Worst movies I saw in 2023.

I’ve watched just over 400 movies this year - a new record for me - and, as ever, there were those movies that, for whatever reason, left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

Spoilers, bitches!

--------------

BEWARE, MY LOVELY

In the last couple years or so, I've become fascinated by film noir thanks mainly to TCM's "Noir Alley". In watching a lot of those movies, I’ve gotten to know the names Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino quite well. Given how much I enjoyed the two of them in On Dangerous Ground from 1952, I was curious to see them together again, but this effort from 1951 did not live up to expectations. In this film, Ryan plays a drifter/handyman who, as the film begins, we see panicking when he finds that the old woman he’s working for has been murdered. And the culprit...is himself; an unfortunate result of his disassociative identity disorder. (One of the film's few clever touches comes in us finding out, as the story goes on, that he killed the old woman before the story began, but had already switched to the docile personality.) He heads off to another town where he ends up in a boarding house run by Lupino, who slowly but surely learns of his malady. Introducing "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" DNA into film noir isn’t the worst idea in the world, but the execution is just painful to watch. With its female protagonist harassed by a stranger in her home with virtually no means of getting help or escaping this nightmarish situation, I was uncomfortably reminded of 1964's Lady in a Cage, whose atrociously acted-and-characterized aggressors suggested The Purge reconfigured as bad dinner theater. Ryan’s character isn't quite as annoying, even if his personality changes are wielded by the screenwriters like a chimpanzee with a loaded gun. The irritation factor seem to be transferred to Lupino‘s niece Ruth (Barbara Whiting) who, in her two scenes, struck me as an even more annoying version of Red Riding Hood from the Bugs Bunny cartoon, "Little Red Riding Rabbit". And you would think that, after a good 77 minutes of Lupino's attempts at saving her own life, she would overpower her attacker or Ryan would be arrested or, at the very least, shot dead by police or anything in the way of catharsis. Instead, he just walks out of her home, a smile on his face, having completely forgotten about the ordeal he subjected her to and free to (more than likely) put another innocent woman through the same treatment. As sour and unsatisfying an ending as one is likely to find in noir, but unlike most endings in the genre, this doesn't serve the story or leave the audience with a message or any emotion other than frustration. With any luck, this is the only dud I run into in the genre, which I've really grown to like.

BIG TROUBLE

One thing in movies I’m oddly fascinated by is when two actors in a particular kind of movie end up working together on a project that’s at a complete remove from their initial meeting. (A particular example that can take one aback: Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron as hot-shot lawyer/mentally deteriorating wife in The Devil's Advocate, then harried businessman/free-spirited girlfriend in Sweet November.) Even though the lead actors of this 1986 farce more or less played their character archetypes before, their chemistry in the earlier project was such that the reunion promised something special. Alan Arkin played an insurance agent desperate to put his triplet sons through college, and the money needed to accomplish this lied in a zany scheme concocted by dizzy dame Beverly D'Angelo to profit off of the impending demise of her rich, eccentric husband Peter Falk. As a reunion of the talents behind 1979's The In-Laws (not just the lead actors, but also Richard Libertini in a small role and a script by Andrew Bergman, credited under a pseudonym after he was replaced as director by a clearly desperate John Cassavetes, likely doing a solid for his buddy Falk) and a comic variation on Double Indemnity (replete with a shamefully misused Charles Durning in the role of Keyes), this film is a massive letdown and - given the talent involved - curiously laugh-free. As far as I'm concerned, the only star-studded farce with this title that matters was released in 2002 and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld.

