Victim's Gold Stars: A Red Cross

I'm halfway through my top ten countdown, and thus it is time to take a little detour into the black pit that is the worst of the year. These are the movies (and the people in them) that are so bad that they don't deserve graphics (no, it's not because I'm lazy)- these are the very nadir of 2006's movie experience. Brace yourselves. (This is strictly for FUN- please don't start berating me.)

WORST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Hayden Christensen, Factory Girl

The Star Wars-alumni suddenly swoops in and tears the film's clever self-conscious emptiness into a dull emptiness with a annoyingly mugging performance as someone who ISN'T Bob Dylan, I tells ya!

Aaron Eckhart, The Black Dahlia

I'm not sure who told Mr. Eckhart to contort his face so wildly whenever the camera looks at him, but I sure as hell wish they hadn't.

Noah Emmerich, Little Children

Emmerich is the sole member of the cast who actually fits into the skewed universe in which Little Children takes place: alienating, grotesque, hyper and disturbing.

Freddy Rodriguez, Lady in the Water

I like Freddy when he isn't forced into an admittedly thankless role and made to perform like a circus monkey. Nice arm.

Mickey Rourke, Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker
There aren't 300 rows in the cinema, Mickey. We can hear you just fine. And see you, unfortunately for us.

WORST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Shohreh Aghdashloo, The Nativity Story
Stop smirking, Shohreh. Just because you're miraculously pregnant doesn't mean you have to start being sickly sweet two months early.

Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
She can sing, sure. But she can't act, even when she's singing.

Laura Linney, Driving Lessons
I think she's supposed to be Welsh. But, like Sir Anthony Hopkins, she seems to be even less clued in than the audience about where she's from. And she's so upset that she starts shrieking! Stop it, Laura! Please, for the love of god!

Idina Menzel, Ask the Dust
Who are you and why are you living next to a fairground?

Hilary Swank, The Black Dahlia
What is she wearing? Is that real hair? She doesn't look like Mia Kirschner, does she? What is she doing? What is she saying? Why is she here?


A little respite... here are five diamonds in the rough. (I'm not sure how they all ended up being women, but there you go.)

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A BAD MOVIE
Amy Adams, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
The Junebug star is barely in this atrocity and yet still manages to be luminescent, suddenly swooping in for a gorgeous monologue before, sadly, subjecting herself to Will Ferrell's hungry lips.

Jennifer Connelly, Little Children
Superbly attuned to the childish and suspicious nature of her sidelined character, Connelly pierces her scenes with a stunning precision, eyes watching her husband and his new 'friend' like a hawk.

Jodelle Ferland, Tideland
To be fair Tideland isn't awful- it's just extremely alienating. Ferland, as the central character, proves a terrific find, no traces of Dakota Fanning-esque precociousness in her unbalanced character's oddities, throwing herself totally into Gilliam's strange world.

Diane Lane, Hollywoodland
Lane is an unexpected warmth in the corner of this extraordinarily dull movie, bringing pathos and emotion to an underwritten part and giving her scenes the necessary nervous edge.

Amy Smart, Crank
Miss Smart is subjected to rather nasty things in the course of Crank's hyper-active running time, yet remains charismatic, knowing and exciting.


And now back to...

WORST ACTOR

Adrien Brody, Hollywoodland
Whenever he reappeared on-screen, my already deadened heart sank several metres. Go. Away.

Tom Hanks, The Da Vinci Code
Nice hair. Are there no showers near the Louvre?

Kevin Kline, A Prairie Home Companion
This is a film about radio, right? So remind me: why the private dick? And more importantly, why is Kevin trying to look like he's come straight from The Maltese Falcon?

Sean Penn, All the King's Men
Mr. Penn is so loud and bombastic that I'm pretty sure even the penguins dancing around the North Pole got what he said. Well, they heard it- god knows if they understood it, because I didn't.

Alex Pettyfer, Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker
I'm thankfully no longer a young teenage boy, but even so, I just wanted to punch this smug pretty boy into the Thames.

WORST ACTRESS

Cate Blanchett, Little Fish
Wake up, Cate! They're filming! It's time to act now. Oh, you are?

Kate Bosworth, Superman Returns
Lois Lane is supposed to be a fiery cracker of a woman. Kate Bosworth acts like someone poured one hundred pints of water over her heard and slapped her after each one.

Keisha Castle Hughes, The Nativity Story
If she's Mary, I'm the Archangel Gabriel. Oh, sorry Mr. Siddig. I forgot they already hired you.

Julie Walters, Driving Lessons
I'm recoiling and she's not even touching me.

Renee Zellweger, Miss Potter
She's blotchy, garish and alarmingly bonkers. Run, children, run!

WORST PICTURE

5. Ask the Dust
It's entirely hollow: not even the sets look realistic, they're reminiscent of a Pleasantville-style enclosed set, and the director is even stupid enough to film at the edges. When you manage to make the naked frolicking of Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek boring, you're in major trouble.

4. Driving Lessons
Julie Walters smiles and yells, Laura Linney shrieks and pops her eyes, and Rupert Grint cowers in fear. If you think its bad while you're watching it, just wait for the end. It's ten times as horrifying.

