Post by StevePulaski on Dec 31, 2009 22:43:10 GMT -5
Richard Roeper's Top 100 Films Movies of the Decade.
1. “I Know Who Killed Me” (2007). Poor Lindsay Lohan. At the outset of the 2000s, she was an adorable tweener who had won raves for the remake of “The Parent Trap”; by 2004 she was established as a rising young star, thanks to her winning performances in films such as “Mean Girls” and “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.” But within a few years, Lohan would become the poster girl for bad behavior, on and off movie sets, as her name was consistently attached to stories that contained phrases like “exhaustion” and “unprofessional” and “DUI” and “rehab.” Lohan’s promising career fractured like an egg dropped on the floor with her over-the-top, trying-out-for-the-high-school-play performance in “I Know Who Killed Me,” an absurd thriller that goes from lurid to laughable to your-jaw-just-drops-at-the-ending.
A decade after playing adorable twins in “The Parent Trap,” Lohan has another dual role of sorts in “I Know Who Killed Me.” She’s bad in both roles. First she’s Aubrey Fleming, a good-girl college student who is kidnapped by a serial killer sicko. When Aubrey wakes up in the hospital, minus one hand and one leg, she has no memory of her previous life and insists she’s actually Dakota Moss, a pole dancer in a low-rent strip club. Upgrade? We think not. It gets from worse from there. “I Know Who Killed Me” is a lurid, low-rent, cheesy B-movie with cheap special effects, an incomprehensible script, a grating score and horrid performances from just about everyone who steps in front of the camera. It’s trash like this that gives garbage a bad name.
2. “Battlefield Earth” (2000). For years John Travolta was hoping (threatening?) to use his star power to bring Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s 819-page opus to the big screen. The vision finally came true in the spring of 2000, and the result was a film quickly pegged as a bomb of epic proportions. In this laughably silly sci-fi flick, Travolta delivers the worst performance of his famously up-and-down career as Terl, head of security for the Psychlos, who hail from the planet, um Psychlo, and are in control of the planet Earth. Sporting ridiculous dreadlocks and wearing a costume with a big bulge in a strategic place (unfortunately it’s not his brain), Travolta affects an embarrassing accent as he attempts to fend off an uprising from a band of humans. From Forest Whitaker to Barry Pepper, everyone in the talented cast looks mortified. Except Travolta. He thought he was making “Star Wars” for the new millennium, but he was actually starring in a cross between “One Million Years B.C.” and “Planet 9 From Outer Space.” I knew when I saw this movie that no matter what happened to cinema thereafter, there would be a place for “Battlefield Earth” on my list of the worst movies in the history of, well, history.
3. “White Chicks” (2004). Here is a movie that asks us to believe everyone in the story is amazingly obtuse. Only a dimwit or a blind person would fail to figure out that the two hotel heiresses flouncing about in the Hamptons are actually two well-built black men wearing some of the worst disguises every seen. Sporting whiteface and prosthetics and dressed in drag, Shawn and Marlon Wayans play FBI agents impersonating a couple of spoiled social princess. (Don’t ask.) Amazingly, everyone falls for the ruse—even longtime friends of the girls—despite the fact these guys look like a couple of weird alien creatures. Never mind that the jokes don’t work; this is a movie that should have been halted in pre-production when it should have been obvious that even in a broad comedy, the “disguises” were horrendous.
4. “Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever” (2002). In the “Top Critics” section on Rotten Tomatoes, this film earned the near-mythical, Blutarski grade-point average: 0.0. That means that not a single major media critic in the world recommended this incomprehensible action film from a director who goes by the name of “Kaos.” The easy insult of this all-action, no-plot dud would be to call it nothing more than a video game on the big screen—but that’s an insult to every video game since Pong. Lucy Liu is Sever and Antonio Banderas is Ecks, and they pretty much refrain from any meaningful dialogue while they (and their stunt doubles) engage in all sorts of pyrotechnics, set to the beat of the most annoying soundtrack of the decade. This movie will give you a migraine.
