So I Made Another List...

The joy is gone. The sun has set, and the world has become a desolate and inhospitable place.

A cold wind blows from the north, bringing with it a devastating storm that will scour the landscape, leaving in its wake a ravaged wasteland. That's what it feels like, at any rate. The memories of the good movies from 2011 are fading away, and I am haunted by the malevolent cinematic spirits that have tormented me over the past year. Their names echo through my mind, mercilessly mocking me. Wow, that is some serious alliteration.

I'm just trying to tell you that its time to identify the 10 worst films of 2011. Just to clarify, these are my worst theatrical experiences from the last year. I'm not speaking for anyone else, obviously. Although anybody who truly enjoys Unknown is immediately suspect in my eyes.

That's a spoiler, by the way. Unknown is on the list. Of course it is.

RE-ACTIVATE FENDERMAN-TRON LIST-O-RAMA 2011 EDITION!!!

The Worst Examples Of The Moving Picture As An Artform

10) The Hangover, Part 2

I liked the first movie. I really did. It's not the next Animal House, but it's a decent, R-rated comedy. This... isn't. I'm not sure what my expectations for this unlikely franchise were. Where else could the creative parties take these four unlikeable protagonists? Why bother? Why? Because it made money!

The world didn't need The Hangover, Part 2. There's no deep mythology to reveal. These are not rich characters with unexplored depths. There's nothing to the first movie. It's a disposable comedy. Does anybody really care about these vapid douchebags?

Fuck it, just re-make the first movie in a different location. It worked for Die Hard! The only problem is that I enjoyed the Die Hard sequels, all except for that last one. John McClane surfed on a fucking fighter jet!? He crashed a car into a helicopter?! He called everybody "Jughead"?! It took four movies for the Die Hard well to run dry. It only took two with The Hangover.

This really happened.

This time, the wolf pack is in Thailand! Wacky shit happens in Thailand, right? Doesn't everybody in Thailand have AIDS? I think I read that somewhere. Literally everyone. And every child under the age of 16 is a prostitute. And a transvestite.

I believe that information is accurate.

I think that means that the wolf pack has AIDS now. Maybe even "super AIDS". I wonder if the next installment is this franchise that should not exist will involve the beloved wolf pack facing their own mortality as they waste away in some run-down hospice, gazing at a bunch of hilariously obscene digital photos. Wouldn't that be great? Somebody get Todd Phillips on the horn, I think I've cracked the story for The Hangover, Part 3!

I guess I'm really saying that I want these characters to die horribly because I don't like them anymore. It's probably my own fault, however. It would be too much to ask for a sequel to do anything different, after all. Don't break the mold, kids. This movie made over $250,000,000, and I contributed twelve bucks to that gross, so I'm the idiot.

But fuck this boring broken record of a movie.

8) Conan The Barbarian

I knew this couldn't end well. A remake of one of my favorite movies, directed by the ecentric "auteur" who gave the world Pathfinder. Have you ever seen Pathfinder? I have. I'm fascinated by the fact that everybody's favorite lunatics (vikings) found North America before that chubby cunt Christopher Columbus. I know there's a good story to be told in the early interactions between the vikings and the native tribes of the New World. But Pathfinder isn't it. It's barely competent.

You've got Clancy Brown essentially reprising his legendary role of "The Kurgan" from the first Highlander film in this, and it still sucks! How do you fuck that up? Moon Bloodgood, that's how.

But seriously, folks, Pathfinder is garbage. And it was basically a dry run for Marcus Nispel's Conan The Barbarian. It's like the writer of this movie took a look at every element that made John Milius' original story such an exciting and memorable experience, and then deliberately decided to go in the opposite direction, while keeping the generic base of the plot intact. Conan is on a mission of vengeance, bent on killing the fanatical warlord who killed his father and wiped out his tribe. It's the same story, but the difference lies in the telling. And this remake tells the story terribly.

There are only two memorable characters in the movie, but that's not praise. Stephen Lang's villain, some bug-eyed lunatic called "Zym", tries so hard to seem imposing and formidable, but he never reaches those lofty heights, even when he's performing such dastardly deeds as torturing Ron Perlman for sport. He acts like he's just really constipated and needs a good laxative. His sweaty face and strained expression scream "I have an obstructed bowel".

