ever had, often looks more alien than the supposedly possessed bystanders trying to infect others. It doesn't help that she's playing the harried gun-toting single mother routine that Jodie Foster has been milking far more believably for the last few years
The final act, the one where the Wachowskis obviously had the most involvement, is one long and increasingly ludicrous car chase with explosions and supposed tension that is often more comedic than exciting. What could've been a intelligent thriller that would've only pleased a limited audience became a rather lame generic action drama that didn't please anyone.
5. Halloween
To give him credit, Rob Zombie avoided the trap that Gus Van Sant fell into when remaking "Psycho" and took his remake/re-imagining of seminal 1978 slasher classic "Halloween" into new directions - sadly though that direction was straight down in terms of quality. Zombie combines a truncated remake of the John Carpenter classic to serve as the second and third act of his picture, and replaces the first with an expanded back story of Michael that plays more like "The Devil's Rejects" meets the Jerry Springer family from hell. In taking this new approach, all it does is solidify the original's status as a modern classic, and nakedly show this pale imitation for what it truly is.
Fear of the unknown is the most potent fear of all, and Carpenter's original made it the driving central force. Myers was a boogeyman, a ghostly shape that would be there one second and gone the next, and the lack of motivation and back story made him into an almost supernatural enigma. Zombie's version aims to give us a more human and three-dimensional Michael, but in the end simply paints him as a disgruntled kid with an abusive family who one night snaps. He later grows up to be a seven-foot tall mute with a mask fetish who is more like a tank (ie. Jason Voorhees) than a specter when it comes to killing.
Despite obvious growth as a filmmaker (it's his best work yet by far), Zombie shows no real reason as to why in the world this project needed to be made. The prequel aspect gives us no new insight, whilst the remake section simply lifts whole scenes from the original and replaces its haunting sense of unease with crass gore effects and tit shots. It's faster paced and has more energy (and Sheri Moon Zombie delivers a pretty solid little performance as Michael's mother), but there's no sense of flow through or craft to it and often it feels decidedly rushed, amateur and dull.
6. Perfect Stranger
A Bruce Willis and Halle Berry online sexual thriller. Yes you read that right, one of the most beautiful women in the world is reduced to online chatting to get her rocks off. Actually what you have with 'Stranger' at first seems like one of those aforementioned B-grade sexual thrillers about a female journalist using the greatest weapons at her disposal - in this case her Instant Messenger account and her tits - to get close to a sleazy mega-rich businessman with a violent temper.
It's laughably bad but at least there's the promise of either some female empowerment moments or at least some nudity right? Wrong. There's a sex scene between Berry and her boyfriend character, but it's too dark and too quick to see anything. Likewise the raunchiest line in the interminable 'erotic chat sessions' between Berry and Willis is "I'm typing with one hand" - the other hand is obviously strangling the script writer.
There's the usual direct-to-video fare elements - a sleazy stalker colleague in the form of Giovanni Ribisi (who's obviously been hitting the gym lately), an icy blonde with all the key secrets who just keeps popping up, the comedic fellow office worker/snitch, and a tall lesbian personal assistant with that evil cold killer bitch attitude made so cliche in the homophobic efforts of the genre during the 90's.
What pushes it into 'worst list' territory however is the final act. Desperately trying to throw in twists to come off as intelligent, most of the sharp turns actually cancel each other out - narratively not making any sense and emotionally just feeling completely wrong. Throw in the typical cliches - abusive parents, a 'shrine' to Halle by the stalker friend, etc. and you have one laughably bad camp piece of entertainment.
7. I Think I Love My Wife
An improvement on his terrible first two directorial efforts, Chris Rock's third time out as both actor/director mixes Rock's over exaggerated comedy in the form of a fairly tame and quite inept sexual farce, with a serious exploration of martial bliss, infidelity and personal happiness. Using Eric Rohmer's 1972 French drama "Chloe in the Afternoon" as its premise, the film is more of an ill-married mismatch than that of the couple it portrays - awkwardly swapping between pretty interesting domestic drama one second, to pure one-liners, viagra jokes, even breaking out into song the next.
The trouble is the former more serious parts are more effective than the later, which only yields one or two good lines and shockingly no laughs whatsoever - in spite of various setups obviously designed to elicit them. Rock is like Robin Williams, hilariously raunchy and fun in his standup but cinematically castrated in comedic roles which have to remain chaste to please the MPAA.