BLOOD LINK

This 1982 mystery utilized the durable evil twin concept. In the hands of a skilled filmmaker, one could imagine how the narrative is supposed to go: Michael Moriarty is a doctor who’s arrested for murder, but he’s not the man responsible. The crimes are being committed by his evil twin brother and following a few more killings and a struggle, the bad twin is locked up and the good twin can continue his life (or have the good twin imprisoned by mistake while the evil one takes over his life, that is, if you want to be an asshole about it). Alberto de Martino, the auteur behind Medusa vs. the Son of Hercules and The Pumaman (a title that may mean more to “Mystery Science Theater 3000” devotees than Joe Schmoe), is not a skilled filmmaker. Frustrating (the police investigating the murders have never seen this alleged evil twin that Moriarty keeps harping on nor have they looked into his bloodline confirming that a twin - good or evil -  even exists, so obviously, he’s a fucking liar), exploitative (funny how every single female character with more than one scene in this film ends up getting naked, at some point) and just ugly, ugly, ugly (in aesthetic as much as anything else). Surprisingly, the film isn’t completely worthless. The lush music had me longing to witness the movie that Ennio Morricone thought he was scoring and while the appearance of Cameron Mitchell in something like this would seem to be obligatory, he was, by far, the most alive thing in the film. It’s still pretty worthless, though; an incredibly unpleasant movie and the sooner society can go back to ignoring its existence (something I don’t imagine taking a very long time), the better.

THE BRINK’S JOB

I don’t know about a lot of other people, but I find it can be rather bracing to see a director known for more serious fare try their hand at comedy. Projects like Wise Guys and 1941 may not be very popular with fans of their respective directors, but they definitely have their moments. And this period story from 1978 - based on an actual incident! - seemed like a potentially engaging change of pace for French Connection/Exorcist director William Friedkin. In 1950, Boston, a motley crew of ordinary joes plot to rob Brink’s of $2 million. The premise, the cast (among them, Peter Falk, Paul Sorvino, Peter Boyle and Warren Oates) and even the poster pointed toward something like a comedy, but, sorry to say, there was very little that was funny about this movie. One couldn’t help but think that this came down to its director and writer (The Wild Bunch’s Walon Green) having little - if any - faculty with humor. And this isn’t even me coming down on Friedkin; he managed to find his footing in the genre years later, with the universally despised (even by Friedkin himself) but under-appreciated Deal of the Century. Perhaps in the right hands, this story could receive the treatment it deserves yet. Now, you’d have to be a truly heartless son of a bastard to dislike Peter Falk, but boy, did he make some questionable movie choices.

EVERY LITTLE CROOK AND NANNY 

Based on a book by Evan Hunter (who has written everything from police procedurals under a variety of pseudonyms to the screenplay for Hitchcock’s The Birds), this 1972 comedy told the story of a woman (Lynn Redgrave) whose etiquette school is shut down by the machinations of a gangster (Victor Mature), so in retaliation, she pretends to be a nanny for his bratty son so she can kidnap the boy and hold him for ransom. A terrific premise that should give rise to a number of gut-busting scenarios. However, the story wanders all over the place and the finished film is - here we go again! - entirely bereft of laughs, not terribly surprising given that Robert Klane was one of the adapters (and don't you dare think I'm going to spare the verbal rod a second time just because Klane died this past year, too; William Friedkin was, otherwise, talented enough to merit a softball, but Klane...less so. Sure, he fluked out with his first movie, Where’s Poppa?, but did audiences really have to pay for that mistake over and over again for the next three decades? Jesus H. Christ, it’s the Farrelly brothers all over again!). Even with a supporting cast that included Austin Pendleton, John Astin, Dom DeLuise, Paul Sand, Pat Morita and ten seconds of Isabel Sanford, the titular pun is the only comedy to be found here.

KONGA

In the 1950s and 1960s, England dipped their toes into the field of horror cinema. Hammer produced a number of features, principally re-vamps of classic movie monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein. The Wolf Man). On the other end of the spectrum were the works of producer Herman Cohen. One of his efforts came from 1961 and saw Michael Gough as a scientist whose experiments turn a chimpanzee into a gorilla because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and uses the enlarged primate to get revenge on his enemies. Said enemies include anyone who might stand in the way of a) carrying out his unethical experiments or b) perving on his pretty blonde student. It was about the time he shot his cat for licking up the spilled serum that I started eagerly rooting for the man to be killed in as brutally graphic a way as an early 60s British horror movie would allow. Having him dropped to the ground during the now-building sized creature's climactic, not-at-all-like-King Kong rampage was good, but not good enough to keep the film from being a waste of time. 

THE LOVE GOD?