5. “Catwoman” (2004). Talk about a startling transformation: Halle Berry goes from Oscar to Razzie in a single bound! Cracking a whip and dressed like a dominatrix while leaving the acting chops at home, Berry plays a wallflower (yeah right) named Patience who is murdered by her boss, brought back to life by some sort of supernatural cat and turned into Catwoman. It’s hilarious when Benjamin Bratt’s police officer can’t discern Catwoman’s true identity. Dude, that’s your new girlfriend in a Mardi Gras mask that doesn’t cover the lower half of her face. The low point comes when Berry faces off with an overacting Sharon Stone in a battle one reviewer called “the most embarrassing screen catfight since Krystal and Alexis went at it in ‘Dynasty.’ ” Yeah, but “Dynasty” had better dialogue.
6. “Son of the Mask” (2005). I believe someone once said no sequel that begins with the words, “Son of,” is any good. Here’s Exhibit A in that theory. Jamie Kennedy takes over the reigns from Jim Carrey in the same way Corey Benjamin replaced Michael Jordan on the Bulls. This woeful follow-up has Kennedy’s Tim putting on the mask and then spawning a horribly obnoxious CGI baby who can shift shapes, tap dance–and kill a movie dead in its tracks. Of all the creepy dancing/talking/singing computerized babies to appear in movies or on TV, this creature is the creepiest. By far. What an ugly movie.
7. “Gigli” (2003). Remember when Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez were THE celebrity couple, with Ben doing the whole GQ makeover and Jen parading him about like a Ken doll? Remember when there was so much bad buzz about “Gigli” that we were almost looking forward to it to see how bad it could be? It couldn’t be that bad, right?
Ahem.
“Gigli” lived down to the hype and then some. Affleck was a thug named Larry Gigli, I kid you not, and J. Lo played Ricki, a lesbian gangster hired to look after Larry while Larry looks after the Rainman-esque younger brother of a federal prosecutor. The unbelievably dim Larry falls for the preening Ricki, and the kid keeps prattling on about “the Baywatch,” and after we’re subjected to two hours of the most excruciating dialogue of the decade and two incredibly painful cameos from Al Pacino and Christopher Walken, we’re smacked in the face with an ending that’s supposed to heartwarming but is beyond ludicrous. Affleck and Lopez reportedly fell in love while making this film. No wonder it didn’t last. Every time they looked in each other’s eyes, they’d have been reminded of “Gigli.”
8. “The Love Guru” (2008). When Mike Myers is on, he’s a comic genius. When he’s off his game and there’s no one around to call him on it, we get “The Love Guru.” To paraphrase Roger Ebert, it takes a truly talented person to make a movie so amazingly awful. Watching Myers flounce about as a New Age guru in a film that believes Mariska Hargitay’s name should be used again and again and again as a punch line, you just wince. This movie is so deadly it has a residual effect on your funnybone. You’d have to chase “The Love Guru” with viewings of “Annie Hall,” “A Day at the Races” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” just to regain your sense of humor.
9. “Bad Boys II” (2003), aka “Cool Guys Don’t Look at Explosions.” Not even the considerable charms of Will Smith can save this incredibly violent, nasty, mean-spirited, excruciatingly long (146 minutes) sequel. The ingredients for this film include two mugging stars (Smith and Martin Lawrence); lots and lots and LOTS of product placement; a dose of dismemberment; a generous supply of explosions, beatings and shootings; countless lame one-liners; a flying carcass; dozens of flying cars; homophobic “humor”; and a Hummer bowling over tin shanties in Cuba, thus turning Third World poverty into an action punchline.
