OK, Ann has tagged me for the Truly Bad Movie Meme, and I am ready to rise (sink?) to the occasion. I just watched 12 Monkeys on DVD last night, and that was probably bad enough to qualify, but I think I have a few worse ones. For me, the movies that make the grade are the ones that I couldn’t even bear to sit all the way through (so if they miraculously became marvelous half way through, I confess I never found out).
One of these is Northfork. Being from Montana, I was initially intrigued by the background plot, which is the building of the Hungry Horse Dam, and its flooding of a town, not far from where I grew up. But, alas, while a great movie could have been made from that premise, I found Northfork simply pretentious and, worse, dull. After a while, I just could not stand the sight of the four weird angels that kept appearing in what I guess was supposed to be a dreamlike way.
But Dogville was also a real dog of a movie, probably more so. Again, I may be influenced by my Montana roots, but how could a movie be based in the Rocky Mountains and not only fail to show the stunning beauty of that setting (at least the cinematography in Northfork was hauntingly beautiful), but actually fail to use any real setting at all? There were just chalk outlines on the ground, and the actors pretended to turn knobs and open doors that were not there. I kept hoping that this was a weird introduction and that a real movie would soon begin, but sadly it did not.
Wow… I have to say that when I initially discovered Ann had tagged me, I felt the vaguely sinking sensation I got as a kid receiving a chain letter. But griping about bad movies is strangely cathartic. Thanks, Ann! (And thanks to my husband for reminding me of these awful movies.) I tag Paul Caron.
Huh, Froomkin thought it felt like a chain letter too:
http://www.discourse.net/archives/2007/11/truly_bad_movie_meme.html
Sorry!
Well, I’m a serious film buff (belong to three film societes) and I know a stinker when I see one. My hands down winner is “Lions for Lambs,” an embarrassingly preachy flick that has Meryl Streep as a TV newswoman tottering on the downside of her career enjoying a “frank” interview with a dazzlingly handsome U.S. senator played by Tom Cruise. The senator is not simply a hawk about National Security but a zealous advocate of a new tactical approach to winning in Afghanistan that you know from the beginning probably has two major flaws: conception and execution. There can’t be legislators like him, right?
Into the muddle is a tendentious one-on-one dialogue between an aging academic, Robert Redford, and a student who just isn’t living up to his potential. The only thing missing from the professor’s ex cathedra sermon on the importance of individual involvement is his turning to the audience and asking all to join in prayer.
Redford directed this bomb which in no way illuminates anything about American foreign policy or, as importantly, that people interacting in discussing these issues aren’t made of cardboard and running on Energizer batteries.
On the plus side…sorry, there ain’t any.
I’m not sure that, “how could you fail to use any real settings” is a fair critique. It doesn’t engage the movie on its own terms, but proposes that instead the movie should have been a different movie.
(Disclosure: I haven’t seen Dogville, and based on the reviews I’ve seen, don’t particularly want to.)
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