Review for

The Worst Ten Films of 2002
By: Michael J. Gold

10: Rollerball - The actors do the best they can with what appears to be a very poor script. Jean Reno is on the right path to master the Jeremy Irons technique for playing the villain in an over-the-top manner, which works quite well in a film this bad. The editing doesn't help the film either. The cuts are at best awkward, creating a film that just seems chaotic and out of control. Overall, this is just a bad film, certainly not worthy of being seen in the theaters and probably not even on video. Your best bet is to ignore this film altogether and simply watch the original.

09: Dragonfly - The problem with this film is that it dragged over the same ground again and again. We see what feels like scene after scene of Joe and his inability to cope with the death of his wife. We see the same symbols drawn by child after child with little to no work on Joe's part to try to determine what the symbol might mean until the end of the film. 20 minutes could have easily been cut from this film to making it tighter and improving the pacing. Overall, Dragonfly is not a bad film. It, like so many of Costner's other films of the last 10 or so years, just feels slow and long-winded.

08: Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever - This film is a horrid mess with enough plot holes to fly a plane through. To make matters worse, the characters are horrible clichés without even a hint of individuality. The film was directed by Wych Kaosayananda of Thailand, who has shortened his named down to Kaos. Oddly enough, Kaos conjures up images of Don Adams playing Agent 86 in the old television series Get Smart! Had this film been made into a comedy in that style then it would have had a much greater chance of being successful. As it stands, the only thing that Kaos has created is chaos.

07: Enough - Enough is a badly made horror flick trying to pass itself off for a thriller. Sadly, this movie falls prey to all the classic horror flick blunders. The main characters are predictable, stereotypes and far more ignorant than should be allowed, the plot is obvious to anyone who has seen more the three movies in their life and the dialog is about as cheesy as it comes. Jennifer Lopez is far too talented for this film, though I can see why she might have been attracted to the role, but sometimes an actress just has to realize that Enough is Enough.

06: The Time Machine - Overall, this movie is just bad. Guy Pearce gives a dry performance to the role of a man who should probably be more colorful. Anyone who can invent a time machine out of parts in 1895 must either be overly determined, ambitious and sure of himself or a little off kilter. Jeremy Irons plays the villain with much the same corny enthusiasm as his role in Dungeons & Dragons. One wonders if Pearce and Irons simply needed the paycheck or if they agreed to appear in the film as a favor to someone.

05: Life or Something Like It - Life or Something Like It is very much a formula film that really doesn't show us anything new. What's worse it doesn't even do a very good job of making the formula very interesting. The characters are simply that, characters. There is nothing about any of them that seems at all real or honest. They are slaves to a bad writer who was trying to create a clever story about the dangers of gaining the world while losing your soul. Instead they have given us an unrealistic and preachy tale that does not in the slightest bit resemble life nor something like it.

04: Deuces Wild - By the time we reach the end of this film (if we haven't walked out by then) we don't really care what happens to any of the characters. The film was written by Paul Kimatian (who according to the Internet Movie Database only other writing credit is a TV movie) and first time screenwriter Christopher Gambale. Their lack of experience shows in a story that wants to be both West Side Story and The Outsiders. Sadly their script treats the characters as checkpoints for a series of predetermined events and takes what could have been an interesting update and makes it completely unnecessary.

03: Birthday Girl - Overall, Birthday Girl is a film that just doesn't succeed. It fails because it doesn't seem to understand what it wants to be: a drama, a thriller or a comedy. It fails because it doesn't understand what motivates its characters. It fails because we do not believe that the events depicted could take place. It fails ultimately because we lose interest in whether or not the main character will straighten out his life and if his mail order bride will or won't be apart of it. Instead we feel played with and simply glad that the pain of the film has ended for us.

02: Queen of the Damned - There are two kinds of people who can see this movie: Those who have read Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and those who haven't. As one of those who has read them, I must confess that this movie completely missed the entire point of the book. In fact, the movie served no point what-so-ever and (it's been a while since I've read the books) if I recall correctly got quite a few points of the books wrong. As I recall, the primary story of The Queen of the Damned is to tell the reader how the first vampires came to be. This is not explored at all in the movie. In fact, to someone who hasn't read the book you would have no idea why Akasha is the Queen of the Vampires, what it means to be the Queen of the Vampires or why she is special at all. The movie fails because, like the later James Bond movies, they took the title of the book, some of the characters and then threw the book away and wrote their own movie. Important characters and events in the book are completely removed. We have no idea what motivates anyone to be doing anything.

01: Full Frontal - Full Frontal is a film about a film within a film as well as the documentary about the film in the film. It is filmed in both 35 mm and on a handheld digital camera. The scenes that are supposed to be the film in the film are shot in 35 mm. Everything else is shot in digital and those digital shots look like something a film student would present as opposed to an accomplished director like Soderbergh.

The plot of the film feels unstructured at best with the only real link seeming to be a birthday party for a producer that all the characters will attend. There are a bevy of talented actors in the film, however, only Catherine Keener gives any sort of compelling performance and her character is so deranged that it is pretty much impossible to empathize with her at all. Add to that a disjointed story and cinematography so poor that it is difficult to connect with or care about any of the characters much less what happens to them.

Films I heard were awful and have thus far elected not to watch:
The Country Bears
Half Past Dead
The Hot Chick
Master of Disguise
Swept Away
The Tuxedo

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