10. “The Hottie and the Nottie” (2005). Paris Hilton pouts, swishes, poses and sashays, but never actually comes close to acting in this cynical, hypocritical, lifeless comedy. Whispering her lines in a vain attempt to camouflage her astonishing lack of acting skills, Hilton’s Cristabel is a bimbo who’s best friends with the hideously grotesque June. That’s not my assessment of June—that’s how the filmmakers created her, complete with bald spots, black teeth, and festering boils. But as June’s appearance improves, her personality begins to shine, which kinda defeats the whole “beauty is only skin deep” message. Ah, but why am I analyzing the PLOT of “The Hottie and the Nottie”? It’s a Paris Hilton vehicle, and Paris Hilton couldn’t even carry the homemade sex tape in which she played herself, let alone a feature film.
11. “The Next Best Thing” (2000)
12. “The Women” (2008)
13. “Running With Scissors” (2006)
14. “The Dukes of Hazzard” (2005)
15. “All About Steve” (2009)
16. “Down to Earth” (2001)
17. “The Sweetest Thing” (2002)
18. “Dreamcatcher” (2003)
19. “The Whole Ten Yards” (2004)
20. “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” (2005)
21. “The Hills Have Eyes” (2006)
22. “Bratz” (2007)
23. “What Happens in Vegas” (2008)
24. “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (2000)
25. “Corky Romano” (2001)
26. “Norbit” (2007)
27. “Half Past Dead” (2002)
28. “The Tuxedo” (2002)
29. “Sweet November” (2001)
30. “Godsend” (2004)
31. “Monster-in-Law” (2005)
32. “RV” (2006)
33. Date Movie” (2006), “Meet the Spartans” (2008) and all the rest of those hokey, amazingly unfunny spoofs.
34. “Beautiful” (2000)
35. “On the Line” (2001)
36. “Freddy Got Fingered” (2001)
37. “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” (2003)
38.“Boat Trip” (2003)
39. “Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed” (2004)
40. “The Longest Yard” (2005)
41. “Fur” (2006)
42. “Southland Tales” (2007)
43. “10,000 B.C.” (2008)
44. “The Ugly Truth” (2009)
45. All those fucking “Saw” movies.
46. “Say It Isn’t So” (2001)
47. “I Spy” (2002)
48. “License to Wed” (2006)
49. “The Stepford Wives” (2004)
50. “Stealth” (2005)
51. “Just My Luck” (2006)
52. “Unaccompanied Minors” (2006)
53. “88 Minutes” (2008)
54. “Old Dogs” (2009)
55. “Joe Dirt” (2000)
56. “Scooby-Doo” (2002)
57. “Good Boy!” (2003)
58. “Good Luck Chuck” (2007)
59. “The Reaping” (2007)
60. “Mr. Deeds” (2002)
61. “Fly Me to the Moon” (2008)
62. “Tranformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen” (2009)
63. “See Spot Run” (2001)
64. “Rush Hour 3” (2007)
65. “Dumb and Dumberer” (2003)
66. “Thunderbirds” (2004)
67. “Harold and Kumar Escape…” (2008)
68. “The Man” (2005)
69. “The Shaggy Dog” (2006)
70. “Funny Games” (2008)
71. “New in Town” (2009)
72. “From Justin to Kelly” (2003)
73. “Monkeybone” (2001)
74. “Perfect Stranger” (2007)
75. “Guess Who” (2005)
76. “The Guardian” (2006)
77. “Over Her Dead Body” (2008)
78. “2012” (2009)
79. “Saving Silverman” (2001)
80. “Just Married” (2003)
81. “Taxi” (2004)
82. “Bewitched” (2005)
83. “Flyboys” (2006)
84. “Love Happens” (2009)
85. “Tomcats” (2001)
86. “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (2003)
87. “Connie and Carla” (2004)
88. “The Legend of Zorro” (2005)
89. “The Wicker Man” (2006)
90. “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” (2008)
91. “Whiteout” (2009)
92. “Witless Protection” (2008)
93. “Step Up” (2006)
94. “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” (2007)
95. “Daddy Day Camp” (2007)
96. “Four Christmases” (2008)
97. “Because I Said So” (2007)
98. “Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous” (2005)
99. “Swept Away” (2002)
100. “Deck the Halls” (2006)
1. “I Know Who Killed Me” (2007). Poor Lindsay Lohan. At the outset of the 2000s, she was an adorable tweener who had won raves for the remake of “The Parent Trap”; by 2004 she was established as a rising young star, thanks to her winning performances in films such as “Mean Girls” and “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.” But within a few years, Lohan would become the poster girl for bad behavior, on and off movie sets, as her name was consistently attached to stories that contained phrases like “exhaustion” and “unprofessional” and “DUI” and “rehab.” Lohan’s promising career fractured like an egg dropped on the floor with her over-the-top, trying-out-for-the-high-school-play performance in “I Know Who Killed Me,” an absurd thriller that goes from lurid to laughable to your-jaw-just-drops-at-the-ending.
