The Worst Movies... Ever

So as I look back on the last month or so of this blog, I see some good things and some bad things. Some funny things and -- let's face it -- some extremely funny things. 

But besides my recurring "Celebrity Birthdays" thingy, what you can't say about this a-here blog is that's it's in any way about Hollywood. 

And well, there's a reason for that: I still live in Chicago. It's hard to write a joke about stepping over a sleeping crackhead in West Hollywood to get to the front door of the apartment you share with an out-of-work bikini waxer if that's not your actual life. 

So as a substitute for that horrible possible future, I've decided to start writing a series of features about what are -- to me, your Humble Narrator -- the worst movies ever. 

My exceptionally creative title for this, picked after a grueling deliberation lasting two seconds?

"The Worst Movies... Ever." 

Worst Movie #1: Hollow Man (2000). 

As Roger Ebert (whose birthday, coincidentally, is today) would say, I "hate hate hate hate hate" this movie. Why? Because it's a piece of shit shit shit shit shit. 

For those of you don't know, Hollow Man is the story of brilliant, arrogant but stupidly named scientist Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) who after years of work has finally discovered a procedure that can make a person invisible. Instead of reporting his success to the government, who hired him and funded his project (complete with a cool underground bunker in the middle of a city), he does what any scientist who wants to further the plot along does: he tests it out on himself. 

And, well, it works. He's invisible. But when they try to return him to visibility after three days, they can't. 

Oops! 

This totally predictable outcome does not make Sebastian mad at himself for causing his shitty situation. Nope, it turns him -- for no reason at all -- into a raging psychopath and murderer. First up, he rapes his neighbor. Seriously. Then he kills a dog. 

Then, instead of just escaping the lab and going into the city (where his chances of being found -- as an invisible guy -- would be pretty slim) he just decides he'd rather kill his entire team -- a group of people, mind you, that are his best friends at the beginning of the movie. 

So this he does, killing everyone except for two people -- Matt (Josh Brolin) and Linda (Elizabeth Shue) -- who he locks in a freezer. To no one's surprise, they escape, using an electromagnet modified (I shit you not) from a defibrilator. 

Then, and I quote from the Wikipedia plot summary: "she (Linda) makes a fire to warm Matt then gathers the parts needed for a flamethrower." 

Don't laugh at this. Flamethrower parts are actually standard issue in medical laboratories. After all, who knows when you'll be forced, between tissue analyses, to root out a bunker of dug-in Japanese soldiers.  

Now if you're thinking: well, he's invisible. Maybe he does all of this because no one will know it's him. No, I'm sorry. Everyone in the movie knows instantly it's Sebastian. Why? Because he talks (and talks and talks) the entire movie, venting a streaming of megomaniacal bullshit from his mouth like a volcano. 

Sample dialogue: 

Sebastian: "How many times do I have to tell you, Frank? You're not God. I am." 

Yes. Despite being a brilliant scientist, Sebastian apparently never learned the first rule of sneaking up on someone: shut the fuck up. 

So yes. Hollow Man is the cinematic equivalent of getting your scrotum caught in a toaster. If I'm destined to go to hell, Hollow Man will be the only movie on, every day, all day long, for eternity. 

And I'm not the only one. Hollow Man was so badly reviewed that, in an effort to find a reviewer who would actually say something nice about the movie, Sony was forced to make someone up. 

So why does Hollow Man rank as one of the worst movies... ever, rather than just as a piece of silly bullshit? 

Well, because the idea of becoming invisible is actually really cool. Any random halfwit could come up with a better movie from that basic idea than the crap I've described above. But no. Instead of exploring the psychological and metaphysical implications (and also interesting stuff), the filmmakers decided to make a really shitty formerly-normal-guy-becomes-a-serial-killer-for-no-reason movie (with, you know, invisibility thrown in there for kicks). 

And for that, well... let me just say that certain persons (for instance, and I'm just picking randomly here, Hollow Man director Paul Verhooven) should be forced to stand on a stage and have rotten fruit thrown at them.