[For this week's edition of the Twitch Video Salute we're please to welcome a special guest saluter. Our thanks to Hal Haberman, co-director of indie superhero movie Special, with a selection of fantastic failures.]
Good movies depress the hell out of me. There are just too many of them … Funny movies. Sad movies. Well-written movies. Well-shot movies. Intelligent movies. Perfect little movies that don’t make any real mistakes. Blah! No, when I pay my ten bucks, buy my tub of overpriced popcorn, and step into a dark theater, I want to see something GREAT. And if, for whatever reason, the filmmakers can’t pull off a great success, I’m more than happy to settle for a great failure.
Now, I’m not talking about a Snakes On A Plane type of failure, kitschy bad movies where even the filmmakers are in on the joke. Bite me! No, I’m talking about real DISASTERS. Movies that get booed at Cannes. Movies that end careers. Movies that try to change the world … but don’t. Movies that make you want to cover your eyes. Movies that when you rent them from the video store, the clerk behind the counter looks at you like you’re renting porn.
Here’s my top five ...
The Chronicles of Riddick
I think Pitch Black caught everyone a little off guard. Who knew it would be such a rad movie? But rad it was. So when it came time to make a kick ass sequel, the pressure was on. It’s pretty much The Matrix syndrome but on a smaller scale. They turned a tight little movie into an insane bloated monster. From the very first shot of Riddick … Vin Diesel, with fake dreadlocks, sprinting across those ice fiords… Genius!
The Fountain
Yeah, The Wrestler is cool. The staple gun sequence and the last couple shots might even verge on greatness. But Mickey Rourke slicing lunchmeat and getting a lap dances from Marisa Tomei doesn’t hold a candle to the absolute greatness of The Fountain! Part 2001: A Space Odyssey and part Holy Mountain. God, I love The Fountain.
Psycho (The Remake)
Gus Van Sant is one of my all time favorites. I love Drugstore Cowboy. I’ve gotten into shouting matches about the merits of Last Days. And Good Will Hunting? If you’re too cool to tear up watching that shit, there’s something dead inside you.
I even love the Gus Van Sant movies that other people dump on. Gerry? I think it was a cool experiment. Even Cowgirls Get The Blues? I saw it. Twice. Finding Fucking Forester? You’re the man now, dog. But the shot for shot remake of Psycho? That is pure, absolute, genius. I don’t know why exactly. But I feel like it was some elaborate joke that I’m not quite smart enough to understand.
The Doors
It’s hard to pick just one spectacular mess from Oliver Stone’s movies. As much as I love the Native American sequence from Natural Born Killers, and the Ben-Hur sequence from Any Given Sunday, The Doors is so amazingly bad on so many levels, it’s almost mind-boggling.
Gothika
La Haine was so fucking great. Better than great. God, I love that movie. But Gothika? I love when brilliant foreign directors come to America and make movies like Gothika.
Great list and I agree with every one of them, those that I've seen, not seen The Fountain or Gothika. I always thought it was strange how insanely HUGE they tried to make Riddik and turned it in to something completely different from Pitch Black. All of a sudden these earthlings are turned in to some alien beings from distant planets. But I have a soft spot for Chronicles.
As for Mathieu Kassovitz, after the brilliant La Haine, pretty much everything he's done has been shit. Utter shit.
Funny, I have really fond memories of The Doors. I think I might have even owned the VHS when I was younger... and The Fountain? Brilliant stuff. Even the presence of The Weisz Witch didn't spoil it for me. Haven't seen Psycho, Cowgirls, or Forrester, but Van Sant has some good shit going on. Especially Gerry. Brilliant.
Judging by those alignments, I might have to give Gothika and those Diesel films a shot...
the subject of "Great Foriegn Directors that Get Seduced and Blown by Hollywood Then Make Terrible Movies" could be an entire column/list of it's own...like, a BIG list.
Someone should write it.
I see what you did there.
I've hated Gus Van Sant movies ever since sitting through My Own Private Idaho. I'm surprised Southland Tales didn't make your list = a director coming off a sleeper hit, an excellent cast (right down to Christopher Lambert as an arms dealer working out of the back of an ice-cream truck) with one of the most muddled scripts ever.
SonaBoy - John Woo and Ringo Lam would top that list, methinks...
...but I like The Fountain...un-ironically...