A decade after playing adorable twins in “The Parent Trap,” Lohan has another dual role of sorts in “I Know Who Killed Me.” She’s bad in both roles. First she’s Aubrey Fleming, a good-girl college student who is kidnapped by a serial killer sicko. When Aubrey wakes up in the hospital, minus one hand and one leg, she has no memory of her previous life and insists she’s actually Dakota Moss, a pole dancer in a low-rent strip club. Upgrade? We think not. It gets from worse from there. “I Know Who Killed Me” is a lurid, low-rent, cheesy B-movie with cheap special effects, an incomprehensible script, a grating score and horrid performances from just about everyone who steps in front of the camera. It’s trash like this that gives garbage a bad name.
2. “Battlefield Earth” (2000). For years John Travolta was hoping (threatening?) to use his star power to bring Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s 819-page opus to the big screen. The vision finally came true in the spring of 2000, and the result was a film quickly pegged as a bomb of epic proportions. In this laughably silly sci-fi flick, Travolta delivers the worst performance of his famously up-and-down career as Terl, head of security for the Psychlos, who hail from the planet, um Psychlo, and are in control of the planet Earth. Sporting ridiculous dreadlocks and wearing a costume with a big bulge in a strategic place (unfortunately it’s not his brain), Travolta affects an embarrassing accent as he attempts to fend off an uprising from a band of humans. From Forest Whitaker to Barry Pepper, everyone in the talented cast looks mortified. Except Travolta. He thought he was making “Star Wars” for the new millennium, but he was actually starring in a cross between “One Million Years B.C.” and “Planet 9 From Outer Space.” I knew when I saw this movie that no matter what happened to cinema thereafter, there would be a place for “Battlefield Earth” on my list of the worst movies in the history of, well, history.
3. “White Chicks” (2004). Here is a movie that asks us to believe everyone in the story is amazingly obtuse. Only a dimwit or a blind person would fail to figure out that the two hotel heiresses flouncing about in the Hamptons are actually two well-built black men wearing some of the worst disguises every seen. Sporting whiteface and prosthetics and dressed in drag, Shawn and Marlon Wayans play FBI agents impersonating a couple of spoiled social princess. (Don’t ask.) Amazingly, everyone falls for the ruse—even longtime friends of the girls—despite the fact these guys look like a couple of weird alien creatures. Never mind that the jokes don’t work; this is a movie that should have been halted in pre-production when it should have been obvious that even in a broad comedy, the “disguises” were horrendous.
4. “Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever” (2002). In the “Top Critics” section on Rotten Tomatoes, this film earned the near-mythical, Blutarski grade-point average: 0.0. That means that not a single major media critic in the world recommended this incomprehensible action film from a director who goes by the name of “Kaos.” The easy insult of this all-action, no-plot dud would be to call it nothing more than a video game on the big screen—but that’s an insult to every video game since Pong. Lucy Liu is Sever and Antonio Banderas is Ecks, and they pretty much refrain from any meaningful dialogue while they (and their stunt doubles) engage in all sorts of pyrotechnics, set to the beat of the most annoying soundtrack of the decade. This movie will give you a migraine.
