[This message has been edited by mlw (edited 12 February 2000).]

BUT.....

For me, it made this list primarily due to the criteria established at the beginning of this post. It had budget, talent, time, and backing to be GOOD, if not great. IMHO, it was a mess (and even The Great Bird of the Galaxy, Gene Rodenberry, considered it "apocryphal"!!!) and SHOULD have been better.

No offense, of course. I kinda like this thread.....neat to see where everyone is at with this! Looking at my list, it's pretty easy to see for myself that I am unforgiving of "Event" movies that....aren't. Heck, there's been some RAIDERS-bashing (!!); and the whole thing started with an on-the-money deconstruction of both the score & film of THE KEEP - both of which I own, as "guilty pleasures". You folks are definitely interesting company!

Nice to see you again, Wedge.

Okay, I need to both reprimand and defend myself here...

Putting Raiders on this post was an extreme. Even though I don't like the movie much, saying it's one of the worst movies I've ever seen was very stupid of me.

I don't really want to explain why I don't like it, because I don't want to offend the people who like the movie, and it wouldn't make much difference.

I also must admit the probability that I'm missing the point of the movie entirely, as Gae pointed out.

If anyone really wants me to go into detail about why I don't like it, e-mail me and I'll talk about it.

I love Last Crusade, if it's any consolation.

James
NP - Mysterious Island (*****)

Oh and ALL of the Police Academy movies.

Dan (UK)

NP: Stargate (*****/*****)

Here are some other awuful A movies I just remembered:

- AUSTIN POWERS (sorry, can't laugh at it. Even mr. Bean was more funny)

- SLEEPY HOLLOW (headless (sic) and feetless screenplay, Johny Depp completely out-of-place trying to incorporate Pee-Wee Herman, plus another histerical-bombastic-anoying score by mr. Elfguy)

- THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY (a movie that show us how dificult it is to be a millionaire and how dificult it is to find a good and gentle and rich husband for 2 and 1/2 hours... At least the score was great)

- SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (same as above, except that now the girls are so poor and miserable...)

- THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (same as Portrait, a.k.a: "Nothing Happens - The Movie" - and with 3 and 1/2 hours of lenght!)

- FOUR ROOMS (everybody seems to be acting during a cocaine overdose, including the directors...)

- JAWS 4 - THE REVENGE (psicopath shark wants to destroy an entire family and travels the world do to so. At the end he fellt so miserable that killed himself by jumping at a stake while crying!)

Cheers, fellas!

mlw:
I disagree with you on:
8mm
The Rock
Mr. Ripley
Jackie Brown
Pulp Fiction
Shakespeare in Love
Blair Witch Project
American Beauty

NO!!

The Matrix
Austin Powers 2
Entrapment
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Godzilla
A Few Good Men
Big Trouble in Little China
Pulp Fiction
Sleepy Hollow
Scream 3

Granted, the aforementioned films aren't perfect, but they can't be the worst that you've seen...but when I saw THESE films posted:

Fargo
Ferris Bueller's Day Off

These are bad films:

Junior(a pregnant Ah-nuld?! I hope someone got caned for that)
Critters & Poltergeist 2(why do I mention these films at once? Because they both suck and because I can)

I move that we banish and ostracize the devil-worshipping cult members what listed Fargo and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

What say you?

Judge Dredd was a pretty bad movie, but how could you not like Armand Assante as the evil Rico? He was great.

I think two of the worst movies ever made were Hoodlum and Batman and Robin. They really need to stop making Batman movies, it is just getting worse and worse.

Other bad movies are:

Titanic
Blair Witch Project

And also, the lovely HARDWARE, truly one of the all time worst. I hate that movie!!! Funny, I did like the same director's DUST DEVIL, but that may have been a fluke.

I must admit I'm not the greatest fan of RAIDERS either, but I don't hate it, I reserve that for the LAST CRUSADE, just too cutesy for me. Though most people hate it, THE TEMPLE OF DOOM was the most entertaining of the series to me, it still had lots of problems, but I enjoyed it. This had the most fun soundtrack of the series also, IMHO.

I hope you don't hate me anymore...

Hugs,
André

One more for the worst of all times list:

I wonder: Do you like William Peter Blatty's pictures? I think he's brilliant, and quite undervalued.

I hope you are aware that parts of STRAY DOG were directed by Kurosawa's second-unit director, Mr. Ishiro Honda, later famous for making the original GODZILLA among others. And Mr. Honda also turns up as an actor, doubling the fleeing back of the main villain Reisaburo Yamamoto (he wasn't on the set that day. If you read the opening credits, you see that Yamamoto's villain was ultimately called "Honda," using the same slightly obscure spelling that Mr. Honda himself used, in homage.)

Kurosawa wrote, "I've been told I captured the atmosphere of postwar Tokyo extremely well in that film, and if so, then I owe a great deal of that success to Honda."

Honda also ghostwrote and ghostdirected small to huge parts of Kurosawa's last few films, from KAGEMUSHA onwards. (Kurosawa's DREAMS includes two sequences unmistakably written and directed by Honda: "The Tunnel" and "Mount Fuji in Red." I'm not imagining this; last time I was in Japan, a number of people who worked with both men brought it up even before *I* did.)

