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The 35 worst movies of all time, according to critics

From ill-advised sequels like scary movie 5 to a bad documentary about hillary clinton, movie critics have deemed these films the worst of the worst, article bookmarked.

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While the moviegoing public will often flock in large numbers to enjoy bad movies (see: Suicide Squad ), professional critics are, by contrast, quick to pile condemnation on films that strike them as inferior.

To find out which movies critics have deemed the worst of the worst, we turned to review aggregator Metacritic to compile this list of the most critically panned films in history.

From ill-advised sequels like Scary Movie 5 to a dubious documentary about Hillary Clinton, these films drew the ire of critics and provoked the repulsion of many.

Here are the 35 worst movies of all time, according to critics:

Note: Only movies with seven or more online reviews appear in the ranking, so it skews toward more recent films.

35. 3 Strikes (2000)​

Critic score: 11/100

User score: 4.0/10

Summary: “[Brian Hooks] plays a character who is just released from jail following his second offence. The state has adopted a three strikes rule and his next offence will possibly land him in prison for life.”

What critics said: “Feels like a very long late-night comedy sketch that occasionally veers beyond tastelessness toward something worse.” — The New York Times

34. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

User score: 8.0/10

Summary: “In defiance of the Elder Gods, the evil Outworlders are back to wreak hell on Earth. Earth's last hope is the mighty Liu Kang and his explosive fighting friends. They're all that stand between life… and annihilation!”

What critics said: “It's cynical and it's depressing, and I would lock a child in a room before I'd show him Mortal Kombat: Annihilation .” — L.A. Weekly

33. Date Movie (2006)​

User score: 2.9/10

Summary: “The twisted minds of two of the six screenwriters behind Scary Movie skewer the romantic comedy genre.”

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What critics said: “'Comedy is hard,' said Steve Martin. For the writers of Date Movie , it's apparently impossible.” — New York Daily News

32. Pinocchio (2002)

Summary: “Roberto Benigni brings one of the world's most famous and beloved tales magically to the screen.”

What critics said: “It's an oddity that will be avoided by millions of people, this new Pinocchio. Osama bin Laden could attend a showing in Times Square and be confident of remaining hidden.” — The New York Times

31. Nine Lives (2016)

User score: 2.8/10

Summary: “Tom Brand (Kevin Spacey) is a daredevil billionaire at the top of his game. ... Tom has a terrible accident. When he wakes he discovers he is trapped in the body of a cat.”

What critics said: “At 87 torturous, laugh-free minutes, the film could change the most avid cat fancier into a kitty hater.” — Rolling Stone

30. Scary Movie 5 (2013)​

User score: 2.7/10

Summary: “A couple begin to experience paranormal activity after bringing their newborn son home from the hospital. With the help of surveillance cameras and various experts, they learn they're being stalked by a nefarious demon, but in a funny way.”

What critics said: “ Scary Movie V murdered my capacity to feel joy. ” — Village Voice

29. Some Kind of Beautiful (2015)​

User score: 5.0/10

Summary: “Richard (Pierce Brosnan) is a successful college professor who gives up a steady stream of one-night stands and beautiful undergrads for fatherhood with much younger Kate (Jessica Alba).”

What critics said: “Some kind of hideous, a perfect storm of romantic-comedy awfulness that seems to set the ailing genre back decades with the sheer force of its ineptitude.” — Variety

28. Whipped (2000)​

Critic score: 10/100

User score: 6.3/10

Summary: “Every Sunday a group of friends get together to discuss their woman-chasing escapades. One week they discover that they are all picking up on the same girl.”

What critics said: “Ugly. And unpleasant. And clueless on a grand scale.” — San Francisco Chronicle

27. Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star (2011)​

Critic score: 9/100

User score: 2/10

Summary: “Bucky is a small town grocery bagger, going nowhere in life – until he discovers that his conservative parents were once adult film stars!”

What critics said: “This may be the worst movie Pauly Shore has ever been in. Think about that. ” — The New York Times

26. Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (2000)​

Summary: “In the year 3000, after the alien Psychlos conquer Earth, killing most of the humans so that they can strip the Earth of its resources, one man comes out of hiding in search of other surviving humans and hoping to overthrow the aliens.”

What critics said: “A picture that will be hailed without controversy as the worst of its kind ever made.” — Slate

25. The Tortured (2012)​

User score: 4.2/10

Summary: “Craig and Elise had all the ingredients for an ideal life... Then, on one sunny day, their perfect world is irrevocably shattered. Leaving their five year old son, Ben, alone for only a moment, Craig is horrified to see him being abducted from their own front yard.”

What critics said: “Lean, nasty, and patently absurd, The Tortured plays like one long scream of agony.” — Village Voice

24. Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004)

User score: 1.8/10

Summary: “The adventure continues with a new generation of talking toddlers. This time, the baby geniuses find themselves at the centre of a nefarious scheme led by powerful media mogul Bill Biscane (Jon Voight) to use his state-of-the-art satellite system to control the minds of the world's population.”

What critics said: “So bad that I predict there will be drinking games set around viewing it someday.” — The Washington Post

23. Alone in the Dark (2005)​

User score: 1.6/10

Summary: “Based on the best-selling Atari videogame series, this film features Edward Carnby (Christian Slater), a private investigator specialising in unexplainable supernatural phenomena.”

What critics said: “So mind-blowingly horrible that it teeters on the edge of cinematic immortality.” — San Francisco Chronicle

22. Atlas Shrugged III: Who Is John Galt? (2014)​

User score: 3.0/10

Summary: “Approaching collapse, the nation's economy is quickly eroding. As crime and fear take over the countryside, the government continues to exert its brutal force against the nation's most productive who are mysteriously vanishing - leaving behind a wake of despair.”

What critics said: “The movie's so slipshod and half-assed that I almost feel for Rand, whose ideas have proved enduring enough that they at least deserve a fair representation, if only for the sake of refutation.” — Village Voice

21. Meet The Spartans (2008)​

Summary: “The heroic Leonidas, armed with nothing by leather underwear and a cape, leads a ragtag group of 13 — count 'em, 13! — Spartans to defend their homeland against the invading Persians (whose ranks include Ghost Rider, Rocky Balboa, the Transformers, and a hunchbacked Paris Hilton).”

What critics said: “Gamely alternates between unfunny gay jokes and violent pratfalls for a good 80 minutes, finding time for not one, but two musical dance numbers set to 'I Will Survive.'” — The AV Club

20. Dirty Love (2005)​

Summary: “In the slapstick comedy Dirty Love , Jenny McCarthy is gorgeous, goofy and gross all at once in this hilarious take on one woman's chaotic quest for true love.”

What critics said: “Dirty Love wasn't written and directed, it was committed. Here is a film so pitiful, it doesn't rise to the level of badness. It is hopelessly incompetent.” — Chicago Sun-Times

19. State Property (2002)

User score: 4.9/10

Summary: “Frustrated with being broke, 'Beans' (Beanie Sigel) decides that the only way to grasp the 'American Dream' is to take it. State Property follows Beans and his crew, the 'ABM' as they take over the city, creating mayhem as their empire builds.”

What critics said: “Result is a fairly good-looking video shot down by a hackneyed script, atrocious acting and a total lack of redeeming social value.” — Variety

18. The Mangler (1995)​

Critic score: 8/100

User score: N/A

Summary: “A laundry-folding machine has been possessed by a demon from Hell, causing it to develop homicidal tendencies.”

What critics said: “It is not a compliment to suggest that a demonically possessed piece of machinery embarked on a bloodthirsty rampage has more personality than most of the flesh-and-blood characters in The Mangler , a horror movie based on a Stephen King story.” — The New York Times

17. Among Ravens (2014)​

Summary: “An annual 4th of July weekend hosted by troubled couple Wendy (Amy Smart) and Ellis (Josh Leonard) is seen through the eyes of Joey (Johnny Sequoia), Wendy's ten year old daughter.”

What critics said: “Featuring unlikeable characters, preposterously contrived plotting, ham-fisted dialogue and strained attempts at poeticism, Among Ravens is a misfire on every level.” — The Hollywood Reporter

16. Septic Man (2014)​

User score: 2.6/10

Summary: “Jack, a sewage worker who’s determined to uncover the cause of the town’s water contamination crisis, gets trapped underground in a septic tank and undergoes a hideous transformation.”

What critics said: “Beyond its mere unfunniness and stupidity, Septic Man is criminally unimaginative.” — The Dissolve

15. Transylmania (2009)​

User score: 8.7/10

Summary: “Spoof horror in which a group of college kids do a semester abroad in Romania and realise that if the partying doesn't kill them, the vampires just might!”

What critics said: “The current vogue for all things vampiric is ripe for a satirical drubbing, but this repulsive comedy is part of the problem, not the solution.” — Chicago Reader

14. Is That a Gun in Your Pocket? (2016)​

Critic score: 7/100

Summary: “If there’s one thing the men of Rockford, Texas love as much as their women, it’s their guns. But life in this idyllic town is turned upside-down when a gun incident at a neighborhood school spurs stay-at-home mom Jenna (Andrea Anders) to rethink Rockford’s obsessive gun culture.”

What critics said: “The movie tries to wrap an important social message in comedy, but it’s unpalatable all the way through.” — Los Angeles Times

13. Miss March (2009)​

User score: 4.3/10

Summary: “Miss March tells the story of a young man who awakens from a four-year coma to hear that his once virginal high-school sweetheart has since become a naked centerfold in Playboy magazine.”

What critics said: “Writer-director-stars Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore, of the Whitest Kids U'Know, here prove the crassest, most maladroit moviemakers you know.” — Entertainment Weekly

12. Screwed (2000)​

User score: 8.2/10

Summary: “Working for a wealthy boss, a chauffeur kidnaps her dog and holds it for ransom. Accidentally the boss gets the dog back and thinks the chauffer has been kidnapped.”

What critics said: “A confusedly misconceived hybrid of interracial buddy comedy and imitation Marx Brothers farce.” — The New York Times

11. The Hottie & the Nottie (2008)

User score: 2.3/10

Summary: “A woman agrees to go on a date with a man only if he finds a suitor for her unattractive best friend.”

What critics said: “Great actors make the craft look easy. In the Paris Hilton comedy 'The Hottie and the Nottie,' acting looks very, very difficult.” — New York Post

10. Baby Geniuses (1999)​

Critic score: 6/100

Summary: “Two doctors set out to dominate the world once they discover they can crack the code to a secret baby language.”

What critics said: “Bad films are easy to make, but a film as unpleasant as Baby Geniuses ' achieves a kind of grandeur.” — Chicago Sun-Times

9. National Lampoon's Gold Diggers (2004)

User score: 2.5/10

Summary: “National Lampoon breaks new comedic ground as it explores the misadventures of two completely incompetent con men who, in desperation, turn their attention to the art of gold digging.”

What critics said: “So stupefyingly hideous that after watching it, you'll need to bathe in 10 gallons of disinfectant, get a full-body scrub and shampoo with vinegar to remove the scummy residue that remains.” — The Washington Post

8. The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence) (2015)​

Critic score: 5/100

Summary: “Taking inspiration from The Human Centipede films, the warden of a notorious and troubled prison looks to create a 500-person human centipede as a solution to his problems.”

What critics said: “It’s only fitting that a series that began with the concept of linking the digestive tracts of three people would end by feasting on its own sh-t.” — The Dissolve

7. Vulgar (2002)

User score: 2.2/10

Summary: “A man who performs as a children's birthday party clown tries to piece his life back together after being gang-raped.”

What critics said: “Sure to appear in everyone's worst-of lists at year's end, to say nothing of a few bad dreams, Bryan Johnson's Vulgar is an unclassifiably awful study in self- and audience-abuse.” — Village Voice

6. Strippers (2000)​

Summary: “Alan is having an horrendous day... he loses his job, money is missing from his bank account, he is evicted from his apartment, misses a date with his girlfriend and much more.”

What critics said: “Unbelievably awful celluloid-waster.” — New York Post

5. Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party (2016)​

Critic score: 2/100

User score: 4.7/10

Summary: “Dinesh D'Souza analyses the history of the Democratic Party and what he thinks are Hillary Clinton's true motivations.”

What critics said: “Little more than an extended version of the kind of political screeds that can be found online with only a minimum of effort, this is just a terrible movie.” — RogerEbert.com

4. The Singing Forest (2003)​

Critic score: 1/100

User score: 3/10

Summary: “Two lovers, killed during the Holocaust, are reincarnated. The first soul to return now has a twenty two year old daughter who is now in love with her father's past life lover.”

What critics said: “ The Singing Forest was written and directed by Jorge Ameer, whose film Strippers opened three years ago and remained the single worst movie I had ever reviewed — until now.” — The New York Times

3. United Passions (2015)

User score: 0.7/10

Summary: “Three men—Jules Rimet (Gérard Depardieu), Joao Havelange (Sam Neill) and Sepp Blatter (Tim Roth)—establish FIFA and help make the World Cup the most popular sporting event in the world.”

What critics said: “As propaganda, United Passions is as subtle as an anvil to the temple. As drama, it’s not merely ham-fisted, but pork-shouldered, bacon-wristed, and sausage-elbowed.” — Village Voice

2. Bio-Dome (1996)​

User score: 7.1/10

Summary: “Five brave scientists are forced to face life forms more perplexing, more terrifying, more annoying than anything they've ever encountered: Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin.”

What critics said: “The sheer ineptitude of the movie is supposed to be funny, but there's no lunacy behind it: Shore and his writers are like comedians on Prozac, smiling through the fart jokes without a hint of desperation.” — The New Yorker

1. Chaos (2005)​

Summary: “Quite definitely one of the most brutal displays of violence ever set to celluloid, Chaos is a dark fairy tale of two young happy teens whose rose-colored contact lenses tint their wooded path a little too densely.”

What critics said: “Writer-director David DeFalco's ugly, pointless and dishonest remake of Craven's remake.” — L.A. Weekly

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Rotten Tomatoes releases the 100 worst movies of all time

The films all scored 6% or less on the Tomatometer. Topping the list — all with a 0% rating: Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever , One Missed Call and Left Behind .

Copyright © 2023 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Worst movies from the last decade, according to critics

Some film critics aren't content if they're not roasting a perfectly good movie, finding faults where none exist, and extinguishing someone else's artistic flame. Sometimes, however, movies seem to go out of their way to earn critical scorn. Art is subjective, but only to a degree. Some movies are so disjointed, so clumsy, so impossibly bad, that it's hard to imagine that a reasonable person who isn't related to a cast member could possibly make an argument in their favor.

To help readers avoid sacrificing two hours of their lives to a regrettable cinematic endeavor, Stacker developed a list of the 100 movies that earned the poorest reviews from movie-review site Metacritic over the past 10 years. To make the list, the film had to be released in U.S. theaters or on streaming services between Jan. 1, 2010, and today. Only films with at least four reviews from critics writing for significant publications were considered. Films are ranked by their 1 to 100 Metascores, with 1 being the worst. IMDb user ratings were used to break initial ties—they run on a scale from 1 to 10—and secondary ties were broken by Letterboxd user ratings.

In some cases, movies suffer from a simple lack of talent, maybe because of a low budget or difficult subject matter—but that's not always the case. In fact, more than a few movies on this list have casts that include veteran Hollywood stars who came into the films as A-list leading men and women in their primes. Other times, audiences and critics felt robbed by a movie whose creators seemed to take them for granted and cheat them of substance in favor of thin plotlines or cheap thrills. In other cases, filmgoers left the theater feeling downright confused about what they actually had just viewed.

The 2010s delivered a long line of commercial and critical successes that thrilled audiences and made stars—none of which are on this list. Here's a look at the most regrettable, most forgettable movies of the past decade. Stream at your own risk.