Unfortunately adding to the problem is that the script for 'Wife' paints everything in the broadest possible strokes which means none of the people ever feel real. It also makes some far too cut and dry moral stances, painting not only its characters but its views on relationships along the hard lines of religious zealots, macho pigs or teenagers who follow the crowd mentality - turning the whole endeavor into something borderline offensive. This antiquated viewpoint is a real a surprise coming from someone like Rock who is one of the smartest and most savvy guys out there and is never afraid to do his own thing.
In this world guys are either sleazy cheaters or work-obsessed geeks and all have insatiable libidos and little to no self-control. Women are slutty bimbos, nosy workmates or frigid soccer moms. Being married means no sex, and being single means everyone you meet wants to sleep with you, you're clubbing every night, etc. Life is far from being that cut and dry, and the way that 'Wife' refuses to even acknowledge that in the slightest makes it at best irritably naive, at worst self-indulgently misogynist.
Rock fans will be bored with the absolute lack of laughs on display. The aggressiveness of his routines are here, but without the wit or comedy they come off as merely juvenile and annoying rants. His attempt to tackle more serious subject matter is commendable, and at one or two points he nails it, but he's no Jim Carrey or Robin Williams in front of the camera when it comes to dramatic performance, and certainly no great master behind it either.
8. The Number 23
A convoluted and rather dull affair, "The Number 23" is one of those serious Jim Carrey vehicles but without the smarts or originality. The result is a tired psychological thriller which takes the mathematically interesting premise of natural phenomena that tie in with the number 23, and then proceeds to mix it up with a "Singing Detective"-esque noirish murder mystery.
The trouble is neither the murder mystery or the numerology macguffin is particularly interesting - the former simply over baked and filled with dead ends which eventually lead to a very predictable outcome, the later a cute riddle that often simply stretches itself too far in a desperate attempt to prove itself. Fernley Phillips screenplay lays some interesting ideas on the table, but is self-consciously clever with far too many visible attempts to hide the fact that the 23 gimmick and murder story are tenuously connected at best.
Director Joel Schumacher has shown in the past that given the right script and story, he can be a compelling thriller movie director. With him onboard this he's able to give the film a visually rich palette - but struggles to find a coherent narrative from the screenplay. That lack of focus spills over into other aspects of the production with scenes coming off as visually arresting but never conforming to a consistent style.
It's a dark and dirty little movie that sadly is lacking the brains or depths it very much begs its audience to recognize that it has. There's an interesting idea in here, a high concept which makes for good script sales, but like most high concept stuff it forgets that a strong central idea is useless without compelling characters or a solidly structured plot. All ultimately very tedious and a big disappointment considering those involved.
9. Primeval
There's a scene in "Primeval" where one of those former "Melrose Place" starlets is about to get raped by the mercenaries of an African warlord in her tent when all of a sudden a giant crocodile comes rampaging through, snatches the attacker in its jaws and runs off. Yes it is that kind of a movie - a film which tries to combine a "Hotel Rwanda" style serious message about the Western world's complacency towards African genocide with a purely C-grade giant croc monster movie.
What could be a misguided effort at best turns more predictably insulting as despite its noble intentions, it still indulges in every dark continent cliche in the book. The human villains in this seem to have escaped from rehearsals for a remake of the old 007 stinker "Live and Let Die". The croc itself is a horrible rendering of poor CG, and predictably changes from a super-charging killing machine in one scene to not being able to outpace a human running for several miles through high grass in another. The only commendable effort is that like the first "Jaws", the croc is actually on screen for only a few minutes and kept hidden for the most part.
Dominic Purcell, the obvious 'top' but slightly less pretty half of the brotherly pair that makes "Prison Break" so incestuously enjoyable, is the gruff lead in this and holds his own better than his cohorts - except maybe Jurgen Prochnow who at least seems to be aware of the trash he's starring in and hams it up as a great white hunter. Aside from the African location yielding nice scenery, there is often a sense of boredom from those involved. As an audience member though it's hard to be bored with all the unintentional comedy going on.
