BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (24 OF 100)

"The Happening" (2008), Dir: M. Night Shyamalan

$48,000,000 in Budget vs. $64,505,912 in Gross

You could say that most of M. Night Shyamalan's movies should be on this list. Signs had the worst acting and possibly the worst climax I've ever seen. The Last Airbender was just a monumental joke. However, I choose The Happening based on it being M. Night's supposed "comeback movie" and then sucking 100% ass in almost every regard. It sums up pretty much the constant disappointment that has become his career.

 
M. Night started out with a lot of promise. The Sixth Sense was pretty much M. Night's retelling of The Shining, but without the hotel. It had a twist that shocked the world unless you're Director Doug Brown, who had no idea until 2002 that Bruce Willis' character was a ghost. He just thought he was cold all the time. But I don't know if M. Night can really be credited with the success of The Sixth Sense. The cast was utterly superb. You had Bruce Willis in his only performance where he didn't use a gun; Haley Joel Osment earning that Oscar nod; and Donnie Wahlberg, who gets very little credit for his terrifying performance as an escaped lunatic. But movie after movie, M. Night's films went from hokey to bad, to absolutely horrible. Twelve years later, his name has become synonymous with several of the worst movies ever made. Yet, for some reason, he keeps getting budgets of $130,000,000 when filmmakers like me can't even get a f$%@ing handshake.

 
The Happening stars Mark Wahlberg as Elliot Moore, a high school teacher caught up (somehow) in a strange epidemic. For some reason, mass groups of people are committing suicide without reason or rational explanation. Not knowing how to handle this, the characters flea the city in a vain attempt to get away from... whatever this is. Shyamalan described his idea as being in the same vein as "The Birds and Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Incorrect statement, sir. Those are actually good films. This is most definitely not. Even its star, Wahlberg himself claimed, "It was a really bad movie... F%$@ it. It is what it is. F&%$ing trees, man. The plants. F@#$ it. You can’t blame me for not wanting to try to play a science teacher. At least I wasn’t playing a cop or a crook." Well, there you have it, folks. Don't ever accuse Marky Mark of not standing by his director. But that being said, f%$@ing trees is right and we'll get back to that...

My biggest problem with The Happening is that a movie about mass suicide is a cheap shot in my mind. Suicide is something that generally rubs everybody wrong (I would hope). Exposing us to an hour and a half of it is kind of tasteless. It does lead to a handful of interesting sequences: There's the opening where construction workers throw themselves off a building, which is a pretty stark image. One sequence follows a gun that multiple people shoot themselves with. Kinda creative. But then there's the sequence where everyone is watching a video of a man who walks into a tiger cage and taunts the beast until it mauls him. To me, watching people watching a video on someone's phone is about as scary as seeing you're coworkers watching youtube videos of puppies at work.

The whole time I was watching this, I was thinking that none of these deaths are actually scary, just unsettling and not in a good way. If you were going to make a horror movie like The Birds or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, don't you think an epidemic of mass murder would make more sense? It would definitely raises the stakes. Characters would be forced to defend themselves rather than be airy, whimpering, passive, wussies. The threat would actually be a physical thing rather than just a looming conceptual one. Mass suicide for me just feels self-defeating, which is the nature of suicide I guess... and also in very poor taste... 

Typically, all M. Night movies end with a twist. That's pretty much his signature, one that has gradually become a joke over time. And as Wahlberg stated, it's f*%$ing trees. Yep. Turns out the root of all the outbreaks are trees in the end... I mean, really? Trees?! Trees were the cause of all this mass hysteria? Trees?! Trees are your twist?! That's the best you could do, M. Night?! Trees?!

Another reason I picked this film is that it's got M. Night's worst twist of all his films. In a lot of cases, the twist is the only reason for watching. In this one, it's the most disappointing part. I probably would have been happier with absolutely nothing rather than f&@$ing trees. Sorry if this is a spoiler for some, but I might have just saved you the biggest disappointment of your film-viewing life. 

For your viewing displeasure, Mark Wahlberg pulling an Emilio Estevez in Maximum Overdrive and talking to the tree in his office. If you wanna learn how to talk to trees, Mark, take lessons from Hugh Jackman.

