On Hiatus!

Hey Everyone,

I'll be on hiatus for about a week and a day, traveling around the Bay Area looking for work and hanging out with friends.

Don't fret-- I should have a new review or two or three up as soon as I return next Friday.

Happy Halloween, Feliz Dia de los Muertos, Happy All Saints Day, etc.

Don't forget to set your clocks back!

-Cait

Away We Go (2009)

I don’t know why this movie wasn’t more popular when it first came out. It is funny and pleasant, and it has a well thought out project.

John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are very convincing as a couple in their mid-thirties who set out on a trip to find the place they want to raise their first child. Both actors are excellent in their respective roles—they successfully detach themselves from the strong personalities of their previous roles while somehow managing to achieve a level of chemistry and rapport that makes them seem like a real couple.

The believe-ability factor in their relationship is important because the other couples they go to visit are more caricatures of obstacles in parenting than they are living breathing people. Though amusing to me, these hyperbolic figures could definitely be annoying to some, if for no other reason than that their unreality serves as a rather harsh foil to Rudolph and Krasinski’s characters’ relationship.

Overall, I think Away We Go has been underrated. It definitely deserves a few hours of your Sunday evening.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

-Spoilers!-

I didn’t watch this one when everyone was peeing themselves about how good it was. I have the probably unhealthy mentality that if I hear a ton of good things about a movie, I’ll most likely be disappointed when I see it. Because of this, I usually wait a long while before I’ll watch a movie that people rave about to me, saying “You have to see it!” Like an obstinate child, I sulk for a while before I watch anything that’s supposedly amazing. I usually come around in the end.

I am happy that I waited to see Slumdog Millionaire. I think if I would have caved in and watched it when it first came out, or even when it later won the Oscar for best picture, I would have turned against it just because everyone was saying it was the best movie in the world, ever.

Now I can gladly and a little more unbiased-ly state that I thought it was good. It wasn’t great, and it wasn’t better than everything ever. It was just a good movie. I liked the soundtrack a lot, and I appreciated the pacing—not an overload of suspense, but not boring either. Characters I could get involved with.

The only thing I had reservations about was the odd disjunction of all the in-your-face hideous reality scenes (e.g. the kid forcibly getting his eyes burned out so he could make more money for his orphan-pimping boss) with the freakishly happy nearly fantasy ending. It left me asking, “…really?” with narrowed eyes. But I guess the whole point of the movie was about destiny, not about the unpleasant rationality and probabilities of the real world. It was just an odd combination for me.

At the end of the day, I’d say definitely worth watching.

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

I am still not sure how I feel about this movie.

It is a hectic, violent, somehow even more fantastical version of the brief and wonderful children’s book upon which it is based. Plot, character design, dialogue—all of these aspects as unbounded as your imagination was as a child, and maybe, still is.

How can I describe such an experience? Strange, definitely; surreal at times. Frightening, yes, even to a grown-up. Breathtaking, and not in the way people use that word when they talk about scenic views. More literally breathtaking, like when you are on a rollercoaster and you feel a lurch; you’re not sure if it’s part of the fun of the ride or if the ride is falling apart and you’re careening toward injury or even death. Should you laugh, should you scream? Remain silently terrified? It was without a doubt brutal. Emotionally and visually.

Would I have enjoyed this if I were a child? Maybe. Some of my childhood favorites were very dark—I’m thinking along the lines of movies like Legend (1985), which had some very horrifying images and themes. But the darkness of that film was actually pure fantasy, whereas Where the Wild Things Are is more rooted to sad reality. Here Max, through his dream world, is dealing with his real world familial troubles in his own way.

There is still enough fun and wildness in the movie to keep kids happy though, I think. If I were one of the eight year olds in the theater watching it, I wouldn’t be thinking “this is how relationships fall apart. Great, something to look forward to.” I would most likely be thinking “Look at those weird things!... Hey!! Is that an owl? Why is that guy’s face all smashed?...” and so on.

