The Bottom Five

A couple of weeks back I wrote about my New Year's resolution: to watch 100 movies in 2011 that I had never seen prior to this year. When you set out to watch 100 new movies in one year, there are bound to be some duds. Here are some movies that I watched this year that didn't really do anything for me.

5. Black Christmas (1974)

I have a love/hate relationship with horror movies. The horror movies I love (Halloween, The Fog, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream, to name a few) are among my absolute favorite movies. However, when I watch a horror movie that I end up not liking, I generally hate it. That was my experience with Black Christmas. Directed by Bob Clark (who, oddly enough, directed the beloved, decidedly non-horror A Christmas Story), Black Christmas is considered by some to be a genre classic and is thought to have been a major influence on Halloween and the "slasher" films that followed. I really didn't like it at all. It's not so much scary as completely unpleasant. It's an important film so I'm glad I watched it once, but I don't think I'd ever watch it again.

4. Insidious (2011)

Insidious is an exception to my typical love/hate horror movie experience. I certainly didn't hate it. In fact, the first 3/4 of the film is actually genuinely scary and pretty fun. However, in the last 1/4 of the movie, Insidious flies completely off the rails. The last half hour is so laughably terrible that it retroactively ruined my enjoyment of the earlier portions. If you ever watch it, turn it off around the time that the dad starts to, like, enter another dimension or something. You'll be glad you did.

This dude is coming to ruin the end of your movie.

 3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

In late 2010, Erin and I started watching the acclaimed television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We got the first season from the library, and then we just ended up buying the whole series. We've torn through five seasons so far, and we are a few episodes into the sixth season. The show is wonderful. It's funny and scary and exciting and sad, oftentimes within the same episode. The movie, however, is none of these things. It's terrible. Paul Reubens is pretty great as a one-armed vampire, but that's about all this one has going for it. Skip the movie and go straight to the series.

Not even a one-armed Paul Reubens can save this one.

2. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

I love Steven Spielberg. I love E.T. I love Jaws. I really like Close Encounters and Raiders of the Lost Ark. I love some of the films he's produced, like Gremlins, Back to the Future, and Super 8. But the fourth Indiana Jones installment is really, really terrible. The story is absurd, and the ending is insane. And it's not Harrison Ford's fault that he's gotten older, but Spielberg has to use CGI to make Indiana Jones jump. It's pretty embarassing.

1. Teen Wolf (1985)

People think they like Teen Wolf. The premise is amusing, and everyone loves Michael J. Fox. But if you actually sit down and watch Teen Wolf, you will realize that it is truly a bad movie. For one thing, it may be the slightest movie I've ever seen; I think it was about forty-five minutes long. Secondly, I assumed that there was a scene near the beginning of the film in which Michael J. Fox is bitten by a werewolf. However, this never happens. He just starts turning into a werewolf, and then his father explains that it's a family curse or something, and that the father is also a werewolf. Michael J. Fox's friend "Stiles" wears a t-shirt that says "What are you looking at dicknose" (which is, admittedly, sort of awesome), but the sentence, which is clearly a question, does not have a question mark at the end, which drove me crazy. Michael J. Fox's nemesis (who, oddly enough, looks more like a wolfman than Michael J. Fox dressed as a wolfman) is allowed to stand under the hoop when Michael J. Fox shoots technical foul free throws, which would never be allowed. What a terrible movie. There is, however, one big laugh, which I've included below. I should've tried this tactic in high school.