PSA 2001

There's no doubt about it, "Mulholland Drive" is the best film of the year, but its greatness sneaks up on you. It is the kind of rare picture that changes indelibly with each vital viewing. Love it or hate it, one things for certain, you wont forget it.
When I saw it the first time, I thought it was great, I had a lot of questions (unfortunately that's when I wrote my review). I saw it a second time, caught on that that whole dream thing, and this was when I realized the best film of the year was a film I already saw. This vital second viewing provided me with the most pleasurable second helping of my life; to see this film a second time, and get it, is quite rewarding. Unlike most mainstream filmmakers (cough, Spielberg) Lynch projects all these dense metaphors and complex visual materials, and allows us to sort out the mess for ourselves. The third time I went back to "Mulholland Drive" was different than the first two, but equally worthwhile; this time I trained my eye to look at, not the convoluted story, but the nuts and bolts filmmaking, and my god, even that is unparalleled this year. Lynch directs this debunked ABC television pilot with a surprising amount of artistic clarity. And for all intensive purposes, this film should have been a jumbled, slap happy mess. Something pieced together. Something irreparably detached. In other words, a normal David Lynch film. But unlike all his other misguided films ("Lost Highway" and "Wild at Heart" were beyond bad), this is not an art house film for the sake of art house films. "Mulholland Drive" keeps our attention from minute to minute and we can never fully get ahead of the film, even after it ends.

This film also represents the strongest female characters I've seen since "Sweet and Lowdown." The two unknown leads (Naomi Watts, Laura Ellana Hurring), one an oblivious aspiring actress and one has amnesia, get together to solve a crime (sounds dumb, I know, but brilliant filmmaking can make anything work); these two give the film a cool vitality and consistent core (these characters change, but there's logic in that and it's well within the boundaries of the story). The two performers ground the film's otherwise outlandish elements (the midget in the chair listening in on conversations, the fumbling hit man, and of course that grimy homeless man). I prefer to think of them as the ultimate guide through Lynch's warped mind. And through them, Lynch written his first strong characters. Watts especially, is able to put anything Julia Roberts has done to shame. Her character, and our understanding of her is constantly changing and the performer acts though this dream induced metamorphosis with astounding, I repeat, astounding range. She plays two completely different characters!
NOTHING IN THIS FILM FALLS SHORT OF BRILLIANCE. I'm enamored by the mystery and want to see it a fourth time. Sure I have a theory as to what the that blue box represents, but so will everyone else who sees it. And as much as it hurts to say that a David Lynch creation is the best thing I've seen all year, this was a clear choice for me.

"Yes, you will, you will, you will, cunt, you will, I don't care...you will, yes, yes, yes!!!" That is the main thing I remember from just about the year's best picture, but do I need anything else? Lines like that were courtesy of Ben Kingsly, and his performance in "Sexy Beast" was an unforgettable career topper. Gandhi will now have to settle for second best. And sure this is just another crime story, but what is so joyfully atypical in the film approach to the crime genre, is it's pitch perfect set-up where an aging henchmen (Ray Winstone) flies to Australia with his wife for some rest and peace. He's done with the life until Logan, a vile little gangster, arrives, not to ask the "retired" henchmen into doing "one last job," but to tell him he's doing one last job. What's so interesting about the film is that even when the prodigious Kingsley is not around, his presence is so palpable and scary that even the audience members are on edge. Kingsley is Jaws. The film could have been overly kinetic and mindless (director Jonathan Glazer got started directing music videos) but when you've got a treasure like Ben Fucking Kingsley, with that searing look of intense malice, the effect is 1000X more rousing then the earthbound asteroid the size of Texas from "Armageddon."

"You have to surrender to it. You have to give yourself up to it." That's director Baz Lurman talking about the public's response to his over-the-top, ADD musical "Moulin Rouge," but it's a quote that applies to every film on my top ten best and worst. Each film is something that requires a leap of faith; be it watching a film backwards, sitting through a fragmented LA dreamscape, a screaming Englishmen, farting Ogres, manic dancers, or a hyper-real vision of France. On both lists, I was either completely sold, or livid over a gimmick I though went horribly wrong. Arbitrary as these thoughts may be, the two that I sold me, "Moulin Rouge" and "Amelie," represent my favorite love stories of the year. And both, besides being set in France, are dreamlike models of the colorful world the respective directors wish this to be.