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (15 OF 100)

"Batman & Robin" (1997), Dir: Joel Schmacher

 

$125,000,000 in Budget vs. $107,285,004 in Gross

It's time, my friends. Time to ask where Batman went so wrong? Why did such a beloved character deserve such a hateful artistic stoning? And even worse, why is Chris O'Donnell still alive? Why, why, why?

With the release of Batman & Robin came a number of career casualties: Joel Schumacher made an apology to Batman fans for killing the franchise. The public has sorta forgiven George Clooney for being the worst Batman since, well, Batmite. Chris O'Donnell should have been made a sacrifice to the vengeful theater-going Gods for such florid blasphemy. 90s hottie Alicia Silverstone got downgraded to D-Movie Hot Girl. Uma Thurman should just be ashamed of herself. The laughable Bane got a badass makeover in Chris Nolan's Dark Knight Rises, even though neither reflect the character from the comics. And no amount of Arnie's action movie puns could save this train wreck.

I remember going to see Batman & Robin with my entire family, which I shortly realized was exactly what Warner Brothers wanted out of this new franchise installment. Since infancy, I've lived and breathed Batman religiously. He is still my favorite fictional character, and it's doubtful that will change.

At the time, though, and under the false impression that Batman Forever had actually been a good movie, (mainly because of Jim Carrey's performance as The Riddler) the next film was to feature Mr. Freeze as the main villain and I was very excited. Bringing probably as much pathos and sympathy to the Batman Universe as the title character himself, Mr. Freeze is Batman's only reluctant villain. His goal has always been to save his dying wife Nora, a sympathetic one but alas one that also makes him very dangerous too. With a varied but fascinating history in comics and television, it seemed like a great choice... then they cast Arnold Schwarzenneger in the role.

A grave misstep, yes, but could Arnold really be blamed for the entire movie falling apart? With three feature films and an animated series all in one decade, I think Batman was getting a little played out in the public eye, (Did you guys hear that Ben Affleck's gonna be the next Batman?) and nobody wanted the same old song.

Prior to the movie's production, I picture the Warner Brothers' executive board having a catered lunch and trying to decide what needs to change with this fourth Batman installment to keep the franchise fresh (and probably used the same school of thinking as Lucasfilm did with Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull). "Guys, we need to make Batman something the whole family can enjoy. Husbands, wives, kids, grandmas, grandpas! So let's go ahead and lose the whole depressing witnessing-his-parents-being-murdered thing. I'm sure he'd be over that by now. Get rid of all the gritty urban futurism and replace that with neon lights and C.G.I. instead, and as far as the Tim Burton's movies go, f&%$ 'em and his little Frankenweenie too."

Now, I'm pretty 50/50 with the Burton films, (in fact, pretty 50/50 with all Batman films), but at least Burton knew to steer clear from the campy Adam West series and stick with the darker, moodier settings and villains the comic books had. But alas, we ended up revisiting the Adam West Days and added Schumacher's stamp of gay culture to the iconic characters' mythology as well (I refer you to the bat nipples). I have no problem with gay culture, but I think most gay men would probably agree with me that they'd rather see pretty boy Zachary Quinto from Heroes being a psychotic, badass Demi-God than another flash of Clooney's blatant plastic package...

Bat nipples and bat crotch aside, the film's also just plain stupid, from Mr. Freeze's singing hockey team to the f*&%ing Bat Credit Card, to Bane reduced from a super-genius to mindless idiot, to the climatic giant freeze gun (no one saw that coming), and finally appearance by Fitl On Film's blog favorite -- that's right -- Coolio himself! Do any of these ideas sound... good... to anyone? Maybe the studio stopped making Batman films for eight years for a very good reason.

At that point, I was pretty much done with these movies. I didn't like Batman Begins, but Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises swayed my return. But now that Mr. Affleck and Legend Killer Zack Snyder have taken over the franchise, I feel as if we are entering another West/Clooney Era. Eight years from now when they reboot the franchise again, this will be known as The Affleck Era, and then shortly renamed The West/Clooney/Affleck Syndrome. Hm... See you again in eight years.

 And for your viewing displeasure, Honest Trailers takes a biting stab at this mess.