Tremble with fear!

His quest to unite a bunch of bones to create an all-powerful necromancer mask with a throbbing anus fails not because Conan thwarts him, but because he's an inept fool. He dons the mask of unlimited power... and then... nothing changes. Absolutely nothing changes. He just falls into a river of lava and that's it. Great job, asshole.

The only other memorable actor in this tripe is Rose Mcgowan, because she understood that the script was garbage, took the role because she had bills to pay, and just showed up and overacted like a mentally disturbed Mae West impersonator. I appreciated it, probably because at least she was entertaining. Hammy as hell, but entertaining.

This woman knows the score.

It's a shame her big Red Sonja remake never happened. I would have seen it. Because I like Rose McGowan. Ever since I saw The Doom Generation as a teenager. Now that was an entertaining movie...

Um...

Right, Conan The Barbarian. I hated it.

8) Cowboys & Aliens

Boring. Painfully boring. Stupid aliens. Stupid motivation for the aliens. Stupid "Olivia Wilde is actually an alien suicide bomber" plot twist. Stupid wasted Clancy Brown and Keith Carradine. Did I mention "painfully boring"? Oh, and no climactic battle featuring a small army of cowboys and indians on flying horseback fighting the extraterrestrial menace.

Gold Robbers From Outer Space is Steve Oedekerk's idea of a good time. That's more than enough reason for me to hate it.

Why is Thumbtanic a real thing?!

7) Green Lantern

Oh god. This is giving me a headache. The so-called "Guardians of the Universe" should all die of space-herpes. This movie didn't need to happen. Hell, it didn't happen. It was inflicted upon the poor souls who were unfortunate enough to see it. People call the Saw movies torture porn. They're wrong. Green Lantern is torture porn. It's gratuitous and obscene. And I'm pretty sure Blake Lively is a Real Doll.

I can't wait for the sequel!

6) Fright Night

It makes sense that Peter Vincent wouldn't be a late-night TV horror host in the inevitable re-invention of my beloved Fright Night. Those folks don't really exist anymore, outside of the internet. Kids these days don't have late-night TV horror hosts. But they do have Criss Angel!

And admittedly, the idea of a magician/vampire face-off is ripe with potential. I had visions of a climactic showdown in Peter Vincent's lair, with our protagonists using every trick in the illusionist's handbook to overcome their bloodsucking adversary. Yeah... that would have been cool. That's not what we got, though.

Colin Farrell's a good, charismatic actor, which is why I refuse to believe the guy who played "Jerry Dandridge" in this garbage is actually Colin Farrell. It doesn't make sense. Christ, he was a leering madman in Daredevil! Where did that energy go? Give me something! Anything!

Get him a fucking costume!

Chris Sarandon is still viable, they should have just cast him in the remake. If that actually happened, at least this movie would have had something going for it. It would have been a little weird, but I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more.

Fright Night 3-D brings absolutely nothing worthwhile to the table. The script is insultingly unimaginative and pedestrian, the direction is stiff and uninspiring, and none of the actors even bothered to try. It's pretty clear that nobody at any point in this film's development and production ever gave a damn. They just slapped this shit together with duct tape, Red Green-style, hoping to make a quick buck before it all came undone and collapsed. How'd that work out, you pricks?!

At least this film reminded me that Lisa Loeb still exists, and that she gave birth to McLovin.

McLoebin?

God Damn you, Fright Night 3-D. Now this means I'll never get my Fright Night 3, starring William Ragsdale and Amanda Bearse! I had a killer spec script!

If only this were in 3-D...

You've ruined everything!

5) Battle: Los Angeles

Take War Of The Worlds, Black Hawk Down, and watch them simultaneously in a poorly ventilated room while you spray paint the walls and repeatedly beat yourself about the head and face with a hammer. After you lapse into a brain-damaged stupor, if you hallucinate Battle: Los Angeles, ask the imaginary talking squirrels standing on your chest for a refund. Because how dare your imagination be so fucking boring. Life's a lemon and I want my money back.

Battle: Los Angeles is the Rick Santorum of movies. It's stupid, poorly thought out, and if you spend more than five minutes in the same room with it, you will contemplate suicide. Thank Zeus this movie can't run for public office.