Upon sitting through the bi-polar "Moulin Rouge," I thought, "Finally a modern musical worth embracing." True, the artful genre of music, dance, and film is dead, but if it remains dead after this year it is not a total loss because at least this generation has the imaginative "Moulin Rouge" to call our own. This staccato grab bag of a musical manically mixes tunes from every post war generation (Madonna, Nirvana, U2) and spins it into a rip roaring tour of freedom, love, and truth, or something along those lines. The star crossed lovers Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman make the film come alive with heartfelt and tragic characters (Kidman grabs the acclaim but McGregor's struggling writer is just as much the reason for this films success). It's no small compliment when I say that only a film this great can redeem a director who previously helmed the worst film of all time: "William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet." For the director and genre, I can only hope both will continue to thrive.

Then there's the otherworldly "Amelie." And this is a blindly romantic lightweight. A quaint film that, in he end, means little, but its just what I needed a day after seeing the harsh but equally moving "Black Hawk Down." Strong imaginations can take us to Somalia or they can take us to a yellow tinted, cotton candy filled France where everybody ends up happy and complete, and this winter, I tried to embrace both.
During this film, my usual brand of sardonic cynicism crumbled, for I not only wanted Amelie (played by Audrey Tautou) to be happy, but everybody else in the film, and why not, the theater too. Needless to say, this strange empathy was a rare emotion for me, and I quickly went back to brooding, but in a wide-eyed and comic book sort of way, I can never forget that Audrey Tautou is just about the most adorable thing I've ever seen. And so is this film.

This is the film that held the top spot in my mind for the longest time. It's a classic to be sure, but not a film that holds together as well as last years "Wonder Boys," a film in which my love only grew in the 10 months it was out that year. "Memento" is still the kind of story that disserves to be on most film lovers top ten if only because, as Ebert puts it, "this film will be around for a while." And besides being THE film to see in 2001, and as filmmaking goes, "Memento" is important, revolutionary, exciting, trendy, fun, surprising, and Guy Pierce gives the best leading performance of the year. A mind trip worth taking, but where's the special edition DVD? I want to see the film backwards and forward while watching deleted scenes and listening to explosive new director Chris Nolan talk about his motives; but more importantly, I want to get more into the labyrinthine mind of Lenny.

Like David Lynch, this is director Cameron Crowe's first great achievement. And like "Mulholland Drive," this is a film that should divide audiences. Even though Crow's movie contained a few faults, I fell into the "loved it" category. The direction of "Vanilla Sky" is first rate as Crowe brings the three faced hybrid love story, romantic thriller, and sci-fi tale to a blissfully heart pounding, pleasing to the eyes, taut with meaning, ending where the final destination of one mans two hour journey hasn't been this pleasing since the fade to white in "The Ninth Gate." It is a film that proves that its okay to be commercial and hard on the audience. Tom Cruse can go from the audience friendly "MI:2," to the brilliantly haunting "Eyes Wide Shut" to this film (all involving masks) without tarnishing any one character from any one film. The iconic actor manages to be both underrated and overrated; underrated in the way that people don't figure he can do serious drama, and by overrated I intend to say that most would rather see him do a third "Mission Impossible" than a second "Magnolia." This is a great role for Cruse and I respect the decision to put a vainly hansom actor in a big budget movie only to make him as ugly as possible-on the inside and out. But the film would be nothing without this solid supporting cast reacting off of Cruse. Peneloply Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Jason Lee, Kurt Russell (as well as two great cameos by Tilda Swinton and Noah Taylor), "Vanilla Sky" is as much a feat in beautiful cinematography/directing/great musical cues, as it is in great performances. A must see film that only benefits from a second viewing.