But I guess the question is, did I enjoy the movie as an adult? I thought it was undeniably, albeit oddly, beautiful. It was poignant and at times painful like when you look through an old photo album of happy holidays from before, but you remember the sad things in between the years, or the fights you had right after dinner. A remembered disappointment, made OK only by the fact that you got through it. A sort of grim acknowledgment of everything that nobody took a picture of.

I thought when I went to see it that I would be treated to some kind of rapturous joy or at least upheaval of real emotion, dredged out by watching one of my all time favorite children’s books made real. But what I was left with was the feeling that nostalgia doesn’t cut it. You have to go to where your memories aren’t so great to really learn something about yourself or your relationships with other people. You have to go where the wild things are.

Duma (2005)

-Caution, spoilers.-

Xan and his father raise a lost cheetah from a cub after they find him on the road one night. They name him Duma, Swahili for cheetah. When Xan’s dad dies, Xan crosses the entire country on foot to return Duma to his original habitat, something he and his father had planned to do together.

This movie was stupid. It was so saccharine that even a child would have trouble buying into it. And don’t even get me started on the fact that it was set somewhere in Africa, yet we only see black people living out in the wilderness in a village, and nowhere in the suspiciously pristine city we briefly visit along the way. Not to mention the fact that an eleven year old tiny white kid is supposed to have driven a motorcycle across the desert, wandered through the freaking veldt and into the jungle completely unscathed by the many wild animals he encounters along the way.

Sure, there was some nice scenery in this movie. And a ridiculously well trained actual adult cheetah plays Duma, who interacts casually and sweetly with Xan throughout. (A fascinating curiosity, though I feel a teensy bit unethical about enjoying watching this wild animal roll around like a dog and eat lunchmeat out of the kid's hand.)

But seriously. If you feel compelled to watch it just for the cheetah, put it on mute. Movies made for children don’t have to be this simplistic, unrealistic, and predictable.


In other news:
Going to see Where The Wild Things Are tonight!

New York, I Love You (2009)

New York, I Love You is a collection of short films which sometimes interconnect, sometimes not, all centered on love relationships (not necessarily romantic), all set in New York City.

We get a nicely varied series of portraits of the sad, vulgar, weird, horrible, and sweet interactions between lots of different characters. The pacing was decent and the varying emotional tones managed to flow across the diverse segments. Overall it was pretty good.

The only thing that slightly put me off was the smarmy last segment that attempted to suture together all the disparate narratives into one neat package. Why was this necessary? Just so people not used to seeing short films put together in a program, people who would rather go to a straightforward start to finish plot about love, could somehow feel like they got their druthers?

You know what? Here is my unsolicited advice: try out a movie that doesn’t serve you your expectations with a cherry on top once in a while. Go to a program of shorts at your local cinematheque or a random little film festival. Go watch a movie you'd never normally even consider seeing. You might like it!

Sure, you can try short films on for size with big releases like New York, I Love You if you like—I’d argue its better than nothing. But don’t be too afraid to step out of your comfort zone, like this movie was. Be bold! You might find some new favorites.

My Little Chickadee (1940)

W.C. Fields and Mae West team up in this tale from the Old West involving masked bandits, shoot-‘em-up train heists and crooked sheriffs.

This seemed like it was going to be a surefire entertainer from yesteryear because of the personality of the two stars involved. I expected plenty of laughs and lots of racy gags. Maybe some antiquated humor I couldn’t quite grasp. Outdated sexual innuendo. The usual.

Unfortunately this movie was so boring I had to turn it off midway through. This is something I almost never do. I hate giving up on something halfway—I’ll watch a stinker all the way through to the end just to have a complete picture of what I’ll later complain about to my friends.