A number of Don Knotts vehicles in the 1960s adhered to a formula: a nervy, but good-hearted man (played by…guess who) triumphs over adversity, comes out on top and, maybe, gets the girl. It may seem a little corny to modern audiences, but formulas endure for a reason…and then, there was this unfortunate 1969 attempt to step outside the formula. Knotts’ Abner Peacock operates a bird lover’s magazine that’s hit a financial rough patch. The capital needed to save it comes from Edmund O’Brien's Osborn Tremaine who, unbeknownst to Peacock (but knownst to us; seriously, the first scene of the film shows him on trial for plying his trade), is a pornographer who remakes the publication as a girlie magazine, leaving a vacationing Peacock as the fall guy for this salacious new direction. The film - as befitting the work of Nat Hiken, creator of “The Phil Silvers Show” (better known as “Sgt. Bilko”) and “Car 54, Where Are You?” - is not without laughs, but there’s too much space between them, the narrative full-to-bursting with cruel opportunists that suck up all the oxygen and overwhelm the nominal star. (Peacock’s own defense attorney bloviating against his supposed proclivities right after the prosecutor had done the same is a particular low point.) Imagine if half the characters in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken were Skip Homeier’s one-dimensional bully Ollie and you’re pretty close. Also, even considering the time period, the view of women is reductive, from the elderly parishioner who spits in Peacock’s face after learning of his ‘desires’ and his innocent fiancée with no life of her own besides standing by her man to the ambulatory blow-up dolls posing for the magazine and Anne Francis’ crusading reporter Lisa LaMonica who (in the film’s most nauseating scene and the one most responsible for this movie making my bottom 10 for the year) strips down to lingerie and crawls into bed with Peacock - after getting him drunk - and making it seem like they slept together, because if people were to learn that this “sex-mad smut monger” (the movie’s words, not mine) was a virgin*, all of the opportunists are screwed. In fairness, the film makes some decent points about free speech, but why the filmmakers felt that they (and the subject of same) belonged in a Don Knotts vehicle and not, say, The People vs. Larry Flynt is anybody’s guess. One wouldn't expect the words 'Don Knotts' and 'distasteful' to occupy the same language, much less a sentence, but there you go.

* - And hearing Knotts say…okay, murmur the word ‘virgin’ is cringe in a way I didn’t think it was possible to experience.

THE PALM BEACH STORY

When one thinks of the great comedy directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, a number of names come up: Hawks, Capra, Lubitsch, Sturges. It is said that every Preston Sturges movie is on the spectrum of classic studio comedy, and this 1942 effort is widely considered, for some reason, to be one of his best. Claudette Colbert (whose presence just makes one wish they were watching It Happened One Night again) played a woman who decided to travel south to lure a rich husband so the sap can finance her real husband Joel McCrea’s inventions. A neat premise rich with comic potential. However, this is where things go pear-shaped. In the opening scene, McCrea treats his wife abominably, making one wonder why she’d stick with the guy, much less why she’d scheme to finance his inventions instead of telling her prick husband to stop playing with the toys and get a real fucking job! And that’s not even getting into the bits with the quote-unquote ‘hilarious’ deaf old man and the gun club members firing their rifles on a moving train, willy-nilly. It’s only after this side-splitting ‘comedy’ that the film fulfills the promise of the premise in the second half, but the film is DOA by that point. (Much like Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances, there was a terrific idea that would really make a great comedy in the hands of somebody who knew what they’re doing.) I found The Lady Eve and Remember the Night to be middling and while Sullivan’s Travels was very funny 65% of the time, the other 35% seemed to be reaching for deeper meaning, undercutting the comedy. Maybe I’m being too hard on Sturges and should try again with the likes of Hail, the Conquering Hero, The Great McGinty or The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, but sometimes, I feel like I should just concede that his stuff isn’t for me. 