An easy choice as one of the years best films. " The Royal Tenenbaums" takes place in a world where gipsy taxies run rampant and people with stomach cancer can eat cheese burgers and booze. Gene Hackman plays Royal, a lovable miscreant who tries to bring his estranged family together. The film is wicked and tender (I prefer the wicked stuff though) and the ensemble cast is too good to be true. In Wes Anderson's best film (even better than "Rushmore" I reckon) he has allowed himself to fully immerse himself in this world without being too ironic. This is a big step forward for Anderson. The cast of fallen eccentrics (the failed tennis star Luc Wilson, the drained playwright Gwyneth Paltrow, the widowed paranoid Ben Stiller...) is expansive and brilliant and if there's a single reason why this film isn't the definitive choice as the years best, it's because the script (by Owen and Wes) and cast, provided so much quirky character depth and oddball hilarity that they couldn't quite pay everything off to the degree that "Magnolia" did a few years back. This film is on the top ten however because I realize how silly it sounds to say the a film's only fault is that there's too much genus at work.

A truly memorable war movie produced by the same guy that did "Pearl Harbor." How'd that happen? This film is modest in its storytelling but energized in its depiction of American soldiers trapped in a battle torn city in Somalia. The film doesn't preach because Ridley Scott would prefer to show us how things may have been so we can us gather our opinions for ourselves. A novel idea, but too rare for war movies. Scott is not out to make a message movie, he's out to make an unrelenting war movie. And only a visual director like Scott could stage such an impressive war picture from a technical standpoint. I remember the whole thing as being one long haze of flying rubble, explosions, blood, tears, sweat, smoke, dust, screaming, and lots of running, engulfed me and afterwards spit me out dizzy and amazed. The reason I go to the movies is right here.

Its like being in college only without the tuition. It would be easy to peg Richard Linklater's mind expanding film as pretentious or out of tune with the modern "slacker" audience, but I can honestly say I've never seen ANYTHING like this before.

Experiencing "Waking Life" was truly a joyful experience for me. Pardon the cliché but this is a movie for people who loves movies, which means it didn't find a huge audience but is destined to become a DVD classic. This is also a film for for people who love Richard Linklater movies, or a movie for people who just plain appreciate thought provoking dialogue. The film is about a character stuck in a dream who literally floats from one place to another while shooting the shit with scholars and junkies alike. The philosophy of the characters in this film is so rich and dense that your mind is constantly trying to get a grip on the brainy things being said "dream is destiny," but can't because the characters have just moved on to another equally fascinating subject like the positive aspects of existentialism, or the nature of what is real to the brain vs. what is real to the body... See this film!

When I first started thinking about what should be on my top ten I decided, barring any great releases (ha, fat chance), this film and "Final Fantasy" had to be on my top ten. I don't know, it makes me feel good knowing that a list can have the serious pathos and complex filmmaking and it can have... a film with 100002 gay/sperm jokes. What sets Kevin Smiths latest opus apart from every other proprietor of low brow humor is the fact that he knows his films have 1000002 gay/sperm jokes. So with this brutal self effacement, the man and his joyful cast of Smithian minions (Jason Lee, Ben Affleck, Jason Mewew...) are enabled, thanks to Smith, to make jokes about how sophomoric their own jokes tend to be. Kevin Smith and his fans get made fun of over anything else, and although just about everything in this film is fair game for satire (from the internet smith himself has embraced, to lame celebrity E channels, to the vanity of the industry) the film's humor is both broad and meticulous. While everybody can grasp the joke where Jay gets a boner and covers it up with a Moobie cup, Smith fans will find extra joys in the smaller points like when Bankey walks out of the theater with his boyfriend. Nay Sayers will do just that and call the film immature and dull (Its hard to argue against that to be honest), but for the Smith fan base, this is his love letter to us. Oh, and its also the funniest film of the year.

So many speaking parts! So much rich character interaction. And it all moves fluidly thanks to Robert Altman's affinity for ensemble storylines. This film, based on a concept by Altman, takes the old fashion, get a bunch of rich stiffs together, kill one of them, and lets try to guess who did it genre and turns it into a comment on the great class divide. Yes there was a murder, and yes its fun to try to guess who did it, but what Altman does here that is ingénues is the he focuses on those who wait on the rich stiffs. A great alternative to the somber Merchant Ivory productions.

