1961: The Day the Earth Caught Fire

A London reporter with personal problems is our main man and witness as the simultaneous tests of nuclear bombs by the Americans (at the South Pole) and the Russians (at the North Pole) causes the earth to shift on its axis, which brings about extreme weather changes that are depicted in a refreshingly un-Emmerichian style. Solid work. (6.5)

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #1: The Singing Forest

Mixing a romance plot and WWII atrocities is tricky if you're not Alain Resnais - metascore 1

"Writer-director Jorge Ameer's bare-bones vanity project has one incredible premise, one that is so ridiculous and over-the-top it would have been difficult to take his film seriously even if the rest of the film's elements were top-notch (they are not)." - G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle

"At one point the dialogue is completely drowned out by the roar of the surf, and that is no doubt a blessing." - Ken Fox, TV Guide

"To describe this supernatural soap opera as inept and mawkish doesn't really begin to evoke the awfulness of "The Singing Forest" [...]. Exploitative, amateurish, prurient and pretentious are other adjectives that could also be applied to this film" - Stephen Holden, New York Times

If nothing else can be said of 'The Singing Forest,' it is assuredly fearless in defying credibility at every turn and on every level. - Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #2: Chaos

Writer-director David DeFalco may have misunderstood the idea that works of art should be daring: metascore 3

"The first 30 minutes tread the usual genre path strewn with variable quality acting and wooden dialogue as two college-aged women are lured from a rave to a remote cabin before it plunges into an abyss of gruesome imagery so repulsive it precludes further watching." - Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times

"'Chaos' is ugly, nihilistic, and cruel -- a film I regret having seen. I urge you to avoid it. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's "only" a horror film, or a slasher film. It is an exercise in heartless cruelty and it ends with careless brutality. The movie denies not only the value of life, but the possibility of hope." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"The movie opens with a message announcing its mission 'to educate and, perhaps, save lives'—presumably a joke, although the portrayal of one girl's impossibly naive parents ("Emily was raised with good family values!"), an attempt at social satire so inept as to verge on self-parody, raises some doubt." - Joshua Land, Villlage Voice

"The only thing this so-called cautionary tale will inspire audiences to do is to never sit through another insultingly awful piece of exploitative trash 'conceived' by David DeFalco." - Laura Kern, New York Times

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #3: Strippers

Jorge Ameer's film about a man who loses everything didn't win the critics' admiration - metascore 5

[O]ne of a barely acknowledged sub-breed of indie: howling-vanity amateur-work that finds its way into a theater only because the producers buy the room out for a week. Exotic-dancer-free, Ameer's sludgy ordeal entails the Job-like wreckage of an L.A. suit's life and finances; Kafkaesque chuckles might have been the goal, but it's impossible to tell. Rave about it to someone you loathe. - Michael Atkinson, Village Voice

The bizarre performances belong strictly to the "read the cue cards and emote like crazy" school of acting. - Anon, New York Times

The amazing thing is that this isn't Ameer's first film. Throw in a cheesy soundtrack and incredibly cheap production design that makes Ed Wood Jr. look like Max Ophuls, and you've got the makings of a turkey with all the trimmings. - Ken Fox, TV Guide

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #4: Vulgar (2002)

The critics didn't think Bryan Johnson's provocative debut marked the arrival of a new Bunuel - metascore 5.

"Johnson [...] has a twisted mind and no evidence of talent." - Edward Guthman, San Francisco Chronicle

"Vulgar doesn't begin to describe it: Try one of the foulest, least amusing films ever made under the rubric of black comedy. At least, it seems to be meant as a black comedy; it's hard to tell, since this sordid tale of degradation and misery isn't the slightest bit funny." - Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide

"If Johnson has some piteous nightmare cum fantasy to work out, pray he does so in the privacy of his shrink's office next time around." - Marc Holcomb, Village Voice

"'Vulgar,' a movie that made me long for the competent lighting of 'Death to Smoochy,' seems to have been designed to shock the kind of people who once attended midnight shows. The only thing shocking about it, however, is the degree to which self-congratulatory gutter exhibitionism has become the degraded ash end of indie 'edge.'" - Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

"Mr. Johnson went to high school with the director Kevin Smith ("Chasing Amy," 1997), who was godfather to this film and contributes a cameo as a gay television producer. [...] As a movie, "Vulgar," which opens today in Manhattan, San Francisco and Los Angeles, is quite a tribute to friendship. It certainly has no other apparent reason to exist." - Bryan Johnson, New York Times

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #5: National Lampoon's Gold Diggers (2004)

It's another comedy that didn't find its way into the critics' hearts - metascore 6

"In the world of gross-out teen comedy, "Gold Diggers" is less offensive than embarrassing, at least for the chagrined performers" - Sean Axmaker, Seattle Pi

"By the time a rattlesnake ends up attached to a neighbor's genitals in "Gold Diggers" -- or maybe when Lasser shackles a naked Owen to the bed and covers him in dessert toppings -- you'll be rooting for all the characters to find success in their attempted murders so the audience's pain can come to an end." - Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle

"Some movies leave a bad taste in the mouth. This one causes full-on halitosis." - Jen Chaney, Washington Post

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #6: The Hottie and the Nottie (2008)

