NEWS: Chris GoreÂ’s Footage Fetishes: Top Turkeys of 2006

CULTURE: Chris Gore’s Footage Fetishes: Top Turkeys of 2006

The upcoming Thanksgiving holiday will bring delicious turkey to dinner tables all across the U.S. as Americans celebrateÂ… um, well, a few days off actually.

Anyway, itÂ’s also a time to reflect on the year in movies and the turkeys that hit theaters with a resounding thud. This less than prestigious collection of awful movies thrilled no one, bored quite a few and the best that can be said of some of them is that they wasted our time. So with that, I present to you my list of the Top Turkeys of 2006Â…

Firewall
Harrison Ford starred in this action thriller about a man whose family is taken hostage. Ford is forced to aid the villains to get past a computer firewall illustrating how any film containing a plot device revolving around a computer is simply deadly dull to watch. The saddest part is watching Han Solo get his ass kicked – if Ford breaks a hip, they’ll never make that fourth Indiana Jones film, but at this point, perhaps they shouldn’t.

Please Han, don't break a hip.

Step Up
This romantic teen film had direct-to-DVD written all over it, but somehow managed to reach theaters and find an audience.

The Hills Have Eyes
If all goes according to plan, by 2010 Hollywood will have remade every film previous to 1980. This is another one that reminds us all how great the original Wes Craven movie was.

Poseidon
This remake of the 1970s classic The Poseidon Adventure will make you question whether the original was ever a classic. Some equate the word “classic” with quality standing the test of time, but in movie marketing “classic” just means from a generation ago. And that’s where this film should have remained. Kevin Dillon plays a real dick whose death is not even satisfying. And it’s interesting to note that this summer movie was on DVD before the summer was even over.

The Omen
Okay, the original Omen is a classic (see definition above), so why did we need this remake? The new film follows the originalÂ’s plot to the letter and it contains no scares or surprises failing to add any new wrinkles to the story soÂ… why did they remake this again?

Employee of the Month
Dane Cook tells incredibly funny stories in his live stand up. His CDs have brought the comedy album back and he has more friends on MySpace than the population of Kazakhstan. But when it comes to movies, DaneÂ’s career canÂ’t seem to get off the ground.

Dane is a real stand-up guy... but maybe not a movie-guy.

The Benchwarmers
Okay, we can forgive Rob Schneider and David Space for appearing in this dreck since, well, when do they not make dreck, but John Heder of Napoleon Dynamite fame has no excuse. We should expect more of Heder at this point. Okay, sure, it was a paycheck, but cÂ’mon John.

The Guardian
Ashton Kutcher still can't act. Apparently Hollywood didn't get the memo.

Ashton has such a range of emotion that, well, this shot is pretty much all the range he has.

Superman Returns
Sure, the effects were spectacular, but history will not be kind to this movie which may be best re-titled, "Superman Lifts." Yes, Supes does return but as a selfish and creepy peeping Tom who can't man-up and get over Lois. How bored audiences wished the guy in the red and blue tights would just beat the crap out of something. Anything. With hopes so high that Bryan "X-Men" Singer was helming the rebirth of America's greatest superhero, this reinvention, which owes so much to director Richard Donner's original vision, that it might go down as the Episode I of Superman movies. (Movie geeks know what that statement means... and it's painful.)

We know you can do better Bryan.

Cheaper by the Dozen 2
The “two” says it all.

Click
Adam Sandler stops time with this laughably life-affirming tale containing the age-old message, "Stop and smell the roses." Tell us something we don't know.

RV
Oscar-winning actor Robin Williams should get a call from the Academy asking to give that naked gold guy back. In spite of rampant poop jokes, RV is an insult to those of us who actually like quality toilet humor.

The Da Vinci Code
This Tom Hanks thriller based on the best-selling book was openly mocked by audiences who laughed at the most dramatic scenes as we discover that Amelie is the descendent of Jesus. Sorry that I ruined it, but trust me, you have been “saved” from seeing this awful film. Each clue led to another unlockable area that must be played by our lead characters which lead to yet another clue. More than any video game movie, this film felt like an adventure game best played on a high-performance PC than a movie.

