As proven in last week's column, I spend way too much of my time in the dark. Unfortunately, not all that time is time well spent. I have seen more than my share of lousy movies. So the flipside of last week's piece is the following list of the ten worst movies I have seen. This does not include such fare as the Porky's or Police Academy movies; those movies didn't strive to be good. Instead, these movies are ones that had some semblance of artistic ambition and thus were all the more disappointing because somewhere from start to finish, something went wrong and caused major sucking.
10) Color Purple- Steven Spielberg's first attempt to be a serious filmmaker demonstrated what he does well and what even his most popular movies lack; he's a master at creating atmosphere and using film's ability to create a sense of wonderment, but his characters in this movie are never developed and the contrast between good and evil isn't taken beyond the most simplistic level. The serious themes of the story deserved better.
9) The Piano- A film very well made, with strong performances, yet the story is about the rape of a mentally disturbed woman. Love in the nineties?
8) Dances With Wolves- I like Kevin Costner, and though I haven't seen Robin Hood or his upcoming Waterworld (which has Hollywood abuzz with comparisons to the failure of Ishtar) this is his worst movie. Dances With Wolves isn't so much a bad movie as it is a movie with a bad message. All the white men in the movie are caricatures with the exception of Costner himself, and that ultimately the Indian woman falls in love with the one good white man, and that he saves the Indians means this movie is so politically incorrect as to affirm the crimes the United States was founded on and has tried hard to forget.
7) Beauty and the Beast- The conservative politics and sexism that exists in most Disney movies can somehow be overlooked because of the artistry of the animation, and the strength of the stories. Not the case here. You spend the entire movie telling about how inner beauty is more important than outer ugliness, and then you end with a handsome prince winning the woman. Explain please.
6) Return of the Jedi- The conclusion to the Star Wars trilogy that betrayed the first two movies' interesting characters and the setup between good and evil being the opposite sides of the same coin. How can you justify ending such impressive storytelling with a smiling Obi Wan and Yoda singing with a bunch of Muppets?
5) Rocky IV- This might fall in the Porkys category because when you get this far down into a series of sequels, you are bound to lose what original inspiration there was. But what is even more criminal about a movie that ends with an American hero winning over a Russian audience is that the first Rocky was a very good movie. The first movie was about the streets of Philadelphia and the eccentricity of its characters. The following two movies at least were entertaining (in fact in number three Stallone plays with the theme of getting spoiled and losing what one originally fights for.) Rocky should have quit while he was on top.
4) The Doors- Oliver Stone's movies are sledgehammers of style overwrought with pretentiousness. His characters are never people but props for messages. In this movie one can see how Stone could relate to Jim Morrison- an artist who could have used a dose of humility and whose worst vice was taking himself way too seriously.
3) Blue Velvet- Often heralded for its quirkiness and its offbeat style, this movie exploits its lead actress and the mixture of David Lynch's juvenile humor and the serious theme of abuse, just doesn't mix. The closing scene with Isabella Rosellini hanging completely naked (literally and figuratively) is disturbing because the movie doesn't earn the scene, and no one in its audience seems to care.
2) Boxing Helena- Poor filmmaking runs in the family. Jennifer Lynch's debut as a director shows some of her father's style but she is in way over her head with the story of being so obsessed with another that you mutilate them. Sherilyn Fenn's character of Helena is so bitchy and unemotional even after losing her limbs, that it competes with the main character's creepiness and lack of charisma. This is truly one movie that made me regret wasting two hours of my life on such drivel.
1) The Natural- How bad does an ulcer have to be to bleed through a man's uniform? How bad can a movie be that paints its hero in such heroic terms that by the end I wanted him to fail, utterly bored by the absolute predictability of it all. Growing up, I enjoyed many a bad baseball movie, from Fear Strikes Out, to Pride of the Yankees. But this wasn't merely a bad baseball movie it was an exercise in propped up self indulgence. Redford takes a story about one man falling to his vices, coming back and ultimately falling to the same vices, and turns it into a vanity flick. Glenn Close outlined in a halo of light, did anyone ever hear of the concept of subtlety?
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