10. Ghost Rider
Whilst there's no modern camp classic scene like last year when he knocked a woman whilst dressed in a bear suit in "The Wicker Man" remake, Nicolas Cage once again is at his overacting best in "Ghost Rider," one of the worst comic-to-film adaptations since - well the last Marvel-based comic adaptation. Outside of the "X-Men" & "Spider-Man" franchises, which themselves took a turn for the worse in their last efforts, Marvel's track record has ranged from misguided (Hulk) to amateurish (Fantastic Four, Blade: Trinity, Daredevil) to hideous (Elektra, Fantastic Four 2).
'Rider' firmly joins those last two, but is even worse as those films at least featured body hugging costumes for the likes of Jennifer Garner, Chris Evans, Jessica Alba and Ioan Gruffudd. The sole highlight of "Ghost Rider" is that it has one decent joke involving Cage listening to Karen Carpenter before he does a stunt. Other than that, the comedy is purely unintentional - for instance a supposedly damning hand gesture by Cage on two occasions looks more like this expensive CG sprite has carpal tunnel syndrome.
Sam Elliott's big redemptive moment proves farcical thanks to a poorly CG animated horse. Peter Fonda shows up looking rather ill as he plays the devil, and references to his "Easy Rider" days are somewhat blatantly displayed in the hammy dialogue. Wes Bentley plays the villain Blackheart like a rather catty version of David Boreanaz's "Angel" - somewhere between petulant child and flamboyant goth.
Plot holes galore are spread throughout the film, characters pop up and disappear without much reason or logic. Lots of elements of main characters like Blackheart are entirely unexplored, and others seem only tailor made to make sense to those who read the comic. A confrontation between the Devil and his son proves one of the most messily edited sequences I've seen in ages, and the Melbourne, Australia location shooting never convincingly feels like some city in the American mid-West.
11. Evan Almighty
The most expensive comedy ever made, 'Evan' is a true testament that even with money, God and star power on your side - you can still make one of the worst American comedy films of the past few years. Granted that's not a hard title to earn - for every truly funny comedy like a "Superbad" or a "Juno" there's seemingly ten truly atrocious pieces of cinema involving Ice Cube, Martin Lawrence, Tim Allen or Adam Sandler.
To be fair 'Evan' was certainly easier to sit through this year than the likes of "Epic Movie" or "Kickin' it Old School" - films so bad that their creators should be castrated using only the paper that makes up their scripts. Those films however were known to be wastes of space right from the outset and really had no ambition short of swindling teens on Ritalin. 'Evan' on the other hand has scads of money, a proven director, a decent premise and the hot comedy star of the moment - Steve Carrell - whose earlier work has been consistently good.
Yet it still manages to botch it all up with heavy-handed preaching and literally no laughs, this is despite the presence of Carell and many of the cohorts from his other work including a cameo by Jon Stewart - a man whom millions have more faith in than God anyhow. The overly long film drags out scenes with painful gags about increased body hair and facial mugging at an escaped assortment of zoo creatures.
With such money on the line, any comedy that was here originally has been whittled down to appeal to as many people as possible - in doing so however it pleases no-one. It merely insults the Christian/Catholic crowd it so wants to embrace, and bores the rest of us atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, and whatever other denominations are floating around these days.
12. The Reaping
An interesting concept becomes lost in a sea of religious hokum and genre cliches in "The Reaping," the latest Dark Castle horror film which joins a long list of movies about a kid being the possible reincarnation of Satan. The setup has the ten Biblical plagues of Egypt falling on a small Mid-Western town, but that's just essentially a long-winded buildup to a final half hour of conventional supernatural thriller antics with some action-oriented effects thrown in.
Beyond the first plague, a visually impressive display of the local river being turned into blood, there's little to salvage in this rather laughable film. There are moments of ickiness but no surprises, suspense or ultimately interest. Other elements are just downright silly - the townsfolk for example are painted as Christian crazies seemingly happy to go lynching any atheist they come across.
Much of the last act, despite finally getting the pace going, dumps any good will (and believe me there isn't much at that point) that came before it in favor of stupid plot twists, an X-Files style coda, and standard silly religious mythological elements of Armageddon and wrath of God mumbo jumbo. If you had to choose between watching this and suffering boils, take the option which at least you can treat with a cream rather than years of expensive therapy.
