Worst of 2007 - Ten Worst Movies

10. The Number 23
Really, you should just go read my original review of this movie to see why I hate it so much. There is no fact or formula to anything written in the damn script. A mess if there ever was one.

09. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
This movie is just a great, big, giant bore of a movie. I wasn't interested in any aspect of it. The plot was stupid. The Silver Surfer shows up to destroy Earth and it's the Fantastic Four's job to stop them. The surfer was pretty cool... until it talked. Then it just became silly like the entire movie. The only good thing about the movie is Chris Evans shirtless. You could just google that...

08. Evan Almighty
This movie was not only not funny but also not entertaining in any way, shape or form. The only redeeming factors, for me, were Ed Helms and Jonah Hill who did their best to make the very lacking script work for them. Still, these two alone cannot save this tired, heavy-handed, preachy, down-right boring movie. Carell just completely loses all of his sparkle and charm in this movie. And what a way to underuse the absolutely brilliant Lauren Graham. Not even underuse. How can you underuse something that you don't use at all? She's relegated to playing the dumb wife, a secondary, non-descript background character. How can anyone who has seen her work on Gilmore Girls not give her more to work with? Everything was rushed, the dialogue was laughably bad and the humor just wasn't funny at all.

07. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
My mamma always told me, "If you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all."

06. Good Luck Chuck
When you say to yourself, "Wow. This movie is a waste of Jessica Alba's talent," you know there is something wrong in the world. Some ideas are good and the execution is so bad that the movie becomes bad as well. This movie is just a bad idea. It's got bad execution, bad script, bad performances, bad EVERYTHING. I think I would find a root canal funnier and more entertaining than this movie. This movie is literally one of the worst romantic comedies I have ever seen. It is neither romantic nor funny in any remote way. Do yourself a favor and see any movie other than this. Even if the movie is not a comedy, it will still surely be funnier than Good Luck Chuck.

05. The Invisible
The absolute only good thing about this movie was the Death Cab song they played near the end. It is almost unbelievable to me that, in 2007, a film this horrendous could be released. If this movie was released in, say, 1985, I would probably have netflixed it and enjoyed it because it would have been one of those movies that are so bad they are good. But, you can't really have fun with movies that way these days because movies take themselves too seriously these days. In the 80s, there were movies that, I think, the filmmakers knew were bad. They were fun. I'm pretty positive that the people making this movie actually thought it was good! What were they thinking? The directing, the acting, the writing... it was all weak. The characters are especially stupid. You would think that the "dead guy" would realize after a while that he can scream and throw things all he wants but no one can see him or hear him! The Annie character could almost be considered interesting... until she pulls off her beanie cap and does some sort of interpretive dance at a rave club. Like, what the hell? I would only be impressed by this movie if I found out a non-English speaking 7-year-old wrote and directed it. Then I would only be impressed because of the decent sentence structure.

04. Three
Thr3e is actually ridiculous in the worst way possible. The plot has something to do with a serial killer called the Riddle Killer (rip off of saw number one) who tortures his victims by telling them riddles and then blowing stuff up. The characters are not developed in the least. The acting is atrocious. The person who wrote the script makes me very confident that I will be able to sell my script when I move to Hollywood because it seems they just take scripts from anybody who walks in off the street. The movie is practically the same thing over and over and over again: dude gets phone call, something blows up... dude gets phone call, something blows up. Here's the thing, every time something blows up... he acts shocked! You think you'd catch on after a while, yeah?

03. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
It's one thing to be gory and disgusting. It's another to be completely without any class or taste. Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem falls into the latter category. I'm not exactly who thought making this lousy movie was a good idea in the first place. Anyway, a bunch of aliens crash a spaceship into their idyllic community and soon Predator is on the way to kill the aliens. These two battle it out and the aliens manage to kill just about everyone in the town in the process - which is a good thing since not one of them can act. This movie is just plain lousy and ridiculous - bad acting and worse dialogue. The plot is awful and most of the alien / predator fights are filmed in such dark lighting that you can barely tell what's happening. Here's hoping there is no Aliens Vs. Predator 3 in our future.

02. I Know Who Killed Me
Where to start when ripping this movie to shreds? Let's start broad: horrible acting, terrible script, bad camera work, ridiculous plot. Specifically: Lohan works at a strip club where numerous women are topless and yet she never takes her bra off (at one point she is even wearing a sheer bar with pasties ON THE TOP OF IT. Seriously). I mean, I could care less about seeing her naked (because, really, we've all seen it before, more or less), but if you are playing a stripper and you don't want to do nudity, you might at least have to imply nudity with some well placed hands or helpful camera angles. The twists in the movie are ridiculous. It takes every bad cliche about thrillers and uses them to the point where this whole big mess of a movie becomes comical. Characters come and go for no reason. Scenes cut away to some other random scene that doesn't really follow any sort of logical thinking. If you have half of a brain, you can probably predict the killer. The final thirty minutes are just plain hilarious! Laugh out loud funny, for sure! I don't think I laughed this much since Superbad. But, you know, Superbad is supposed to be funny.

