Stiletto

I don’t watch Castle, but I’ve seen a couple of episodes, and whenever I used to flip past it, I couldn’t say that Stana Katic didn’t catch the eye. So, when I spotted her name in the description of a movie called Stiletto on one of our movie channels one day, I said to myself, “Self, that sounds like a totally ridiculous crapfest that only a hottie could save.”

Well, I was wrong. Unfortunately, only regarding the last six words of my internal declaration.

The movie started out terrible and then it got worse. At last, Stana Katic came on screen and she was way hot.

She simply wasn’t hot enough.

I don’t even know that I got through five minutes after she came on screen. It was so bad, I couldn’t even fast-forward to the hottie parts. Instead, I gave up completely and banished the movie from my DVR.

Which was really depressing.  Because did I mention she was hot?

I confess, I have intentionally viewed and sat through the entirety of multiple terrible movies in the name of hottiedom. Or to watch my favorite actresses. Two lists that, perhaps surprisingly, don’t overlap all that much for me. Though it does happen occasionally.

Anyway, this list of seven things has a couple of rules.

Rule 1 – I had to have watched the movie solely because there was a hottie in it. I can’t include any movie that I would have intentionally elected to see even if it were hottie-deficient.

Rule 2 – The hottie on the list can’t be more favorite actress than hottie. She has to come in at at least 50/50. 50-percent love for being a hottie. 50-percent love for being one of my favorite actresses. That means, despite being completely easy on the eyes, Dina Meyer, Wendy Crewson and Leslie Bibb are off-limits. I love them so much acting-wise, you see, that I have difficulty objectifying them. Though that happens occasionally too. Mostly with Wendy.

Rule 3 – The movie has to be bad enough to truly belong on a worst movies list.

Bearing these rules in mind, I must give an honorary mention to Nine, because it doesn’t meet the above criteria. It does have hotties in it – for me, Penélope Cruz and Sophia Loren – and none of them are on my favorite actress list, so it does meet Rule 2. I would have seen it anyway, though, so it fails to meet Rule 1.

As for Rule 3, I found Nine so painful that I started fast-forwarding within the first ten minutes, despite scantily-clad Penélope Cruz writhing about. Then, I stopped at every obvious singing part until I finally found “Unusual Way” and discovered that they had allowed Nicole Kidman to sing it. And it was fucking tragic.

I don’t know how bad this movie is to be honest. I trust that I don’t remember it as terrible simply because I was in a mood, but it is a possibility.

So, here’s the story -

I’m in college and I go to the cheap movie theater with a small group of friends. I knew this group of people very well, and, yet, bizarrely enough, we had never gone to the movies together. So, somehow, I had never discovered the fact that one of these people, who was actually one of my closest friends and my roommate at the time of the incident, didn’t watch any movie with a rating above PG.

Apparently, if a child under thirteen shouldn’t see the movie, neither should she. This is not creative liberty. She actually said these words.

Yes, it was for religious reasons.

Unfortunately, she didn’t enlighten us to this fact before we drove to the theater, which was like 20 miles from school. So, we were left to choose from the movies that were rated PG or under. Oh, I’m sorry, did I write “movies”? Because I meant “movie”.

That’s right, once her religious fear of teenage material came to light, we were left with exactly one option. Which isn’t really an option at all. I should express here that this is not a knock against religion – I’ll save that for another post – because there were other religious people in the group. She was just the only one who couldn’t handle material deemed inappropriate for a twelve-year-old.

So, anyway, I walked into The Man Who Knew Too Little with a very bad taste in my mouth that, clearly, lingers to this day.

It was a truly stupid and terrible movie, though.

I’m almost positive.

It’s a sad truth that there are a lot of lesbian movies horrible enough to make this list. In fact, I could probably do a list of the seven worst lesbian movies and still have to whittle down.

Which brings up a story. I would call it a funny story, but how’s about I just share it instead and let y’all decide if it’s funny or tragic.

A few months ago, as I was working away on something, Shawna was talking to our friend Chauncy (not her real name) online. Chauncy, who was watching something terrible on Logo, suddenly stated, “There has to be someone out there who can make good lesbian movies.” To which Shawna replied, “There is. She’s sitting over on my couch broke.”

See, even I’m not sure if that story comes out funny or tragic.

Anyway, I had a really hard time deciding which bad lesbian film to put on this list. It was easily between two. Claire of the Moon, anyone?

But, when it came down to it, Go Fish took the prize. Mostly because it is, for some bizarre reason, highly regarded by some viewers and critics, whereas Claire of the Moon is pretty much sufficiently panned all around.

Unlike the other movies on this list, I remember a lot of Go Fish. But mostly I remember thinking, “Why did people tell me to watch this?”

And, right now, with this single post, I have pretty much guaranteed myself zero chance of getting into Hollywood’s lesbian inner circle.

Bummer.

Okay, here’s what I remember about this movie. Sex, violence, violence, more violence, violence, violent sex.