#100. A Love Affair of Sorts (2011)

- Director: David Guy Levy - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 5.0 - Runtime: 91 min

"'A Love Affair of Sorts' answers the question of whether you can make a feature film with a Flip camera and leaves open the question of whether you can make a good one," according to Roger Ebert. Long at 91 minutes, many critics panned the drama as an exercise in narcissistic naval-gazing based on meandering relationships—all filmed in a frustrating shaky-cam style.

#99. The Moment (2013)

- Director: Jane Weinstock - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 4.9 - Runtime: 90 min

Many reviews, including one in Variety, commend Jennifer Jason Leigh for her effort in "The Moment," but even the capable Hollywood veteran couldn't carry this clumsy attempt at a psychological thriller. A common theme among critics is the sheer amount of work required to keep up with the muddled, disjointed, and convoluted plot.

#98. The Cold Light of Day (2012)

- Director: Mabrouk El Mechri - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 4.9 - Runtime: 93 min

The massive star power of Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver wasn't put to good use in "The Cold Day of Light." While director Mabrouk El Mechri seems to have been going for a Bourne-esque multinational espionage thriller, critics derided its frenetic pace used to conceal a lack of substance.

#97. Dark House (2014)

- Director: Victor Salva - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 4.7 - Runtime: 102 min

"Dark House" cobbles together scattered horror tropes into the same house-with-a-dark-past supernatural thriller that audiences had already seen countless times. Critics enshrined "Dark Horse" as among the worst movies of the decade for its easy scares and unimaginative narrative.

#96. Passion Play (2011)

- Director: Mitch Glazer - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 4.6 - Runtime: 94 min

It's hard to imagine that a movie with Bill Murray, Mickey Rourke, and "Megan Fox stripped down to her tattoos," to quote  a New York Post critic , could possibly be bad, but "Passion Play" found a way. An underworld fairy tale gone awry, critics expected better from a veteran screenwriter like Mitch Glazer.

#95. Max Steel (2016)

- Director: Stewart Hendler - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 4.6 - Runtime: 92 min

Stars Andy Garcia and Maria Bello surely knew they were overqualified for "Max Steel," a boy-meets-alien movie based on a toy. Critics panned it for a lack of positive messaging that's common to the genre and several whiffs on weak attempts at humor. All in all, it's little more than stilted 1990s nostalgia.

#94. $upercapitalist (2012)

- Director: Simon Yin - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 4.6 - Runtime: 102 min

"$upercapitalist" attempts to chronicle the fast-paced, high-stakes world of international finance, but misses the mark despite good intentions. Critics panned it as a collection of frat-bro Wall Street clichés that have been seen before in countless corporate-excess cautionary tales.

#93. Brother's Justice (2010)

- Directors: David Palmer, Dax Shepard - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 4.5 - Runtime: 80 min

Falling short of an hour and 20 minutes and void of any recognizable, name-brand talent, "Brother's Justice" is a dramedy that oozes ultra-low-budget incompetence. Critics called it out as a stumbling mockumentary that comes up short of genuine satire.

#92. Beneath the Darkness (2012)

- Director: Martin Guigui - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 4.5 - Runtime: 96 min

Of "Beneath the Darkness," Rex Reed quipped , "You anticipate every scene before it happens and figure out every secret before it's revealed." Other critics were equally unkind . Reminiscent of a late-night cable TV horror movie, the film delivers little more than predictable jolts set in a contrived Texas backdrop—and that's no place for a talent like Dennis Quaid to spend his time.

#91. Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (2011)

- Director: John Whitesell - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 4.4 - Runtime: 107 min

By the time it limped into the third installment, the "Big Momma" franchise had long run out of steam , out of jokes, and out of excuses. The Martin Lawrence fat-suit crossdressing theme had already been so exhausted by the time this threequel hit theaters that it makes the original—which barely kept its head above water based on Lawrence's talent alone—feel like a blockbuster comedy.

#90. Getaway (2013)

- Director: Courtney Solomon - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 4.4 - Runtime: 90 min

Summed up by one particularly unimpressed critic as "pretty much a 90-minute car chase," "Getaway" sacrificed writing, character development, dialogue, and plot to the alter of high-octane speed. Even though A-list names like Ethan Hawke, Selena Gomez, and Jon Voight headlined the credits, the movie's stuntmen were the only real stars.

#89. God's Not Dead 2 (2016)

- Director: Harold Cronk - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 4.3 - Runtime: 120 min

Names like Melissa Joan Hart, Robin Givens, and Ernie Hudson pepper the cast of "God's Not Dead 2," but semi-star power wasn't enough to save this homage to America's Christian persecution complex. As many top critics pointed out , including a few from major faith-based publications, it's little more than two plodding hours of contrived, angry, culture-war proselytization disguised as a movie.

#88. The Legend of Hercules (2014)

- Director: Renny Harlin - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 4.2 - Runtime: 99 min

"The Legend of Hercules" certainly delivers on jacked guys brawling in skimpy Bronze Age costumes, for moviegoers who are drawn to that kind of thing. If that's the upside, the downsides are long dull spots, cheap CGI, lackluster acting, and an overall feeling of a discount "300."

#87. Shark Night 3D (2011)

- Director: David R. Ellis - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 4.0 - Runtime: 90 min

A title like "Shark Night 3D" may not inspire confidence that a compelling theater experience awaits, but even the name is deceiving. Critics complain that there was not enough shark and little 3D in this predictable, disposable, and un-thrilling thriller. Most campy horror movies compensate for their obvious flaws with second servings of sex and gore, but thanks to a PG-13 rating, "Shark Night 3D" couldn't even deliver on that.

#86. Martyrs (2016)

- Directors: Kevin Goetz, Michael Goetz - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 4.0 - Runtime: 86 min

"Martyrs" is a remake of Pascal Laugier's 2008 horror movie of the same name, a controversial, genre-busting affair that delivered artistic gore to the thrill of its die-hard fans. However, the remake fell flat , mimicking the original too closely without delivering on its substance. In the end, it's little more than cheap torture porn.

#85. That's What She Said (2012)

- Director: Carrie Preston - Metascore: 22 - IMDb user rating: 3.7 - Runtime: 84 min

"That's What's She Said" is a female-centric counter to the litany of bromance flicks that came before it, which would have been refreshing if it were any good. Despite the presence of Anne Heche, it is not. Crude and raunchy for the sake of being crude and raunchy , "That's What She Said" attempts to capture women as they truly are, but instead leans on forced and obvious guy-bashing and feminine hygiene jokes.

#84. Life Itself (2018)

- Director: Dan Fogelman - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 6.7 - Runtime: 117 min

The foot-dragging melodrama that is "Life Itself" is a multi-generational college-through-parenthood tale whose trademark feature is a complete lack of chemistry that belies the talent of its cast. Annette Bening and Olivia Wilde weren't enough to make "Life Itself" anything more than what it is: an unrelatable, sappy, and cringe-inducing flop.

#83. The Alien Girl (2010)

- Director: Anton Bormatov - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 6.6 - Runtime: 100 min

Summed up by a critic for The New York Times as a "Guy Ritchie knockoff without the jokes or Cockney accents," this post-Soviet Eastern Europe crime thriller has grit, action, and little else. Plotlines, narratives, and character development are not on the menu in "Alien Girl," which instead relies on profanity, sex, and violence to fill the void.

#82. A Family Man (2016)

- Director: Mark Williams - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 6.5 - Runtime: 108 min

One-dimensional characters, formulaic plotlines, and predictable melodrama are the name of the game in "A Family Man." Despite the likes of Gerard Butler, Willem Dafoe, and Alison Brie, this attempt at a redemption tale feels superficial from the opening credits through the end.

#81. Dirty Grandpa (2016)

- Director: Dan Mazer - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 5.9 - Runtime: 102 min

"Dirty Grandpa" clearly aimed to be a crude and shocking gross-out comedy , and it landed with everything—except the comedy. It tries hard to be politically incorrect and irreverent, but it's mostly just dull and disappointing, particularly considering that the movie's cast included Aubrey Plaza, Zac Efron, and Robert De Niro.

#80. The Angriest Man in Brooklyn (2014)

- Director: Phil Alden Robinson - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 5.7 - Runtime: 83 min

"The Angriest Man in Brooklyn" came out the same year Robin Williams died, and it feels wrong that a movie so bad was among the last films he ever made. Williams built a career on successfully blending sentiment and comedy, and although he tried to work that magic here, he came up with a rare goose egg on both.

#79. Crazy on the Outside (2010)

- Director: Tim Allen - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 5.5 - Runtime: 96 min

Tim Allen's directorial debut included Kelsey Grammer, Ray Liotta, Sigourney Weaver, J.K. Simmons, and, of course, himself—but names don't make a movie. "Crazy on the Outside" chronicles the exploits of a convict trying to make it in the free world , but there are really no exploits to chronicle. The script reeked of network sitcom formula writing and the stellar cast mostly just phoned it in.

#78. Killers (2010)

- Director: Robert Luketic - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 5.4 - Runtime: 100 min

Despite their individual talent, Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher fail to muster any combined chemistry in "Killers," a dull and formulaic affair that oozes a lazy over-reliance on star power alone. Action-comedies have to deliver both thrills and laughs to work, and this was void of both.

#77. Saving Lincoln (2013)

- Director: Salvador Litvak - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 5.4 - Runtime: 101 min

The one saving grace of "Saving Lincoln" is that it's historically accurate for the most part, but audiences didn't pay to see a documentary—they paid to see a movie. What they got instead was a dull period piece defined by stiff dialogue and historical sequences that felt like they were shoehorned into the plot. In the end, little new insight was shed on a tale already told.

#76. Geostorm (2017)

- Director: Dean Devlin - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 5.3 - Runtime: 109 min

Epic disaster movies must deliver eye-candy visuals if they don't want to become epic disasters themselves—and "Geostorm" is a cautionary tale that proves that reality. As Gerard Butler races to save an exploding planet disrupted by faulty satellites, the audience is left wondering how it got roped into a big, boring disaster flick that they'd already seen many times before.

#75. The Clapper (2018)

- Director: Dito Montiel - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 5.1 - Runtime: 89 min

A talented cast tried hard to make "The Clapper" work, but even the valiant efforts of Tracy Morgan, Amanda Seyfried, and Ed Helms weren't enough to carry this failed romance-comedy . In terms of charm and laughs, it has its moments, but they're rare and incomplete.

#74. Reach Me (2014)

- Director: John Herzfeld - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 4.9 - Runtime: 95 min

Filled with clichés and intentionally chaotic, "Reach Me" can't seem to settle on a theme or a narrative. Kyra Sedgwick, Sylvester Stallone, Danny Aiello, and Tom Berenger, all well past their primes, lead the cast. In the words of a Detroit Press critic, "'Reach Me' is the sort of movie where careers go to die ."

#73. Just Getting Started (2017)

- Director: Ron Shelton - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 4.4 - Runtime: 91 min

Here, too, aging cast members show their rust. "Just Getting Started" features Morgan Freeman, Tommy Lee Jones, and Rene Russo in a lazy, lurching romantic caper flick that fails to actually ever get started.

#72. 211 (2018)

- Director: York Alec Shackleton - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 4.4 - Runtime: 86 min

"211" is 86 minutes of Nic Cage doing what Nic Cage does , only without his trademark so-bad-it's-good, bonkers-but-loveable craziness. It's loud, it's got a high body count, and it's teeming with video-game, cartoon bad guys that never run out of ammunition but can't seem to hit anything. Beyond that, there isn't much there.

#71. Ghost Team One (2013)

- Directors: Ben Peyser, Scott Rutherford - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 4.3 - Runtime: 84 min

Shaky even by shaky-cam standards , "Ghost Team One" is hard on the eyes, but it's not just bad because of bad delivery. Horror-comedy is a tough genre to nail, and "Ghost Team One" is the proof, delivering neither the laughs nor the scares to justify the undertaking.

#70. Norm of the North (2016)

- Director: Trevor Wall - Metascore: 21 - IMDb user rating: 3.4 - Runtime: 90 min

"Norm of the North" proves an age-old axiom: a twerking cartoon polar bear can only take you so far. It attempts to be "Ice Age," "Happy Feet," and "Abominable" at the same time, but misses the humor, sentiment, and positive messaging of all three.

#69. Would You Rather (2013)

- Director: David Guy Levy - Metascore: 20 - IMDb user rating: 5.7 - Runtime: 93 min

"Would You Rather" tries to blend horror with mystery, but winds up being a watered-down "Hostel." To be fair, there are some shockingly gory moments, but in the end, it's a forgettable attempt at genre-twisting.

#68. A Haunted House (2013)

- Director: Michael Tiddes - Metascore: 20 - IMDb user rating: 5.0 - Runtime: 86 min

Marlon Wayans knows the horror-spoof genre, evidenced by "Scary Movie," which he co-wrote. His attempt to reboot the magic, however—if "Scary Movie" qualifies as magic—falls short in "A Haunted House." Neither irreverent nor clever, funny nor frightening, "A Haunted House" is a few flatulence jokes blanketed in a lot of wasted time .

#67. Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil (2011)

- Director: Mike Disa - Metascore: 20 - IMDb user rating: 4.7 - Runtime: 86 min

"Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil" is brimming with puns and obvious wordplay, as well as plenty of pop-culture references and shout-outs to familiar fairy tales, but it lacks the wit and charm of the original, which was OK at best. Any time a title uses the wrong version of "two" to indicate a sequel, audiences should take it as a red flag.

#66. 30 Beats (2012)

- Director: Alexis Lloyd - Metascore: 20 - IMDb user rating: 4.1 - Runtime: 88 min

Scattered and meandering, "30 Beats" tells the story of 10 unrelated characters without actually telling any of their stories. Super-sexualized without being titillating or sensual, it's an 88-minute chore of character drifting and gimmickry .

#65. Accidental Love (2015)

- Director: David O. Russell - Metascore: 20 - IMDb user rating: 4.1 - Runtime: 100 min

Jessica Biel and Jake Gyllenhaal strikeout in "Accidental Love," despite a handful of charming moments. Messy and unfocused, the film exists in the basement of the rom-com genre.

#64. The Last Airbender (2010)

- Director: M. Night Shyamalan - Metascore: 20 - IMDb user rating: 4.1 - Runtime: 103 min

Critics call out the poor acting, incoherent plot lines, and disconnected directing in reviews of  "The Last Airbender."  Roger Ebert wrote that the film " an agonizing experience in every category ."

#63. Assassin's Bullet (2012)

- Director: Isaac Florentine - Metascore: 20 - IMDb user rating: 3.6 - Runtime: 89 min

The smoldering wreckage of a three-car accident involving the "Bourne," "Taken," and "Bond" franchises, "Assassin's Bullet" is simply beneath stars Donald Sutherland and Christian Slater. A recycling of every hitman/action/romance/suspense movie that's ever been made , even "Assassin's Bullet's" gaping plot holes aren't big enough to contain its grinding dialogue.

#62. To Save a Life (2009)

- Director: Brian Baugh - Metascore: 19 - IMDb user rating: 6.9 - Runtime: 120 min

While its attempt to steer teenagers toward greater empathy is noble, "To Save a Life" is supposed to be a feature film, not an after-school special. It substitutes preaching for production, and the green cast simply doesn't have the chops to carry the heavy load of the underlying message.

#61. After Fall, Winter (2012)

- Director: Eric Schaeffer - Metascore: 19 - IMDb user rating: 6.6 - Runtime: 132 min

More than two hours, "After Fall, Winter" does not come close to justifying its length. Wordy and sanctimonious, it's hard to see this dramatic romance as anything more than a trite vanity project.

