The Films of 2004: Part One

BRINGING OUT THE DEAD:
The Worst Movies of 2004

If there's a running theme amongst the worst cinematic drivel thrust upon us this year, it was the recurring instances of the dead returning from their graves to torment the living...in this case, cinema audiences.

I'd like to present a worst ten list -- it seems a common number for these things. The problem (if you want to call it a problem) was that I didn't see ten truly bad movies. Some of the more obvious dreck -- Catwoman, White Chicks, Anchorman, etc. -- I deftly managed to avoid. These, then, are the six worst films I saw...either out of morbid curiosity or misguided optimism.

6. The Chronicles of Riddick

It wasn't as bad as Pitch Black, but not for lack of trying. David Twohy's laughably self-indulgent, insanely incoherent tale of evil "Necromongers" (undead religious zealots who worship the infinite darkness of something or other...or something like that, who knows) vs. Vin Diesel (as Vin Diesel) is like a video game movie without the video game. (From what I hear, the actual Riddick video game is a great deal more impressive than this.) Twohy allegedly "wrote" the "script," but everything's really just an excuse to watch a series of over-designed, scientifically impossible planets drift past the screen. A shadow puppet show would have had the same depth. And, probably, would have more entertaining. Extra shame goes to Judy Dench, who must have needed the cash really bad.

5. The Forgetten

Speaking of actresses who should have known better. Julianne Moore -- my precious Julianne! -- trapped in this hellhole of a film, which plays like the worst episode of The Twilight Zone you never saw. She's a depressed mom, torn apart with grief over the son she lost in a plane crash...or did she? Soon, everyone (like Gary Sinise, who should also know better, and Anthony Edwards, who finds a very special kind of bad in his two or three scenes as the clueless husband) is telling her that her precious child never even existed at all, and the photos and videos she kept of him have vanished. From there, The Forgotten leaves our world and plunges directly into the Land Beyond Mad, as the story flies in the most preposterous direction at maximum warp. Even the internal story logic doesn't hold up -- the Evil Force behind everything can wipe everyone's memory, erase her videotapes and replace her photographs, but they cover up damning evidence by just wallpapering over it? Huh? If you can hang in there, though, the film's climax is absolutely hilarious -- the script puts forth the idea of an actual measurable psychic connection between a mother and child ("We can measure its energy," someone says) and features "YOU...MUST...FOOOORGEEEEEET!!!" as actual dialogue. And in the end, everything turns out happy because Julianne Moore is the Most Powerful Mother in the World. Seriously.

4. The Manchurian Candidate

These troubled times would seem ripe for a film about paranoia, one that analyzes the way we are programmed into fear and submission by shadowy forces more powerful than ourselves. (That ended up being this movie over here.) Jonathan Demme's exhumation of The Manchurian Candidate, however, is a clumsy, stylistically awkward mess. Denzel Washington brings it, as he always does, and Liev Schrieber does as well, but Meryl Streep -- ye gods! She doesn't chew the scenery, she swallows it whole, like a giant vacuum cleaner of horrible showiness. And Demme's shooting style -- jamming the camera right in everyone's face, like they're performing for a toothpaste commercial -- doesn't quite garner the same results he achieved in The Silence of the Lambs. Instead, he winds up with a dull, headache inducing nightmare. At least he managed to stay out of the bottom three...

THE TRIFECTA OF HORROR

3. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

George Lucas, eat your heart out. Shallow, idiotic, boring, and incomprehensible, this a CGI orgy that only writer/director Ken Conran could possibly find entertaining. His script gathers together an annoying group of characters, throws them into a completely nonsensical storyline, then coasts the rest of the way on his washed-out special effects. I'd feel bad for Jude Law, who deserves better than this tripe, but he can at least comfort himself by saying, "Hey, it was my sixth-best performance this year." No one will remember him grinning and quipping his way through Sky Captain. And hey, Ken -- was there a good reason for shoving the quite deceased Laurence Olivier into the movie? I mean, other than "Because I could?"

2. Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Um...I remember seeing this movie. I remember sitting in the dark for two hours. I know this had to have happened, because I wrote about it. But...nothing else has stuck in my brain. This may be the most vapidly boring movie ever made. I think. I can't really remember. I originally had this down as the prime offender of the year, but since I can barely remember it, I should probably go with...

1. The Passion of the Christ

This one I can recall quite vividly. The cinematic equivalent of watching autopsy footage. Mel Gibson's crazy religious tract was supposed to be a moving, transcendent experience, but instead collapses under the weight of the makeup and the four-hour scenes of flogging and punching and kicking and stabbing and more flogging and here's a whip and oh yeah look at the blood! The conservatives always blast Hollywood for the gratuitous violence in movies today, but then turn around and applaud this hideous piece of death-porn as a masterpiece? There's no deeper emotional context, no big message -- it is, quite literally, a bunch of guys kicking the shit out of another human being for two hours. And then, of course, the Jesus Christ: Terminator ending, when he stalks out of his cave to a martial drumbeat and gets ready to lay the smackdown on all us sinners, Old Testament-style. Thanks, but no thanks, Mel.

Next: Honorable Mentions.