And then being skeeved for days and wishing I could unsee it all.

Anybody who likes this movie will defend the hell out of it, and I don’t remember the rest of the movie enough to debate the positive aspects of it, if there were any.

Once I got to the sex scene on the stairs, though, I was done.

I have a definite prudish spot when it comes to sexual violence. It’s not sexy and it really shouldn’t be depicted as such. Like ever. Sex as punishment or possession is just, well, gross, and I think that any scene that depicts sex starting out non-consensual and turning consensual in a mainstream movie is a dangerous precedent to set.

For the record, I found the almost exact same scene no more acceptable in the first season finale of The L Word, which pretty much put the nail in the coffin on The L Word for me. Apparently, a lot of people thought the scene was really “intense” and “sexy”. This baffles me, and I can’t help but wonder if these people would have felt the same way if Bette had been a man. If you know the answer to this question, please feel free to let me know.

‘Force someone to have sex and then that person will start wanting the sex’ really isn’t a good message, no matter what the sex, sexuality or relationship of the people involved.

So, did this movie make it all the way to #3 on my movie shitlist just for that one scene alone?

Yeah, I guess it did.

I just recently saw Fast Food Nation. Until it actually opened on the screen, I was under the impression that it was a documentary. It should have been a documentary. After all, it was based on a non-fiction book.

Now, I know that you can make a great movie based on true events, but apparently not everyone feels the need. Why would you, when you can just throw a few scenes that spout the facts from the books down in a script, as if they actually make for interesting dialogue?

Even little Chrissy Seaver from Growing Pains couldn’t make me feel nostalgic enough to stop me from wondering what the fuck I was watching.

Seriously. What a disaster.

With this, I note that Richard Linklater has two movies on this list.  The Newton Boys and this. I have to admit that his ability to make two drastically different terrible movies is impressive in its own way.

I should also point out that I really like School of Rock, Dazed and Confused and Waking Life. I remember reading that people walked out of Waking Life when it was in theaters, though.

Must have been too psychedelic for some people.

Different strokes, eh?

Everything M. Night Shyamalan
Between The Sixth Sense and Devil

I’ve, sadly, seen enough of them to make this proclamation.

Unbreakable, I saw with enthusiasm, because The Sixth Sense is actually a very good movie. Though, I will say that I still think the wife looked more angry than sad in most scenes. I would also like to add how kick-ass Donnie Wahlberg’s acting is at the beginning. And he’s not even my favorite Wahlberg. See below*

Having found Unbreakable a barely watchable movie that should have been far better with its cast, I also chose to watch Signs anyway, because I have a little heart-spot in which Patricia Kalember resides, and no one told me (SPOILER ALERT) that she was going to spend her entire sequence of flashbacks rammed against a tree. Of course, to be fair, I still would have watched it, tree and mushed insides or no tree and mushed insides, and she was, by far, the best thing about that movie.

Now, I know that not everyone hates these movies. I watched Signs, for instance, at my brother’s house, because he owns it on DVD. So, there you go. Someone who doesn’t think that Signs sucks.

Of course, a lot of people don’t think that Steven Spielberg screwed the pooch with the ending of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull either. But he did. Big time. And also the ending of A.I., which really wasn’t a terrible movie until they had to weirdly over-happify the ending. (SPOILER ALERT) Should have ended at water’s bottom. That’s all I’m sayin’.

Hm, apparently I’m going to be pissed off at both M. Night and Spielberg in this post. Oh well, how often does one get to rail against Spielberg? Normally, when I start to, I get all Schindler’s List, ET, The Color Purple, and I can’t maintain my anger. So, take it while I’ve got it to give Spielberg. Every once in a while, edit the fucking aliens OUT!

Anyway, back to Shyamalan.

I saw The Happening – yes, I went in knowing how ridiculous the plot was – because I really like Mark Wahlberg* and Zooey Deschanel, and I thought they did really well with the shit they’d been handed, frankly. Despite the many reviews that said Zooey Deschanel was “weird” in her role. Uh, I kinda think that was the role as it was handed to her.

To be fair, I should state that I did not see The Village - but, um… I’ve heard about it – nor Lady in the Water. Considering that Lady in the Water is M. Night’s lowest rated film on IMDB, though, and I find his other movies stank, I’m gonna assume that it sucks with a punishable severity.

As for Devil, didn’t mind it. Wasn’t The Sixth Sense. But also wasn’t Signs, Unbreakable, The Happening, or the even worse Shyamalan movies that I have avoided like the plague. He is only responsible for the story on Devil, though, so maybe he’s hit a wall and should just leave the writin’ and directin’ to others.

If he doesn’t, he could just end up writing aliens into everything. Even when they don’t belong. And sometimes, Spielberg, the aliens don’t fuckin’ belong. (SPOILER ALERT) Fuckin’ aliens in fuckin’ Indiana fuckin’ Jones. What were you fuckin’ thinkin’?