But the issue with My Little Chickadee wasn’t that it was bad in the sense of being tasteless, humorless, or illogical. There were some jokes worth a chuckle or two. The problem was that the story was just outright boring. Apparently relying on the charisma of the two stars to carry the thing forward, no one bothered to put much stock in plot. Unfortunately both West and Fields fell totally flat in this one, and so without any kind of interesting action to fall back on, the whole thing just completely fell apart.

Wah-wah-wahwahwahwahhhh! (Disappointed trumpet.)

Up Next, Either:
New York, I Love You
Or
Where the Wild Things Are

Monkey Business (1931)

While I was watching Monkey Business last night I slowly became aware that it is not the Marx brothers’ movie I was thinking about when I wrote my Top Ten off the Top of My Head List a while back. Boy oh boy do I feel foolish.

Not only does Monkey Business not contain the lemonade scene I mentioned before; it also does not have the peanut stand scene or the really lengthy immigrants on deck singing scene that (I thought) made the movie memorable to me. But because it is a Marx brothers’ movie and it is set on a ship I somehow mixed it up with the mystery movie I so happily called my favorite.

I wasn’t at all disappointed that this was not the movie I was thinking of, however. This one had its share of hilarity and gags, with plenty of slapstick and racy humor thrown in. If you have never watched any Marx brothers I would suggest starting with this one. It has a fairly logical storyline and plenty of still relevant and fresh jokes.

I later discovered, via Google and Youtube, that the lemonade and peanut stand scene I was thinking of came from Duck Soup, but I’m still not sure if the immigrant singing on deck scene came from that one or a different one. The most likely scenario is that I am taking many funny scenes from different movies and somehow irrationally trying to convince myself that they are all from the same movie.

Awesomely, what this confusion means is that I’ll just have to re-watch all the Marx brothers’ classics to try figure it out!

The Garden (2008)

I do not normally enjoy documentaries. In fact, I generally flatly reject them without regard to the topic. What irritates me about them is the interplay between fact and opinion that documentaries sometimes showcase but more often than not sweep under the rug. In short, movies ostensibly reporting “facts” and “situations” while actually just being some random yahoo’s hugely skewed opinions are not really my thing.

Nevertheless, when The Garden arrived in the mailbox, neatly sealed in its perforated red envelope, I politely conceded to watching it. Why not? It was already here and it was about a community farm in South Central Los Angeles. I just moved back to LA! Might as well take a peek at some current-ish local events.

About forty five minutes into watching it I realize I am really getting upset about these peoples' situation. South Central residents were given a plot of land for a community garden following the Rodney King riots of the early ‘90s. Great! But then, through a twisted series of questionably legal maneuvers, the city somehow ended up selling the land back to the original owner, who proceeded to try to evict the gardeners. The landowner did not realize what he was getting himself into. A huge legal battle with many ups and downs ensued.

I do not want to ruin the story for anyone so I will stop short of saying how the story plays out (although you could probably just look up the actual news events online). What I can say is that The Garden is a successful representation of the tenacity of people who for one reason or another enjoy working the land.

I think this movie achieved what it set out to do, which was to represent the side of the gardeners in this conflict. I cannot say that the movie did anything particularly innovative in the way it tells the story. If you are interested in social justice or urban farming initiatives, check it out.

I Heart Huckabees (2004)

Want to know why The Happening (reviewed in a rather negative light last time when I tore into The Invention of Lying) didn’t end up on my top ten worst list?  It was because I liked Mark Wahlberg’s extremely silly acting job, which helped me not to take the movie seriously.  That was what saved it for me. 

In I Heart Huckabees Wahlberg appears in weirdo mode again, acting crazed and violent yet somehow lovable in his role as a fireman having an existential crisis.  He’s not even officially the main character of this random and satisfyingly entertaining movie, but he was definitely my favorite.  Jason Schwartzman, potty-mouth extraordinaire in his role as an environmental activist poet is who the story focuses on, with Dustin Hoffman, Jude Law, Lily Tomlin, and a host of other big names for backup.