RAZORBACK

Jaws really split open a can of worms in 1975, not just in birthing the enduring ‘bigger is better’ summer movie mentality, but in giving rise to a number of films that saw giant animals of all species rampaging across movie screens. Australia got into the game somewhat late with this 1984 thriller, which saw Gregory Harrison as an American who traverses the Outback to learn what’s become of his missing journalist wife. It's not long before he meets her killer: a giant (and possibly mythical) Razorback boar. The unfamiliar setting, the massive (if somewhat barely mobile) creature and cinematography from The Road Warrior's Dean Semler. All the ingredients were there for a strong feature. Unfortunately, the film ended up in the hands of Russell Mulcahy, then best-known for music videos...something the film very seldom lets you forget. In some sequences, it's not hard to imagine the rock music blasting away and a cutaway to the band on a desert stage. The film nearly drowns in style, to the detriment of basic plausibility. To cite an example from the film's beginning: the Razorback charges through an old man's home, destroying it and causing a small fire in the process. As the old man cries out for the missing and presumably dead grandson he’d been minding, the action suddenly moves outside where the old man finishes his skyward scream in the foreground while the house in the background is now engulfed in flames. He didn't even make an effort to save his home situated some ten degrees south of Bumfuck, Nowhere, but boy howdy, it sure made for a cool shot! And in keeping with the music video motif, for some reason, Harrison's character was met with ludicrous jump scares from a laughing skeletal horse and a pig-faced woman. Worst than all of this, surprisingly, were the two grungy Australian brothers, the more unbearable of whom thought nothing of trying to sexually assault the soon-to-be-gored wife and whose own death-by-Razorback was entirely too little, too late. A decade later, Mulcahy directed what I still consider to be his best film, The Shadow. I now choose to believe that it turned out amazing in spite of his involvement.

SANS DESSEIN

A Letterboxd watchlist can be a dangerous thing. You’re going about your day surfing the Internet and you hear about this (usually unknown) movie that strikes your fancy for one reason or another. You add it to your list, thinking to yourself, “oh man, I can’t wait to watch that!”, then you do and…well, much like what I said in last year‘s column about punch-up, this 2001 comedy (such as it is) stands as a strong example of how this practice can go horribly wrong. The premise was a fascinating one: the recently-departed ghost of an older man travels back in time to visit his younger self in the hopes of guiding them toward a more fulfilling life. Unfortunately, the filmmakers decided to smother this potentially riotous idea with ridiculously disgusting quote-unquote 'humor'. To wit: the main character's older self ends up drowning in a toilet that he just filled with his own fecal matter; the main character's younger self is fired from his job for accidentally destroying his boss's model of the Eiffel Tower, constructed out of Q-Tips and the boss's own earwax; his GBF is lifted into the air by the ghost while at a urinal, causing him to urinate into another man's mouth; his ultimate girlfriend showing a maxi pad with blood on it and writing a song about her vaginal area; the girl of his dreams getting sexually assaulted by the ghost…and finding that she likes it! Also, there were the flashbacks to the main character's middle school life, executed in an animated cut-and-paste style that recalled "Angela Anaconda" and, well, enough said there. But even if the film had studiously avoided all manner of low comedy, we'd still have to deal with the fact that we’re rooting for a main character who - consciously or not - was stringing along two different women, neither of whom he’d done very much to deserve. It’s hardly a coincidence that the film’s writer, co-director and star are all the same person. The English language title for this Quebec-shot disaster was Lost Cause. Some jokes just write themselves.

More bad movies I had the displeasure of discovering this year: The Cat Creature, Cooley High, Cries and Whispers, Crooklyn, The Deep End, Eraserhead, Ghoulies, The Hollywood Knights, The Laser Man, My Demon Lover, Punch-Drunk Love and Suspiria

Things that annoyed me about movies that weren't quite the worst I saw this year:

(Adventures of) Arsene Lupin - Debbie Wiseman‘s magnificent score - still one of my favorite scores of the century, so far - and its track arrangement on the soundtrack album led me to expect a more exciting and enjoyable movie than the utterly depressing and dour insult to the source material that I got. Maybe, I should just stick with the anime.

American Graffiti - So, Ron Howard’s Steve has no problem breaking up with his girlfriend, Cindy Williams’s Laurie, because he feels they should spread their wings and date other people. Also, while he’s away, he’s entrusted his car to Charles Martin Smith’s Terry, who while screwing around with a girl, loses the car to thieves and then you have Mackenzie Phillips’s Carol who takes a ride with Paul LeMat’s John and threatens to introubulate him with a false rape charge. Needless to say, I didn’t like too many of the assholes in this movie. In fact, given my distaste for Cooley High and The Hollywood Knights, maybe the American Graffiti template isn’t my cup of tea.