"One would think that after increasingly embarrassing forays into reality television, the Internet and the penitentiary, Paris Hilton might have taken a moment to reflect on her choices. Or perhaps not: with “The Hottie & the Nottie” Ms. Hilton proves yet again that introspection — not to mention shame — is as alien to her as a life without paparazzi." - Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times

"Hilton is Hilton — smirking, squinty-eyed, thoroughly without charisma, and saying things like, 'Our bodies are earth suits, vessels to help us pass from this planet to the next'" - Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide

"Scripted by Heidi Ferrer and shat onscreen by director Tom Putnam, this strong contender for The Worst Movie I've Ever Seen follows Nate's attempt to woo the 'hottie' while suffering the rancid foot fungus, oozing facial blisters, and hideous tooth decay of her best friend, June Phigg (Christine Lakin). Which leads to such hilarious antics as the yoga-class mishap in which Nate, inching his nose into Cristabel's downward- dogging, spandex-clad ass, gets a whiff of Phiggian foot funk instead. Guffaw!" - Nathan Lee, Village Voice

"Although the credits claim that Tom Putnam directed The Hottie & the Nottie and Heidi Ferrer wrote it, it wouldn't surprise me - based on the quality of the evidence - if Paris didn't have a hand in both of those areas as well." - James Berardinelli, Reelviews

"It suggests that maybe, just maybe, the best movie stars are not those first made famous for penetration scenes." - Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #7: Screwed (2000)

No love for the Danny DeVito comedy from the critics - and a metascore of 7 as a result

"Just how and why Grover is lured into this kidnapping plot is too boring to go into. Suffice it to say, he is offered a large sum of money to find a matching corpse on which another character's identification will be planted. The body Grover selects to impersonate a much younger and healthier man happens to be that of an ancient white-bearded dwarf." - Stephen Holden, New York Times

"As bad as the title, and much longer." - Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide

". . . gives stupid, vulgar comedy a bad name." - Bob Graham, San Francisco Chronicle

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #8: Miss March

Neither male nor female reviewers were convinced by this teenboy comedy - 7/100 on Metacritic's scale.

"Only a moron would expect a dude road-trip-sex comedy to be more than an aggressive expression of male sexual anxiety. But really, when did women become such vile creatures that they must be stabbed in the face with a fork after a botched blowjob, become near roadkill, and drink dog pee (and love it!)?" - Melissa Anderson, L.A. Weekly

"The problem with "Miss March" isn't that it disrespects women: It's that it disrespects poo and tits." - Stephanie Zacharek - Salon

"Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore, who wrote, directed, and star in this crap comedy, are adenoidal smart alecks from the sketch-comedy series The Whitest Kids U Know. As it turns out, they're also the meanest and least inspired kids U know" - J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader

"You know, we’re the country that gave the world jazz and abstract expressionism and Orson Welles. We invented basketball and hip-hop. Now we export adolescent comedy garbage and hope the world won’t notice. No wonder everyone hates us." - Jeff Rosenblatt, Austin Chronicle

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #9: Transylmania

The vampire spoof receives 8/100 from Metacritic

"The film is filled with fart jokes, jizz jokes, anal violation jokes, weed jokes, premature ejaculation jokes, and topless vampire chicks, yet somehow fails to amuse." - Cliff Doerksen, Chicago Reader

"It’s destined to spend a short and painful life in theaters and then join the ranks of the DVD and late-night-cable undead." - Mike Hale, New York Times

"Romania had it bad enough under communism without seeing one of its atmospheric old castles be location-molested for a moronic college comedy with topless vampires, a leather-clad vampire huntress and horny, pot-puffing American exchange students of indeterminate age." - Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

"Transylmania is so inept that it even fails as an adolescent breast-delivery device—teen boys either will have to sneak into theaters or desperately count the weeks until the “unrated directors’ edition” finally arrives at its proper home in the darkest, most disreputable corner of the local video store." - Steven Hyden, The A.V. Club

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #10: State Property

This gangsta epic managed a metascore of 9.

"A Roc-a-Fella Films production, this picture features company CEO Damon Dash and Rock-a-Fella artists Sigel, Memphis Bleek and Jay-Z; director Abdul Malik Abbott is best known for directing Jay-Z videos. The steady stream of characters dressed in Roca-Wear sometimes gives the impression that you're watching a feature-length commercial." - Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide

"Abbott's apparent nod to 'Scarface' goes beyond the inevitable token coin-flip homage in that, throughout the pic, he clearly means to create an ironic distance from the severely limited consciousness of his hero. But since Sigel's acting range is even more limited than his character's consciousness, it's difficult to gauge where the irony begins or ends around, say, his fervent espousal of family values: 'When I'm behind the trigger and ready to rock someone, I always think: Damn I got a family.'" - Ronnie Scheib, Variety

"'State Property' is rated R. It has violence, nudity, obscenity and not much else." - A.O. Scott, The New York Times

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties

Enough of Best of the Decade lists! Metacritic, the site that aggregates movie reviews and calculates an overall "metascore" (out of a hundred) gives us a list of The Worst Movies of the Decade - the ones that the critics really hated (pointer: TSPDT). Starting on Tuesday, I'll give a rundown of the bottom ten (none of which I've seen), each time collecting a number of choice quotes from the portion of the reviews that's still online. Follow with the Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties tag.