01. Captivity
Elisha Cuthbert plays a model who is suddenly abducted from a club and thrown into a dungeon sort of room in the basement of a house in Jersey. She is supposedly tortured but the tortures are definitely not frightening. I mean, these people obviously watched Saw and Hostel, you think they could have at least ripped them off a little more and came up with something scarier. These supposed tortures border on comical when she's stuck in an hourglass type situation with sand falling on her. Sure the idea is cool but I could think of a million ways I'd rather torture the people who made this movie. But, hey, for being held captive for four days, the girl sure does get a lot of wardrobe changes so life can't really be all that bad, right? There is absolutely no character development at all. Actually Cuthbert's character (whose name I really don't care about) is sort of a brainless blonde bimbo type and there's really no reason at all to like her. She's stupid too. Her preferred way to try to escape from a car is to pound on the windows instead of trying the door handle. I cared more about her character's dog who may or may not have been shot then I did about her. Every "twist" these people cooked up was apparent at least an hour before it actually happened. Everything about this movie is just so contrived and fake. And there are so many mistakes in this movie that I wouldn't even begin to be able to count them all. This is, almost definitely, the single worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life.

Good Luck Chuck, Eastern Promises

Good Luck Chuck - When you say to yourself, "Wow. This movie is a waste of Jessica Alba's talent," you know there is something wrong in the world. Why, you ask? Well, Jessica Alba really has no talent unless looking hot is a talent. And it's very, very sad when even the tiny, little, itty bit of talent that she possesses is wasted in a movie that's so bad I can't even believe it was made. Some ideas are good and the execution is so bad that the movie becomes bad as well. This movie is just a bad idea. It's got bad execution, bad script, bad performances, bad EVERYTHING. The movie follows Charlie (Dane Cook - his character is only really called Chuck, like, twice during the whole movie) who gets hexed at a Spin the Bottle / Seven Minutes in Heaven party because he won't show his penis to the goth girl. The hex? Well, every girl that sleeps with him will find the man of her dreams right after dumping him. While Charlie's annoying best friend Stu (Dan Fogler - who may be the single most annoying / unfunny person in the history of cinema) thinks this hex is really a blessing, Charlie disagrees. Especially after he meets clumsy but cute Cam (Alba) at a wedding and falls for her instantly. Blah, blah, blah, stupid jokes, bad plot points and cliche writing ensue. I don't really think I laughed once during the entire movie. I think I would find a root canal funnier and more entertaining than this movie. It's almost torturous it's so bad (although not quite as bad as Captivity... because, really, that's just hard). This movie is literally one of the worst romantic comedies I have ever seen. It is neither romantic nor funny in any remote way. Jessica Alba plays a clumsy girl and it seems like every scene she is in is set up so that she can walk into something or trip over something or do something else stupid. And her acting? My lord. The only thing worse than her acting is Dane Cook's acting. Is his "acting career" over yet? News flash - Dane Cook is NOT funny. I don't hate the guy because he's a Boston Red Sox fan and I like anyone who likes the Sox but seriously - he's not funny. AND he's not a good actor either. The movie is very misogynistic but I won't even talk about that because even if I wasn't a feminist, I would still hate this movie. Do yourself a favor and see any movie other than this. Even if the movie is not a comedy, it will still surely be funnier than Good Luck Chuck.

Grade: F

Eastern Promises - Here's the thing about David Cronenberg: He's violent to the point of being too violent. There's a line where violence stops being realistic. Cronenberg is about thirteen steps past that line. And guess what? I love it! Here's the thing about Viggo Mortensen: He's the only man that I find uncontrollably sexy who I think is capable of mass murder. One minute you want to sleep with him and the next you think he might slit your throat. And guess what? I love it! And here's the thing about a Cronenberg / Mortensen collaboration: It's dangerous, unpredictable, violent, terrifying, witty, intelligent and just plain entertaining. A History of Violence made my Top 10 list last year and while I don't think Eastern Promises is quite that good, its still solid. The film follows Mortensen as Nikolai, a Russian driver to the Russian mafia living in London. He has a close relationship with Kirill (Vincent Cassel), the son of the head fo the Russian mafia. This leads him on an inside track to the mob. Meanwhile there's sweet mid-wife Anna (Naomi Watts) who is investigating the case of a dead fourteen year old girl who died giving birth and who has ties to the Russian mafia. There's a lot of unexpected heart and soul here which culminates with a lovely scene between Mortensen and Watts. There's a lot of humor and a lot of subtle acting which juxtaposes nicely with the slightly over the top violence. Viggo's performance is perfect and Oscar worthy (Will he get nominated? Probably not. The nude knife fight might be a bit much for some people... not for me though). The movie drags a bit at times but over all it's a good, solid film. And guess what? It's a million times funnier than Good Luck Chuck!

Grade: B-