13. Georgia Rule
Tone is something not often brought up in discussions about films amongst friends, but it's vital enough that it can make or break an entire project. You'll probably find no finer example this year than "Georgia Rule" - a film that plays like a fusion of "Little Women" and "The Accused."
The film attempts to balance mild amounts of cliched comedy about country bumpkins and the generation gap with heavy themes of child sexual abuse, alcoholism, and emotional nihilism. The result is a bleak, awkward mixture that never feels comfortable, short of scant quirky comedic moments involving its assorted conceited characters that work in spite of themselves.
Lohan's obvious lack of interest in even being on-set actually suits this utterly self-absorbed character, one who's an annoying cow at the beginning and remains a royal c*** throughout - some unconvincing moral lessons learned by the end notwithstanding. The freak spray-on tan and baby doll shirts she flaunts provide their own form of twisted entertainment for horny teenage males. A chick flick even women will despise.
14. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
A great example of how a sequel that should've easily overcome its lackluster predecessor manages to sink below it. In spite of its multitude of problems, 2005's first 'Four' adventure at least had a sense of genuine camaraderie, a fun turn by Chris Evans, and a nice subplot involving the Thing's love life to overcome some truly atrocious acting, filmmaking and special effects.
With 'Surfer' however, the only thing that has improved slightly has been the effects - everything else is notably worse. Gone are the few saving graces of the original, in its place a live-action cartoon that also manages to turn one of the greatest villains and storylines in Marvel comic history into a joke. Hampered with a PG rating, the film is stuck with no characterization, painful attempts at humor, no depth, and mindless video game style action scenes.
Its one saving grace is the title character, the Silver Surfer comes out beautifully on screen and is rendered well. Then he opens his mouth and it becomes Laurence Fishburne delivering pitiable and tired voice work. Even the form fitting tight blue spandex suits can't save this from being one of the worst comic adaptations since the genre's revival this decade.
15. Rendition & 16. Lions for Lambs
I'm an anti-war man and any film preaching the foolishness of the Iraq war and the Bush Government's abuse of power is something that has my sympathies from the get go. Yet both "Rendition" and "Lions for Lambs", two high-profile ensemble dramas delving into the topic, manage to lose that sympathy early on and never retrieve it.
A lot of that is because both are stocked with talent both in front of and behind the camera that should know better. These are complex issues filled with all sorts of shady areas and complications, yet both of them - especially "Rendition" - turns them into two-dimensional and predictable stories. Characters don't spout arguments, rather they scream cliches and revelations that may have been shocking several years ago but now seem almost antiquated.
There's moments to like - "Rendition" has a clever play on the context of its time setting whilst Cruise does a commendable job in 'Lambs' as a Republican junior senator towing the party line. The likes of Streep (in both films), Witherspoon and Gyllenhaal however deliver amongst their weakest work to date. All in all both are surprisingly pointless despite all the talking going on. There are intelligent and damning investigations to be made into the Bush administration and its culpability in the Iraq war - these aren't films that will inspire such action unfortunately.
17. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
Forget about flogging a dead horse, in this case they've taken the remains of that horse, beaten them down into a fine paste, sprinkled some arugala on it and served it up hot. Even armed with an R-rating, a more hardcore action focus, and a director who's NOT Paul W.S. Anderson, AVP-R still somehow manages to be worse than it's already terrible predecessor.
Much of that can be put on scribe Shane Salerno and first-time directors The Brothers Strause. Rather than expanding on the story they simply rip-off the best bits of the only great films in the respective series - the first two "Alien" films and the first "Predator" - and haphazardly throw them in a blender to deliver what essentially plays out like a blend of E.T. torture porn with a WWF session involving guys in rubber suits.
The cast, a mix of nobodies short of Michelle from TV's "24", aren't much chop but do the best with what little material they have. There's the odd chilling scene, a moment in a maternity ward is actually a clever idea, but the rest of the film is just bone-headed histrionics and loud jumps. There's no horror or suspense, just unconvincing action and painful attempts at storytelling. If this is what team-up movies are like, fans clamoring for the likes of "Justice League" or "The Avengers" really should take note.
18. 30 Days of Night
Though ultimately a mess, 'Night' at least attempts to bring back some bite to the basically defanged vampire genre. Much like the Steve Niles graphic novel it's based on, a simple but great setup and some effective atmospheric visuals are the standouts amongst an otherwise weak narrative and over-reliance on gore.