#60. Polar (2019)

- Director: Jonas Åkerlund - Metascore: 19 - IMDb user rating: 6.3 - Runtime: 118 min

If moviegoers want a thrilling, fun, and brilliant flick about the most dangerous assassin in the world, they should watch "John Wick" with Keanu Reeves. If they want a cheap knockoff defined by chaotic sensory overload, they should check out "Polar."

#59. The Lovers (2017)

- Director: Azazel Jacobs - Metascore: 19 - IMDb user rating: 6.1 - Runtime: 97 min

Although it has its bright spots, "The Lovers" ploddingly chronicles a tired marriage in which dual infidelities lead to true love through the couple's respective affairs. The plotline, however, meanders, the soundtrack is disruptive, and it runs out of steam long before the closing credits.

#58. The Ultimate Life (2013)

- Director: Michael Landon Jr. - Metascore: 19 - IMDb user rating: 5.8 - Runtime: 105 min

Dull, long, and preachy, "The Ultimate Life" is a faith-based drama with good intentions, but bad acting, bad writing, and bad character development. Roger Moore from Tribune News Service summed it up neatly: "Thin, bland, safe-for-seniors gruel."

#57. Replicas (2018)

- Director: Jeffrey Nachmanoff - Metascore: 19 - IMDb user rating: 5.5 - Runtime: 107 min

Even the esteemed Keanu Reeves can lay an egg every once in a while ("The Watcher," anyone?). He did exactly that in the science-in-search-of-eternal-life sci-fi venture that is "Replicas," which was a major step down for the actor who redefined sci-fi in "The Matrix." A gooped-up script and questionable visuals leave Reeves alone to do all the heavy lifting, mostly in the form of "Minority Report"-esque computer air-mapping.

#56. Grown Ups 2 (2013)

- Director: Dennis Dugan - Metascore: 19 - IMDb user rating: 5.4 - Runtime: 101 min

Despite a glut of talent, including Chris Rock, David Spade, Salma Hayek, Maya Rudolph, Adam Sandler, and Kevin James, "Grown Ups 2" crashes and burns. With a PG-13 rating, it had to settle for raunch-lite, and the handful of jokes that are recognizable as such consist of bully-based lowbrow humor at someone else's expense.

#55. Cavemen (2013)

- Director: Herschel Faber - Metascore: 19 - IMDb user rating: 5.3 - Runtime: 88 min

A bad rom-com even by the standards of bad rom-coms, "Cavemen" comes off as a retread amalgamation of every contrived romantic comedy that came before it. As the name implies, the characters exhibit Paleolithic alpha-maleness that adds an extra layer of yuck to any already hopeless production.

#54. The Prince (2014)

- Director: Brian A. Miller - Metascore: 19 - IMDb user rating: 4.6 - Runtime: 93 min

Perhaps a hack shoot-'em-up could be expected from 50 Cent—or maybe even Bruce Willis, at this point—but with John Cusack on the bill, there was a glimmer of hope for "The Prince." That glimmer is extinguished not long after the opening credits. It's an unoriginal and mindless action film —a dime a dozen on Netflix.

#53. Kite (2014)

- Director: Ralph Ziman - Metascore: 19 - IMDb user rating: 4.4 - Runtime: 90 min

Bloody, fast-paced, and mercifully short, "Kite" is unnecessary clutter on the well-worn path of assassin flicks with an attractive woman at the helm. According to a New York Post film critic, it's a "kill-a-minute gore-a-thon whose twist is so obvious your grandma Edna will see it coming."

#52. Reprisal (2018)

- Director: Brian A. Miller - Metascore: 19 - IMDb user rating: 4.2 - Runtime: 89 min

Here, too, Bruce Willis settles for low-hanging fruit, this time alongside Frank Grillo in "Reprisal." Defined by a painfully thin plotline and choppy, hectic action sequences, this manhunt action thriller fails to thrill.

#51. The Vanishing of Sidney Hall (2017)

- Director: Shawn Christensen - Metascore: 18 - IMDb user rating: 6.9 - Runtime: 119 min

A pretentious male-power fantasy, "The Vanishing of Sidney Hall" drags the audience along in slow motion for almost two full hours. The movie settles for (not so) shocking revelations at the end as a substitute for character development throughout.

#50. Mother's Day (2016)

- Director: Garry Marshall - Metascore: 18 - IMDb user rating: 5.7 - Runtime: 118 min

Timothy Olyphant, Jason Sudeikis, Kate Hudson, Julia Roberts, and Jennifer Aniston—what could go wrong, right? Well, a lot, actually. "Mother's Day" is a feel-good-all-over dramedy that's so sickeningly sweet it feels like a Hallmark card took over the movie screen.

#49. The Darkest Hour (2011)

- Director: Chris Gorak - Metascore: 18 - IMDb user rating: 4.9 - Runtime: 89 min

Clunky special effects, unconvincing aliens, and characters that are hard to distinguish from one another define "The Darkest Hour." A Moscow-set, end-of-the-world flick that's doomed from the outset, its only decent moments are revealed in the trailer.

#48. The Ridiculous 6 (2015)

- Director: Frank Coraci - Metascore: 18 - IMDb user rating: 4.8 - Runtime: 119 min

If a Wild West Adam Sandler movie based on the results of a paternity test sounds like a good idea, "The Ridiculous 6" proves it is not. This film lacks substance, relies on lazy racist humor, and features preposterous plot lines.

#47. Behaving Badly (2014)

- Director: Tim Garrick - Metascore: 18 - IMDb user rating: 4.4 - Runtime: 97 min

Raunchy high school comedies can knock it out of the park—"American Pie" dedicated an entire franchise to the genre—but "Behaving Badly" is no "American Pie." It's not sexy, shocking, or irreverent enough to turn heads, and when you hose off the shallow, potty-mouth jokes, a bad virgin/harlot drama club play is all that's left.

#46. Movie 43 (2013)

- Directors: Elizabeth Banks, Steven Brill, Steve Carr, Rusty Cundieff, James Duffy, Griffin Dunne, Peter Farrelly, Patrik Forsberg, Will Graham, James Gunn, Brett Ratner, Jonathan van Tulleken, Bob Odenkirk - Metascore: 18 - IMDb user rating: 4.3 - Runtime: 94 min

Johnny Knoxville helms the cast of "Movie 43," which is essentially an hour and a half of gross-out humor designed to test how much an audience can stomach. In an attempt to camouflage lazy writing and an incoherent script, the movie trots out a conga line of star cameos, none of whom makes a dent in cleaning up this unfortunate sketch-comedy mess.

#45. The Nutcracker in 3D (2010)

- Director: Andrey Konchalovskiy - Metascore: 18 - IMDb user rating: 4.2 - Runtime: 110 min

"The Nutcracker in 3D" is a ballet-absent crack at serious cinema that appears to go out of its way to not be taken seriously. An unnecessary blight on the original, it does to "The Nutcracker" what "The Godfather Part III" did to "The Godfather."

#44. The Devil Inside (2012)

- Director: William Brent Bell - Metascore: 18 - IMDb user rating: 4.2 - Runtime: 83 min

Arguably the worst example of the found-footage genre , "The Devil Inside" is clumsy, filled with holes, and downright not scary throughout. What stands out, however, is the bad climax—possibly the worst in recent horror memory.

#43. The Apparition (2012)

- Director: Todd Lincoln - Metascore: 18 - IMDb user rating: 4.1 - Runtime: 82 min

Viewers are more likely to be sleepy than startled through the 82 minutes of drudgery that is "The Apparition." The premise makes no sense, the shock scenes fail to shock, and the narrative offers little momentum to carry the audience through to the unsatisfying end.

#42. Vampires Suck (2010)

- Directors: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer - Metascore: 18 - IMDb user rating: 3.4 - Runtime: 82 min

The double entendre title lets audiences know that "Vampires Suck" is a comedy—the movie itself, does not. The film intends to spoof the "Twilight" series, but the attempt at parody falls victim to cheap, high school humor—flatulence jokes, groin kicks, and all.

#41. Saving Christmas (2014)

- Director: Darren Doane - Metascore: 18 - IMDb user rating: 1.4 - Runtime: 79 min

With Kirk Cameron holding the reigns, informed audiences could probably guess that "Saving Christmas" floats storylines based on fighting back against secular, politically correct attempts to muscle the manger out of Christmas. Audiences would be right—it's persecution-complex whining dressed up as a faith-based holiday movie.

#40. Girls Against Boys (2012)

- Director: Austin Chick - Metascore: 17 - IMDb user rating: 4.8 - Runtime: 93 min

Billed as a gutsy femme-revenge flick, "Girls Against Boys" is actually just B-horror with a touch of homophobia and whatever the opposite of misogyny is. In going out of its way to be pro-woman, it misses that goal, but most importantly, it forgets to be fun.

#39. A Haunted House 2 (2014)

- Director: Michael Tiddes - Metascore: 17 - IMDb user rating: 4.7 - Runtime: 86 min

As if its parody predecessor "A Haunted House" wasn't bad enough, Marlon Wayans dug deeper into the same horror spoof dumpster to find "A Haunted House 2." Not only are the jokes lowbrow and cheap, but unless you've seen every obscure horror movie from a few years prior, it simply won't make any sense.

#38. Excuse Me for Living (2012)

- Director: Ric Klass - Metascore: 17 - IMDb user rating: 4.6 - Runtime: 106 min

Several better-than-this actors—including Jerry Stiller and Christopher Lloyd—got caught up in the mess that is "Excuse Me For Living." What they got for their troubles was a credit in a rom-com that plays like an unpolished sitcom stretched out for more than 100 minutes.

#37. I Will Follow You Into the Dark (2012)

- Director: Mark Edwin Robinson - Metascore: 17 - IMDb user rating: 4.5 - Runtime: 112 min

An attempt at a grandiose, genre-busting, horror-drama-mystery-suspense production, "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" ends up being an overly complex ghost story. Moralistic and sappy, it doesn't do itself any favors by shoehorning in a faith theme where none belongs.

#36. Vice (2015)

- Director: Brian A. Miller - Metascore: 17 - IMDb user rating: 4.2 - Runtime: 96 min

Here again, Bruce Willis goes slumming in a throwaway action/sci-fi mash-up that reminds his fans that "Die Hard" was a long, long time ago. "Vice" has some intriguing ideas, but none of them are fully fleshed out before the credits roll.

#35. Best Night Ever (2013)

- Directors: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer - Metascore: 17 - IMDb user rating: 4.0 - Runtime: 90 min

Over-the-top, hard-boozing shenanigans ensue in "Best Night Ever," 90 minutes of clichéd comedy that feels forced every step of the way . In the end, it's hard to tell if the film intends to mock the female buddy comedy genre or if it's actually meant to be taken seriously as one.

#34. The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (2011)

- Director: Tom Six - Metascore: 17 - IMDb user rating: 3.8 - Runtime: 91 min

Dutch horror import "The Human Centipede" was the pinnacle of torture porn to its cult-following enthusiasts and a despicable display of tastelessness to everyone else. Its follow-up, "The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)" does its best to lump its entire audience into the "everyone else" category this time around.

#33. The Fanatic (2019)

- Director: Fred Durst - Metascore: 17 - IMDb user rating: 3.8 - Runtime: 88 min

John Travolta whiffs again with "The Fanatic," an illogical and ridiculous drama based on the blurred line between fan appreciation and obsession. If Travolta were to quit tomorrow, this film would be the capstone on a career that showed sporadic flickers of brilliance, but that was ultimately defined by flops like this one.

#32. Boo 2! A Madea Halloween (2017)

- Director: Tyler Perry - Metascore: 17 - IMDb user rating: 3.7 - Runtime: 101 min

In 2005, "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" launched the Madea character and Tyler Perry's film career—and then the sequels never stopped coming. "Boo 2! A Madea Halloween" is even more cinematic proof that Perry's long-exhausted matriarchal alter-ego desperately needs to be retired.

#31. Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

- Director: Michael J. Bassett - Metascore: 16 - IMDb user rating: 5.0 - Runtime: 95 min

Even by the standards of the based-on-a-video-game genre, "Silent Hill: Revelation" has some explaining to do. The two key adjectives are "baffling" and "boring," and although it seems to have been made exclusively for gamers, it's hard to imagine even they wouldn't eventually tire of this endless parade of jump scares.

#30. The Last Face (2016)

- Director: Sean Penn - Metascore: 16 - IMDb user rating: 4.8 - Runtime: 130 min

Even with Sean Penn behind the camera and Charlize Theron, Javier Bardem, and Jared Harris in front of it, "The Last Face" comes out as a well-intentioned miss at very best. A heavy, panting romance set against the backdrop of war-torn Liberia , it's muddled and pretentious throughout. A RogerEbert.com critic wrote, "Sean Penn turns African strife into a two-hour perfume commercial."

#29. Authors Anonymous (2014)

- Director: Ellie Kanner - Metascore: 16 - IMDb user rating: 4.3 - Runtime: 92 min

Ensemble mockumentary satire at its near-worst, "Authors Anonymous" attempts to roast the publishing industry . In the process, it pulls off an intense self-burn that left critics wondering if the movie's format matched its intent.

#28. London Fields (2018)

- Director: Mathew Cullen - Metascore: 16 - IMDb user rating: 4.3 - Runtime: 118 min

"London Fields" could have been a fantastic smutty comedy but instead chose to shame its vaunted literary source material of the same name. Viewers don't have to be fans of the book, however, to be repulsed by this disorganized, jumbled mystery thriller.

#27. America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014)

- Directors: Dinesh D'Souza, John Sullivan - Metascore: 15 - IMDb user rating: 5.4 - Runtime: 105 min

"America: Imagine the World Without Her" is a classic case of sanctimonious preaching to the choir. Dinesh D'Souza uses the 105-minute expanse of his movie to bolster his conservative bona fides by peddling U.S. history through rose-colored glasses.

#26. The Layover (2017)

- Director: William H. Macy - Metascore: 15 - IMDb user rating: 4.7 - Runtime: 88 min

It's difficult to reconcile the cinematic genius that William H. Macy has proven to be with this painfully tedious attempt at comedy. Not only is "The Layover" unfunny, but it's woefully out of touch in dealing with how women purportedly talk to each other.

#25. A Little Bit of Heaven (2011)

- Director: Nicole Kassell - Metascore: 14 - IMDb user rating: 6.3 - Runtime: 106 min

Falling in love while dying of colon cancer is the theme of "A Little Bit of Heaven." It doesn't do nearly enough to address the realities of the serious subject matter it attempts to tackle—and certainly doesn't balance it with enough laughs to call itself a romantic dramedy.

#24. Evidence (2012)

- Director: Howie Askins - Metascore: 14 - IMDb user rating: 5.0 - Runtime: 78 min

The many potential pitfalls of the found-footage genre are on display for all to see in "Evidence." A familiar documentary-crew-gets-lost-in-the-woods theme unfolds slowly—painstakingly so—until the final payoff, which never actually pays off.

#23. Cabin Fever (2016)

- Director: Travis Zariwny - Metascore: 14 - IMDb user rating: 3.7 - Runtime: 99 min

Synopsis: flesh-eating virus stalks teens partying in a remote cabin. To be fair, "Cabin Fever" did create some intense-looking virus ghouls and the gory scenes delivered, but audiences walked away feeling like they'd seen this all before—not because it's a remake, but because it's been done before.

#22. Don Peyote (2014)

- Directors: Michael Canzoniero, Dan Fogler - Metascore: 14 - IMDb user rating: 3.5 - Runtime: 98 min

"Don Peyote" tells the tale of an aging stoner who goes off the rails as his wedding approaches —and the audience goes right off the rails with him. It lacks the charm of a true stoner comedy and the extended hallucination sequences are simply too much to bear.