5. “Catwoman” (2004). Talk about a startling transformation: Halle Berry goes from Oscar to Razzie in a single bound! Cracking a whip and dressed like a dominatrix while leaving the acting chops at home, Berry plays a wallflower (yeah right) named Patience who is murdered by her boss, brought back to life by some sort of supernatural cat and turned into Catwoman. It’s hilarious when Benjamin Bratt’s police officer can’t discern Catwoman’s true identity. Dude, that’s your new girlfriend in a Mardi Gras mask that doesn’t cover the lower half of her face. The low point comes when Berry faces off with an overacting Sharon Stone in a battle one reviewer called “the most embarrassing screen catfight since Krystal and Alexis went at it in ‘Dynasty.’ ” Yeah, but “Dynasty” had better dialogue.
6. “Son of the Mask” (2005). I believe someone once said no sequel that begins with the words, “Son of,” is any good. Here’s Exhibit A in that theory. Jamie Kennedy takes over the reigns from Jim Carrey in the same way Corey Benjamin replaced Michael Jordan on the Bulls. This woeful follow-up has Kennedy’s Tim putting on the mask and then spawning a horribly obnoxious CGI baby who can shift shapes, tap dance–and kill a movie dead in its tracks. Of all the creepy dancing/talking/singing computerized babies to appear in movies or on TV, this creature is the creepiest. By far. What an ugly movie.
7. “Gigli” (2003). Remember when Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez were THE celebrity couple, with Ben doing the whole GQ makeover and Jen parading him about like a Ken doll? Remember when there was so much bad buzz about “Gigli” that we were almost looking forward to it to see how bad it could be? It couldn’t be that bad, right?
Ahem.
“Gigli” lived down to the hype and then some. Affleck was a thug named Larry Gigli, I kid you not, and J. Lo played Ricki, a lesbian gangster hired to look after Larry while Larry looks after the Rainman-esque younger brother of a federal prosecutor. The unbelievably dim Larry falls for the preening Ricki, and the kid keeps prattling on about “the Baywatch,” and after we’re subjected to two hours of the most excruciating dialogue of the decade and two incredibly painful cameos from Al Pacino and Christopher Walken, we’re smacked in the face with an ending that’s supposed to heartwarming but is beyond ludicrous. Affleck and Lopez reportedly fell in love while making this film. No wonder it didn’t last. Every time they looked in each other’s eyes, they’d have been reminded of “Gigli.”
8. “The Love Guru” (2008). When Mike Myers is on, he’s a comic genius. When he’s off his game and there’s no one around to call him on it, we get “The Love Guru.” To paraphrase Roger Ebert, it takes a truly talented person to make a movie so amazingly awful. Watching Myers flounce about as a New Age guru in a film that believes Mariska Hargitay’s name should be used again and again and again as a punch line, you just wince. This movie is so deadly it has a residual effect on your funnybone. You’d have to chase “The Love Guru” with viewings of “Annie Hall,” “A Day at the Races” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” just to regain your sense of humor.
9. “Bad Boys II” (2003), aka “Cool Guys Don’t Look at Explosions.” Not even the considerable charms of Will Smith can save this incredibly violent, nasty, mean-spirited, excruciatingly long (146 minutes) sequel. The ingredients for this film include two mugging stars (Smith and Martin Lawrence); lots and lots and LOTS of product placement; a dose of dismemberment; a generous supply of explosions, beatings and shootings; countless lame one-liners; a flying carcass; dozens of flying cars; homophobic “humor”; and a Hummer bowling over tin shanties in Cuba, thus turning Third World poverty into an action punchline.
