The Screengrab : the postman

The Screengrab's Top Ten Worst...Movies...Ever!!!! (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Leonard Pierce's Top Ten Worst Movies Ever

1. INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)
2. THE POSTMAN (1997)

After the half-billion-dollar disaster that was Waterworld, it’s a wonder that any studio would give Kevin Costner money for anything, let alone another massively budgeted post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic. But Warner Brothers ponied up the jack, and auteur Costner decided to show them what he could really do. Wasting another quarter-billion dollars, and bringing eternal shame to the MPAA voters who had, less than a decade before, awarded him a Best Director Oscar, Costner created one of the worst films of all time. Wasting a decent source novel by David Brin, The Postman is noisy, stupid, indulgent, witless, and interminable, and it ends with one of the biggest cop-out endings in motion picture history; but what makes it truly special (by which I mean wretched) is what a colossal vanity project it is for its director/star. Cramming the movie with his relatives, he turns his character from a relatable idealist to an impossibly perfect superman who is loved by everyone who encounters him. It’s the kind of manically overindulgent ego-stroke that used to kill entire careers in the old Hollywood system; unluckily for moviegoers worldwide, it didn’t do the same for Costner.

3. SHOWGIRLS (1995)
4. CALIGULA (1979)

Anyone can make a shitty movie with a bad cast and a crap writer. But it takes a special level of awfulness to take one of America’s leading literary lights, have him write a script to be performed by some of the world’s greatest actors, and spend tens of millions of dollars recreating the period in which your film is set, and still have it end up so horrible that it’s rightly considered one of the worst movies ever made. Conceived (and originally directed, until even he figured out what a colossal piece of shit he had on his hands) by Bob Guccione as a sort of combination of highbrow historical drama and low-grade softcore pornography, the story of the deranged Roman emperor Caligula was such a disaster that original screenwriter Gore Vidal sued to have his name removed from the final project – which, considering the stuff he left his name on, is a pretty powerful indictment of the film. Tinto Brass did most of the directing after Guccione bailed, and seriously bad directing it is, though if both the writer and the director have bailed on the project, it’s probably going to suck no matter who takes the helm. Not only did the eight-digit catastrophe waste the talents of big-leaguers like John Gielgud, Malcolm McDowell (in his worst venue until he decided to appear on Heroes), Helen Mirren, and Peter O’Toole, but – criminally unforgivable for a movie funded by the head man at Penthouse – it was so incompetent, enervating and ill-conceived that it wasn’t even remotely sexy.

5. THE BROWN BUNNY (2003)
6. URBAN MENACE (1999)

As a rule, I’ve tried to avoid sticking low-budget indie fare like Plan 9 From Outer Space, Robot Monster and Manos: The Hands of Fate on my list of the worst movies of all time. For one thing, it’s too easy – these films were often made in isolation by untrained filmmakers with zero budget, second-hand equipment and amateur actors. It’s amazing they made those films at all; expecting them to be good was expecting too much. For another, they’re from a different era; some of the acclaimed and popular films coming out of Hollywood featured dialogue just as hokey and scenarios just as idiotic, only they were assayed by skilled professionals in front of and behind the camera. But I’ll make an exception for the dreadfully bad 1999 gangsta-horror flick Urban Menace. Directed by the criminally awful Albert Pyun – whose career as an auteur of crap puts even Uwe Boll to shame – it was directed by a seasoned studio filmmaker; it had a budget that could have paid for everything Ed Wood ever made ten times over; and its target audience was the presumably more sophisticated filmgoer of today. But for all that, it plays like Plan 9 Goes Gangsta: Snoop Dogg’s stand-in is a lanky, faceless nobody who looks nothing like him. The script is through the bottom of the barrel and three feet into the ground below the barrel. The ‘actors’ include theatrically deficient rappers Big Pun and Fat Joe, who not only can’t act, but can’t even be understood. The plot can barely be said to exist, and the setting consists of a warehouse that was undoubtedly chosen for its proximity to the director’s house. It’s the kind of hacked-out garbage that’s so amazingly bad that you’ll be shocked they even make movies this bad anymore.