#21. Love, Wedding, Marriage (2011)

- Director: Dermot Mulroney - Metascore: 13 - IMDb user rating: 4.9 - Runtime: 90 min

Mandy Moore leads the cast of "Love, Wedding, Marriage," which raked in just shy of $1,400 at the box office (no, there are no zeroes missing). A rom-com that is neither romantic nor comedic enough to qualify, the film exposes Moore's weakness as a crossover actor.

#20. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (2015)

- Director: Andy Fickman - Metascore: 13 - IMDb user rating: 4.4 - Runtime: 94 min

The comedic philosophy of "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2" is that fat-shaming is funny as long as it's done by a chubby guy on a Segway. It's not funny, and not only because of a moral objection to body-based humor.

#19. Nothing Left to Fear (2013)

- Director: Anthony Leonardi III - Metascore: 12 - IMDb user rating: 4.4 - Runtime: 100 min

This is Anne Heche's second appearance on this list, this time in the top 20. The unintentionally ironic title "Nothing Left to Fear" is fitting—the biggest thing it's missing is scares, which is fairly important for horror movies. The effects and jump-startles are all too familiar, and there's no wit or humor to break the tension.

#18. The Emoji Movie (2017)

- Director: Tony Leondis - Metascore: 12 - IMDb user rating: 3.2 - Runtime: 86 min

More of an ad for apps than an animated film, "The Emoji Movie" puts on a clinic in the art of cinematic product placement. Widely considered to be a blatant rip-off of "Wreck-It Ralph," it's a tone-deaf misrepresentation of teenage communication wrapped inside a commercial.

#17. Left Behind (2014)

- Director: Vic Armstrong - Metascore: 12 - IMDb user rating: 3.1 - Runtime: 110 min

Fundamentalist religion meets disaster movie in "Left Behind," which offers yet more proof of just how far Nicolas Cage has strayed from his roots. There might have been worse exploding-planet movies, maybe worse religious-brimstone-warning movies, and perhaps even worse Nic Cage movies—but never at the same time.

#16. Some Kind of Beautiful (2014)

- Director: Tom Vaughan - Metascore: 11 - IMDb user rating: 5.7 - Runtime: 99 min

Pierce Brosnan's character in "Some Kind of Beautiful" swerves between refined, experienced tomcat, and creepy old perv—mismatched either way for both Salma Hayek and Jessica Alba. Clearly going for edgy, it's actually a vanilla rom-com all the way and everything, from the jokes to the outcome, is predictable from the start.

#15. Nine Lives (2016)

- Director: Barry Sonnenfeld - Metascore: 11 - IMDb user rating: 5.3 - Runtime: 87 min

Even before "Nine Lives" was covered in the stink of post-#MeToo Kevin Spacey, it, well, stunk. Bad animal voiceovers combine with the fact that it's a horrible portrayal of family pets as disposable objects. If there's a single good punchline in the movie, it's hidden well.

#14. Persecuted (2014)

- Director: Daniel Lusko - Metascore: 11 - IMDb user rating: 3.5 - Runtime: 91 min

The theme of "Persecuted" is summed up in the title ; 91 minutes of falling-sky, attack-on-Christianity self-victimization. This film is a thinly veiled admission that the movie's creators are terrified of a pluralist future.

#13. Scary Movie 5 (2013)

- Directors: Malcolm D. Lee, David Zucker - Metascore: 11 - IMDb user rating: 3.5 - Runtime: 86 min

The original "Scary Movie" was built on jokes about pop culture. The entire premise of "Scary Movie 5," on the other hand, seems to be that audiences should be willing to laugh at nothing more than pop culture references—and they're expected to do it over and over.

#12. Unplanned (2019)

- Directors: Chuck Konzelman, Cary Solomon - Metascore: 10 - IMDb user rating: 5.8 - Runtime: 109 min

People will naturally rush either to attack or defend a movie like "Unplanned" depending on which pole they gravitate toward—the movie, after all, deals with abortion. No matter a person's political persuasion, however, the elements that go into a good movie don't change, and lukewarm acting, contrived dialogue, and one-dimensional characters are not among them.

#11. The Tortured (2010)

- Director: Robert Lieberman - Metascore: 9 - IMDb user rating: 5.5 - Runtime: 79 min

As the name implies, "The Tortured" takes a swing at torture porn—revenge torture porn, to be specific. It's revolting, no doubt, but there aren't any real thrills, no new ground is broken, and it runs out of steam well before the end.

#10. Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt? (2014)

- Director: James Manera - Metascore: 9 - IMDb user rating: 4.3 - Runtime: 99 min

The third installment in the Ayn Rand-inspired trilogy, "Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?" is generally considered the worst of the lot . The dystopian sci-fi thriller rams home yet again Rand's philosophy—unbridled capitalism: good; government: evil.

#9. Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star (2011)

- Director: Tom Brady - Metascore: 9 - IMDb user rating: 3.2 - Runtime: 97 min

Kevin Nealon, Don Johnson, and especially Christina Ricci lend more credibility to "Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star" than the movie may deserve. It's billed as a comedy, which it is, as long as the audience agrees that anything involving porn, sex, or Chewbacca is instantly funny.

#8. Among Ravens (2014)

- Directors: Russell Friedenberg, Randy Redroad - Metascore: 8 - IMDb user rating: 4.6 - Runtime: 103 min

Obvious symbolism about innocence and natural beauty are the driving forces behind "Among Ravens"—and they're bad substitutes for dialogue and character development. Family drama collides at an annual lake house get-together in this obviously indie chore, which is pretentious and self-serving from beginning to merciful end.

#7. Septic Man (2013)

- Director: Jesse Thomas Cook - Metascore: 8 - IMDb user rating: 4.0 - Runtime: 83 min

Subterranean, sewer-based mutation is the foundation of "Septic Man," a horror movie that somehow forgot to include scares, chills, and tension. Much of the movie is spent in the dark, fumbling around in underground storm drains with no discernible action.

#6. The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019)

- Director: Daniel Farrands - Metascore: 8 - IMDb user rating: 2.9 - Runtime: 94 min

"The Haunting of Sharon Tate" could be a watchable supernatural/home invasion thriller. The problem, however, is obvious. It deals irreverently with a hideous real-life crime in the 1960s that left an actual woman brutally murdered during her ninth month of pregnancy.

#5. Is That a Gun in Your Pocket? (2016)

- Director: Matt Cooper - Metascore: 7 - IMDb user rating: 5.6 - Runtime: 95 min

In Texas, they love guns…and sex, apparently—at least that's the assumption made by the minds behind "Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?" Gender stereotypes are the driving forces behind this done-a-million-times battle of the sexes/homage to American gun culture.

#4. The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence) (2015)

- Director: Tom Six - Metascore: 5 - IMDb user rating: 2.7 - Runtime: 102 min

The full title of "Human Centipede III" promises it will be the final sequence in the franchise—a moviegoer can dream. Ugly, painful to watch, and now boasting a 500-segment centipede, there was nowhere to go but down after the second installment—and down it went (think: boiling waterboarding and dull-instrument castration).

#3. Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party (2016)

- Directors: Dinesh D'Souza, Bruce Schooley - Metascore: 2 - IMDb user rating: 5.3 - Runtime: 106 min

In this film, Dinesh D'Souza takes aim at full-blown Deep State propaganda instead of his usual conservative, America-is-never-wrong choir preaching. "Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party" is more an individual crusade than a documentary. 

#2. Death of a Nation (2018)

- Director: Dinesh D'Souza - Metascore: 1 - IMDb user rating: 4.6 - Runtime: 108 min

Coming in at #2 is Dinesh D'Souza, once again, this time framing Democratic treason in a slightly misleading historical context in "Death of a Nation." He points out correctly that Democrats refused to accept Republican Abraham Lincoln's election, rebelled against his presidency, started a Civil War over it, and eventually assassinated him—just like they're trying to do, apparently, with President Donald Trump. He conveniently omits that in the mid-1960s—when a white Southern Texas Democrat named Lyndon Johnson signed landmark civil rights legislation as president—the parties switched and the segregationist South became the base of the modern Republican party.

#1. United Passions (2014)

- Director: Frédéric Auburtin - Metascore: 1 - IMDb user rating: 2.1 - Runtime: 110 min

It's hard to know if the makers of "United Passions" tried to make a movie as bad as it could possibly be, or if that just happened organically. Either way, it takes a special kind of movie to rank as the single worst in a given decade . Even more impressive is the fact that they pulled it off with a cast that includes Tim Roth, Gérard Depardieu, and Sam Neill.

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25 of the Worst Horror Movies Ever Made, According to Rotten Tomatoes

By mike rampton | may 17, 2024.

Horror is unfairly maligned as a genre . If we think of high art as work that provokes an intellectual response and low art as something that provokes more of a physical one, horror falls firmly in the latter category for most. After all, shrieking in terror is a pretty physical response.

While there are absolutely some undeniable masterpieces in the horror genre, there are also a lot of schlocky stinkers. It’s not always about budget, either. Classics like The Blair Witch Project (1999), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), and Night Of The Living Dead (1968) were all made for peanuts but went on to transcend those limitations and make a big impact on pop culture.

Usually even a crappy horror movie has something going for it. But you’d be hard-pressed to find anything worth writing home about when it comes to the flicks that made it onto Rotten Tomatoes’ roundup of the worst horror movies of all time, like 2008’s One Missed Call . A remake of the 2003 Japanese horror movie of the same name by Takashi Miike, it placed first overall and has a score of 0 percent on the site, with film critic Wesley Morris dubbing it “hopelessly disconnected” and “another demonstration of how certain studios and producers care neither about us nor the skill required to pull off a respectable work of garbage.”

Other entrants onto the list—like FeardotCom (2002) and 2023’s Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey —did slightly better, earning a 3 percent score overall. But within the top 25, nothing cracks past a 6 percent score, and there are plenty of cynical by-the-numbers remakes (like 2017’s Flatliners ) and sequels with recycled plots (see: 1988’s Return of the Living Dead Part II ) to go around. You can check out the worst of the worst down below. Bear in mind that to even make it onto the rankings to begin with, these flicks had to have at least 20 reviews. (Ouch.)

Making a completely unwatchable horror film takes some doing. Further on, we break down the six that scored a flat 0 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Remarkably, one actor— Michael Landes of Final Destination 2 (2003) and the first season of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman , both of which are great—pops up in two of these. It’s not his fault!

One Missed Call (2008) // 0 Percent Score

Jaws: the revenge (1987) // 0 percent score, cabin fever (2016) // 0 percent score, the disappointments room (2016) // 0 percent score, homecoming (2009) // 0 percent score, beneath the darkness (2011) // 0 percent score.

Premise: This 2008 J-horror remake focuses on a curse that manifests through phone calls and results in candy popping out of dead people’s mouths.

“Fun” fact: Guillermo Del Toro passed up the opportunity to direct this in order to focus on Hellboy II: The Golden Army , which has a vastly more impressive 86 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. 

Better movies to watch instead: The Ring (2002), The Grudge (2004)

Premise : Apparently great white sharks are big on holding a grudge, because in this follow-up to the 1975 summer blockbuster, one is out for vengeance against the Brody family and is willing to head down to the Bahamas to get it.

“Fun” fact : Star Michael Caine won his first Oscar in 1986 for Hannah and Her Sisters , but missed the ceremony because he was too busy shooting this clunker. He famously quipped: “I have never seen [ Jaws: The Revenge ], but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”

Better movies to watch instead: Jaws (1975), Cujo (1983)

Premise: This inexplicable remake of 2002’s Cabin Fever follows the original beat for beat but doesn’t have the novelty value of starring the guy from Boy Meets World . Why was this film made? Your guess is as good as ours.

“Fun” fact: One of the decisions the creative team made for their remake was to remove the comedic elements of the original.

Better movies to watch instead: The Evil Dead (1981), 28 Days Later (2002)

Premise: A New York couple moves to rural North Carolina and are either haunted by the house’s previous occupants, go bonkers or—get this—possibly both.

“Fun” fact: Some of the North Carolina locations used in this movie were also used in Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth (which has 38 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes). 

Better movies to watch instead: The Others (2001), Poltergeist (1982)

Premise: An obsessive stalker does a Misery on her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend and predictably, chaos ensues.

“Fun” fact: One of the filming locations was North Allegheny Senior High School in Pennsylvania, whose alumni include Christina Aguilera.

Better movies to watch instead: Misery (1990), Single White Female (1992)

Premise: An unhinged mortician-turned-murderer terrorizes a group of teenagers when they discover his secret (which involves dancing with his wife’s corpse).

“Fun” fact: Beneath The Darkness grossed a mere $9600 at the domestic box office.

Better movies to watch instead: Psycho (1960), The Shining (1980)

Read More About Horror Movies:

The Worst Movies of 2023

We tend to think that the best movies of the year express something about the spirit of their time. But what about the worst movies? Often, they’re thought of as merely inept. Yet the truth is that bad movies, in their very badness, have their own way of channeling what’s going on around them. Our list of the year’s worst films includes a superhero movie that crystalizes why superhero mania may be on the outs; a horror film that points to the sacrilegious future of our how-low-can-you-go? culture; not one but two thrillers that incarnate the new (grating) aesthetic of the streaming world; and a Wes Anderson movie that asks, “Has 25 years of twee become too much?” Bad movies, by definition, aren’t fun, but we hope that you have fun reading why Variety ’s chief film critics felt compelled to skewer them.

Owen Gleiberman’s 5 Worst Films

Every era has its most degraded (and grating) movie genre. In the ’80s, it was the formula slasher film. In the aughts, it was the CGI-mascot-in-a-live-action-universe kiddie comedy. The worst genre now going, enabled by the age of streaming, is the overstuffed romantic espionage action comedy built on far too big a budget. It’s like a fast-food fusion experiment gone wrong, and “Ghosted,” starring Ana de Armas as a CIA cutthroat and Chris Evans as the nice-guy farmer who stalks her to London, is an exhausting piece of fake fun on steroid overkill. Dexter Fletcher, at the helm of this mess, doesn’t direct it so much as he keeps tossing random trash into the blender.

2. Asteroid City

Let’s leave aside the word twee , shall we? It no longer does justice to the airlessness of Wes Anderson’s “Look! My movie is a four-tier diorama of artifice!” indie kitsch aesthetic. In this fantastic piece of fake-desert-cactus-and-mushroom-cloud design that is also a claustrophobic dud of a movie, Anderson triples down on his fetishistic yet oppressive way of engineering a story, even as his most ardent fans triple down on their devotion to the idea that he’s somehow expressing an arch humanity. This one, we kept hearing, is actually an aria of “grief,” though the only grief I felt was that of being trapped in a stylized panorama so insistent it’s become a form of OCD.

3. Your Place or Mine

When “When Harry Met Sally” met Netflix. In Aline Brosh McKenna’s abysmal romantic comedy, Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon play platonic best friends — he’s a New York business shark, she’s an L.A. single mom — who trade apartments for a week. He becomes a surrogate daddy to her introverted 13-year-old, and she learns all his secrets, like the fact that he has written a novel. (After reading it, she puts her hand on her heart and stage whispers “Wow!”) It’s like several bad movies rolled into one, with a romantic climax (set in an airport!) that’s like an episode of couples’ therapy and a discussion that seems to think that Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth” is a rom-com. In “Your Place or Mine,” the whole world is a rom-com — we just cringe through it.

4. Magic Mike’s Last Dance

“Magic Mike” Lane started off as a Tampa stripper struggling for cash and just as desperate to nail down his role in the world; he was like John Travolta’s Tony Manero in chaps. But in “Magic Mike XXL,” he went on a road trip that devolved into a hodgepodge of low-rent high jinks, and in “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” the final and most toothless entry of Steven Soderbergh’s male-burlesque trilogy, he’s become a total softie, using his stripper moves to romance a lonely mogul’s wife (Salma Hayek), then assembling an all-male revue to save an old London theater. It’s a let’s-put-on-a-show movie that feels like Chippendales by way of Disney. If Channing Tatum, under Mike’s lunkish exterior, looks a little confused, maybe that’s because nothing can make Mike’s magic wilt like turning him into a saint.