But it is not the caliber of the acting that makes this movie entertaining.  Instead it is the sheer number of bizarre moments of violence, physical humor, and philosophical sputtering that create the chemistry that keeps the thing going.  It is not a movie which asks you to think deep thoughts—it is a movie about people thrashing around while having deep thoughts to comedic effect.

A very enjoyable diversion.

The Invention of Lying (2009), featuring a brief review of The Happening (2008)

The Invention of Lying was by far the worst movie I have seen in years.

Evidently Ricky Gervais, who co-wrote and co-directed this ridiculously stupefying waste of celluloid, completely and utterly failed to realize that you cannot make a film which tries to make big statements about the nature of faith, honesty, and deception without properly defining these terms. 

Time for a huge tangent.  Remember M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening?  (Or really, any of his movies after Unbreakable?)  In The Happening, M Night’s basic premise was that if plants release a chemical into the air which enters people’s systems and disables their self-preservation instinct, everyone will violently kill themselves by whatever means directly and immediately available to them.  Just to be clear, we are supposed to understand that:

P (plant chemical) + H (human brain) => -I (lack of self-preservation instinct) => S (suicide by ridiculous means like laying down in the path of an industrial lawn mower or bashing one’s head against a wall until death)

Somewhere between the –I and S portions of that chain of events, we encounter a huge error.  Logically, losing the instinct to preserve one’s own well-being does not necessarily imply that everyone is suddenly driven to suicide.  Rather, what it would mean is that people just wouldn’t duck if something came flying at them, or they wouldn’t run away from danger, or they wouldn’t experience the fear and cringing reactions normally associated with risky and dangerous situations.  Not so much with the impromptu stabbing themselves in the neck with chopsticks and hanging themselves from trees.  Another sad swing-and-a-miss for Mr. Shyamalan. 

So back to The Invention of Lying.  Gervais asks us to go along with the idea that in a world where people haven’t evolved the ability to lie, each person just says what is on his/her mind at any given moment without any self-censoring whatsoever.  Here’s the problem: blabbing insults and character-impugning personal facts stream-of-consciousness style is NOT the same thing as being unable to tell a lie.  Unfortunately this type of incident is what the movie relies on to produce “humor” throughout. 

For example, when in the first scene of the movie Jennifer Garner’s character answers her door and randomly blurts out “I was just masturbating,” we note that this was not, in fact, in response to any query about what she was doing.  It was just something she said off the top of her head.  It had nothing to do with whether or not she was able to lie about what she was doing.  No one even asked her what she was doing!  And can I also note that not one person in the mostly high school student audience so much as chuckled at this zinger of an opening punchline? 

Gervais not only befouls the definition of honesty from the get go; he also conflates truth with belief in a way that proves highly problematic to his anti-religion argument which comes out of the woodwork later on.  Gervais’s character at one point makes up a set of rules and fundamentals that are meant to resemble the basic premises of Christianity (there is a “man in the sky” who controls everything, if you do bad stuff you go to hell, there is heaven which is the reward for doing good stuff, etc).  Of course everyone in the world believes him because they are not aware that he is able to say something untrue.  But religion, at least for the faithful, has never been about truth and fact.  It’s about belief.  It’s a FAITH, not a science experiment, not a force with empirical evidence that can be quantified and replicated in a lab. You can’t win an argument against a faithful person by trying to prove them wrong.  It’s just completely pointless. 

A lot of good actors got dragged into this ridiculous mess.  Perhaps the most offensive to me was Tina Fey’s character, whose few crass lines feature the never funny use of the word faggot, which was apparently supposed to be the punchline of the joke in and of itself.  What a waste.

Literally the only funny moment of the film was probably originally an outtake.  It was a split second shot of Philip Seymour Hoffman (who plays a bartender) smiling with a wedge of lime covering his teeth.  The only time I laughed during the entire movie. 

I can’t even say that this movie was unfortunately terrible because everything that was terrible about it was a conscious choice made by the people who put it together and acted it out. 

I wish I could have my ten dollars and one hundred minutes back. 