David Slade, the man behind last year's superb emasculation thriller "Hard Candy," fails to live up to the John Carpenter standard he's so obviously trying to imitate. Sequences change tone drastically throughout, from the clumsy slow buildup that heralds the arrival of the creatures, to the vampire attacks combining surprisingly large amounts of torture porn style gore, bursts of screeching sound and quick cut MTV editing which make it feel more like watching a bad music video than a horror film.
These jarring changes, combine with some serious script problems, rob the film of any real suspense or atmosphere - a real waste considering the premise is so ripe for a genuinely tense thriller about innocent people under siege. '30 Days' not only fails to utilize the setting or characters to its benefit, but the ticking clock of sunrise as well. The only thing remarkable about it is that at least the vampires themselves are perfectly realized on a visual level.
19. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
After the sheer massive drop in quality between the first two 'Pirates' films, it was hard to believe that the franchise could disappoint again but lo and behold 'At World's End' manages to do just that. Admittedly the quality isn't that different from the lackluster 'Dead Man's Chest', yet even that problematic sequel kept the goofy humor of the first one and had a few notable action sequences such as the cannibal island escape and the three-way sword fight.
'End' has no such memorable sequences, no real laughs, and a far too serious and dark tone. Whilst the cannibal island sequence of 'Chest' was pointless, it at least made sense. Here a lot of the narrative is merely a jumble with elements such as the releasing of Callisto proving to be a massive anticlimax, whilst subtlety of character is dropped in favor of massive CG whirlpools or esoteric dream sequences involving multiple Jacks.
Depp and Rush keep us afloat through the tedium with their gruff and eminently watchable performances, but both struggle to keep their heads above water. It does pull together story strands and wraps things up from across the trilogy, but to do so it sucks much of the life, energy and just plain enjoyment out of the franchise to get back to essentially where it was at the very beginning. Like "Spider-Man", the 'Pirates' need to take a break for a few years and properly come back with a smarter, simpler, lighter, and more inventive entry to properly reinvigorate them into the smart crowd pleasers they began as.
20. Spider-Man 3
When it comes to superhero movies, the word trilogy has now been firmly cemented as a fearful thing. "Superman III," "Batman Forever" and "X-Men: The Last Stand" turned franchises with great first films and arguably even better second films into walking jokes. Many blamed the simple changing of the guard behind the scenes, with new directors coming in and taking over from more seasoned and solid talent like Donner, Burton and Singer for the mess.
With "Spider-Man 3" however, there is no such excuse as those involved have been there from the beginning. Like those 'three-quels' before it, on its own this film is a moderately enjoyable Summer escapist effort with some great set pieces and nice character moments. In comparison to what came before it however - it's disastrously problematic.
Louder, brasher and ultimately flatter than the first two films, the material is simply too much stretched too far. Even a puppet master like Raimi can't juggle three villains, the ongoing Harry-Mary Jane-Peter love-hate triangle, the whole black suit subplot, and several new characters at the same time. The result is a definitely feeling that many of the elements involved were rushed out rather than carefully crafted.
Not helping is Raimi's obvious distaste for the Venom subplot which effectively wastes one of the great comic book villains in a way as bad as Two-Face, Bane or Mr. Freeze were reduced to cringe-inducing antagonists in the Schumacher Batman films. The black suit/rise of Venom subplot is one that deserves a whole film of its own, instead its a B story here and suffers for it - most memorably by the awkward dancing and 'street strutting' scenes with Maguire sporting a black emo haircut.
The A plot isn't much better. There's a few great moments like the hilarious supporting work of Bruce Campbell as a French maitre 'd and J.K. Simmons as the Daily Bugle editor, whilst the Sandman 'birthing' scene is a truly beautiful and haunting sequence that stands out as one of the year's best moments in film. Yet they're compounded by some painful amateur mistakes, from the never before seen butler who has critical information at just the right time to the final construction site fight that's painfully narrated by an on-the-ground reporter.
The first two "Spider-Man" films, whilst overrated, are superb pieces of blockbuster filmmaking and having a third of equal quality would've been a perfect cap to the trilogy. Sadly that didn't happen and it's a shame. A film like this had extremely high standards and expectations to live up to and sadly let many down on that front - enough that it sadly leaves a bitter taste about the whole franchise.