5. Heart of Stone

What goes around comes around, so here we are again: in the land of made-for-streaming-thriller wretched excess, where hyperbolic overkill isn’t just the by-product — it’s the whole point. (In this case, it feels like Netflix commander Ted Sarandos saying to his audience, “See, you never need to go out to a movie theater! We’ll entertain you to death right at home!”) Gal Gadot plays a rogue MI6 counteragent out to save the world in a joyless, sludgy-looking diversion that’s as convoluted as it strives to be, in no small part because it’s built on MacGuffins no one can pretend to care about. But here’s a question with actual suspense: Will these movies ever go away, or will they just keep coming at us in a never-ending stream?

Peter Debruge’s 5 Worst Films

1. winnie the pooh: blood and honey.

This schlocky slasher movie takes audiences back to the 100 Acre Woods, where neglected playthings Pooh and Piglet defile a cabin full of dead-meat young women. Are we supposed to see the killers as A.A. Milne’s imaginary friends gone rogue, or bad actors in off-brand rubber masks? Either way, this gimmicky cash-grab unleashed a horrifying precedent: Exploiting a legal loophole whereby popular creations fall into the public domain 95 years after they were first copyrighted, director Rhys Frake Waterfield showed what irreverent bottom feeders eventually have in store for beloved brands. With protections for Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Superman and more set to expire in 2024, expect more raunchy abuses of favorite characters to come.

Prosper Mérimée’s classic romance lends itself to reinterpretation, having inspired everyone from Georges Bizet to Jean-Luc Godard, Dorothy Dandridge to Beyoncé over the years. That makes it a promising allegory for acclaimed choreographer Benjamin Millepied to make his own. Instead he delivers a tragically under-imagined feature directing debut — the worst first film since Ryan Gosling’s “Lost River.” Never sure where to put the camera, Millepied stages a clumsy dance movie without nearly enough dance … and even less in the way of chemistry. A dopey soldier suffering from PTSD (Paul Mescal) falls for a feisty refugee (Melissa Barrera), as “Carmen” gets twisted into an artless and obvious political statement about the injustice of U.S.-Mexico border enforcement. Doom has seldom felt more dismal.

3. The Flash

Younger than the other members of the DC stable, the Flash can be a fun character, running circles around his fellow Justice Leaguers in terms of laughs and attitude. As the center of his own movie, however, the character proves mostly just exhausting, especially when you throw in the OCD device of dashing back in time to change the past. Problematic off-screen shenanigans aside, Ezra Miller’s got charisma to burn — though it doesn’t help that director Andy Muschietti torches whatever goodwill the junior hero earned with the gonzo falling-babies opening scene on a tiresome infinite-loop plot and terrible visual effects, trapping the immature character in a space-time bubble so that DC can get in on the already-stale multiverse craze. Granted, “Marvels” and “Ant-Man 3” didn’t fare much better, but in a rough year for superhero movies, “The Flash” gets a pan.

Like a how-to class in what paint-by-number indie comedies should studiously avoid, this thin sketch of a movie can’t even milk a laugh from its easy-target subject: a Bob Ross-like public television personality named Carl Nargle, played by Owen Wilson, looking smug in permed wig and wide-collared Western shirts. Clueless Carl’s used to watching his female colleagues swoon as he paints his happy little clouds, but isn’t prepared for (are you ready for it?) a woman to host a rival show. The movie’s one joke comes from questioning how this guy ever became popular. My advice: Seek out either 2021 Netflix doc “Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed” or upcoming Thomas Kinkade portrait “Art for Everybody” for a brush with the dark side of art hackery.

5. Caligula: The Ultimate Cut

In the late ’70s, Penthouse honcho Bob Guccione bankrolled what was supposed to be a respectable adult movie, hiring a serious cast and crew — including Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren and Peter O’Toole — to make an extravagant Roman epic that wouldn’t shy away from explicit sex and violence. The cast took the assignment seriously, but Guccione betrayed them: He ditched the script, fired director Tinto Brass and padded the serious footage with hardcore porn. Nearly everyone involved disowned the X-rated result, which found a cult following nonetheless. Now, the self-anointed leader of said cult, Thomas Negovan, has reconstructed what the project could have been, minus most of the “furious jumping,” referring back to Gore Vidal’s original script to create an alternate (but hardly definitive) cut comprised of slightly less outrageous spare takes. “Caligula” was never going to be a great movie, but this version is somehow worse, since all that smut wasn’t gratuitous; it was the movie’s raison d’être . Like a force-gorged Roman guard with a sword to his scrotum, this tedious new cut somehow manages to be both bloated and neutered — an interminable who-needs-it workprint in which the transgressive novelty has been removed to make room for more of McDowell’s insufferable scenery chewing.

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Jerry seinfeld’s ‘unfrosted’ divides critics: “one of decade’s worst movies”.

The comedian's directorial debut is getting strong reviews from some top critics, but most are not bowled-over by the Netflix cereal comedy.

By James Hibberd

James Hibberd

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Jerry Seinfeld is having an odd time lately.

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Seinfeld’s Unfrosted (trailer below) is a zany star-filled comedy that tells the story of rival cereal companies, Kellogg’s and Post, “racing to create a pastry that will change the face of breakfast forever”— Pop-Tarts. Seinfeld stars in, co-wrote and directed the film, which also stars Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Hugh Grant, Amy Schumer, Max Greenfield, Christian Slater, Sarah Cooper and Bill Burr.

Out of the gate this morning, the film has only a 42 percent positive critics score on Rotten Tomatoes which — as Tony the Tiger would say — isn’t exactly g-r-r-reat! Some reviews are downright scathing, as you’ll soon read.

And yet, some of the country’s top critics at publications like The New York Times , Wall Street Journal , The Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle gave the film modestly positive reviews.

But let’s start with a few notices that won’t be lucky charms for the film.

The Chicago Sun-Times declared Unfrosted “one of the decade’s worst movies. I’m surprised … Seinfeld, one of the sharpest and most observant comedic minds of his generation, didn’t halt production halfway through, call time of death and apologize to everyone for wasting their time. Unfrosted is so consistently awful it makes the aforementioned Flamin’ Hot seem like The Social Network . If there was a thing called the IMDB Witness Protection Program whereby you could get your name taken off the credits of a particular project, this would be that project.”

The Daily Beast called the film “as bad as you’d expect.” “Superior to Seinfeld’s prior cinematic offering, 2007’s animated  Bee Movie , it’s content to be childishly silly rather than legitimately weird, veering between gags concerning age-old products and Jan. 6 with a mildness that keeps things pleasantly pedestrian. There’s nothing particularly awful about it, but there’s also very little that’s memorable.”

Collider wrote: “Considering we’re in a world where  Barbie  can make $1.4 billion and become a commentary on feminism and the patriarchy, or Tetris, Air Jordans, and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos can get their own halfway decent biopics, it’s a shame  Unfrosted  doesn’t try a bit harder. Again, even a film like  Weird  managed to make its jokes and cameos work as part of a larger story, whereas  Unfrosted  always puts the story itself on the back burner.”

But comedy is, if nothing else, subjective, and several top outlets rather enjoyed Unfrosted .

The Guardian wrote “there’s a steady stream of excellent gags, creating a rising crescendo of silliness similar in effect to Seinfeld’s own distinctive falsetto-hysterical declamation at the moment of ultimate joke-awareness …As a whole, it’s not exactly a masterpiece, but amiable and funny in a way that’s much harder to achieve than it looks.”

The Washington Post gave the movie 2.5 stars and wrote, “ Unfrosted may be the Platonic ideal of the Netflix movie: ephemeral, edible, enjoyable, forgettable. It’s essentially Jerry Seinfeld inviting everyone in his Rolodex to come on over for an extended hang to parody the current craze for trademark biopics … The hit-to-miss joke ratio is decent — about three gags land for every one that gets stuck in the toaster.”

And, yes, The Hollywood Reporter was among the positive reviews , calling the film “gleefully silly,” and writing, “For those willing to put aside reality for 90 minutes, as  Unfrosted  does with gusto, the Netflix movie whips up a frothy sendup of storytelling tropes and clichés … At the helm of a cast filled with virtuosos of comic timing, Seinfeld draws performances that are, for the most part, understated, effectively heightening the ridiculousness of the setup by playing it straight … Best of all, there’s not a drop of corporate mythologizing in the mishmash of factoid and fantasy.”

Unfrosted was released today on Netflix, so feel free to Chex it out yourself.

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50 of the funniest, most searing movie reviews ever written

• Movie reviewers have had some pretty scathing takes on films throughout the years. 
• One reviewer referred to a film as like "Grease: The Next Generation" acted out by the food-court staff at SeaWorld.
• Another riffed "Some movies leave a bad taste in the mouth. This one causes full-on halitosis."

For many viewers, a movie can simply exist as something to fill a void of upwards of 90 minutes. Film critics, who spend their lives scribbling notes in dark theaters, ask for a little more.

" I have a colleague who describes his job as 'covering the national dream beat,' because if you pay attention to the movies they will tell you what people desire and fear in their deepest secrets," the late Roger Ebert wrote in 1992 . "At least, the good ones will. That's why we go, hoping to be touched in those secret places. Movies are hardly ever about what they seem to be about. Look at a movie that a lot of people love, and you will find something profound, no matter how silly the film may seem."

Sometimes the best thing to come out of a movie is a blistering review. INSIDER rounded up 50 of the funniest, most searing movie reviews ever written.

Critics said that heartbreak was preferable to watching "Valentine's Day."

"'Valentine's Day' is being marketed as a Date Movie. I think it's more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do not date that person again. And if you like it, there may not be a second date." —   Roger Ebert , Chicago Sun-Times.

Critics eviscerated "Twilight," but the movie still made more than $390 million at the box office.

"I've had mosquito bites that were more passionate than this undead, unrequited, and altogether unfun pseudo-romantic riff on 'Romeo and Juliet.'" — Marc Salov , The Austin Chronicle.  

"The Other Woman" wasn't a hit with critics.

"I know what you're thinking ... 'Enough beating around the bush. Just tell us whether you liked it.' Consider this, which I will say in terms this movie would understand, if you were on an airplane, 'The Other Woman'   might not be preferable to simply staring into your empty airsick bag, but it has enough nicely executed physical comedy that in the event you become ill, it is definitely preferable to staring into your occupied airsick bag." — Linda Holmes , NPR.

"The Emoji Movie" has an 8% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

"This is a movie about how words aren't cool, but you can still expect a girl to fall at your feet in response to mild wordplay. Please keep up. Or throw whatever device you’re reading this on into the ocean. Send me a postcard ... tell me what it’s like to be free." — Kaitlyn Tiffany and Lizzie Plaugic , The Verge.

Netflix is making a sequel to "Bright" despite the fact it was totally panned by critics.

"While I had the misfortune to see 'Bright' in a theater, most people will simply press 'play' out of curiosity on their Roku remote. I am willing to concede that this might elevate the experience a little ... the ability to take a quick trip to the kitchen or restroom after shouting 'no, don't pause it' to your partner on the couch will be liberating." — Jordan Hoffman , Vanity Fair.

"Battlefield Earth" was a box-office bust and a critical failure.

"'Battlefield Earth' saves its scariest moment for the end: a virtual guarantee that there will be a sequel." — Desson Howe , The Washington Post.

The basic plot of "Milk Money" perplexed critics.

Roger Ebert imagined what the conversation between studio executives would have looked like when they greenlit the movie:

"Studio Executive A: Kind of like 'Working Girl Turns a Trick?'

"Studio Executive B: Cuter than that. We start with three 12-year-old boys. They're going crazy because they've never seen a naked woman.

"Studio Executive A: Whatsamatter? They poor? Don't they have cable?"

Even fans of the HBO series prefer to pretend "Sex and the City 2" doesn't exist, according to critics.

"When viewed as a rom-com, 'Sex and the City 2' is terrible and crappy and a horrific inversion of everything the show once was. But when viewed as a science fiction film, 'SATC2' is subversive, stylish and chilling. Like The Island from 'Lost,' we may never know The City's true identity — Is it a VR computer program? A malevolent interdimensional god? Satan?" — Cyriaque Lamar , i09.

Making fun of "Gigli" became a national past-time.

"Even making a little game of it, and trying to pinpoint the exact moment when Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez fell in love, stops being fun after a while. Perhaps it's when he says, in an attempt to seduce her, 'I'm the bull, you're the cow.' Or when she beckons him into foreplay by lying back in bed and purring, 'Gobble, gobble' — which could forever change the way you view your Thanksgiving turkey." — Christy Lemire , The Associated Press.

"The Adventures of Pluto Nash" wasn't a hit with critics.

"It's good to know that, if we have to leave Earth someday, we won't have to go without our kitsch. Forensics experts will be digging through the rubble of this fiasco for a long time, trying to reconstruct the accident. How did so many lines fall flat? Why were the action scenes so corny and unconvincing? Who put the stink on this?" — Jack Mathews , New York Daily News.

"Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2" has a 2% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

" At its best/worst, 'Superbabies' hallucinatory idiocy inspires open-mouthed horror at what happens when an ill-conceived premise leads to even more jaw-droppingly misguided execution." — Nathan Rabin , AV Club.

Critics thought "Gotti" was so bad it was almost criminal.

"I'd rather wake up next to a severed horse head than ever watch 'Gotti' again. The worst movie of the year so far, the long-awaited biopic about the Gambino crime boss' rise from made man to top dog took four directors, 44 producers and eight years to make. It shows. The finished product belongs in a cement bucket at the bottom of the river." — Johnny Oleksinski , New York Post.

Critics got personal with their contempt for "Jaws: The Revenge."

"In the just-released 'Jaws: The Revenge' the shark's main course is intended to be Roy Scheider's widow, Ellen Brody, a frumpy middle-aged woman played by boring actress Lorraine Gary, who happens to be married to the president of MCA Universal, which finances the 'Jaws' films and which explains her lead role. Let's put it this way: When you see and hear the nasal Lorraine Gary on screen you want the shark to eat her." — Gene Siskel , Chicago Tribune.

"One Missed Call" didn't warrant anyone's attention, according to critics.

"The kid in front of me spent most of the movie playing Tetris on his phone. I didn't care enough about the movie to ask him to stop, or to find a cooler game." — Wesley Morris , The Boston Globe.

The critical response to "Jack Frost" was icy.

"With emotions as sincere as the soap flake snow on its sets, 'Jack Frost' goes on to show how much fun it is to have a snowman as a loving, though dead, father … As one more Hollywood effort to look on the sunny side of fatality, 'Jack Frost' is so sugarcoated that it makes other recent efforts in this genre look blisteringly honest." — Janet Maslin , The New York Times.

"The Snowman" left critics cold.

"'The Snowman' is like if aliens studied humanity and tried to make their own movie in an attempt to communicate with us. This simulacrum contains all the requisite pieces of a movie, but humanity got lost in translation." — Barbara VanDenburgh , The Arizona Republic.

Critics saw "Batman & Robin" as more of a cash-grab than a movie.

" The people who made this movie — which, as always, is set up for a sequel — will be laughing all the way to the bank. But isn't there someone in that bank who can lock them all inside a safety-deposit vault and throw away the key?" — Peter Rainer , The Phoenix New Times.

"Cool World" was almost universally hated by critics.

"The plot of Michael Grais' and Mark Victor's screenplay is even more nonsensical than it needs to be, revolving around frequent unmotivated trips between parallel cartoon and live-action universes, and around the question of whether cartoon women will have sex with human men." — Janet Maslin , The New York Times.