Oh, and if there are any succulent cinematic turkeys that I failed to mention, please do so in the comments as this list could have been twice as long.

Gore gone!

Chris_Gore is an author, a filmmaker, the creator of Film Threat, and plans to spend Thanksgiving avoiding all of the above-mentioned movies.

I saw DOA last night, spectacularly, spectacularly, shit. And the most entertaining shit film i've seen since Torque. I'm not sure if it deserves a place on the list or not, it was a pitiful attempt at filmmaking, even for a movie based on a video game, but somehow it managed to drop off the bottom of the scale and re-appear at the top (like Pac-Man) and make me enjoy it about 8 million times more than watching Tubby Tom looking constipated through The DaVinci Code.

Date Movie was horrid!!
I expected more from you Willow!

Bloodrayne, another Uwe Boll masterpiece.

Your list seems pretty accurate to me. And even though I go see all kinds of movies, I thankfully missed a good number of these turkeys. Kudos for including SUPERMAN RETURNS - I had high hopes this too, especially when I heard Singer was going to pay tribute to Donner's vision. Unfortunately, the new movie never got off the ground so to speak. Note to filmmakers who tackle comic book adaptations: GIVE YOUR HERO A FUCKING INTRODUCTION. It will go a long way towards including your audience on the spectacular ride you want to take them on.

oh yeah - and you forgot ULTRAVIOLET...

We'll soon be able to add "Bobby" to the list. Man, that looks unfuckingbearable.

Ok, of those that I saw, I LOVED The Hills Have Eyes and Superman Returns. Really great, was not disappointed in the slightest. But then, I also haven't seen the originals for either.

I really felt they should've named Cheaper by the dozen 2 "Cheaper by the Baker's Dozen," and had one of the kids have a baby, but then, I'm much more hilarious than whoever produces that garbage.


Also, I'd like to add Wicker Man. That movie made me want to cut myself, and I read that the original was actually a respected movie with a cult following. My message to Nicolas Cage? Stop it!

i was forced to see 'the break up'. another example of how the ad managed to contain the funniest moment in the movie.

You're totally off here. If I have to see the Superman origin story ONE MORE TIME, I might gouge my eyes out. We don't need another rehash of a story that's been told a thousand times before. Even in the past few years on Smallville. I was extremely glad I didn't have to watch the same old story all over again.

A list of crap in film in 2006 that doesn't include X-Men 3 doesn't count. People can bitch about how Superman Returns was "boring" and "all he did was lift stuff and be a stalker", but at least there was a thorough plotline, with things like consequences and reactions. Y'know, stuff that tends to be requirements of character development.

Hey, I'm with you - we've already seen the origin story. I just meant a cinematic moment where the character is properly introduced to the audience. Seems like he just kinda slinked around, hardly even speaking for the first half hour or so. Didn't really engender a lot of interest in what was going to happen later. But to be honest - that was just the first of many miscues. All I really remember about the movie is how bored I was...

X-Men 3 was a good movie. I'm glad Chris looked past the past the smear campaign AintitCoolNews started on the net for months trying to sink that movie and recognized that Superman Returns was the movie that really creeped most Superman fans out.

Don't get me wrong, I like Apt Pupil, The Usual Suspects and X2, but Singer can't deliver the goods on telling a solid movie in 2 hours. X1 and X2 are like prologues that lead to nothing. If the highest praise people can give X2 is that it was a prelude for the Phoenix storyline that he would've done, then that's crap. You see a glimmer of an outline in teh water and that's supposed to mke up for for the 90 minutes of a TV plot that X-Men 1 is? I could get into how expecting a comic cannon accurate Phoenix Saga from Singer is absolutely idiotic given how little he took from the comics themselves but the weak scripts and average directing were lifted by an above average cast.

Tell you what, if Singer was such a great director, you think he couldve gotten Halle Berry to keep her accent consistent at least within either X1 or X2.