Porco Rosso (1992)

In Porco Rosso we follow the story of an inexplicably pig-faced Italian World War I pilot turned bounty hunter who expertly out-flies pirates in his antique red plane. If that doesn’t sound bizarre or complicated enough for a Japanese children’s movie, consider that the pirates Porco Rosso (the Crimson Pig) fights turn out to be more civil than the Air Force who tries to intervene in their affairs. What’s more, at the end of the film we are left with few clear answers to any of the many questions regarding characters and plot that Miyazaki conjures up over the course of the story. We are expected to rely on our own imaginations to fill in the blanks, or not, as we see fit.

What I love best about Miyazaki movies, Porco Rosso included, is they not only display the beauty of a childlike uninhibited imagination visually, but that they also inspire imagination and thought that goes beyond the borders of the screen. Rather than spoon-feed the audience moral values through hackneyed plotlines and sugarcoated romances, Miyazaki instead offers breathtakingly strange and intriguing tales appropriate for any age. We go places when we watch his films. We see new things, we consider new possibilities. Just what animation, and film in general, is supposed to do.

With frequent magical and unexplained interventions into characters’ identities, highly unconventional narrative trajectories (at least in Western terms), and loads of astonishingly unexpected heroes, Miyazaki’s animated masterpieces are crafted for the truly adventurous and imaginative moviegoer. Lucky for us, in the treasure trove of Miyazaki’s work Porco Rosso is only one small gem.

----

If you’d like a bigger list of Miyazaki’s movies, check out his imdb profile.
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0594503/)
The majority of his movies are distributed in the US by Disney on very nice DVDs with options for either English language dubbing or English subtitles according to your preference.

Everything is Illuminated (2005)

Jonathan Safran Foer collects things related to his family.  He decides to travel to the Ukraine to investigate a curious item of his late Grandfather’s bequeathed to him by his Grandmother on her deathbed.  On his trip he is guided by a young Ukranian translator named Alex and Alex’s grandfather.  Together they come to realize the power and value of memory and heritage, each in their own way.  Based on a novel of the same title.

The concept sounded interesting and the trailers made it look visually complex, but unfortunately this movie could not deliver on the promises it made. 

For one thing, Elijah Wood (who plays lead character Jonathan) wears improbably extreme eye-magnifying glasses which have the undesirable effect of conjuring up another one of his characters, the cannibalistic freakshow named Kevin from Sin City, released the same year.  Unfortunate for everyone involved.

Another misstep is that Alex the Ukranian translator/guide narrates the tale with what was intended to be comically bad English.  For me the joke wore off about two minutes into the movie.  I can only hear someone who is basically a strawman for contemporary Eurotrashy post-Soviet stereotypes refer to a dog as a “seeing eye bitch” maybe once before I stop thinking it is in any way amusing.

Issues of taste and associations set aside, probably the biggest issue with this movie was that it was trying very hard to be creative, but did not really succeed.  It was actually a pretty standard narrative about the importance of remembering the Holocaust, and performed all the usual ruminations on the roots of prejudice and hatred.  Just adding quirky and obnoxious characters into the mix along with pastoral scenery didn’t really provide a new perspective on how we may, generations after the fact, go about remembering the atrocities committed by the Nazis or figure out how they impact our own lives. 

At its best it was vaguely amusing for a few seconds, but at its worst it was irritating and pointless.  Just skip it.

Adventureland (2009)

What happens when a recent graduate’s trip to Europe and grad school plans fall through because of his parent’s money troubles?  He loses his university-prescribed rose colored glasses and has to get a crappy job at a local amusement park.  All is not lost, however, because James (our down and out Comp Lit major) finds friends and, improbably, actually grows up a little during his stint cleaning up puke and managing the ring toss. 