"Titanic" won 11 Academy Awards, but critics thought it took its sweet time getting to the point.

"'Titanic' is a good, often stunning movie caught in a three-and-a-half hour drift. As we marvel at the physical spectacle of the Titanic's last few hours, we're left staggeringly untouched by the people facing their last moments. This movie should have blown us out of the water. Instead, we catch ourselves occasionally thinking the unpardonable thought: 'OK, sink already.'" — Desson Howe , The Washington Post.

"Howard The Duck" was a one-note movie that prompted critics to question for whom exactly the movie was made.

"The story has no center; the duck is not likable, and the costly, overwrought, laser-filled special effects that conclude the movie are less impressive than a sparkler on a birthday cake. George 'Star Wars' Lucas supervised the production of this film, and maybe it's time he went back to making low-budget films like his best picture, 'American Graffiti.'" — Gene Siskel , The Chicago Tribune.

"Catwoman" is considered by critics to be one of the worst superhero movies ever made.

"The film could have turned out worse, but only via the addition of a Tom Green cameo, or an accident in which the actors caught on fire." — Keith Phipps , The AV Club

Critics thought "Mac and Me" was a discount version of "ET: The Extraterrestrial."

"'Mac and Me,' which opened yesterday at the Guild and other theaters, has a final police shootout and a fiery explosion in which Eric is the victim. When a doctor announced that Eric was gone, a small boy behind me said, 'He ain't dead,' with all the calm assurance of an experienced moviegoer who knows perfectly well that if E.T. came back, so would Eric. Cloning is a dangerous thing." — Caryn James , The New York Times.

Only a sucker would bother watching "Sucker Punch" after reading reviews.

"In the end, though the metaphor of mental institution as battleground is an interesting one to explore, that is not the analysis at the heart of this movie. Nope, 'Sucker Punch' is a two-hour $82 million fetish film examining how hot sad schoolgirls look when holding weapons. Snyder should have just made a porn movie — it might have been better, and it definitely would have been cheaper and more honest." — Dodai Stewart , Jezebel.

"Movie 43" prompted devastating reviews.

"It's as if 'Movie 43' was itself a feature-length f--- you to Hollywood, a movie made simply to show how bad a movie a studio could be induced to make and actors could be persuaded to act in." — Richard Brody , The New Yorker.

The best thing critics could say about "Fifty Shades Freed" was that the trilogy was finally over.

"Universal has had some fun with its marketing campaign, using the tag-line, 'Don't miss the climax.' It's a shame, though, that the posters exhibit considerably more ingenuity than the film itself." — Brian Lowery , CNN.

"A Christmas Prince" falls squarely in the category of "so bad it's good."

"It's a Netflix original movie, but it feels like a violation of nature that it somehow isn't from Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel. Nathan Atkins is credited with the screenplay, but this film is such a perfect amalgam of established tropes that I am not entirely convinced that isn't a pseudonym to keep us from discovering that Netflix has created the artificial-intelligence technology to generate a script using auto-complete." — Dana Schwartz , Entertainment Weekly.

"A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding" seemed to revel in shoddiness.

"It plays like a piece of Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan fan fiction, written by a child who actually doesn't know who they are but has watched the 'Princess Diaries' films." — Carly Mallenbaum , USA Today.

Critics thought "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" was far too depressing for a superhero movie.

"An even less charitable way to put it is that a clearly excited 7- or 8-year-old kid sitting in front of me busted out crying and had to be whisked out of the theater by his father within the first five minutes. Perhaps he was unnerved by the harsh, operatic violence of Bruce Wayne's parents getting murdered — the mom's pearls get tangled around the gun, somehow, which allows for some very tight and poignant slow motion — or maybe he was offended by the notion that a 2016 Batman movie felt it necessary to depict Bruce Wayne's parents getting murdered. Either way, this kid bounced." — Rob Harvilla , Deadspin.

Critics thought "Transformers: The Last Knight" was simply too incoherent to describe.

"I'll admit, I've been dreading the thought of trying to at all explain the plot of this movie — even in broad, simple terms. I honestly had anxiety dreams last night about this moment. It's like staring at a projected kaleidoscope for two and a half hours and then trying to tell someone about the plot." — Mike Ryan , Uproxx.

Many thought "The Brown Bunny" was tedious and only remembered for its inclusion of one explicit scene.

"It's not really a movie. I suppose it's what could be called a recorded behavior. It simply reproduces, with some crude fidelity, the hapless anguish of a grieving man as he copes with his loss. It has no characters, it has no conflict, it has nothing that could be called a plot. It offers no reason to watch it — that is, no reason within the picture." — Stephen Hunter , The Washington Post.

Critics were thoroughly disgusted by "The Human Centipede," but they were also bored by it.

"This is one of those movies where victims repeatedly have opportunities to escape but choose not to, guaranteeing still more grotesque degradation, full of gore, torture, and sexual humiliation — and contains not an iota of wit or intelligence to justify any of it." — Michael Ordoña , The Los Angeles Times.

"Avatar" is still the highest grossing movie of all time, but not everyone was a fan.

"' Avatar' isn't about actors or characters or even about story; it's about special effects, which is fine as far as it goes. But for a movie that stresses how important it is for us to stay connected with nature, to keep our ponytails plugged into the life force, 'Avatar' is peculiarly bloodless. It's a remote-control movie experience, a high-tech 'wish you were here' scribbled on a very expensive postcard. You don't have to be fully present to experience 'Avatar'; all you have to do is show up." — Stephanie Zacharek , Salon.

Critics thought "I Know Who Killed Me" was embarrassing for everyone involved.

"Pretentious and inane, 'I Know Who Killed Me' arouses unexpected sympathy for its embattled star. 'Should we populate the movie with competent, strong performances, or were we looking for stars?' asks the producer, Frank Mancuso Jr., in the film's production notes. Out of the mouths of producers." — Jeannette Catsoulis , The New York Times.

Critics thought there was nothing redeeming about "Sorority Boys."

"I'm curious about who would go to see this movie. Obviously moviegoers with a low opinion of their own taste. It's so obviously what it is that you would require a positive desire to throw away money in order to lose two hours of your life. 'Sorority Boys' will be the worst movie playing in any multiplex in America this weekend, and, yes, I realize 'Crossroads' is still out there." — Roger Ebert , The Chicago Sun-Times.

"Forrest Gump" won multiple Academy Awards, but it still prompted some biting reviews.

"With two decades of perspective on 'Forrest Gump's triumph, you get the sense that '90s audiences were relieved to see a film that said it was OK — even honorable — to ignore all the bad stuff about war. So, too, was the Motion Picture Academy, which 12 months after lauding 'Schindler's List'   decided, 'Screw it, let's give the awards to the movie that sells cookbooks.' — Amy Nicholson , LA Weekly.

Critics absolutely hated "Life Itself."

"'Life Itself' thinks you're stupid. Or, if not stupid, unable to understand how a movie should work. It's a movie made for people who can't be trusted to understand any storytelling unless it's not just spoon-fed but ladled on, piled high, and explained via montage and voiceover" — Kate Erbland , IndieWire.

"Ridiculous 6" felt intentionally offensive.

"There's the broad racism and misogyny of the piece. After the controversial walk-offs, Netflix claimed that this was 'satire.' It's not. There's nothing satirical about Sandler's bad Native American accent, which totally comes and goes, by the way, or Schneider's Hispanic caricature. Saying that this is satire is like the drunk guy at the bar telling you how many black friends he has after telling a racist joke. Don't fall for it." — Brian Tallerico , RogerEbert.com.

"The Village" felt like a waste of time to some.

" [M. Night Shyamalan] directs the material as if he'd written it (which he did), and not a single friend dared tell him the truth." — Mick LaSalle , SFGate.

The extreme level of product placement in "Crossroads" was an issue for critics.

"It turns out that 'Crossroads' is not a music video, not yet a movie, but more like an extended-play advertisement for the Product that is Britney." — Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post.

Critics thought "Grown Ups" was a lazy attempt at comedy.

"The movie is symptomatic of a social attitude that might be called the security of incompetence. There's something reassuring about a bad movie that doesn't ask you to think or feel or even pay attention ... we can all be happy D-minus students huddled together in communal self-disgust in a D-minus world." — Stephen Holden , The New York Times.

Critics thought "Grown Ups 2" was so bad that it made them appreciate the first movie.

"In 'Grown Ups 2,' which is set on the last day of school, our heroes are now all living in the same small town together, and everybody's pretty happy, so there's little to motivate the action. It makes the first movie look like 'The Maltese Falcon.'" — Bilge Ebiri , Vulture.

Some thought "Suburbicon" was too smug for its own good.

"You absolutely can fault [George Clooney] for wrongheadedness in making a movie that condemns racism, and specifically segregation in the postwar housing boom, albeit in the most broad, perfunctory, awareness-ribbon-wearing way while barely allowing its black characters to speak. 'Suburbicon' might be the biggest embarrassment to pious Hollywood liberalism since 'Crash' won best picture in 2006." — Chris Klimek , NPR.

"Mother!" may not have been enjoyable, but it certainly was memorable.

"I admired the camerawork, the wide-angle close-ups of flaring nostrils, and the pandemonium of the crowd scenes in the second half of the film when it goes haywire and insanity reign. It's an odd sensation to still remember moments of technical brilliance in a movie I never want to see again." — Rex Reed , The Observer.

Some thought "Freddy Got Fingered" was an embarrassment for everyone involved.

" This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels." — Roger Ebert , Chicago Sun-Times.

Critics thought there just wasn't anything funny about "Joe Dirt."

"Why do American audiences accept the stance that silly movies have to be terrible by definition? There's nothing enjoyable about 'Joe Dirt.' Absolutely nothing. Spade's generic nonperformance is the centerpiece of a very wobbly story, and he simply isn't enough of an actor to keep you interested." — Paul Tatara , CNN.

Critics thought "Fantastic Four" was the opposite of fantastic.

"My notebook usually remains near my lap, but at this movie, it made involuntary trips over my mouth to cover all of my gasping. The entire experience is shameful — for us, for the filmmakers, for whoever at the studio had the job of creating the ads, in which the cast appear to be starring in hostage posters." — Wesley Morris , Grantland.

"From Justin to Kelly" was embarrassingly amateur, according to critics.

"How bad is 'From Justin to Kelly?' Set in Miami during spring break, it's like 'Grease: The Next Generation' acted out by the food-court staff at SeaWorld." — Owen Gleiberman , Entertainment Weekly.

"National Lampoon's Gold Diggers" has a 0% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

"Just how repellent is 'National Lampoon's Gold Diggers?' So stupefyingly hideous that after watching it, you'll need to bathe in 10 gallons of disinfectant, get a full-body scrub and shampoo with vinegar to remove the scummy residue that remains. Some movies leave a bad taste in the mouth. This one causes full-on halitosis." — Jen Chaney , The Washington Post.

"Venom" was a tonally-uneven, muddled mess, according to most critics.

"For all of its cult potential, and my God, is this film rife with it, it is 'Venom's' insidious political intonations, which were entirely avoidable, that become the least palatable aspect of the film. And this is a movie where you see Tom Hardy eat out of a garbage can." — Sarah Tai-Black , The Globe and Mail.

"North" almost universally disliked by critics and prompted one of Roger Ebert's movie memorable reviews.

"' North' is one of the most unpleasant, contrived, artificial, cloying experiences I've had at the movies. To call it manipulative would be inaccurate; it has an ambition to manipulate, but fails … I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it." — Roger Ebert , Chicago Sun-Times.

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, the worst person in the world.

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There’s a restlessness that arises within when, by society’s punitive standards, one’s youth begins inevitably fading away. As you perform the taxing charade of adulthood, with your twenties now concluded and your thirties ticking down, the urgency to become, to achieve, to fall in love forever, all to prove you’ve got something to show for your earthbound time, settles in. 

The feeling that the burning light of promise is quickly extinguishing, consumed by the status quo-imposed milestones, drives Norwegian director Joachim Trier ’s phenomenally inventive dramedy “The Worst Person in the World,” the third installment in his unplanned, yet spiritually akin Oslo Trilogy. 

“I feel like a spectator in my own life,” say Julie ( Renate Reinsve ), a young woman still piecing together the spectrum of her emotional wants and needs. She explains this to Aksel ( Anders Danielsen Lie ), her lover who is over a decade her senior. In Julie, millennial anxiety manifests in flares of frustration and feeling stuck as she wrestles with self-discovery. 

Segmented into a dozen chapters (plus a prologue and an epilogue), the literary-structured film introduces Julie with a montage of her college days trapped in a swirl of indecisiveness and exploration, between career path changes and romantic flings. But by the end of the first act, Julie will turn 30 and be faced with the looming question of potential motherhood. 

Trier and his longtime co-writer Eskil Vogt constantly invigorate our understanding of Julie and her romantic partners via insightful visual digressions guided by the voice of a female narrator. Soaked in Harry Nilsson’s deceivingly cheerful songs, their high-spirited narrative language finds an ideal vehicle in the way cinematographer Kasper Tuxen suffuses the characters’ genuine visages with the softest, most elegant lighting of the Nordic skies. 

Working at a bookstore, after dabbling in medicine and photography, Julie is now in the shadow of Aksel, a revered cartoonist of politically incorrect material. He’s a safe choice, a reasonable partner, but she is not ready for the commitment he desires. A montage adds to the feeling that she’s behind on life’s schedule, showing how the women in her lineage across generations were already raising children at her age. 

Part of Julie’s growth in the gracefully whimsical “The Worst Person in the World,” as she navigates an estrangement from her father, comes from moments about her fortitude to step away from a situation or a person in order to pursue her own happiness. There’s an agency in her perceived recklessness that places her in a limbo between juvenile hedonism and expected maturity. 

Yet, in addressing the necessary selfishness to let herself move along based on her intuitiveness, she shows a deep compassion for the human being on the other side of every schism. It’s in those scenes where Julie and Aksel air out the sorrow for the things that might never come to pass between them, that Trier captures an almost shocking display of honesty, rid of any defensive armor. Here are two people that love each other, who can come to terms with the impossibility of their union at this moment in time.  

Reinsve’s performance is an incantation of the highest caliber, an act of pure acting magic that fluctuates across Julie’s evolving arc. By allowing us to observe the character over time and in distinct facets, Trier gives Reinsve a platform not only to show range but also to construct a character in small, but immensely telling emotional modulations: her faint smile when trying not to cry or an uncontainable grin of joy, her dancing with abandon, or the way she stands her ground with a devastating determination. 

Through her, Julie comes of age at her own pace. She often runs towards something that’s impermanent but exciting, only to discover that maybe she has been looking for answers in the arms of another when they've always been only hers to formulate. To think Reinsve didn’t break out in the 10 years between her first on-screen appearance in Trier’s “Oslo, August 31st” is outrageous. But in a sense, that period of trying to breakthrough and not accomplishing it until her early thirties may have created a kinship with her fictional persona.  

Danielsen Lie conveys a similar sweetness as Aksel, even as a man unwilling to let go of the obsolete. There’s also an embarrassingly recognizable fear in him of losing one’s edge, of learning that all the sensible apprehensions we once mocked have begun keeping us up at night. Aksel’s speech about how at some point all we have left is to look back at who we were, to the artifacts of youth, is a striking gut-punch. 

In those pensive duels of sincerity that Trier stages between the impeccable Danielsen Lie and the mesmerizing Reinsve, the actor repeatedly puts on a smile that appears as if his cheekbones are dams fighting to holds back a flood of tears. There’s a desperate pleading in his eyes that reads almost childlike, confessing that his artistic wins didn’t dilute the consternation for finding meaning in the sum of his mortal days.  

