bad movies Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Over on his blog at the Chicago Tribune, critic Michael Phillips (a very nice and knowledgable guy who James Rocchi and I chatted with at Sundance earlier this year) has a fun piece up on movies that he's walked out on. Then he asked a bunch of Tribune staffers to share what films they've walked out on.

Some of the picks are predictable -- Evita, Reservoir Dogs (one of my own least favorite movies of all time, though I actually sat through the entire violent mess), and Forrest Gump (blech) are on there, along with a few I wouldn't have thought of, like Prince's Under the Cherry Moon and Cat People, which I remember watching with a certain fondness as a midnight movie on TV in my youth (it wasn't that bad, was it?)

I'm one of those sadistic movie fans who will generally force myself to sit through anything, even at a film fest, when a lot of folks will slip out with the excuse that they need to catch something else that's overlapping a film they really just want to walk out on anyhow. I generally try to avoid up front seeing a film I know I'm really going to hate, but sometimes I'm assigned to review something, and it can't be helped -- I just have to suffer through it so I can write the damn review. Here are a few movies, though, that I suffered through but wish I hadn't. If only I'd known then that even print folks at a place like the Tribune walk out on films, I might have saved myself some misery ...

Here's some good news: Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly cracked the box office top ten this week, coming in at #10, while playing only on 216 screens. Our number one movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, is playing on 4133. For the math geeks out there, that's nearly 20 times as many screens. The difference between the two movies is that Pirates needs to saturate the market as quickly as possible before moviegoers discover how truly mediocre it is, while A Scanner Darkly is the kind of movie you want to ponder, then go back and see again.

I have still only seen the film once, but I continue to roll it around in my brain. It's a bit of a downer, focusing mostly on drug addiction and very little of the cool gadgetry that make other Philip K. Dick movies so cult-worthy; the best trick is the identity-mixing suit that the hero (played by Keanu Reeves) has to wear in his capacity as a drug cop. Yet A Scanner Darkly has quite a bit to say about drugs, especially the business of drugs and the emotional side of drugs. Plus, the kooky, cartoony performances by Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. go a long way in lightening the movie's load.

Editor's Note: When it came time to assign the year-end "Worst Of" list, Cinematical writers Erik Davis and Robert Newton both jumped at the chance. Rather than put them in the steel cage and let them fight to the death (something which parent company AOL frowns upon), we are letting them tag-team with this "Wurst Movies Of 2005" feature:

Erik Davis: I'm probably not going to be very popular for this choice (especially among Scientologists), but I have to start off with…

10. War of the Worlds – Okay, so Tom Cruise didn’t defeat the Aliens by giving them a computer virus (with a Macintosh) à la Independence Day, but that still doesn’t excuse this film from sucking up the hype and spewing it all over our faces as we left the theater.

Robert Newton: I'm a big sci-fi fan, and am always pained to see a fetid floater like Snore Of The Worlds or Aeon Flux or The Island, but for me, the most leaden of all genre turds was…