3. Just My Luck
The jokes are just too easy with that title. What universe does this take place in? I hate it. I hate it I hate it I hate it.

2. Lady in the Water
The setting of M. Night Shyamalan's latest indulgency is an apartment block that seems to be the little swampy brother of Narnia. Is it strange that this, too, doesn't seem to take place in any recognisable universe, even though it protests to? I mean, I know it's full of strange creatures, but the people are supposed to be from Earth, right? Right? Oh, sorry, Night, you can't hear me- your head is lodged firmly up your own ass.

1. Apocalypto
Speaking of asses... Apocalypto isn't just immoral and despicable and horrifying and useless and devoid of any purpose whatsoever, but it's just bad filmmaking. The camera doesn't know where it's going, the script seems to have been written by a three-year-old, and- a-ha!- someone gave the editor Milos's crazy scissors! Step away from the camera, Mel, and no-one'll get hurt.

Victim's Gold Stars will resume normal service very soon. And no, I'm not going to mention Spider-Man 3.

Little Children, Scenes of a Sexual Nature and Slither

[Little Children (Todd Field, 2006): The initially middling grade I gave Little Children probably sprung for my intense desire to want to like it, to admire it, to say that the acting here covers up the horrendous mess of the script and direction. Kate Winslet is undoubtably my favourite modern actress, and maybe it just wounds me too much to say that even she can't make up for the deficencies here. There's nothing particularly wrong with her performance here; indeed, it's probably as good as it could have been, save perhaps for the scene where, ironically, she shows the most emotion. (The moment feels so odd, fitting in I suppose with the histrionics the script constantly visits; but in the context of repressed surburban housewife, it's jarring.) There's little, indeed, wrong with most of the performances here: Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Haley, Phyllis Somerville, Jane Adams, and particularly Jennifer Connelly (able, as always, to mine so much out of an underwritten and marginalized role) are all fine, often excellent- only Noah Emmerich is bad, a garish performance which suits the film around him better than do the other actors- but they're all slaving away in service of a confused, puzzling mess of a film which thinks it knows so much when it knows so little. It throws you off right from the beginning, the stale, sage narration of some always-unknown quantity striking up at irregular intervals and never, really, serving a purpose apart from highlighting things the audience should be left to understand on their own. But what's worst about Little Children is it's smugness- Todd Field and Tom Perrotta's script (adapted from Perrotta's well-recieved novel) sits there, laden with a strange bitterness and pessimism that is never explained, winding it's way through a serious of rather unexciting events concerning- and how ironic this is- adults acting like "little children", selfish and irresponsible, all wanting to feel needed and loved, trying to make their lives worthwhile. Even before it reaches it's bizarre and conflicted climax, Little Children navigates various levels of over-egged histrionics and self-involved events, abandoning all sense of balance to the talented cast to try and sort out- it's not their fault, I cry, vainly trying to convince myself that it deserves attention; but really, there are better performances out there that warrant attention, and Kate the Great will have to wait a few more years for that thin golden statuette. Grade: D+]

[Scenes of a Sexual Nature (Ed Blum, 2006/7): Even worse than the smugness of Little Children is the smugness of Scenes of a Sexual Nature, which has even less claim to the idea of knowledge than Todd Field's unweilding mess. No, here is a film which, like Little Children, has employed a talented cast- Ewan McGregor, Polly Walker, Sophie Okonedo, Andrew Lincoln, Eileen Atkins, et al- to act out its complacent "ideas" about sexuality, this time in the form of seven criss-crossing vignettes between various couplings. The first false note is struck by the sickeningly twinkly and whimsical score, which, as one review I read commenting, "will make you want to kill yourself". The script is hollow and empty, full of cliched lines and situations- most of the vignettes seem like the more boring scenes from a common romantic comedy, the bits you'd sit sighing through waiting for the amusing comedic side-kick to re-appear, because they're the real reason you paid the ticket price. The talent of the cast, and the reasonable performances they give, somehow makes the whole thing even worse- how, I ask loudly, could all these actors be conned into starring in this horrific mess? Oh, and I never, ever want to go to Hampstead Heath, thanks. Grade: F]

[Slither (James Gunn, 2006): The delirious joys of Slither take a while to kick in, but when they do, oh-ho-ho, they don't let go. In the spirit of '80's alien horrors, but without their laughable effects (Slither looks, at times, frighteningly realistic), James Gunn's debut is a witty, exciting ride, expertly balancing comedy and horror and never over-dosing on either. The cast is game, with Serenity's Nathan Fillion playing the hero with a reluctant gusto, and Elizabeth Banks is both a funny and sympathetic straight-face as the wife of the man-turned-monster (and, naturally, the object of Fillion's affections). Overall, Slither's narrative goes in a predictable direction, but Gunn has a lot of fun in the intermediate scenes, constantly springing gory surprises that provide for some hilarious lines. To use a familiar expression: no, it's not Citizen Kane, but there's a lot of fun to be had by all. Grade: B]