Each chapter in “The Worst Person in the World” feels like a complete, unique thought encapsulating something real in unrealistic visual terms—like the tracks on an eclectic album, which even if they vary in tone comprise a cohesive whole. With Tuxen and editor Olivier Bugge Coutté embellishing the playfulness of the screenplay, Trier conceives highly stimulating instances such as with the agile camera movements that accompany Aksel as he plays air drums in a musical driven trance, or in the hilarious bizarreness of a drug-induced trip that features splashes of animation. 

A prime example of Trier’s cinematic ebullience is a sequence where Julie meets Eivind ( Herbert Nordrum ), a new lover. Both promise not to cheat on their partners with each other, but the pair engage in a flirtatious dance of intimacy that surpasses the carnal. Later, she dreams of making time stand still to traverse Oslo for a kiss and an afternoon of wonder, in one of the film’s most fabulous displays of romanticism laden with the thrill of mischief. 

Trier and Vogt are poets of this longing for what’s to come while trapped in a convoluted present, and have revisited this idea across their work, especially in their Oslo-set escapades. In “ Reprise ,” the young authors discover that success doesn’t equal fulfillment, while in the more somber “Oslo, August 31st” an addict in his thirties sees no reason to continue having disappointment. That they can still engage so intensely with this disquieting state so familiar to many is a sensational virtue. 

“The Worst Person in the World,” Trier’s stirringly sophisticated masterpiece, unrolls in piecemeal manner, but once fully extended is a tapestry of unfeigned experiences sowed with the thread of truth, in all its painful ambivalence. All it can confirm is that there’s probably no turning point in which life is supposed to start for good.

For our transient time here—an inharmonious symphony of beginnings and conclusions, small triumphs and big disillusions, all without a grand design—perhaps the plans that fell through, Julie’s and ours, don’t matter as much. The value is in the bravery to see the crumbles of a former dream or a past relationship and still try again in earnest from scratch; to be aware that the same mistakes may come along and that growing pains may never vanish, to embrace that we are on nobody’s timeline but our own.

Now playing in select theaters.

Carlos Aguilar

Originally from Mexico City, Carlos Aguilar was chosen as one of 6 young film critics to partake in the first Roger Ebert Fellowship organized by RogerEbert.com, the Sundance Institute and Indiewire in 2014. 

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Film Credits

The Worst Person in the World (2022)

Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and some language.

128 minutes

Renate Reinsve as Julie

Anders Danielsen Lie as Aksel

Herbert Nordrum as Eivind

Hans Olav Brenner as Ole Magnus

Helene Bjørnebye as Karianne

Vidar Sandem as Per Harald

Maria Grazia Di Meo as Sunniva

Lasse Gretland as Kristoffer

Karen Røise Kielland as Tone

• Joachim Trier

Cinematographer

• Kasper Tuxen
• Olivier Bugge Coutté
• Ola Fløttum

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Paul Schrader on ‘Oh, Canada,’ Tarantino’s ‘The Movie Critic,’ and the ‘Worst F**king Idea’ of a ‘Taxi Driver’ Sequel

Nick newman.

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The Paul Schrader Renaissance began the moment “ First Reformed ” debuted to the director’s best reviews in at least 15 years, back in 2017. The spiritual trilogy formed around it — “The Card Counter” and “Master Gardener” — have fostered in a new generation’s mind this frankly narrow vision of what constitutes a Paul Schrader movie: men in rooms, pens across diaries, peculiar revenge plots.

Ahead of the Cannes premiere of “Oh, Canada,” IndieWire spoke to Schrader, who came ready with a collection of thorough, thoughtful answers that run between abstract ambitions and how-the-sausage-is-made practicality. Included therein is a certain criticism of his film that was small apples for Schrader, whose faith in his own material has been validated time and again. He’ll believe in shelf life before relying on the flash responses that are an unfortunate currency of the major-festival premieres; one expects that, whatever those at Cannes make of it in tweets and embargo-pressured reviews, “Oh, Canada” houses secrets and surprises that won’t shake loose anytime soon.

This review has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Indiewire: In light of the recent Variety piece , where you mentioned Martin Scorsese’s dog attacked your hand, how is your thumb?

“Oh, Canada” throws you into the deep end of its protagonist’s consciousness. The what-when-where of events and chronology becomes less certain as it continues; it just expands in possibility.

Yeah, he’s losing a little traction. The wheels start spinning at some point.

How much were any initial versions played a bit clearer, and how many drafts were more opaque?

The previous films I’ve been doing are what I call monocular: They look through one eye. One eye, one character. Whereas this one is a mosaic, a pastiche that sort of goes back to the structure of “Mishima,” where you have the different layers of reality and different visual formats that are interlocking. Now, it’s not nearly as… bold, today, as it would’ve been in the past, because I go to movies all the time where they’re switching formats, switching colors, going to black-and-white, and nobody in the audience groans anymore when, suddenly, one scene is radically stylistically different from the last. We’ve become very sophisticated as film viewers. We no longer necessarily believe in continuity. What we used to call a continuity mistake we now call a continuity choice. [Laughs.] He enters the room with a red jacket from the outside, and in the inside he has a green jacket. That’s not a mistake — that’s “a choice.” [Laughs.]

Your first collaboration with cinematographer Andrew Wonder is very expressive in not only color and format, but also specific lens choices. What’s the communication like with a DP who’s a first-time collaborator?

You recently expressed the feeling that some of your period pieces haven’t come off as well as you’d hoped. Which makes it interesting that “Oh, Canada” is largely set in a bygone era. Are there particular discomforts or adaptation processes to making a period piece?

My attraction to storytelling has always been to step outside and sniff the air. What’s going on? There’s something happening here. What is it? I’m always sort of interested in the zeitgeist, why people are doing certain things. That pretty much is every film. I did “Patty Hearst” — even though it’s in the past it’s really about what’s going on right now. So that has always attracted me in a way that faintly recreating a period doesn’t. I also think people make mistakes when they recreate the period because they recreate it as an image of a period.

It’s such a delight when you interplay Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi’s presence in single scenes. There’s a variance in tone: It’s funny when Michael Imperioli “plays young” but looks like a middle-aged man, or Uma Thurman shows up as Gloria, a young hippie who nevertheless looks like an older woman.

Yeah. And I don’t know if you noticed, but Sloane — who is the assistant du jour — is Amy! There’s that direct cut where Sloane says, “What was that girl’s name?” Then you cut to Richard and he says “Amy,” then you cut to a picture of Jake and the actress playing Amy — the same actress playing Sloane — then you cut back again. But because one has long, purplish hair and one has short, blonde bob, for the most part that sort of slips by people. When I do it with Uma, I’m doing it for the second time, not the first time. That was a kind of miscalculation I made doing the film: I thought that when Uma makes her appearance, people would say, “Oh, he’s doing it again,” not “he’s doing it for the first time.”

You’re much more honest than almost any director about assessing your own films.

How do you transplant a book to a screenplay?

A good book will have several adaptations inside it; a short story maybe only has one. You get a book like “Last Temptation”: I figured there were at least six different scripts in that book. “Affliction,” there were probably two. The first thing you do is get out a legal pad and write out every single thing that happens and number it. And then you start putting checks by each individual scene: how buzzy , how cool, how good it is. One scene, two scenes — three checks. Then you make a list of all the three-check scenes. You say, “These are all really cool scenes. The movie’s only about 40 minutes, but you have 40 minutes of cool scenes here. Now let’s start thinking about adding something to it.”

We’re talking about a month after Quentin Tarantino announced he’s not going to make “The Movie Critic.” You were kind of a bellwether on that . Were you hopeful to see his rendition of your original “Rolling Thunder” ending?

About 10 years ago Robert De Niro said you’d tried approaching a “Taxi Driver” sequel. I’m curious if a) that’s true; b) what that might have entailed.

It’s not true. Robert is the one who wanted to do that. He asked Marty and I. Now, I don’t want to slag De Niro, but a lot of his decisions sometimes have financial motivations. I’m sure someone had said to him, “You know, if you do ‘Taxi Driver 2,’ they can pay.” So he pressed Marty on it and Marty asked me and I said, “Marty, that’s the worst fucking idea I’ve ever heard.” He said, “Yeah, but you tell him. Let’s have dinner.” So we had dinner at Bob’s restaurant and Bob was talking about it. I said, “Wow, that’s the worst fucking idea I’ve ever heard. That character dies at the end of that movie or dies shortly thereafter. He’s gone. Oh, but maybe there is a version of him that I could do. Maybe he became Ted Kaczynski and maybe he’s in a cabin somewhere and just sitting there, making letter bombs. Now, that would be cool. That would be a nice Travis. He doesn’t have a cab anymore. He just sits there [laughs] making letter bombs.” But Bob didn’t cotton to that idea, either. [Laughs.]

You know, that would only happen in an extraordinary situation. Because Francis and I are there the first weekend and George is there the second weekend. Hopefully one of us — I doubt both, but possibly — will be asked to return for the second weekend. But I can’t imagine a world where all three of us will be there on the closing day! [Laughs.]

I hope you feel good about premiering it. The Cannes competition is no small thing.

That’s a good moment in any cinephile’s life, realizing that’s the French method.

[Laughs] But I tell you: I was back in Cannes about 10 years ago in Fortnight with “Dog Eat Dog.” I had a memory from “Taxi Driver,” which was: The Carlton Terrace used to be very casual and half-empty. It was a hang place. I was sitting there with Marty and Sergio Leone and Fassbinder came by with his boyfriend and joined us. So we’re all sitting there. We’re talking movies. The sun was going down over the water. I thought, “Wow. This is just fucking great . This is so fucking great.” 10 years ago I went back and said, “I’m going to go back on the Carlton Terrace so I can relive this moment.” And it was just packed , crowded , there was a queue , there was noise . There were no filmmakers there whatsoever! [Laughs] So: that was then.

“Oh, Canada” premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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The garfield movie review: chris pratt leads a lackluster animated adventure with little appeal.

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Every Chris Pratt Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

The garfield movie's voice cast & character guide: who stars in chris pratt's 2024 movie, chris pratt's garfield rotten tomatoes score is in — does it beat bill murray's movies.

• The Garfield Movie offers humor but lacks originality, overshadowing the main character with a bland story and better characters.
• Chris Pratt's voice performance is decent, but Ving Rhames steals the show as Otto.
• Despite an emotional father-son storyline, The Garfield Movie feels lackluster and fails to bring anything new to the table.

As one of the most famous fictional cats out there, it's no surprise that Hollywood is keen to build a franchise on Jim Davis' Garfield, the lazy lasagna-loving pet who loathes Mondays above all else. Yet, more than ten years after the misfires that were Garfield: The Movie and its 2006 follow-up, which even star Bill Murray has disavowed, the cat's prospects haven't exactly improved. The newest attempt at making the character happen, The Garfield Movie , is already at a disadvantage due to its lead star.

Based on Jim Davis's comic series, Garfield is a new imagining of the lasagna-loving cat and his friends, opting for a fully computer-animated approach. Chris Pratt voices the titular cat, with the film aiming to explore his early days and new misadventures for him, his friends, and his family.

• There is the occasional genuine bit of humor
• The voice cast is good
• The story is lackluster
• The movie doesn't offer anything creative or invigorating
• Garfield is overshadowed by better characters
• Garfield isn't a strong enough protagonist

Chris Pratt has received a lot of flack for taking on voice roles for seemingly no reason other than his star power, and his casting as Garfield sparked plenty of memes and eye-rolls (though admittedly, the furor was much smaller than it was when he was cast as Mario). That The Garfield Movie isn't a particularly strong animated movie isn't entirely Pratt's fault , far from it, but it does make me think that, unlike last year's The Super Mario Bros . Movie , this new Sony outing won't rebound from its initial reception.

From humble beginnings to Hollywood elite, Chris Pratt has rapidly become one of the most commercially successful actors in the history of film.

The Garfield Movie's Plot Moves Fast & Hits The Expected Beats

The Garfield Movie wastes no time introducing its titular character, from his seemingly bottomless stomach to his tragic origin story, which lays the foundation for the whole plot. When he was a tiny, big-eyed kitten, Garfield was left in an alley by his father, Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), on a dark and stormy night. Naturally, Garfield himself is providing the narration for this intro, a gimmick I found tiring almost immediately. Drawn by the scents of a nearby Italian restaurant, baby Garfield left the alley behind and found his way into the arms of sweet Jon Arbuckle (Nicholas Hoult).

Jon swiftly adopted the cat and so established the status quo comic readers are familiar with. However, it isn't long before Garfield and innocent pup Odie (Harvey Guillén) are yanked from their comfortable home and drawn into a mysterious plot, all because of former thief Vic. One of Vic's past partners in crime, Jinx (Hannah Waddingham), ended up in prison because of his actions, and she's returned for revenge. Jinx insists Vic and Garfield (with poor Odie along for the ride) must fulfill her chosen form of retribution, which involves stealing a lot of milk.

The Garfield Movie , directed by Mark Dindal and written by Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgove, and David Reynolds, keeps a steady pace the whole time, perhaps to ensure younger viewers don't lose focus too quickly. Much of the plot is centered around the milk heist, and Garfield's strained relationship with his dad. The father-son storyline forms the core of The Garfield Movie , and it certainly tugs at the heartstrings in exactly the way you'd expect . It's an effective way for us to gain some compassion for Garfield, since the movie itself isn't always interested in making him a well-rounded character.

The Garfield Movie

Pratt's garfield is overshadowed by stronger performances (& characters), ving rhames is especially good as otto.

There aren't many surprises to be had here, and the straightforward story, while likely working pretty well for its younger audience, won't excite adult viewers. At times, it feels as though The Garfield Movie is going through the motions, and it fails to offer anything particularly noteworthy about its main character . Maybe the nostalgia is simply lost on me, but I don't understand the appeal of Garfield as a protagonist, and this movie did little to change my mind.

Maybe I'm asking too much for a family-oriented animated movie, but there are so many titles out there that prove there is more to this medium than what is being offered here.

Performance-wise, Pratt isn't bad as Garfield. He knows how to find the humor in certain lines and injects some vulnerability into the occasional heavier emotional beat. However, he's surrounded by a very strong voice cast , and that makes his own simple approach stand out. Waddingham is clearly having a ball as the vengeful Jinx, and Hoult, brief as his part may be, sounds so unlike himself, I didn't recognize him until I saw his name in the credits.

Jackson is as reliable as always, and Ving Rhames sinks into the role of Otto, a bull Vic, Garfield, and Odie meet while preparing for their heist. Otto is perhaps the most compelling character here, with a sad backstory of his own that could've provided a bit more depth to The Garfield Movie if further explored. However, this movie is more focused on the predictable beats of the heist and the predictable comedic beats of Garfield falling flat on his face. Genuine laughs, outside a few clever references that will pass over some kids' heads, are sparse.

The Garfield Movie is far from an offensively bad take on the character , but it does leave me wondering whether the cat can actually sustain a movie all on his own. Compared to other recent animated movies, and even those still to come in 2024, this effort feels distinctly lackluster, not offering anything original or creatively invigorating. Maybe I'm asking too much for a family-oriented animated movie, but there are so many titles out there that prove there is more to this medium than what is being offered here.

The Garfield Movie releases in theaters on Friday, May 24. It is 101 minutes long and rated PG for action/peril and mild thematic elements.

The 15 Best Superhero Movies of All Time, Ranked According to IMDb

The Nolanverse will always be the moment!

Read update

With this month's new release of Marvel's highly emotional and thoroughly enthralling Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. , which was very well received and captured many viewers' hearts (critics and MCU enthusiasts the same) and quickly became a fan-favorite, some people who could not help being fascinated by James Gunn 's fantastic film may be wondering how to get into the genre and what to watch next. From The Incredibles to The Dark Knight , these are the top superhero movies on the cinephile platform.

