WORST FILMS OF 2006...ACCORDING TO THE JAMES

Howdy all, TJ here. This post is for my pal, EZ E aka Bear, aka The Meat-Man, aka The Bloody Butcher, aka Lesbian-Candy, aka Mr. Mimi Layton. Anyway, EZ E claims that I like too many films, and always challenges me to name ones I can't stand. I take challenges...in fact, I recall purchasing a Justin Timberlake cd in Atl recently that EZ himself desired, but was too intimidated to buy. Well, here is my Worst List of '06, and I've limited it to 5 films that I personally had to endure while watching them. I didn't include the obvious awful films that I wasn't dumb enough to pay to see...you know, films that like human excrement, you can smell the stink on them from a mile away. Putrescent gems like The Omen remake, Blood Diamond, Fast & The Furious Tokyo Drift, The Pink Panther, and You, Me, & Dupree. The filmmakers and intelligenstsia behind these cinematic life-stealers should be flayed alive and dropped in acidic bubble baths. Anyway, on with my list in descending order...saving the "best" for last:

5. X-Men 3 The Last Stand: Let me say from the beginning that for once, I don't blame the director here. Brett Rattner (Rush Hour, Red Dragon) was basically brought in as a "jobber" to complete a production that had already been bailed on twice (Singer & Vaughn) and was working to bring the film in on a deadline demanded by the personal ego of Tim Rothman, head of 20th Century Fox Studios, since Rothman was engaged in a pissing contest with Bryan Singer over his departure to make Superman Returns. (Personal Note for everything Rothman did to sabotage X-Men in the beginning, desiring to claim credit when it was a success later, and everything he did to lose Bryan Singer and cost the fans a great trilogy: SCREW YOU ROTHMAN...DIE!!!) The end product was X-Men 3: The Last Stand. I'm thinking that folks came up with that title after watching early screenings of the film, since it was one horrible pile of shit. The opportunities squandered with the quintissential X-Men story, The Phoenix Saga, are incalculable. What is seen is double to triple the usual amount of characters on screen...which equal less characterization (Hell, we learned all there was to know about Angel in the film from the previews...except his schmaltzy look at his father after his messianic rescue effort), a Wolverine that I suppose uses his incredible healing factor to quickly overcome his grief over the death of Jean Grey (it took him 1 scene), and the complete and total gutting of Jean Grey's character into a monosyllabic-terminatoresque monster role, where Famke Janssen had about as much emoting to do as Michael Myers in Halloween. I hated this film on pretty much ever level, excluding the geek-out enjoyment of watching Beast on the screen. Compared to 1 and 2, which are in my top Comic-adaptation films of all time (post coming soon), this one is like a phallic-shaped weed with covered in manure beside 2 long-stem, immaculately groomed roses.

4. The Departed: Yes, I know. I said it, and I meant it. I know it's Scorcese and I freely acknowledge that he is one of the true masters of the artform working today. I also "like" some of the film...Nicholson is awesome as usual, Damon is good, and I like Wahlberg now...in fact his performances in Boogie Nights, I Heart Huckabees, and The Departed almost make me forget "Marky Mark," and Planet of the Apes. Now we get to the real problems: 1) It's an inferior remake of a better film: Infernal Affairs. The rule is that if you remake something, it has to be better...and the ones that usually work are re-envisionings, not revisions...like Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, or Scorcese's own Cape Fear. Unfortunately, this is not better than the wonderful Hong Kong flick I watched the year before, and it's not re-envisioned: the whole plot scenario with the building and the cops and mob showing up at the same time is taken directly from IA. Now we come to the more glaring problem with The Departed: Leonardo Dicaprio. How this guy convinces anybody that he's a tough guy is beyond me. I'm not saying that this guy can't act...I thought he was amazing in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, and very good in Catch Me If You Can, and The Aviator. The problem is when he tries to play tough guys that I start to laugh my ass off...and no actor, not even Daniel Day-Lewis himself possesses the craft to act like Dicaprio is someone to be afraid of, or intimidated by. The roles he plays well acknowledge or make use of his feminine features and lack of masculinity and it works fine for him. However, Dicaprio and Scorcese have missed the boat when they think he's the perfect fit for Gangs of New York and The Departed. What baffles me is WHY Scorcese has adopted "Leo" as his new on-camera persona, after he worked with "Bobby" (Deniro) for so long. Some film critics have explained this as Scorcese literally exploring the masculine with Deniro's "raging" presence and now intent on uncovering the feminine with Dicaprio. I for one, am sick of it, and laugh at all those who buy into Dicaprio's sad-ass tough guy schtick...Go see him butcher a South African accent as a "bad-ass" in Blood Diamond while you're at it. I thought that perhaps Scorcese might be grooming Day-Lewis as Deniro's heir-apparent after Age of Innocence and Gangs of New York, but Day-Lewis doesn't work fast enough...even by Scorcese's standards. I put this on my worst list for wasting a potentially great Scorcese film with such an obvious poor casting choice.