I have seen this movie twice now and happily I was not disappointed after the second viewing.  The dialogue was just as low-key as I remembered, and the soundtrack still provided clever yet subtle commentary on the action taking place.  Kristen Stewart was still great as the complicated love interest, and other cast members still provided unexpected and thoughtful counterpoints to lead man Jesse Eisenberg’s wry and shy character James. 

Adventureland was originally marketed as a silly college comedy, full of vulgar jokes, sex, and misadventures.  That is not an accurate representation of what this movie is about, or how it speaks to the audience.  It deals with serious themes and is really more of a coming of age narrative than a balls and pratfalls kind of story.  There are some of these types of jokes in the movie, but they are far from the main point or even the main appeal.

That being said, this isn’t likely to be the kind of movie where you’ll watch it and have any type of personal revelations after the fact.  But should you choose to watch it, you will be treated to a smartly written, quietly good story about a guy trying to figure out what he really needs out of life to be happy.  And I think that’s worth watching.

Whip It (2009)

I am tired of writing favorable reviews. The title of this blog is “A Phantasmagoria of Complaints!” not “A Plethora of Praise”. Yet lately I’ve been on a kick of happy reviews about good movies. Well frankly it’s getting old. At least for me. I don’t know about on your end.

So I went to see Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut Whip It with this “ready to hate it” attitude in mind. The trailers for the movie make it look insufferably stereotypical and predictable. Ellen Page in yet another “I’m a unique and misunderstood teenager” role. Neatly packaged lessons about “growing up” and being “different.” Modern acceptable girl-power femininity (exemplified here by roller derby) versus outdated 1950s ideals (beauty pageants). Basically, a movie that seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to sharpen my claws and get the grouch out of my system.

Had I left Whip It anywhere in the first forty five minutes of the movie my preconceived notions would have remained uncomplicatedly intact. But then, somewhere around the one hour mark, something changed. The movie started getting kind of good.

I don’t know if it was the chemistry between the cast members, which included a lot of very funny ladies, or if it was the excitement of seeing the roller derby matches on the big screen. Or maybe it was the soundtrack that mixed indie music favorites with nice emotional pieces, or some combination of all these factors coming together in just the right way. Whatever happened over the course of the film, I found myself really getting into it, and I walked out with a smile on my face.

Despite my mid-feature change of heart, however, I cannot honestly say that it was an especially good movie. I did enjoy parts of it because it’s fun to watch roller derby and to hear smart, quirky dialogue performed by big name actresses. But the movie was actually pretty guilty of all that it seemed to be after viewing the previews, and my excited enjoyment of it faded after I left the theater.

The bottom line is that I remain uncomfortable and bored with mainstream film’s assumption that teenage girls are always looking for some dreamboat boy to hold hands with while going against their parents’ wishes and painting the town red. Instead of hinting around at woman for woman desire in every other scene, maybe we could actually just have a character or two who are, indeed, actual girlfriends and not just “girlfriends.” It was a smidge heartbreaking for me to watch the slow motion sudden hopefulness scene that happens when Ellen Page’s character sees the roller derby girls for the first time. Because I knew right away that even though it was set up to resemble a romantic love at first sight type moment, we were probably going to be asked to pretend that Page’s character is in love with the roller derby, and not with the women themselves.

Of course my expectations are absurdly out of line with the way Hollywood works, especially when it comes to PG-13 movies aimed at teenage girls. But is it wrong to hope for, and maybe even start asking for a representation of something beyond the girl meets boy scenario we’re so often served?

Greenfingers (2000)

British inmates in an experimental “open prison” mend their woes by planting a garden on the grounds of the correctional facility where they serve their time.  Some find love, others forgiveness, but all come away having “grown” in some way.  
 

Sound improbably cheesy?  Like something that would never happen in real life?  Too full of gardening puns for you taste?  Well here’s the real surprise—this movie is based on a true story. 