The Bedroom Window - This thriller had a good cast (including a surprisingly effective Steve Guttenberg) and good Baltimore locations. However, the trial scene threatened to derail the film. Prosecutor Wallace Shawn points out that Guttenberg‘s Terry wears contact lenses and that he’s not supposed to drive without corrective lenses...and yet, Terry had absolutely no problem driving well beforehand. I’m aware that Curtis Hanson was adapting a novel by Anne Holden, but I have to know: was the contact lenses thing as much of an asspull in the book as it was in the movie?

Bells Are Ringing - A neat little musical whenever it focused on Judy Holliday, Dean Martin or Frank Gorshin, but then you factor in the ridiculous subplots with Jean Stapleton‘s (!) scumbag boyfriend and police thinking that the phone service was a front for a prostitution ring. Sweet Jesus.

Black Nativity - Not a bad musical, really; how many opportunities do you get to hear Angela Bassett* and Forest Whitaker sing, but it reminded me too much of Lady Bird: good story, fine supporting cast, but centered around just the biggest asshole that ever assholed.

* - I admit to being a little put out to learn that Bassett didn't do her own singing in What's Love Got to Do With It?, but Tina Turner's voice is hard to replicate, so I can't fault the production too strongly.

Body Snatchers - Game attempt at changing up the formula by moving the Jack Finney story to a military base, but having Gabrielle Anwar attacked by a soldier who warns her 'they get you when you sleep' in the first few minutes pretty much kills the suspense before the opening credits have had a chance to unspool. This borrows a lot - maybe, too much - from the 1978 version, but without fully understanding why those aspects worked in the first place. For example, why would a character drop the whole 'you can fool them if you fake having no emotions' bomb if that character is, within a minute, revealed to be a pod person?! Also, it felt like somebody on the production team went full Sean Parker: "You know what’s cooler than one desiccated person? A dozen desiccated people!". It’s certainly inferior to the earlier renditions of the story, but, honestly, it is impossible to completely dislike a movie that sees R. Lee Ermey and Forest Whitaker sharing a scene and Ermey is the calm and rational one. 

Bullitt - Once you come down from the high of one of the greatest (if not the greatest) car chases ever captured on film, there’s too much in this movie that doesn’t pass the smell test. So, why did the guy unlock the door of the suspect's room at the hotel if he was supposed to be under lock and key? Also, while this film may not have invented the whole 'You know that guy we told you needed protecting? Yeah, we were just fucking with you. That’s the guy that need to be protected.' cliché, it just annoyed me greatly. Film looked cool, though, and that’s what matters, right?

Cash on Demand - It has been said that Peter Cushing‘s overly officious bank manager is said to be a variation on Ebenezer Scrooge. In most variations of "A Christmas Carol", we’re not supposed to sympathize with the Scrooge character initially, but over the course of the story, given that Cushing‘s wife and child are threatened - to say nothing of his livelihood and freedom - I think the filmmakers did a pretty shit job in having me not sympathize with him. Also, there’s the ridiculous ending where Andre Morell's Col. Hepburn departs the bank with its entire fortune, only to be brought back by police roughly 30 seconds of screen time later. How the hell did they catch him so fast, especially if you consider that the police were there and yet Cushing was unable to rat the guy out? What's more, it turns out that his wife and child were in no danger whatsoever, so how do you explain the panicked phone call earlier? Hepburn said something about a tape recorder, but what the hell does that have to do with anything? Hammer (yes, that Hammer) had one of the great Christmas noirs at hand, only to trip centimeters shy of the finish line. All in all, it’s no The Silent Partner.

Cobweb - Well-acted, well-staged and well-written, this was one of the best horror movies of the year…or, at least, it could've been if it actually resolved the story; the last scene seems to show Woody Norman’s Peter in a new home over the creature's narration that it will always be with him. So, did he get away? Did his teacher Cleopatra Coleman take him in? Is the creature locked away? Did Peter end up a suspect in the weird deaths of his parents? It seemed like the filmmakers just wanted a 'gotcha!' ending, never mind if it even made sense.