11. Final Fantasy:The Spirits Within
Literally bumped off at the last minute, I wish I could make room for this great film... And the award for most disrespected and unfairly dismissed film of the year goes to this glorious sci-fi epic that also happens to be the most interesting looking computer animated film ever made. I was livid last year when "Titan AE" failed to capture the recognition it disserved, but I'm still scratching my head as to why this photo realistic sci-fi epic didn't find an audience. Sure there are no lame green org characters making painfully obvious jokes about the penis size of the villain, but its a solid action vehicle that, at the very least, should have been popular in the male high school market. Okay, sure, that whole run away from the evil aliens deal was slightly derivative, but the film is unrelentingly in that "Aliens" like pace. This film proves that animation can take us places where some live actions film cant, yet we didn't want to go there. And for those who somehow saw the film... and actually liked it, don't get your hopes up for a sequel because the failure of this film caused the Square film production company to go under. Unlike Japan, we need our animated films to either be for children or for children with couple of entendres thrown in for the parents; and that's it. Were not ready for adult animated fare like "Final Fantasy" or "Princess Mononokie" just as audiences of 1941 weren't ready for "Citizen Kane." I cherished this film because it was brave enough to say you can see and enjoy it even if you hate children.

12.Made So close to being on the top ten, it feels bad not to praise this film as much as it disserves. "Made" is from most of the people that brought you "Swingers" and its far better than that film because there's actually a plot. Vince Vaughn and director/writer/actor Joe Favero provide the best comic duo of the year (yes, even better than Jay and Silent Bob) and I hope these guys never stop making films together.

13.Caveman's Valentine Meet my pick for sleeper of the year. You say there's nothing good to rent, well this brilliant little title is hiding in your local video store just waiting to be discovered and embraced. This great film starring Samuel L. Jackson as a crazy homeless man who takes it upon himself to solve a crime, is a brilliant showcase for a great actor, but also a visionary directorial achievement from Kasi Lemmonds (Eves Bayou). The gumshoe lover in me couldn't resist this film because its rare enough for solid mystery to surface (how many years has it been since "Zero Effect?" And how often do we get a sub par variation of "Along Came a Spider?") and when they do, the experience can be unparalleled in the world of cinema. Even if you don't like detective films, rent "Caveman's Valentine" for its luscious mise en scene, impeccable art direction, and stunning cinematography.

14. Life after Pulp: Snach Was this film released in 2000 or 2001? No matter, whatever year it was released its a quirky little crime thriller that disserves to be on any top twenty list. "Snach," directed by an over caffiniated Guy Richie is better than "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" (one of the worst films of 1999) because it never tries to rise above the humorous crime genre. Its ambitious yet never forgets that it's a frenetic thirty year-old gangster pic. The perfect kick back film to show your friends. Amorous Perros--All right, compare it to "Pulp Fiction," but "Amorous Perros" represents the natural progression of that now classic Pulp stricter. It's a great film but not quite top ten material due to the fact that the first 1/3 of the picture felt like a bad version of "Todo me amigos." The second, and especially third, segments of the film remain to be some of the most poignant and humorous moments of the year.

15. A.I. Artificial Intelligence The best failed experiment of the year. Brave, ambitious, and a near classic. Too bad Spielberg cant snatch anymore of Kubrick's almost formed ideas. This film represents an unbalanced mix of Spielberg's mushy family melodrama and Kubrick's esoteric sci-fi gravitas and it could have achieved greatness had Kubrick not been so afraid to go to the doctors --robots, sex, and society is something Kubrick could have done with considerable versatility. Under the ultimate producer/ultimate hack filmmaker, Spielberg, it reaches a nice try status that's worthy of being called one of the year's best. If I had only walked out five minutes earlier, "AI" would be in my top five.

16.Startup.com The best documentary of the year is the film that will be watched in economic classes for decades to come. A film so fascinating that it doesn't even seem like this could happen outside of Hollywood. It did, and the film that chronicles the rise and fall of the dot com industry never ceases to amaze. If real life is this fascinating I should get out more.

17. Stuff for the serious: The Widow of St. Pierre A sad and deeply enriching experience. Whatever your feelings are about the death penalty, this film demands that you make a case for it's liberal sensibilities. After seeing it, I became a little bit more open minded and a little more cynical. Juliet Bonoche gives a fine performance as the lady who loves the soon to be dead, prideful prisoner. The Golden Bowl Fascinating. The best serious costume drama of the year and lots of interesting acting styles to feast your senses on. The characters in this film are so clandestine and detached that the best parts of the film lies in what's not said. A must rent if your a Merchant/Ivory junky. Who needs to read the heavy-handed James if his adaptations are this good.

