bad movies of 2006

My brother and I are not the only ones who thought the new Superman movie really sucked. John Cole agreed:

Tried to watch Superman Returns last night, and despite really looking forward to seeing it, I couldn’t even finish it.

It sucked in more ways than I thought possible. If this movie were a war, it would be Iraq. If this movie were a religious leader, it would be Ted Haggard. If it were a blogger, it would be Dan Riehl.

That is how bad I thought it was.

[More specifically targeted railing against the movie follows.]

Rather than giving this movie two thumbs down, I instead choose to give it the finger. This movie was clearly made to make the Hulk remake revival look good by comparison. Don’t buy it. Don’t rent it. Don’t watch it. And if anyone tells you it was good, remember their names and ignore their movie advice in the future.

I’m not in a position to offer much criticism of the movie myself since I walked out after about 40 minutes. This was longer than I watched the abomination called Brick, which I will not refrain from defaming in detail even though I (thankfully) only gained a passing acquaintance with its annoying characters and so-called plot.

Matt Yglesias, whose opinions I respect on matters of foreign policy but no longer on film, named it as one of his favorites of 2006. I railed against it briefly in comments and was met with slightly bewildered dismissal from other commenters:

[T]o whomever called Brick "viscerally offensive" after walking out 30 minutes into it: the first reel of that movie is intentionally confusing for a few reasons--most having to do with the unique neo-noir dialogue of the film [note: having experienced it myself, I can only interpret the phrase “unique neo-noir dialogue” in the context of Brick to mean “the fakest, least coherent, least plausible, most irritating cracked-out pretentious pseudo-urban wanky dribblings ever wanked into existence by a pimply high-school sophomore], but also as a result of simply being dropped into the middle of a mystery which requires the rest of the movie to solve. After you get used to the language/world of Brick, it becomes rather compelling, maybe even impressive. To me, at least. I bet if you gave it a shot on DVD, you'd change your opinion.

And

Yeah, how can you possible develop an accurate opinion of Brick after 30 minutes? I mean I don't think you'd have even seen The Pin yet.

To which I replied:

As for Brick, I understood what they were saying, I just didn't like it. If I'd stayed longer than 30 minutes, I'm afraid I would have had to gouge my eyes out and run down Houston Street into oncoming traffic until my skull was mercifully crushed by the grill of a Mack truck. Every minute that passed as I sat in that theater, I could feel more of my soul seeping out through my pores. So no, I don't think seeing more of the movie would change my opinion. But I guess I'll never know for sure.

The only way I could see myself enjoying the movie is if everyone in it died horrible deaths at minute 31:00 and the film ended early, its awful work accomplished, having exhausted in a mere half hour all the ways in which a movie can torture and exasperate its viewers, and then my enjoyment would only have been derived from relief at not having to endure the remaining time typically allotted to a film. But no, I see that the film ran a standard 110 minutes. Given that I left when I did, I think I enjoyed it as much as I possibly could have.

That said, I’ve certainly enjoyed not enjoying it!

On a brighter note, my favorite 10 films of 2006 were, in no particular order: Inside Man, Casino Royale, Strangers With Candy, Inconvenient Truth, Borat, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Jackass 2, Volver, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Departed.

Since I didn’t see Pan’s Labyrinth until this year, I won’t include it in this list, but if I did, it would be at the top of the list.