Coneheads - No complaints about the film; it's still one of the better SNL movies to come out, for what that's worth. My main complaint is about the current print of the film. Back when I watched this from the 90s, I distinctly remembered there being a scene at the beginning of the film, where Dan Aykroyd's Beldar was conferring with his associate, Phil Hartman's Marlax, about the scouting mission to Earth, and how Beldar's ship would be undetectable if he utilized the cloaking device. Marlax is really hammering this home, even silently fuming when Beldar leaves the device behind for a moment. Over the opening credits, the ship is picked up on radar, leading to this exchange:

Prymaat: "Nibs! You should've activated the cloaking device!"
Beldar: "I cannot remember everything!"

This would've paid off the opening beautifully. What happened? It couldn't possibly be a matter of pacing; the film is just under 90 minutes long. I wonder if the older DVDs have this scene? 

DuBarry Was a Lady - There were too many musical numbers in this musical, but I must say that they did a nice job of distracting from the supposed plot, which ends up making no sense (So, a musical number at the beginning of the movie justifies the last third set in royalty times...wait, what?). Even more, I really chafed at Red Skelton‘s overconfident dope schtick, at its most indigestible in the way he spent the entire movie recoiling at the thought of Va-Va-Voom! cigarette girl Virginia O’Brien** throwing herself at him every chance she got, and at the end when he woke up from his dream:

Skelton: "Where was I?"
O'Brien: "You’ve been right here in my arms this whole time."
Skelton: "No wonder it was a nightmare."

Fuck you, too!

Empire of the Sun - Beautifully made (because Spielberg), but the boy's curiosity about the encroachment of war bordered on ignorance. The early scene where he peeked at the meeting of the Japanese soldiers in the field was bad enough, but the moment I completely lost investment in what was happening is when the crowd of people were trying to escape the soldiers and the boy - instead of staying with his parents and possibly getting to safety - decides to retrieve his toy plane he'd dropped. Sure, I'd regained interest with the internment camp sequence, but it's hard to ignore what got us to that point.

The Flash - Sweet zombie Jesus, where do I begin? The way our quote-unquote 'hero' thinks nothing of stealing food and clothing from innocent bystanders. The ridiculous baby shower sequence at the beginning. The poor attempts at humor in general. (Anyone who can watch the "Eric Stoltz was Marty McFly!" sequence without wanting to smash their head through a brick wall is already a pod person. Change my mind.) The pathetic attempts at drama with Barry's departed mother (and with his ability to travel through time, it never once occurs to him to go back and find out who killed her?). The two versions of Barry that seemed to be engaged in a 'who can be the most annoying?' contest. The returns of Michael Keaton‘s Batman and Michael Shannon's Zod that were solely designed to trick the more gullible audience members into becoming the 'pointing Rick Dalton' meme. (You know what would’ve been really nice? If this movie had come up with its own villain, instead of borrowing one from a better movie...in this instance, Man of Steel is better.) The utterly eye-rolling montage of cameos of characters from previous DC projects, executed with eye-searingly amateurish CGI that would shame the theoretical Asylum knock-off of this movie. Honestly, anyone with the testicular fortitude to slam The Marvels while praising this mercenary piece of shit needs to swear to this New Year’s resolution: “I will stop watching movies because, clearly, I suck at it.”.

Gothika - The second half, with Halle Berry's Dr. Miranda Grey escaping captivity and investigating the murder case of the girl by whom she's being haunted, is quite entertaining and the whole project had me weirdly nostalgic for things we don't see too much of in film today: big-name actors slumming in a junky genre exercise (Penelope Cruz, Robert Downey Jr., then-recent Oscar winner (!) Berry), mid-budget thrillers, the credit 'Music by John Ottman'. However, the film ended up not completely working for me for the same reason that derailed Last Night in Soho: "I was murdered and I need you to bring my killer - who's still out there - to justice...but to do that, I need to fuck your shit all the way up and make people think you're crazy, thereby undermining anything you may try to do to help me. kthxbye!" Also, I think that group shower scene was just someone on the production team getting their jollies. Prove me wrong.

The Great Race - The "Prisoner of Zenda" sidetrip killed the momentum somewhat, even if it did give rise to a second delightfully hammy Jack Lemmon performance. The big millstone, though? Natalie Wood's Maggie. Her crusading reporter character (okay, seriously, between this and The Love God?, why was this archetype so popular with middling 60s comedies?) was just the worst throughout the story. The moment where she tricked Keenan Wynn's Hezekiah onto a train heading away from her and Tony Curtis's The Great Leslie was pretty much the moment that cemented my extraordinary hatred of her and The Great Leslie throws the race at the end of the movie…for her? Kiss my ass. If you think Professor Fate was upset at that turn of events, you should've seen me. 