3. Superman Returns: You know, the one consolation I had when I heard that Singer was leaving Fox and X-Men, was that he was going to be heading up the Superman reboot. I am an avid Bryan Singer fan, with The Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil, and X-Men 1 & 2 being some of my favorite films. I was also excited that Singer was going to use former Suspects alumni Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor. Cool...very cool. Still yet more shockingly, and amazing, was that Singer planned to continue the groundwork from Superman 1 & 2 that Richard Donner had laid. Awesome!!! Then...things started to go down. Kate Bosworth was cast as Lois Lane based on...what, exactly? Her fine performance in the moronic and abyssmal Blue Crush? Win a Date with Tad Hamilton? Or was it that she was in Spacey's Bobby Darin bio-pic, Beyond the Sea? None of these roles captured the spirit of an aggressive, tough, ballsy but hot Lois Lane. However, I could let that slide...for Singer, I mean he hadn't failed me so far. Then the casting of Superman: Brandon Routh. Okay, I saw this guy...and he looked like a good Clark Kent, if a little young. However, I kept getting a little uneasy that no sign of him acting in a scene was available even all the way up until the trailer. When it finally came time to see the film, I was apprehensive, but I had faith in Singer. Folks, that's what I get for having faith. The film's narrative didn't bother me like it did many...although when I thought Singer was going to "follow" the work of Donner, I didn't think that meant directly imitate plot points, (Luthor's after real estate, again?), or borrow lines from those films in a failed attempt at homage that became theft. Spacey and Parker Posey were fine...but Bosworth was horrible and looked so out of place with the tinted dark hair, and Routh...Routh's performance was a bad, bad, bad Christopher Reeve impression done by an actor who doesn't possess a fraction of Reeve's charm, charisma, or humor. I won't even add comment on his physicality, except that from the side he's so thin that if I punched him in the gut, it might go through his back...and Superman doesn't have fey or male-modelesque looks. He's a simple farmboy, bumbling city news employee, and a demigod in a cape...no time for eyebrow plucking. Superman The Movie made me believe a man could fly, and Reeve was the perfect embodiment of a godlike hero who was a farmboy at heart. Anyone with an ounce of pretension could never be Superman, and Reeve became a legend. Unfortunately, all Superman Returns made me believe was that even the best directors make mistakes...and this one cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and jeopardizes the cinematic future of one of pop-culture's greatest icons.

2. The Lady in the Water: M. Night, M. Night, M. Night...this was the "make or break it" film, with The Sixth Sense being great, Unbreakable being a work of art, and then...The Village. The Village strained the confidence of Disney's development staff, enough that they were ready for your ramblings in The Lady in the Water...and they passed. Maybe it was your intention to use their money for scenes that had nothing to do with the plot, but to serve your own ego when you included the character of the movie critic. Get over yourself, dude. The Village sucked, and critics didn't make it suck...you did. So you find a new backer, determined that you're right, and the suits don't understand your genius, and that "narfs" are cool...Get some help, man!!! I like Paul Giamatti in everything, that's not the problem. It's Bryce Dallas Howard for one thing...extremely unattractive and unappealing to look at, and the story itself is anticlimactic, silly, and has a glaring flaw: the complete and total lack of any skepticism over the B/S raised in the film's narrative at all. Everybody just hears this fairy tale crap and immediately shrugs and goes "Yeah, we've got to get involved." WTF? I mean, what about 1 guy who hears that she's a chick named Story from the Blue World and there's a grass-turfy-looking monster after her and says "Blow it out your ass, I think you're full of it." Wouldn't that have added a sense of realism to this otherwise completely sad and assinine melodrama? Okay fine, if she's enchanted and people just immediately flock to her...shouldn't someone at least notice this and comment on that so we get it? I still don't think a skeptic could have helped this debacle of a film succeed, but it bothered me endlessly. Anyway, I hope that M. Night Shymalan comes back with some great stuff, because he's made two awesome flicks...but I fear that he might suffer from some of the success-driven demential that plagued Orson Welles after Citizen Kane.

1. The Davinci Code: You waited for it, and here it is...ladies and gentlemen last year's worst film according to TJ was another collaboration between Ron Howard and Tom Hanks (Splash, Apollo 13.) I've never been a fan of Ron Howard's directing (A Beautiful Mind, Ransom, The Missing)...he's never innovative or particularly interesting with his camera choices, and does much of the same banal material, but Hanks on the project, bringing his Gary Cooperesque brand of sincerity left me a glimmer of hope that this might be at least, enjoyable. Audrey Tatou, Paul Bettany and Alfred Molina being cast lent even further hope, but landing Sir Ian McKellan made this a must-see film for me. Unfortunately, it turns out that Ron Howard could only turn out Ron Howard material, and Tom Hanks was woefully miscast as the inexplicably mulleted Robert Langdon. I have never seen Hanks as an aggressive character, or even what is called a "handkerchief actor" where the actor attempts to steal every scene their in with behavior or gestures. However, the complete passivity of Hanks' Langdon rendered the film almost unwatchable to me during my one and only time ever wasting hours of my life on it. Audrey Tatou made more moves than him, and kicked more cinematic ass as his character just watched everything happened around him. No, I wasn't wanting him to be Indiana Jones, but at least act like a man. It felt like I was watching a classroom presentation on Europe: Architecture & History...with about as much tension or suspense. That much talent in a film based on the world's hottest book (besides all things Harry Potter) and this is the result? That's why The Davinci Code makes the top of the list as '06's worst film of the year.

So that's it folks, and FOTJ. Let me know if I picked on any of your favorites of last year, or if we share the bond of suffering for having survived watching some of these celluloid criminal acts.