I'm Rick Santorum, and I approve this movie.

Imagine the bone-headed legislation Battle: Los Angeles would introduce on the Senate floor. Battle: "Man On Dog" Los Angeles.

4) I Am Number 4

I wanted to enjoy an evening watching women's roller derby. What I got instead was one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

Some soulless dickheads optioned the rights to a godawful young adult novel, hired the devil's personal taint scrubber to write the screenplay, tracked  down the sociopathic drifter who killed D.J. Caruso and stole his identity to direct it for a bottle of rotgut and a spoiled pastrami sandwich, and filled out the cast with a cadre of brain-damaged catalogue models.

This isn't a movie. It's the fucking Anti-Life Equation.

Darkseid is pleased.

This abomination is like the sizzle reel for an anti-social film student who wants to hate-fuck moviegoers just for the hell of it. I Am Number 4 is the epitome of corporate greed. Protest this movie! Riot! Bring it down! Bring it all down!

3) Super 8

No. Just no.

2) Sucker Punch

It's not deep. It doesn't have any special signifigance. There's no message. This is just Zack Snyder trying to say... something... and failing miserably. Pointless cinematic masturbation. Bad things happen to mentally ill young women. That's it. That's all it is.

A series of metaphorical battles with clockwork Nazis and faceless robots don't make for a compelling narrative in and of themselves. Striking visuals don't fix the serious story flaws. You remember that "lipstick on a pig" shit? That's what Sucker Punch is.

I love you, Carla Gugino. Honestly I do. But please, for the love of all things sacred, please stop saying yes to this shit.

Aww, I can't stay mad at you!

Maybe, at one point, if Zack Snyder had handed off his story to a real screenwriter, something worthwhile could have come out of this. But that didn't happen, and we are left with a fractured, vapid, half-baked allegory that made my cousin cry.

1) Unknown

I went back and forth on many of my entries in this year's list. Where did they belong? Did I really hate Conan The Barbarian more than The Hangover, Part 2?

I had none of those problems with Unknown. I knew when I left the theatre on that cold February afternoon that I would not see a worse movie in 2011. This worthless excuse for a motion picture filled me with such disgust, it literally made me sick. My body rejected Unknown, and I spent many anguished minutes attached to my toilet bowl, projectile vomiting and cursing my existence.

How could this happen? Nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING in this movie works. It's that rare perfect storm of cinema that fails to get anything right. It is, on every level, a complete and utter failure. This movie transformed talented actors like Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, Frank Langella, Bruno Ganz and Aidan Quinn into drooling cretins, unable to do anything more than find their mark and recite their insipid dialogue without shitting their pants.

The narrative revolves around a bunch of bad people hired to assassinate a scientist for inventing a new kind of corn. Somebody invented an animatronic sex toy to portray the femme fatale. Skeletor died in a rape van explosion. Darkman was replaced by another Darkman wearing the face of that cop from Practical Magic. Adolf Hitler was a private detective.

What have I done...?

The fabric of the universe unraveled before my very eyes and I gained a complete understanding of the cosmos, gazing into all potential realities. And what I learned from my sojourn in the infinite nearly destroyed me. All roads lead to Unknown. It is the inevitable conclusion to the great cosmic drama, the very nexus of time and space. Unknown is our apocalypse.

I imagined myself as Kevin McCarthy at the conclusion of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, scrambling onto a highway shouting "You're next!" at passing motorists. I had to warn people. The end was extremely fucking nigh, and the populace needed to know that the BEAST had been loosed upon the world.

And the BEAST wants your pocket change.

When the psychic warlords from Zanthar VII arrive in the year 2237 to conquer this world and enslave the human race, the sole justification for their brutal invasion will be Unknown. And we will deserve it. We have condemned ourselves to 10,000 years of intergalactic bondage and pain for allowing Unknown to exist.

Are you happy, Liam Neeson?! I hope it was worth it. You may think I'm exaggerating slightly.

But in the immortal words of Eric Roberts: "This is how it STARTS!"

I'm finished, now. I can't take this anymore. The memories are too much to bare. Time to crack open that bottle of peppermint schnapps I've been saving.

Drink the pain away.