The Horn Blows at Midnight - Not quite the dud Jack Benny so often joked about, but it’s still flawed as hell. The premise is solid gold*, but too much time is taken up with unnecessary side plots like having Benny's Athaneal get the horn back from a bunch of punk kids (one of them played by a post-"Our Gang", pre-“Baretta” Robert Blake!!). Also, there was the idiotic, movie-padding nonsense with Alexis Smith's Elizabeth thinking that Athaneal was two-timing her with an Earth babe, Dolores Moran's Fran, when she walks in on them in a clutch; the idea that Fran would throw herself at Athaneal is wholly inconceivable?

* - I still maintain that if someone were to combine this plot line with that of Death Takes a Holiday, you’d really have a home run. 

I Confess - I know that Hitchcock loves his ‘wrong man accused’ narratives, but I just found it ridiculously contrived that the two young witnesses to the murder assumed that the person they saw leaving the scene of the crime was a priest, leaving Montgomery Clift's Father Logan as the prime suspect. Code of the cloth or no, if I was accused of murder, I would tell the truth and if excommunication was my punishment, so be it. Also, wouldn’t it have been a perfect ending to pay off the return of Logan's former love, Anne Baxter's Ruth? After all, the film seemed to be building to a potential reconciliation, only to refuse to pay this off. One supposes that after burning through Hitch's classics, I would eventually run into the duds (this, The Trouble with Harry and I'm loath to name Suspicion, but given its pathetic conclusion...).

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Retribution - Pro tip for screenwriters: If you’re gonna have your character blamed for killing people that were actually murdered by the film's villain(s), it's never a bad idea to, you know, resolve that storyline before the end, just for the novelty. I can only imagine that the original Dial of Destiny ending of Indy being erased from existence was supposed to pave that plot hole, but then they changed it and apparently, the continuity person was washing their hair the night they had to check the finished film. Retribution had a number of news reports over the end credits ostensibly to resolve things, but between the accents and the way they overlapped each other, they may as well have revealed that Liam Neeson‘s character was an alien the whole time. It would’ve made just as much difference to the narrative. 

Intensity - Sneaking into the RV of a known killer. Trying to speak to a woman who, it was pretty well established, was dead. Not checking a gun before firing it. Making an escape from the killer's compound, only to reverse instead of gunning it when the killer returns from work early. If Voss had been a little more patient, Chyna - given how stupid she acts throughout the story - might've ended up killing herself.

Intolerable Cruelty - In one of those Doofenshmirtzian, ‘not a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice’ sort of deals, 2003 saw a pair of romantic comedies that hearkened back to Golden Age Hollywood. Down With Love, a neat period piece showing a snapshot of early 60s New York City, took the innuendos of the Rock Hudson-Doris Day vehicles to their natural conclusion. Released a few months later was the Goofus to Down’s Gallant, an attempt at screwball farce about a divorce lawyer and a gold digger facing off in and out of court. That the lead characters were incredibly unlikable was one thing (though, in fairness, I’m not a big fan of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell‘s characters by the end of His Girl Friday, either), but then, you factor in the plotting, the supporting characters and (lamentably) Carter Burwell‘s music, all of which are far more cartoonish than anything in Down With Love. The nadir comes when Edward Herrmann‘s character is fuming at witness testimony that could be damaging to his case (and fortune)…and to make extra sure that we get it, his face is reddened through CGI like a cartoon character. He leaps from his seat and starts strangling the witness…and the judge allows this. Now, I run hot and cold when it comes to Coen brothers comedies (when a certain someone dies in Burn After Reading, he takes the movie with him), but it is truly mind-blowing that this bears their name.

Julie - For about an hour, a pretty tense psychological thriller (and I had to appreciate that Barry Sullivan's Cliff helped Doris Day's Julie out not because he was secretly in love with her, but because it was the right thing to do)...then her wacko husband, Louis Jourdan's Lyle, boards a flight that she had to stewardess on and shoots the pilots before getting shot himself, forcing her to have to land the plane. Imagine if Jennifer Lopez's Enough suddenly turned into Airport 1975 with absolutely no warning. Total bullshit, right? I cannot imagine how this was nominated for an Original Screenplay Oscar! Remember last year's column when I said that Oscar voters are like diapers: they need to be changed every so often and for the same reason? Bob's your uncle.