18. For the masses: Harry Potter No I haven't gone soft, this a decent film. As a series, "Potter" is far better than "Lord of the Rings" because its a contained picture. I witnessed a beginning, middle, and this is an important one: an end. Even if I am too old for this shit, I had a great time. Beautiful and satisfying; this is the best children's film of the year. Lord of the Rings As for "Lord of the Rings," well, I still maintain that this is a B- film but the directors Peter Jackson's vision just wont go away. It's a meandering waist of time, it's redundant and an hour too long, but it's also THE most beautiful event film ever made. The acting is great (McKellen rocks, and Elijah Wood makes for a good Frodo), the Jackson's direction is ambitious, and even if I'm not a huge Tolkin fan, the realization of his world is stunning. As fun is is to tell people I hate this film, who am I kidding?

19.Swordfish and Time and Tide-- The best mindless action films of the year. "Swordfish" with it's simple premise, fun performances, stylish action, great music, and contains the best hacking scene ever. And "Time and Tide," well, this film may not make much sense but it proves that Asian action films don't all need martial arts. John Woo would be proud because this mile a minute action film is just amazing. Who needs story, these make for a great for a late night low brain power rentals.

20. Wild Card Pick:Josie and the Pussycats
Credibility... HA. The mere mentioning this film with the words Years Best pretty much negates all the genuinely good movies listed above, but I cant help it. Something must be seriously wrong with me because, after I scoffed at this film and rejoiced its box office failure, I rented it if only because I dig that Rachel Lee Cook vibe. Well, the low expectations must have helped because "Josie" is a clever satire of things begging to be satirized; most notably, boy bands, MTV, and a consumer America driven by frivolous teens, "Orange is the new pink." So go ahead and laugh at me, but the years best guilty pleasure is a movie we all might hate, until we see it. And I fucking dare you not to laugh at the DuJour boy band.

21.The Man Who Wasn't There-- The Cohen's do it again. "Man" may not be as joyful as "Oh Brother..." but this film, besides being the best looking thing out, is a dark masterpiece. Plus, Billy Bob is great. Existentialism is back.

The worst films of 2001.
Let me start off by quoting the late great Gene Siskel ''Two things are not debatable: eroticism, and comedy. If you don't think it's sexy, or funny, there's no way I can change your mind.'' That said never before have I seen so many unfunny comedies in a single year.. I swear, a little ways into the making of what I though was the worst films of 2001 (really, there were so many) I realized that they were all piss poor comedies. What are the chances? I didn't even know that a majority of the stinkers I saw were humorless bombs delivered by the most vile of cinematic terrorist, the ones with an inept sense of humor. From bad teen comedies, to bad action comedies, to bad animated comedies, to bad dumb blond comedies, to even worse heist comedies, this year, pound per comic pound, was hasn't been this awful since the eighties. So how is it that some of the best comedies ("Jay and Silent Bob," "Made," "American Pie 2," "Josie and the Pussycats," "Wet Hot American Summer") should have also been bad. The success of "Jay and Silent Bob" may just prove that the fine line of great laughs and silence is... how the hell should I know, I don't have a sense of humor. I just laugh if something strikes me as being humorous which is anything but the films listed below.

This film flounders for all the same reasons my other worst of the year choices: "Pearl Harbor," Creed, and "The West Wing"... these are not stories, these are pieces of "art" and I resent having to defend my morals against industry types that are delusional enough to think they know what's good for us.

