9. Elizabeth: The Golden Age (dir. Shekhar Kapur)
The generally mediocre reviews of Elizabeth: The Golden Age don't even come close to suggesting how bad this history-as-fashion-layout film really is. The sequel to 1998's Elizabeth re-teams director Shekhar Kapur and star Cate Blanchett, but throws out the tiny pieces of sense and gravity that helped the first film work. It's all costumes, forced tears, posturing, and a score so obnoxiously over-the-top that it wouldn't sound out of place in a circus.
10. The Number 23 (dir. Joel Schumacher)
Jim Carrey squandered the good will he'd earned from his surprisingly mature and restrained lead turn in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind by delivering the worst dual performance this side of Lindsay Lohan in I Know Who Killed Me. Here, Carrey plays an obsessed dogcatcher and his shadowy doppelgänger, a saxophone-playing brooder who serves as the protagonist of a mysterious book. Schumacher's ludicrous thriller piles on gimmicks and plot twists until it all but disappears up its own ass.
11. Smokin Aces (dir. Joe Carnahan)
Smokin' Aces features a bizarre all-star cast (Jeremy Piven! Alicia Keys! Ray Liotta!) and some of the most untamed filmmaking you'll ever see. Sure, writer-director Joe Carnahan knows his way around a difficult shot, but it's all for nothing when the story makes no sense and the characters couldn't be more unpleasant if they were covered in sores. When an action comedy counts Jason Bateman in a bra and a bizarre ventriloquist routine involving Ben Affleck's corpse as highlights, you know you're not watching the second coming of Midnight Run.
12. Revolver (dir. Guy Ritchie)
Didn't think it was possible for Mr. Madonna to sink lower than his risible Swept Away remake? Think again! Though Ritchie's return to the gangster movie after Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch seemed like a reasonably safe bet, Revolver's overlay of extreme pretentiousness negates any hoped-for genre payoffs. The film opens with no less than five quotes from sources like Machiavelli and Julius Caesar (what, no Sun Tzu?), then proceeds to advance a murky, Kabbalah-inspired philosophy without the aid of a single coherent sequence. Ritchie has claimed that the film becomes clearer after repeat viewings. We'll have to take his word for it.
13. Wild Hogs (dir. Walt Becker)
2007 was the year of the "gay panic" comedy, which may be a natural counterbalance to the mainstream success of Brokeback Mountain. It's as if Americans said, "Hey, we liked that gay cowboy movie, but don't get the wrong idea." While I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry at least attempted to spin everyday homophobia into a message of tolerance, Wild Hogs sent four middle-class, middle-aged buddies on the road in leather chaps and put them in every tired this-is-not-what-it-looks-like scenario imaginable. But mostly, the film is guilty of giving Easy Rider a City Slickers makeover, and making the odious suggestion that a bunch of whipped suburbanites are freer than the men who actually live on the road.
14. What Would Jesus Buy? (dir. Rob VanAlkemade)
The problem with "issue docs" is that it's hard to criticize them without sounding like an opponent of their messages. So understand this: It's possible to believe American consumerism has run dangerously rampant and still think that What Would Jesus Buy? is glib, sloppy, and largely pointless. Filmmaker Rob VanAlkemade lionizes anti-corporate performance artist "Reverend Billy" to such a degree that WWJB? ends up only parroting what Billy says, without developing as either a character sketch or an informed polemic. Clumsy as journalism and indifferent as art, WWJB? is all anecdotes, impressions, and smug stunts.
15. The Salon (dir. Mark Brown)
Mark Brown's film "inspired by" Shelley Garrett's play at least means well, but it's a clunky collection of bargain-basement stereotypes: sassy big momma, waify wrist-dangling gay guy, Asian manicurist who brags about being an "Amelican" who votes in every "erection," and above all, Vivica A. Fox as the downright saintly salon proprietor whose family shop is about to be razed and turned into a parking lot. There isn't much plot; it's mostly about watching Fox's employees riff on white folks vs. black folks, straights vs. gays, and Halle Berry's Oscar, then rewarding ever limp bon mot with a chorus of "Tell the truth!" and "Keep it real!" It's fakey, cheap, lowbrow, and endlessly dull.
16. The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising (dir. David L. Cunningham)
Take one dry, atmospheric children's classic. Remove all context, content, subtext, sense of history, sense of grandeur, and explanation of what's going on. Replace it with chase scenes, explosions, and a helluva lot of CGI effects. Tack on a ridiculous ending in which it turns out that the magical item that a child needs to save the day is actually himself. Voila! You've ruined a good book. Now on to the rest of the series!
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