Making the Grade - There were the expected 80s gags here (stereotypical Asian accents, the r-word), but the turd in the punchbowl for me: Dana Olsen's Palmer. One of the most obnoxious lead characters in all of the teen movies from that decade (I'd like to think that Palmer ended up on the same cell block as the schmucks from Joysticks). Really marred an otherwise surprisingly funny comedy.

Menace II Society - O-Dog: “The convenience store owner just said he felt sorry for my mother, but instead of ignoring this mean but not malicious comment, I’m gonna turn him and his wife into Swiss cheese and while taking the security camera tape is a smart idea so the cops can’t identify us, I’m gonna take it home and watch it and laugh at it like it’s 'America’s Goddamn Funniest Home Videos' instead of destroying it or burying it.”
Caine: “Well, I’m gonna take out my gun and set it on the dresser of my girlfriend’s son’s bedroom, and instead of giving him a speech about how dangerous guns are - especially if you consider that, not 15 minutes of screen time earlier, I was sitting right next to my cousin when some dude blew his brains out - I’m gonna let him hold it and if my girlfriend walks in on us and I tell her the gun’s not loaded, maybe she won’t kick my balls into outer space like I fucking deserve.”

The Asylum may not have been a thing in 1993, but if it were, you bet your dick that this would've been considered an Asylum rip-off of Boyz N the Hood and all that that implies.

The Movie Orgy - For a four-and-a-half-hour collection of clips from all manner of media, of course you're gonna run across a few duds. The “You Bet Your Life” segment was less funny than strangely mean-spirited, but worst in show had to be the "Abbott and Costello Show" sketch where Lou tried to sell some straw hats, only for some word in his pitch to get him slapped around and the straw hats destroyed. I’m not the biggest fan of their movies, but this sketch made them look positively Chaplinesque.

Night Hunter - A perfectly cromulent, if inexplicably star-studded, procedural thriller...and then you have Brendan Fletcher. He made for a pretty good escaped mental patient in Freddy vs. Jason, but it seems like in the interim, he graduated with honors from the Sean Penn Institute of Believably Depicting the Mentally Challenged On-Screen (Paul Dano's performance in The Batman also bears out the theory of such a place). Such an annoying, try-hard performance. Seriously, bro, what the hell happened? 

Nightmare at Bittercreek - A not-too-bad made-for-TV thriller, but the last third really stretched credulity. Women turning assault rifles that they have never seen before - much less ever fired - back on their psychotic tormentors? Okay, I can buy that, but half the characters get riddled with bullets and they all survive at the end? Give me a break. 

Old Enough - The friendship between Sarah Boyd's Lonnie and Winona Ryder Lookalike Contest first-place winner Rainbow Harvest's Karen was believably depicted, making for a sweet, authentic indie drama...then a new single, female tenant moves into Harvest's building and her jerky brother embarks on an affair with the woman, while letting people believe that their superintendent father (Danny Aiello!) was carrying on with her. This leads to a Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure when Lonnie learns the truth, but Karen refuses to listen to her. Way to crap away your touching coming-of-age drama!

Set It Off - Vivica A. Fox's Frankie is fired from her bank teller job because she knew the guy that held her branch up at the beginning. Chaz Lamar Shepherd's Stevie - brother of Jada Pinkett's Stony - gets shot by cops because he just had to have the same haircut as one of the suspects from that robbery. Kimberly Elise's Tisean is in danger of losing her child because he gets into the cleaning solutions at her job and, apparently, there wasn't a single other person that could've looked after him. The girls' initial take is stolen because keeping the money someplace other than where their greedy boss could get to it is too damn hard. Watchable in its mix of action and drama, but ever so contrived.

** - By the way, Miss O’Brien looks like this. For real, I think I’m in love. In between discovering her and seeing Bonnie Aarons - the actress who plays the demonic nun in those Conjuring-verse Nun movies - out of make-up, congratulations. I’m pretty sure I have a type.