Clearly one of the most beloved movie genres out there, these engaging flicks offer viewers diverse narratives, making global audiences feel as though they belong somewhere, especially given how many characters with superhuman abilities experience very human things. With all these successful and upcoming superhero movies in the film industry, there is no doubt that the genre has come to stay.

Throughout the years, movies that fall under this category have managed to capture many people's attention with their action-packed — even if incredibly touching at times, too — storylines and cool characters. And these are the best superhero movies of all time, according to their high IMDb scores.

Updated on May 18, 2023, by Daniela Gama:

15 'the incredibles' (2004).

IMDb Rating: 8.0/10

The perfect movie for both younger and older audiences, Pixar's engaging and iconic film The Incredibles by Brad Bird centers on a family of undercover superheroes (Bob, Helen, Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack) who attempt to lead a quiet life while also doing their best to save the world.

No doubt, the 2004 feature remains a big part of pop culture all these years later, owning a special place in the hearts of those who enjoy animated superhero films, and its IMDb score just reflects that. On top of great dialogue, the film counts on an entertaining storyline and very good animation for the time it was released.

Watch on Disney+

14 'Zack Snyder's Justice League' (2021)

2021's Justice League , as opposed to the 2017 feature of the same name (which counted on a bunch of mixed reviews), was very well received by the general audiences. Zack Snyder 's extended version of the original film follows Ben Affleck 's Bruce Wayne as he recruits a team of metahumans to protect the world from an approaching threat.

Assuredly, this second take on an intriguing storyline turned out so much better than the previous one. While Snyder's Cut Justice League is not a masterpiece, it is a very improved film where the talented filmmaker showcased his true vision. All in all, it definitely makes for a great blockbuster.

Watch on HBO Max

13 'Deadpool' (2016)

Whether one likes it or not, Deadpool has been a success from the moment it premiered, and Ryan Reynolds ' take on the beloved character is an extremely praised one. The first film of the franchise centers on Wade Wilson's quest on tracking down the man who ruined his looks.

While it may not be everyone's cup of tea, Tim Miller 's non-family-friendly superhero movie is considered a highly humorous, diverting, violent, and unconventional superhero feature. It is also perfectly cast and written, going to great lengths to distance itself from other Marvel flicks.

12 'The Avengers' (2012)

The first Avengers film illustrates the group of mighty heroes ( Chris Evans , Robert Downey Jr. , Scarlett Johansson , Bruce Banner , and Jeremy Renner ) first fight as a team to stop Thor's ( Chris Hemsworth ) brother and God of Mischief, Loki ( Tom Hiddleston ), from enslaving humanity.

While it is not among the MCU's best, The Avengers is nevertheless an iconic movie that is quite impossible not to like, especially by fans of the beloved cinematic universe. Although somewhat flawed, the Joss Whedon movie does a wonderful job of emphasizing its heroes' humanity and provides audiences with a promising narrative.

11 'Guardians of the Galaxy' (2014)

Guardians of the Galaxy introduces major MCU characters to its audience when a group of five intergalactic criminals is forced to team up in order to stop a fanatical warrior to take control of the universe by acquiring an all-powerful orb, which is capable of great damage.

No wonder the first GotG movie is one of Marvel fans' most cherished — with beautiful cinematography, it is an absolute wonder to look at. Part of its undeniable charm is the way it never takes itself too seriously and manages to deliver an amazing storyline, not to mention the impeccable comedic timing of the hilarious jokes it features.

10 'The Iron Giant' (1999)

IMDb Rating: 8.1/10

Adapted from Ted Hughes ' Cold War fable, The Iron Giant follows an alien robot ( Vin Diesel ) who crash-lands near a small town in 1857. He then quickly bonds with a 9-year-old boy who protects him from being destroyed by a paranoid government agent.

An endearing film that is fit for both children and adults, The Iron Giant presents a very strong narrative as well as great animation throughout. Considered one of the best animated movies by many superhero fans, this tender piece of filmmaking is an incredibly clever family-friendly movie.

9 'Logan' (2017)

Set in 2024, Logan ( Hugh Jackman ) is in charge of taking care of Professor X ( Patrick Stewart ) at a remote outpost in Mexico. While he had plans to hide from the outside world, they quickly get overturned when a young mutant ( Dafne Keen ) who is very much like him comes asking for help.

Logan isn't your usual Western, but it is, without a doubt, a great one nonetheless. This R-rated X-Men movie delivers everything you'd expect it to — a gripping plot, amazing characters, and an excellent final performance by Hugh Jackman. Although, as one would expect, the memorable 2017 feature is a very violent one at times, it is also a fascinating character study.

8 'Batman Begins' (2005)

IMDb Rating: 8.2/10

This movie follows Bruce Wayne's mentoring in Asia, where he is trained on how to fight evil post the death of his parents. When Bruce then comes back to Gotham after learning about Ducard's ( Liam Neeson ) plan, he adopts the image of a bat to strike fear into the criminals and corrupts.

Sure, Batman Begins may not be the best out of Nolan's trilogy , but it is still a very enjoyable watch nonetheless and a very good introduction to a trilogy, which is why it is currently one of the highest-rated superhero movies out there, surpassing many Marvel blockbusters. With an appealing script and very realistic, human characters, the first installment of the Nolan franchise sets just the right tone for the two following movies.

7 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' (2021)

After Spider-Man's identity is revealed, Peter ( Tom Holland ) asks Dr. Strange ( Benedict Cumberbatch ) for a helping hand. However, things do not go as expected — instead, enemies from other universes that could destroy the world start to appear, leaving Peter to discover what it means to be Spider-Man.

Spider-Man 's most recent installment is as fun as it is excruciatingly heartbreaking. While it features tons of feel-good moments and nostalgia-packed scenes (as well as some nice references here and there), it is also soul-shattering at times. Offering audiences an intriguing conclusion to Holland's trilogy, the 2021 movie highlights the actor's strong performance, which is a fan-favorite among Marvel enthusiasts.

Watch on Starz

6 'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3' (2023)

IMDb Rating: 8.3/10

The newly-released Guardians of the Galaxy is everything it promises to be and more (making it one of the highest-rated superhero movies of all time on IMDb). The heartwrenching film portrays Rocket Raccoon's (voiced by Bradley Cooper ) tragic backstory and sends out powerful messages on animal testing, depicting the very harsh realities for animals in laboratories.

Additionally, the James Gunn film features showstopping needle drops and tackles topics of familial bonds (both the families we choose and the families we are born into) and human connection. It is near impossible to dislike the third volume of the GotG trilogy for several different reasons, but its touching premise is what leaps out the most.

5 'The Dark Knight Rises' (2012)

IMDb Rating: 8.4/10

After 8 years of hiding, Bale's Batman is forced to come out of the shadows only to find a new menace named Bane ( Tom Hardy ), a former member of the League of Shadows, who aspires to destroy Gotham at a time of peace. In the meantime, he allies with jewel thief Selina Kyle ( Anne Hathaway ). But can he really trust her?

The final installment in Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy is a thrilling action movie that provides the beloved franchise with an adequate, proper ending. Although it isn't as good as the first movie, The Dark Knight Rises is a pretty solid and exhilarating epic that is still very much better than many blockbusters out there.

4 'Avengers: Infinity War' (2018)

In this action-packed adventure epic, the many Avengers team up and try to come up with detailed, meticulous intergalactic plans in an attempt to prevent Thanos from collecting the powerful six Infinity Stones and using them to erase Earth's population.

Even if featuring shorter numbers than Endgame , Infinity War was nonetheless a massive global box-office hit. Filled with plot twists and team-ups that every Marvel fan had been dying to see, the first part of the MCU's Phase 3 finale was quite the emotional ride and left an imprint in many minds.

3 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' (2018)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a computer-animated superhero movie that focuses on teen Miles Morales' ( Shameik Moore ), who has just learned about his new superpowers and must join five other spider-powered individuals from other universes in order to stop a big threat.

A perfect adaptation with stunning illustration, this groundbreaking Oscar-nominated animated movie makes it feel like comic-book pages have come to life, certainly appealing to Spider-Man fans of all ages. Into the Spider-Verse mixes comedy elements and action-packed scenes to amazing results, making for an all-around hilarious and extremely entertaining watch for those who enjoy the genre.

Watch on Fubo

2 'Avengers: Endgame' (2019)

IMDb Rating: 8.4

As the title suggests, Avengers: Endgame is the final installment for Marvel Phase 3 and the long-awaited sequel to Infinity War . After half of all life is snapped away by Thanos ( Josh Brolin ), Endgame depicts hopeless, scattered, and divided Avengers who must assemble once more to set things right.

Endgame was one of the most anticipated Marvel movies ever, making a total of $2.79 billion at the box office and surpassing Infinity War 's entire theatrical run in just eleven days. There is no doubt that this Russo Brothers movie was one of the most memorable movies of 2019 — not only given the records it broke, but also thanks to its perfect blend of drama, comedy, and action. Ultimately, the grand finale to Marvel's Phase 3 is a big deal for Marvel enthusiasts because it marks the end of the MCU as fans knew it, making way for a whole new generation of superheroes.

1 'The Dark Knight' (2008)

IMDb Rating: 9.0/10

Following Christian Bale 's vigilante Batman who seeks to ensure the safety of Gotham at all times, The Dark Knight introduces a new threat that goes by the name of the Joker, played by Heath Ledger . The battle between the two becomes intensely personal when the latter makes Bruce confront everything he's ever believed in.

Christopher Nolan's masterwork is one of the most praised superhero movies to date, and for good reason. Apart from the late Heath Ledger's unforgettable portrayal of the Clown Prince of Crime, this engaging movie also offers viewers a thoroughly captivating storyline that features tons of grounded, dark, and realistic elements.

NEXT: All MCU Movies from Worst to Best

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bronx Zoo 90’ on Peacock, a Three-Part Documentary Look at the Worst, Most Chaotic Season in New York Yankees’ History

Where to stream:.

• Bronx Zoo '90

‘Bronx Zoo 90’: DJ Caruso And Joel Sherman On Why The 1990 Yankees Were Such A Crazy, Awful Team — And Why It’s A Redemption Story

‘bronx zoo ’90: crime, chaos and baseball’ is the antidote to the recent glut of overly sanitized sports docuseries, how ‘moneyball’ became the most enduring baseball movie of the 21st century, how to watch yankees-marlins on amazon prime video: start time, streaming.

For most of the last thirty years, the New York Yankees have been synonymous with success; even if they don’t win it all, they’re pretty much always good. In 1990, though, that wasn’t the case: the Bronx Bombers were a dumpster fire, bad on the field and embarrassing off of it. That chaotic season–the focus of Bronx Zoo ‘90 , a new three-part documentary streaming on Peacock –was miserable for fans, but helped lay the groundwork for the dynasty years to follow.

BRONX ZOO ‘90 : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: There’s a lot of moving parts when you tell the story of the 1990 New York Yankees, but they’re all moving around the late George Steinbrenner . He’s not around to tell the story, but Steinbrenner features prominently in archival footage as he crows to the media about his various grudges related to his team’s failings. That core is bolstered by a deep roster of interviewees from in and around the Yankees–reporters, announcers, coaches, former players, all who still have a lot to say about The Boss and that cursed season.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: There’s shades of A Season on the Brink here, but more than anything, it recalls The U , the ESPN 30 For 30 documentary that profiled the chaotic 1980s Miami Hurricanes college football teams. Those teams were a lot more successful than the 1990 Yankees, of course, but in terms of a team full of characters and legal troubles, they’re a handy comparison.

Performance Worth Watching: There’s plenty of talking heads weighing in here, including ones who really capture the essence of New York at the time, voices like veteran local news anchor Rosanna Scotto. But the most intriguing presence is that of current Yankees general manager Brian Cashman–a front office assistant in 1990–who’s more than happy to talk about the chaos that his former boss sowed at the time.

Memorable Dialogue: “He was huge. He was a giant. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the greatest person…”, Yankee executive Brian Cashman says, recalling the exploits of eccentric-at-best and extremely-criminal-at-worst Yankee outfielder Mel Hall. Putting a finer point on the matter, news anchor Rosanna Scotto recalls, “when I look back and think that Mel went to a sixteen-year-old’s prom… and that prom photo was in the Yankee Yearbook… what??? Are you kidding me? How was that acceptable?”

Sex and Skin: There’s some frank discussion of sexual improprieties, but the skin tops out at a shirtless Deion Sanders.

Our Take: In 2023, the New York Yankees had their worst season in more than three decades… and they finished 82-80. The fact that finishing with a winning record can be a generational low point illustrates what a high standard the franchise has set in recent years. Sure, they haven’t won a title since 2009, but the Yankees are almost always good, and hardly embarrassing.

The 1990 season was a different story.

It’s not just that the 1990 Yankees were bad. To be clear, they were quite bad–finishing in last place in the AL East with a record of 67-95, their most losses since 1912. That disappointment on the field was just the tip of the iceberg, though. The personalities running through the Bronx that year ranged from erratic and arrogant to outright criminal, and they nearly tore apart one of sports’ most storied franchises.

Where to start?

The team’s one real star, Dave Winfield, was traded away at the tail end of a decade-long vendetta waged by team owner George Steinbrenner (below), who would eventually be suspended from baseball for hiring a gambling addict to dig up dirt on the slugger.

The team’s marquee offseason signing, troubled pitcher Pascual Perez, blew out his arm three starts into the season.

The team’s flashiest player–two-sport star and current Colorado Buffaloes head football coach Deion Sanders–was great at drawing attention, and not terribly great at anything else on the field.

Then there’s Mel Hall, an erratic outfielder who surprised teammates by bringing live cougar cubs into the clubhouse–and probably should’ve drawn more negative attention at the time for his “relationship” with a sixteen-year-old girl. (Hall would later be sentenced to more than 40 years in prison for unrelated sex crimes against minors.)

In short: the 1990 New York Yankees were as big a disaster as any major professional sports team in recent memory. Things couldn’t have gone worse that year. And yet… 1990 helped lay the groundwork for one of the greatest dynasties in baseball, the late-’90s Yankees that won four World Series championships in five years. They drafted future Hall of Famers that year, and the suspension that Steinbrenner earned for his war on Winfield probably kept him from rashly trading any of them away before they could win pennants for the Yankees.

Bronx Zoo ‘90 is an entertaining–if often-unsettling–look at this season on the brink. It’s a lively three-episode run that clocks in around the length of a feature-length movie, and there’s more than enough drama to fill that runtime. A great number of people in and around the team participate, and the story moves along briskly. Whether you love or hate the Yankees, it’s a heck of an artifact; there’s no way a sports team could be bad in this way today.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you love the New York Yankees, Bronx Zoo ‘90 is a reminder of how far the team came after those chaotic days. And, y’know, if you hate the Yankees? Well, it’s pretty darn entertaining to watch them be this bad. Either way, it’s certainly interesting.

Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter ,  is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.

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The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

Nobody is ready for the mayhem and surprises that ensue when six of the worst youngsters disrupt the town's yearly Christmas performance. Nobody is ready for the mayhem and surprises that ensue when six of the worst youngsters disrupt the town's yearly Christmas performance. Nobody is ready for the mayhem and surprises that ensue when six of the worst youngsters disrupt the town's yearly Christmas performance.

• Dallas Jenkins
• Platte Clark
• Darin McDaniel
• Ryan Swanson
• Lauren Graham
• Elizabeth Tabish

• Self - Narrator

• Mrs. Thomas

• Reverend Hopkins

• First-grade teacher

• Gladys Herdman

• George Armstrong

• Mrs. Wendleken

• Alice Wendleken

• Claude Herdman

• Charlie Bradley

• Mrs. Hopkins

• Imogene Herdman

• Ms. Graebner
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• November 8, 2024 (United States)
• Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
• FletChet Entertainment
• Kingdom Story Company
• Lionsgate Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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