If anything, I think X3 showed that you could introduce a character within the confine of a film and not have to milk it and drag it out to give him some kind of prolonged excuse to join the team. Kelsey Grammar fit in just fine and given how many hanging threads Singer left Ratner did a good job of trying to tie them up, or the screenwriters rather, the film is pretty tightly shot and while some sequences wouldve had a bit mor eimpact if given a little breathing room [mainly the end where Magneto moves the chess piece] its a good movie which wraps the storylines up but doesnt really fuck with the status quo

- Cyclops may or may not be dead. As comics tell us, his optic beams feed the Phoenix Force, so you could always have him put in stasis in a cocoon - if Raimi can flip continuity in Spider-Man with Gwen, it could be done with Cyclops
- Jean ALWAYS comes back from the dead enough said
- Xavier is like on his 3rd or 4th cloned body in the comics, so him coming back, also within canon.

Versus Superman Returns, which is a weird creepy movie with Superstalker and the fact that James Marsters is the only sympathetic chrcter in the movie that you like him and not Superman and the whole time youre thinking, why didnt they just cast Marsters as Superman versus this creepy Chris Reeves wannabe. Youve got the single parent/kid angle that already cripples the franchise with an albatross around its neck.

Seriously, Im grateful for Chris Nolan, because he at least understands that a relaunch doesnt mean remake the movies before yours, but shitty. Superman Returns is a pseudo remake of part 1 and crappy sequel to part 2. There was no reason for Singer to waste time on another origin story given Smallville and having Lex as anotehr non super powered villain in the age of cool villains, is just stupid.

Summary; lots of good about X3, SR is dreck. Thank you Chris. Its nice to read some movie criticism not colored by bias like at the AICN site.

This may end with my lunch money being stolen, but I really don't think Superman is a timeless character.

And X3 wasn't as much bad as it was very poorly paced. If you get the misprinted DVD with the 20+ deleted scenes, you'll see that they did indeed film a worthy successor to X2.

And then they sliced off every bit of that worthy successor that wasn't an action scene or an important event leading into an action scene.

x3 sucked pretty hard, regardless of how it fits with the other two movies and/or the comic books, the dialogue was tacky and unoriginal, and the story had no real content.

That sounds pretty much like X-Men 1 and X-Men 2 as well.

"What happens when a toad gets struck by lightning ... the same things that happens to everything else."

ugh.

I can back this!

I had a day where I watched Spice World and Ultraviolet. I can't believe that Spice World was not the worst movie I saw that day.

+1



Who kills off Cyclops? He's X-man #1. You just don't do it.

Superman sucked.... the worst part was realizing it was sucking during the movie and also realizing it was not getting any better. It was a travesty.

That being said x3 sucked. Just because it sucked less then supes did doesn't mean it didn't suck. It was a sucktastic movie. Face it. In fact I haven't been able to read the comics since the movie made me want to go home and never leave the house again. I was planning on just sitting at home and pretending like the bad man, Bryan Singer, didn't exist and that comics would not be made into disappointing unwatchable vomit inducing dreck.

I know I won't find too many voices of agreement here but I actually liked "Step Up" quite a bit. It was good in the way that "Mean Girls" was good

As for Superman, it was bad, yet still only slightly worse than X-3.

You'll probably be able to add "Deck The Halls" to this list pretty soon.

You know, I really didn't like Superman Returns. And yet, I'd say you're spot on about this.

Great list, Chris.
Poseidon was *such* a disappointment -- but maybe because I went to see it with my father who was a cruise ship captain and continuously pointed out all the impossibilities. Or maybe because Emmy Rossum's face annoys me.

Glad you all seemed to dig the list. I began with a list of almost 40 movies and had to filter those to what I felt were the absolute worst. However, I agree with everyone's comments -- those additional film suggestions all make sense.

Yeah the Hills have Eyes was awful, I couldnt stomach it and had to turn it off. I think it was more for shock value but even that is sick.

Go to the video store. Go to the video store RIGHT FUCKING NOW.