10. “The Hottie and the Nottie” (2005). Paris Hilton pouts, swishes, poses and sashays, but never actually comes close to acting in this cynical, hypocritical, lifeless comedy. Whispering her lines in a vain attempt to camouflage her astonishing lack of acting skills, Hilton’s Cristabel is a bimbo who’s best friends with the hideously grotesque June. That’s not my assessment of June—that’s how the filmmakers created her, complete with bald spots, black teeth, and festering boils. But as June’s appearance improves, her personality begins to shine, which kinda defeats the whole “beauty is only skin deep” message. Ah, but why am I analyzing the PLOT of “The Hottie and the Nottie”? It’s a Paris Hilton vehicle, and Paris Hilton couldn’t even carry the homemade sex tape in which she played herself, let alone a feature film.
11. “The Next Best Thing” (2000)
12. “The Women” (2008)
13. “Running With Scissors” (2006)
14. “The Dukes of Hazzard” (2005)
15. “All About Steve” (2009)
16. “Down to Earth” (2001)
17. “The Sweetest Thing” (2002)
18. “Dreamcatcher” (2003)
19. “The Whole Ten Yards” (2004)
20. “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” (2005)
21. “The Hills Have Eyes” (2006)
22. “Bratz” (2007)
23. “What Happens in Vegas” (2008)
24. “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (2000)
25. “Corky Romano” (2001)
26. “Norbit” (2007)
27. “Half Past Dead” (2002)
28. “The Tuxedo” (2002)
29. “Sweet November” (2001)
30. “Godsend” (2004)
31. “Monster-in-Law” (2005)
32. “RV” (2006)
33. Date Movie” (2006), “Meet the Spartans” (2008) and all the rest of those hokey, amazingly unfunny spoofs.
34. “Beautiful” (2000)
35. “On the Line” (2001)
36. “Freddy Got Fingered” (2001)
37. “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” (2003)
38.“Boat Trip” (2003)
39. “Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed” (2004)
40. “The Longest Yard” (2005)
41. “Fur” (2006)
42. “Southland Tales” (2007)
43. “10,000 B.C.” (2008)
44. “The Ugly Truth” (2009)
45. All those fucking “Saw” movies.
46. “Say It Isn’t So” (2001)
47. “I Spy” (2002)
48. “License to Wed” (2006)
49. “The Stepford Wives” (2004)
50. “Stealth” (2005)
51. “Just My Luck” (2006)
52. “Unaccompanied Minors” (2006)
53. “88 Minutes” (2008)
54. “Old Dogs” (2009)
55. “Joe Dirt” (2000)
56. “Scooby-Doo” (2002)
57. “Good Boy!” (2003)
58. “Good Luck Chuck” (2007)
59. “The Reaping” (2007)
60. “Mr. Deeds” (2002)
61. “Fly Me to the Moon” (2008)
62. “Tranformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen” (2009)
63. “See Spot Run” (2001)
64. “Rush Hour 3” (2007)
65. “Dumb and Dumberer” (2003)
66. “Thunderbirds” (2004)
67. “Harold and Kumar Escape…” (2008)
68. “The Man” (2005)
69. “The Shaggy Dog” (2006)
70. “Funny Games” (2008)
71. “New in Town” (2009)
72. “From Justin to Kelly” (2003)
73. “Monkeybone” (2001)
74. “Perfect Stranger” (2007)
75. “Guess Who” (2005)
76. “The Guardian” (2006)
77. “Over Her Dead Body” (2008)
78. “2012” (2009)
79. “Saving Silverman” (2001)
80. “Just Married” (2003)
81. “Taxi” (2004)
82. “Bewitched” (2005)
83. “Flyboys” (2006)
84. “Love Happens” (2009)
85. “Tomcats” (2001)
86. “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (2003)
87. “Connie and Carla” (2004)
88. “The Legend of Zorro” (2005)
89. “The Wicker Man” (2006)
90. “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” (2008)
91. “Whiteout” (2009)
92. “Witless Protection” (2008)
93. “Step Up” (2006)
94. “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” (2007)
95. “Daddy Day Camp” (2007)
96. “Four Christmases” (2008)
97. “Because I Said So” (2007)
98. “Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous” (2005)
99. “Swept Away” (2002)
100. “Deck the Halls” (2006)
