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In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

Special award: Most hilarious cast 

Now, obviously, any video game movie directed by Uwe Boll is not going to have anything to do with the game, so I don’t really care about that.  I’ve never even played the game.  What makes this movie so unbelievably bad is the casting.  Burt Reynolds (who does not attempt an accent) is the king of a medieval country? Jason Statham is his son?  That guy that looks like Steve Odekirk’s thumb is Legolas?  All of these pale when you see them next to Matthew Lillard’s portrayal of a sniveling nobleman.  I think his might be one of the worst fake accents I have ever seen in a film.  Of course, the the strangest choice of them all is Ray Liotta as a Gary Glitter-esque evil wizard with the power to control books and presumably give the hero really bad paper cuts.

Doomsday

Special Award: Most confusing mix of genres

Doomsday, starring Rhoda “Kate Beckensale’s replacement in Underworld” Mitra, starts out a as mix between Escape From New York and 28 Days Later, only way crappier.  It then transitions to a cannibalistic Mad Max-esque ruined society.  As Mitra escapes, she stumbles into Camelot and faces off against Malcolm McDowell as King Arthur.  It is all very confusing.

The Happening

Special Award: Least enjoyable movie

This movie had the easiest title to make fun of.  You should avoid naming your crappy movie something that can easily have the word “crap” substituted in (i.e. The Crappening).  Seriously.  The latest Shyamalan film is squarely at the bottom of what I like to call “The Mediocre Valley”.  If a movie is good, or if it is terrible, it can be very enjoyable.  There is, however, a region where a movie can be fairly competently made, but utterly unenjoyable.  I don’t think there’s a single movie that represents the Mediocre Valley as well as The Happening.

Bangkok Dangerous

Special Award: Lamest action hero

One of the main problems with Bangkok Dangerous is that it takes itself totally seriously.  It is this super artsy fartsy action movie, but falls completely on its face.  At some point, the assassin, played by Nicolas Cage, falls for a young deaf Thai pharmacist.  This of course leads to a scene where he blows away two muggers without her knowledge until she gets splattered with blood.  Most of the scene is in slow motion and is just about as boring and infuriating as it possibly could be.

Twilight

Special Award: Sparkliest vampire

Fans of the book seem pretty split on the movie.  Some are so blindly in love with Edward the Vampire, or as I like to call him “Sparkles”, that they believe that this movie is the best thing they’ve ever seen.  They just wish that Sparkles would stalk them creepily and fantasize about draining them of all of their blood.  They don’t care that the story is sexist (about both men and women) or that Edward looks like a geisha.  They just want him to stand in their bedroom and watch them sleep.

The Spirit

Special Award: Best black Nazi

I went to the movies last week, thinking that this list was all wrapped up.  Boy howdy was I wrong.  The Spirit is shockingly awful.  It’s like some kind of exercise in absurdist torture.  This is probably the worst comic book movie I’ve seen since Batman and Robin.  Frank Miller seems to have taken someone else’s comic book and ineptly imposed his own style ontop of it.  I wanted to go see Doubt, but Julie thought we should go see a fun movie.  She apologized as we were leaving.

Worst movie I saw in 2008: Bangkok Dangerous

Least enjoyable movie I saw in 2008: The Happening