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Bad movies and unknown gems posted 06/08/2008 12:29 am by Jim Hu

Last update:06/08/2008 12:31 am

A lunchtime conversation has generated interest in discovering the winners in the following categories:
1) Worst well-regarded film
2) Most overhyped film (note that this is slightly different from above; the first measures the absolute badness level, while the second measures the delta between reputation and actual quality)
3) Worst film to win a best picture Oscar
4) Most disappointing film (ie should have been good but wasn't--Godfather III, Phantom Menace, the latest Indiana Jones atrocity)
5) Worst movie, full stop. (Must have been a major motion picture release--no direct-to-video, or film festival torture tactics, please)
6) Worst movie with good direction (ie terrible script, awful acting, producer interference, etc)
7) Biggest unknown treasure

There are some peculiar nominations in the comments. How anyone could put Casablanca, Citizen Kane, or the Marx Brothers on any of these lists is beyond me.

The categories are for bad movies, so there are going to be many bad movies that I will have missed - and I'm not going to add them to our Netflix list just to catch up on what's bad. I suspect that others who responded have similar lacunae. This leads to the question of whether to only include movies I've actually seen... or to include movies based on reputation, reviews, etc. What the heck, I'll have some of each on my list.

1) Worst well-regarded film

For this, we need to know what's well-regarded. Considering the various lists:

Of the ones I've seen, the NYT and AFI lists don't have many actively bad movies. Including the IMDB list is almost cheating, as their voter base is random schmoes over the internet. But I guess it samples the "wisdom of crowds". From these, I'd say the worst are Five Easy Pieces (NYT top 1000) and American Beauty (IMDB). Both share a smarmy condescension that is pretty unpleasant, while lacking the redeeming value of being thought provoking.

As I wrote in this comment on Althouse, I thought Five Easy Pieces was OK when I first saw it... and then I heard Studs Terkel demolish it.

2) Most overhyped film (note that this is slightly different from above; the first measures the absolute badness level, while the second measures the delta between reputation and actual quality)

2001. There's a lot of good stuff in 2001 - until it gets to the part where your friends tell you that you need to be on drugs to appreciate it.

3) Worst film to win a best picture Oscar

American Beauty See above. Runner up: The Last Emperor.

4) Most disappointing film (ie should have been good but wasn't--Godfather III, Phantom Menace, the latest Indiana Jones atrocity)

Starship Troopers.

5) Worst movie, full stop. (Must have been a major motion picture release--no direct-to-video, or film festival torture tactics, please)

I have painful memories of The Prince of Tides. Never saw Heaven's Gate or Waterworld. I did see The Chronicles of Riddick, a movie that Judi Dench is probably trying to erase from her memory. But despite it's transcendent badness, Riddick lacks the pretension of quality of a world class dreadful film. Like, say, Last Year at Marienbad.

6) Worst movie with good direction (ie terrible script, awful acting, producer interference, etc)

The Natural?

7) Biggest unknown treasure

There are lots of underwatched great movies. But it's hard to call most of them unknowns. These two short films are pretty obscure, but are gems:

La Jetee. La Jetee was the inspiration for the much longer and less interesting 12 Monkeys

De Düva. This isn't even on Netflix, but can be watched in grainy form on Google Video

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