Bad movies are pretty much synonymous with Hollywood; they're practically a dime a dozen in Tinseltown. But, every so often, a film comes around that is so infuriatingly rotten that it deserves to enter the pantheon of schlock cinema and become recognized as a wretched triumph in cinematic garbage. After wading through a countless number of worthy contenders at the local video store, I have managed to compile a list of the "10 Worst Movies Of The Last Decade" in the hopes that each of these films be avoided by all.
10 - "Kill Bill Vol. 2"?The second in Quentin Tarantino's overrated series of slaughterhouse kung-fu flicks, "Kill Bill Vol. 2" follows a woman seeking revenge on the team of assassins who killed her fianc". Rather than capitalizing on the brilliantly choreographed, intensely violent style of martial arts fighting that he perfected in the first "Kill Bill,"? Tarantino churns out an action movie that is boring, pretentious and long-winded. The first fight takes place an hour into the film, and the script is filled with inane set-pieces that never connect or lead anywhere. Tarantino loves to hear his own dialogue, and his ego prevents him from just shutting up and letting the action take over.
9 - "Lost In Translation""Lost In Translation" follows two Americans as they develop a friendship while vacationing in Japan. They walk around. They decide to sip some tea. They walk around some more. That's pretty much it. By the end of this flick, I was tempted to poke out my own eyes just to make something interesting happen. This movie is so subtle it's nonexistent. There's no dialogue, no story and (most annoyingly) no tripod to keep the camera straight. Never has friendship or culture clash been less interesting, profound or pointless.
8 - "Matrix Revolutions"There's a lot of things stuffed into this movie: lots of bad special effects; lots of pretentious, confusing dialogue; lots of Keanu Reeves looking around and appearing severely confused. This movie earned a spot on the list both because it was a horrible train-wreck of a film on its own and because it torpedoed the legacy of the first "Matrix" movie, a much finer and more enjoyable flick than the overblown "Revolutions." The only good part of this movie is when all the main characters die, because it ensures that there can never be a "Matrix 4: The Matrix Rehashed."?
7 - "The Fifth Element"?This cringe-inducing movie is about a cab driver in the future who must defeat a madman named General Zorg and an army of toad warriors working for an evil presence named, you guessed it, Evil. The only thing that can stop these "Power Ranger"? villain rejects are stones representing the elements earth, wind, fire and water, as well as an unknown, fifth element. Over-acting abounds in this schlocky sci-fi snoozefest that proves once and for all that Chris Tucker (who plays a screeching diva) really is the most annoying creature to ever walk the earth.
6 - "Tomb Raider 2""Tomb Raider 2"? follows treasure hunter Lara Croft as she searches for Pandora's Box while fighting off an army of inept henchman. The movie isn't even two hours long, but it feels like a decade, mostly because it fails to make any sense at all. In the film, Croft finds an ancient Chinese orb of magical powers that can only be operated with state of the art computer technology invented thousands of years after the orb was actually made. Sadly, this stuff with the orb makes more sense than when Croft later travels to Africa and vanquishes an ancient race of sand crabs by climbing through a giant anthill into an underground pit where gravity doesn't exist. Stop me when any of this begins to make sense.
5 - "From Dusk Till Dawn"?"From Dusk Till Dawn,"? which was written by Quentin Tarantino, starts out as a clever heist movie as it follows the bank-robbing Gecko Brothers. Then, halfway through, Tarantino decides that he wants to go in a totally different direction, so he has his criminal anti-heroes stop off at a roadside bar where they are attacked by blood-thirsty, vampire-strippers. Which, of course, happens all the time. It's not just the cheesy dialogue or horrendous acting that does this movie in; it's the total absence of coherence. The whole vampire angle comes completely out of left field, and it's frustrating how no characters in the movie are at all shocked when the vampires show up.
4 - "Solaris"?Like "Lost In Translation,"? this George Clooney flick suffers from an inoperable case of nothing-freakin'-happens syndrome. The film is extremely hard to follow, but as near as I could tell, there's a scientist played by Clooney who travels to a faraway space station near an alien world after his wife dies. While on the space station, his wife keeps reappearing and killing herself again, so, naturally, Clooney's character decides to crash the space station on the alien planet, because this will somehow bring his wife back to life permanently. None of this awful mess is ever explained, which doesn't really matter because viewers are liable to fall asleep halfway through this cinematic tranquilizer. This thing makes Barbiturates look like Flintstone vitamins.
3 - "Gigli"This notorious bomb starring Bennifer is about two hitmen (or hitpeople since Jennifer Lopez is one of them) assigned to kidnap the mentally retarded brother of a federal DA. Along the way, it is revealed that Lopez's character is a lesbian, which is inconsequential because she still falls in love with Ben Affleck's character because, as she puts it, he's essentially a woman at heart. The only thing I gained from this stinker, besides a splitting migraine, was the lesson that attractive lesbians will find me desirable if I act like a woman. Or maybe that's just in Hollywood.
2 - "Spawn"?"Spawn"? is a superhero movie about a guy who dies and promises to lead the devil's army of evil minions. In return for leading an army of demons, Satan (who's really just a big softie, as it turns out) gives this guy the name of Spawn and a magical cape that can stop bullets and transform him into various household objects, like a wall or a chair. Spawn also has these chains that can bite off people's heads (I still haven't figured that one out yet) and a suit that is only useful for making his eyes glow green. This "Spider-Man"? wannabe is too awful for words, especially after the introduction of Spawn's arch-nemesis, who turns out to be an overweight clown with poor dental hygiene.
1 - "Resident Evil: Apocalypse"This movie, about a team of people in a deserted city staving off a zombie invasion, truly deserves to be called the worst film of all time. The hero (a female assassin who decides that the best attire for slaughtering zombies are cut-offs and a mesh tank top) leads a band of social misfits through a horrible plot helped along by a putrid script. Halfway through the movie, a T.V. reporter who's been videotaping the zombies promises that she will sell the tape and get rich off of it. Then she smiles and laughs before saying, "But only if we all get out of here alive." This lady has just seen somebody get their foot chewed off by a mob of crazed zombies, and she's laughing nonchalantly about how everyone's going to die. Trust me, you'll be wishing for death by disembowelment long before this one is over.
The 10 Worst Actors And Actresses Of All Time -
10) Keanu Reeves
9) Bruce Willis
8) Steven Seagal
7) Madonna
6) Emilio Estevez
5) Barbara Streisand
4) Cuba Gooding Jr. post-Jerry Maguire
3) Ben Affleck
2) Jennifer Lopez
1) Any of the Baldwin brothers