None of this is meant to take away from Kurosawa. In fact, Kurosawa also wrote that he and Honda and their other pal Senkichi Taniguchi were taught by director Kajiro Yamamoto, who encouraged his youthful charges (actually Yamamoto was less than ten years older than any of them!) to shoot sizable portions of his own films -- how else were they to learn, and how else was the picture to get done on time?

The Japanese film industry 1945-1965 is something I still massively envy and adore, all in the same breath. Would only that we had a similar system in this fair nation.

By the way, Henry, I like Blatty a lot myself, THE NINTH CONFIGURATION is truly one of the unsung classics of the '70s, a brilliant movie with a wonderful cast. Very unnerving.

I also love Honda -- everything you say about him is true, and I would love to see some of his more conventional films also. I've always been very curious about I BOMBED PEARL HARBOR, I'd really love to see that one.

NP: Kamen's 101 Dalmations -- I don't like the movie, but I think Kamen wrote a wonderful score to this, one of his best since THE DEAD ZONE.

3 Kings-- boil that whole pathetic obscenity commercial that was the gulf war down to a cheesy action genre flic and then bait critics with a barely interesting little speech with oil down the throat (whoa that was SO radical!) but blow it all off anyway with a goofy unrealistic saved-by-the-bell wrap-up then collect the reviews. Stupid movie. Didn't even attempt to grapple with the geo-political issues driving Iraq's invitation to invade Kuwait for Bush's misfire campaign. (I did like the part with Spike Jonze blowing away stuffed animals off his car)

Sorry, that was just to get your attention in this sea of 72 replies, heh.

I think the film you were talking about, Gae, is "Existenz". I loved that film... very nice atmosphere in it.

A trend I see in all the replies here are just labelling popular films that people think are overrated. Really... waterworld is not the worst film ever made. Neither is The 5th Element. Neither is Sphere, or Event Horizon. Neither is Braveheart. Neither is Starship Troopers. There are worse films than that. Your just pissed off at these films because you think they're overrated.

As for me, the worst film I've ever seen is The Waterboy. I can watch pointless comedies and love them... Happy Gilmore, Tommy Boy, Half-Baked, etc.

Thomas, Mr. Honda didn't direct I BOMBED PEARL HARBOR (Japanese title is OPERATION HAWAII MIDWAY: STORM OVER THE PACIFIC) -- that was Shuei Matsubayashi, who also made THE LAST WAR and a bunch of other war pictures. He was a genuine veteran of Japan's Pacific War (Mr. Honda's combat experience was in mainland China), and that's one reason why he got so many war assignments throughout the 1960s.

Mr. Honda only made two war movies as such, his first two big hits: EAGLE OF THE PACIFIC (October 1953, the first big war film made after the American Occupation lifted), and FAREWELL RABAUL (spring 1954). Then followed the original GODZILLA, and everything changed after that ...

By the way, do you know if Ace WWII Zero pilot Saburo Sakai's autobiography SAMURAI (U.S. title) was ever made into a movie? He served at Rabaul, and his life was incredible. The book would certainly would make an amazing movie, and he is certainly one of the most fascinating men I've ever read about.

One story I'm sure the Japanese don't want told on film (though if done correctly, it would be emotionally overwhelming) is the story of the Nanking Massacre, surely one of the most shameful episodes of the 20th Century and one of the reasons that I can only work up so much guilt about Hiroshima -- when you sow the wind... Nagasaki is a totally different matter, however.

I don't intend any Japanese bashing in the above paragraph, but Nanking/Nanjing is really something the Japanese need to come to grips with. I'm not saying that as a smug American, God knows the terrible things we've caused.

The director was Seiji Maruyama, the other most prolific director of war films at Toho besides Mr. Matsubayashi. (Matsubayashi is still alive; Mr. Maruyama passed away about five years ago.)

The American title is, I think, ZERO FIGHTER IN FLAMES, or perhaps just ZERO. Or perhaps it was released as something else altogether. I must confess that I don't own it.

Hiroshima and Nanking -- and Nagasaki and other places the Japanese invaded -- what can one say but: you reap what you sow. And not a single veteran of the Japanese "adventure" in the South Pacific ever tried to suggest otherwise to my face.

Which source(s) told you Mr. Honda had anything to do with I BOMBED PEARL HARBOR? Honestly, just curious.

However, for me it's very simple to choose a WORST movie: Armageddon. I couldn't believe it when I saw that trash. Horrible.

I hope you know that I love the Japanese people and their culture, I have always regretted not taking Japanese in college. And I still must get there within the next few years. My 70 year old mom spent a few days in Japan before she then spent a couple of weeks in China about 4 years back, and that completely changed her perception of that part of Asia. She really fell in love with the Japanese and Chinese people.

I must get over there myself. I certainly understand why you want to go back. Sadly, I think I am just a pathetic "otaku," if I am using the right word. I really love nearly all things Japanese and to a lesser extent Chinese.

...so many varied tastes.