10 Movies Everybody Loves... That I Hate

I watched Curse of the Golden Flower for the first time last night and was thoroughly unimpressed. I had heard that the film was the box office record holder in China, so I figured it must be great. Not good. Great.

Only, it wasn't even okay. It stunk.

Curious as to why so many purported Chinese would love this movie, I decided to research the story. To see, like several popular Chinese action films, if it was based at all in truth. So far, I've found squat. It's just a chaotic mess of a movie that seems to have "Asian is cool" fanboys in an uproar over what amounts to an exercise in futility and ridiculousness. Ah, well.

At any rate, I decided to write about 10 movies that most people I know tend to love, and that I actually hate. How unlike me, right?

1. Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace. George Lucas' really bad version of the Bible, with Anakin Skywalker as Jesus Christ. Absolute crap.

2. Star Wars Episode Two: Attack of the Clones. The film with what had to be the single most retarded scene ever to grace the silver screen: Yoda bouncing around the screen like a pinball. Star Wars fanboys loved it. And you all know what I think of Star Wars fanboys.

3. Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith. Ugh, why bother?

4. Anchorman. I've written about this before. It was dumb. I fell asleep. Will Farrell is hit or miss, and he definitely missed with this one.

5. Charlie's Angels. Sue me. I can't sit through this all the way. Next to George Lucas, Drew Barrymore deserves the "kill childhood fantasy" award. Not only was the script stupid, the acting sucked, none of the actresses (even Lucy Liu) could hold a candle to any of the original Angels (Farrah, Jacklyn, Kate, and Cheryl). I have no fucking clue how a sequel got greenlit. Praise Allah that McG lost out on directing the Superman film.

6. The Searchers. Oh, yes... John Ford and John Wayne's staple of film school. Even Spielberg claims he watches it just before he directs a new movie. My question is: why? It feels a bit sloppy. Most of the acting is subpar. And the climax is, quite simply, a letdown. I guess I should watch it again, but I seriously don't get it. Maybe I missed something.

7. The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Up until this film, I would have claimed that Steven Spielberg had never directed a truly bad film (even 1941, which makes me chuckle). But this... this wretched followup to the uber-great Jurassic Park... left me scratching my head. Ian Malcolm's daughter doing gymnastics in the middle of a jungle to knock out a velociraptor? Um, no. And let's not bring up the horrible casting behind that particular character.

8. The Matrix Reloaded. That's right, the second film in the trilogy. Nearly every person I know is in agreement that the third film was horrid, but I lay claim that the second was pretty fucking bad, too. Admittedly, it was better during a second (forced) viewing, but then again, I didn't pay $7 to see it. Any society who throws a rave while their doom is impending deserves to lose any rights to a sequel.

9. The Da Vinci Code. Boring. Great plot. Bad story. Very boring. I've written about how overrated I think Dan Brown, the book's author, is, but even I figured the near-great Ron Howard could make a kick ass movie out of the plot he was handed. I was wrong. I never thought I'd say this, but I'd be very glad should Tom Hanks not do the sequel should it be made. Until this film, I thought he could pull any role off. I was wrong.

10. Mission: Impossible 2. The unofficial Tom Cruise as James Bond film, complete with Anthony Hopkins as M. Seriously. How derivative can a film be? Let me rephrase that: how unoriginal, uninspired, campy, and crappy can a film be? And this was before Tom Cruise turned insane...

Anybody feel like adding to this list, feel free.