The only non comedy on this top ten list yet is the most laughable film of the year. Easily the second worst film EVER made, how can anybody describe how bad this really is. Michael Bay is not a director he's a soulless, commercial, corporate dancing monkey, rich boy, jaded, pretentious salesmen of patriotic dreck. Or as Tenacious D would call, a "cockass." Next, I move to the cast of "Titanic" gone wrong wannabys: okay, but there's still cool with me because, why would an actor, any actor, turn down an event movie produced by Bruckheimer? I see that the need for this kind of historical melodrama is quite tangible, the execution however... 90 minutes of fluffy character expositions so we care about them when the missiles drop. HA, after half this film was over the sensationalistic bombardment couldn't kill these fuckers fast enough. Bay rewrites history to be cinematic and ends up betraying, not just the country, but the whole wide world.
People will dedicate essays to how vilely bad this film is, but still, I don't think that would capture anything. When I say I "hate" "Shrek," Adam Sandler or the mourning, my connotation is more like deeply annoyed. But hate and "Pearl Harbor" are the perfect couple. I'm not thrilled with my little web page, or my writing, but if there ever was a reason for keeping it up, it would be to say this is the worst film I've seen in years.

#2 Shrek and Cats and Dogs
This beloved "wicked" film is one of the very worst films of the year; allow me to explain. Everything about Shrek's animation is ugly and to make matters worst, it tries way to hard to be self aware and clever. My annoyance grew over the year of praise for this colorless contradiction of a children's story--the films says Shrek's beauty is on the inside, so why does Shrek make fun of Farquat's diminutive size? This film is so busy bashing Disney, that it forgets to bottle 1/100 of the magic from those good Disney films, few as they may be. It will win the Oscar but I'm rooting for the film with half a brain: "Waking Life."
Would you look at that, another mindless family friendly comedy. Is this film in the same bad movie pantheon as "PH?" No. Is it really an F film? I say yes, because little else is as intrinsically wrong as babies, cats, dogs, furniture, Chris Tucker, or tea cups that talk like humans. Ya see, this film is funny because cats aren't really this smart, HA HA HA; cats talking, that's priceless!!!

#3 Rush Hour 2
What's worse: watching a god awful kung-fu movie, watching Jackie Chan completely and utterly selling out (nice blue screen dude), or Chris Tucker? My moneys on that bitch Tucker, although the other two are pretty unpleasant too. "Rush Hour 2" is a lifeless action film, so bankrupt of original ideas that making fun of Asians and Whites is about all it has to offer. Hey, make fun of whoever you want, I don't care, but please make sure your doing it in a remotely good film. How did Tucker become a star? Utter crap, all of it. Horki say: Wooo, smell funny, me going to puke.

#4 Legally Blond
A film so bad that it's not even worth my time to trash-- and believe me folks when I say that my time is as worthwhile as Jack Black's from "High Fidelity." Reese Witherspoon thinks she's so clever in this second generation "Clueless" clone, but my money is on "Josie and the Pussycats" for the socially aware jokes there at least hit their a target. I'm supposed to like this film simply because Witherspoon is playing a guile yet girly blond-- and doing a bad job at it because this is the worst female performance of the year-- then I must have missed something. In just two years, Witherspoon goes from the best actress of the year with "Election" to a film that thinks "whatever" jokes are still funny.

#5 Ocean's 11
The most balls out annoying film characters I've seen all year appeared in this movie... and I sat through "Pearl Harbor!" It's a tragedy that a film so bad was full of a cast of usually brilliant actors that were directed by a can't miss Steven Soderberg. My best guess in this anomaly if a bad movie is that since everybody on board were constantly being told their shit was dope, nobody really felt they had to try that hard because people would love what they did on principle. My BS detector went up even before the poorly conceived heist scene played before me. Just about all of Danny Ocean's losers walked through this film like they have the invisibility code and I despised their cant loose attitude. A film about a heist shouldn't look this effortless and to make matters worse, I couldn't stand that the villain wasn't nearly as arrogant as the so called heroes. Bad in so many ways; I must have seen a different movie than the one everybody else. And as bad as "The Score" was, at least Robert De Niro is still a humble performer.

#6 The Wedding Planner
How about that, another lame comedy. What a year. Lopez has earned my respect after a grip of great films, but this one is not only her worst ("Money Train" was Oscar caliber compared to this shaky romantic comedy), but just about the worst film period. Like The Animal, something was completely off in the films execution of it's weakly formulated jokes. And the chemistry was laughable.