Even though it’s unlikely you’ve heard anything about it outside of this blog, you should be at least mildly interested in seeing this movie.  Though it is admittedly a very sunny, perhaps simplistic, view of what criminals in Britain can and do go through during their stay in prison, this pleasant patch of inspirational fluff is just the ticket for helping you believe that even the worst situations in life can be made better.  Also, Clive Owen plays the lead role with Helen Mirren for backup.  AND!  As if that weren’t enough to entice you to click “Add to Queue”, consider that you'll also get the added bonus of dry humor and lovely garden settings! 

A cheerful pick-me-up for any moviegoer who wants a break from the horrors of the evening news but without committing to a fully fledged trip into fantasyland. 

Off Day

Today is an off day, if you couldn't tell by the title.

Upcoming reviews:
I <3 Huckabees
Adventureland
Everything is Illuminated

And either:
The Invention of Lying
or
Whip It

Happy Friday!
-Cait

Ten Ways to Ruin Your Day

Since everyone seems to be talking about the recent Rotten Tomatoes 100 Worst list, I decided to try my hand at pondering a few unsightly gaffes dished out by Hollywood and beyond.

Here are a few of my least favorites in no particular order. Caution: Spoilers abound.

1) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
      Dear Disney: Please don't set us up for the ideal romantic ending between two people who clearly have no chemistry only to make it so they can't actually be together in the end. After three hours of stunts where people roll down hills in round or cylindrical objects while delivering punchline-less jokes, all I wanted was the freaking happy ending. And you couldn't even deliver that. Thanks for literally nothing.

2) Summer Catch (2001)
       Gross, humorless, plotless. Even the eggy Freddie Prinze Jr. with his perpetually freshly glossed lips couldn't inspire any interest in this insanely tasteless and bland dud.

3) A League of Their Own (1992)
      Before anyone gets upset, I have to say that I used to like this movie. The issue is now I have seen it way too many times and the goodness wore off, leaving behind the aftertaste of how I used to feel when I watched it. Now whenever I see it on TV I have to contend with the onslaught of emotion that used to confront me while sitting on a couch on a Sunday late afternoon in winter watching HBO, knowing I had a huge pile of homework waiting in the next room and an entire week of school ahead of me. Downer! Note that those feelings have nothing to do with the content of the film. Yet just the thought of the music accompanying the final scenes makes me feel middle school era lethargy and depression all over again.

4) Burn After Reading (2009)
      Gigantically mis-marketed film. A case of expectations way out of line with what was delivered. Left feeling so let down and sour that the rest of my night was ruined. It makes the list mainly because the Coen brothers are the writers and directors of one of my favorites (that somehow didn't make it onto my top ten list), Blood Simple (1984).

5) Lilo and Stitch (2002)
      Obnoxious and intensely not cute. Couldn't get into it at all. Just wanted it to end. Still cringe when I come across clips and stills.

6) Blood and Chocolate (2007)
      Based on a popular young adult novel of the same title, this movie had little to nothing to do with the original source material.  Terrible acting. Bad cinematography. Ridiculous dialogue. Stayed only because walking out seemed like giving up, and I wanted to prove that I could give the book the respect of sitting through the movie adaptation. Extremely poor judgment on my part.

7)  Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
      The kind of movie where you go and you just get so angry because of all the unnecessary blue filters and dramatic slow motion. Atrocious dialogue. Poor performances. Generated a headache that lasted beyond the credits.

8) Hancock (2008)
      Holy lord. This was a train wreck. Whoever wrote/made this did not edit it. Played like a short story written for a creative writing class by a physics major at 3am after having just taken two midterms and had stomach flu.

9) Birth of a Nation (1915)
      I don't care if D.W. Griffith established parallel editing or whatever with this movie, I hate it. I hate it so much. The obvious reason is that its racist, yet still intensely famous. The not so obvious reason is that it just sucks. 

10) T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G (1969)
      If you ever get the opportunity to watch this avant-garde classic, don't. Just walk away. Don't question me, just walk right back out through the door you came in.

Aaaand that's the long and short of it.

Arguments? Additions? Please feel free to comment!