#7 Scary Movie 2
The first "Scary Movie" was genuinely funny. Now I see that that's almost an impossible feet considering the Wanyans brothers (all fifty of them) don't have a creatively funny bone in their collective bodies. So after getting lucky with "SM1" what do they do only a few short months later, the same exact thing, only these guys are dense enough not to understand what they did right the first time. The second "Scary Movie" is a redundant rush job and the result is a predictable mess where we can see the weed jokes coming ten minutes before they happen. Nobody could screw up a send up of that classic brain eating scene from "Hannibal," nobody but the Wayans brothers of course.

#8 Say it Isn't So
It's the end of the year and most forgot-- more like repressed-- how truly bad this film was. My curse is that I can't forget how bad this piece of junk truly is. Sure it was not as hostilely bad as "Freddy Got Fingered," or insultingly bad as "Pearl Harbor," but the ultimate sin of "Say it Isn't So" is not it's lack of taste, it's the lack of comic timing thanks to the already dense actors. Did I miss something or is Chris Kline (a dumb version of an already dumb Keanu Reeves) worse than he usually is? The makers of "American Pie 2" were smart, they gave Kline almost no screen time the second time around. Too bad this film couldn't do the same.

#9 The Animal
Humm, this is a tough one. I don't dislike Rob Scnider, but after this film he might be as comically inclined as Adam Sandler (or Chris Kline for that matter). "The Animal" may have a decent premise, but the execution is quite flat. This film and it's actors both falls flat on its face. At less than 80 minutes, "The Animal" is too long.

#10 Freddy Got Fingered
To be honest, I don't want to put the film on my top ten worst. Its bad yes, but as I've had time to reflect on this rarity, I realize that Tom Green may have delivered precisely what his fans wanted. When the man comes out with a film, people expect him to be the same Moose humping Tom Green from his old MTV show. What he gave you (those that watched him on MTV) was that Tom Green times a thousand. He didn't hold back, and we all reviled this. Apparently we want Tom Green, but the PG-13 Tom Green from "Charlie's Angels." My quandary, as a someone who enjoys writing about movies, is that its hard to put a film on a top ten worst list if I feel everybody should see it. That's right, "Freddy Got Fingered" is so bad and so horrifyingly bad that we should all see it no questions asked. In all the films I've ever seen, I've never been as caught off guard as when Green grabbed a dead and bloody baby out of his mothers womb and swung it around his head. Intriguing to see that in a mainstream movie but what is that about. A true freak show. As Jason Lee says in Vanilla Sky, "the bitter and the sweet," for if it weren't for this film, "Sexy Beast" would be average. This may be the most humorless comedy on a list of momentous lameness, but its also the best cult movie of the year. And just because I'm not in this cult doesn't mean I don't respect the films outré qualities. Maybe "Freddy Got Fingered" is not so bad if you approach it as a horror movie.

Dimitri Sotiriou's ten best

Mulholland Drive
Waking Life
Lord of the Rings
Amelie
Vanilla Sky
The Man Who Wasn't
In the Bedroom
Memento
From Hell
Harry Potter

Miguel Rameriz's picks

Memento
Moulin Rouge
A Beautiful Mind
Amelie
Monster's Ball
Jay and Silent Bob
Vanilla Sky
Swordfish
Legally Blond
Shrek

Andrew Reiter's Ten Best

Mulholland Drive
The Royal Tenenbaumbs
Vanilla Sky
Memento
In The bed room
Jay and Silent Bob
Blow
Ocean's 11
Training Day
Made/Monster Inc.

Worst:

Planet of the Apes
Pearl Harbor
Freddie Got Fingered
Hannibal
Rush Hour 2

Adele Delisi's Ten Best

Training Day
Lord of the Rings
Amelie
Donnie Darko
Zoolander (I'm serious)
In the Mood for Love
Black Hawk Down
A.I.
Startup.Com
Vanilla Sky

Worst:

A Beautiful Mind
Pearl Harbor
Legally Blond
Mulholland Dr.
Harry Potter

Best Album: Gorillaz

A big thank you goes out to both of you who sent something in. That was two more than I ever expected to be looking at the site. I really appreciated that guys, thanks. Another thank you goes out to all those who can actually stand looking at this site for more than ten seconds without loosing it. This has been Greg, last survivor of The Nostromo, signing off...