7. THE HAPPENING (2008)

There’s a 1967 hippies-on-a-rampage flick called The Happening that, oddly enough, could also arguably qualify as one of the most awful movies ever, but the worst-case scenario we’re discussing here is the one that may have provided a final capper to director M. Night Shyamalan’s downward career spiral. Usually, a stupid plot alone isn’t enough to make a movie qualify for all-time-worst status, but the plot of The Happening (trees turn against mankind and use some kind of floral pheremones to trigger a wave of mass suicide and madness) is Navy vs. the Night Monsters-level bad, and utterly dashes any hopes the movie had of being good by its very existence. Luckily for us, though, Shyamalan throws in tons of extra bad-movie elements in case the asinine plot isn’t enough: a ridiculous lead performance by Mark Wahlberg, interaction between the lead actors utterly free of charisma, hooty special effects, a subpar script, and set pieces that are meant to be dramatic and terrifying but instead come across as laughable, or, worse yet, boring and pointless. Shyamalan went from shocking the world with his seemingly unique gifts to shocking the world at how bad his movies were; it seems unlikely that he has the ability to make a movie worse than The Happening (assuming any studio will give him money to make a movie ever again). But then again, that’s what people said about The Village, too.

8. BATTLEFIELD EARTH (2000)
9. MOMENT BY MOMENT (1978)
10. TOMMY BOY (1995)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributor: Leonard Pierce

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: March 28-April 3, 2009

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Hey, gang. It’s your ol’ pal, the Cost-Dawg. Some friends of mine told me about this very amusing “Waterworld II” prank y’all pulled on April Fool’s Day. I got a good chuckle out of it. Truth is, I’d never make a sequel to Waterworld, a movie for which I drank my own pee. (Real pee? That’s a Hollywood secret, kids.) However, I thought this would be a good opportunity to let you know I am hard at work on a follow-up to The Postman. I want to call it The Postman Always Rings Twice, but some hardasses at the studio are giving me grief over that title for some reason.

While I was checking out your site, I happened to read your list April Fools: The 35 Funniest Movie Characters of All Time (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven and Eight). I dunno, folks, I think you might have forgotten somebody. If you need a hint, I got two words for you: swing and vote. Get me? Bet you feel pretty silly now.

As for the rest of your stuff, most of it made me feel like I’d rather be back on the set of Waterworld guzzling my own whiz, but I guess these were okay:

Reviews: Sugar, Alien Trespass, The Song of Sparrows, Gigantic, Adventureland

The Screengrab Library of Unproduced Screenplays: David Lynch and Mark Frost's "One Saliva Bubble"

White Elephant Blogathon: Flesh Gordon

Ozsploitation! “Mad Dog Morgan” (1976)

Forgotten Films: "Strange Invaders" (1983)

Unwatchable #39: “The Invisible Maniac”

Apocalypse Now and Then: Ten Great End-of-the-World Movie Scenarios, Part 2

Phil Nugent — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:00:00 GMT

THE QUIET EARTH (1985)

Suppose they gave an apocalypse and nobody came? That’s the question faced by the always-engaging Bruno Lawrence in Geoff Murphy’s delightful little sci-fi thriller, The Quiet Earth. Made in New Zealand before it was home to hobbits and every low-budget syndicated action show on television, the movie opens with scientist Lawrence awaking one day to find that, due to an experiment gone rather substantially awry, he is the last person left on Earth. By far the film’s greatest charms lie in the subsequent scenes, where Lawrence tries to balance his attempt to find out what happened (and if there is any way of correcting it) with his somewhat bemused attitude towards being the last living human being on the planet. This bemusement, unsurprisingly, slowly degenerates into neurosis and from there into near-madness as Lawrence transforms from the sort of quirkiness one expects from a guy who lives alone and doesn’t get out much into outright loneliness-inspired lunacy. (It is in these scenes that Lawrence has a brief but highly amusing conversation with Adolf Hitler.) When he finally discovers that there is at least one other living person on the planet — in a scene that can only be described as the post-apocalyptic genre’s biggest meet-cute — the movie shifts gears into a more conventional science fiction contrivance, but it’s kept alive by swell performances from Lawrence and the Maori actor Peter Smith, as well as some highly inventive and rapid-fire camerawork from director Murphy. The Quiet Earth is an interesting take on the whole genre, and it nicely blends its psychological approach with the typical what-would-you-do-if-you-were-the-last-man-on-earth gameplaying seen in such movies.

THE BED SITTING ROOM (1969)

The end of the world as brought to you by giggly British weirdos. Directed by Richard Lester, it depicts what's left of England after World War III, which, we're told, lasted "three minutes and forty-seven seconds... including the peace treaty." The cast includes Ralph Richardson in the title role (after he mutates), Michael Hordern, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Spike Milligan, Marty Feldman, and Rita Tushingham, who trumps Shelley Plimpton by giving birth (to Christ knows what) after she's been pregnant for thirteen months. This is one of the most truly horrifying visions of the end of the world ever caught on film, because it's supposed to be a comedy but there isn't a laugh in it. It is the anti-Dr. Strangelove, demonstrating the desperate inability of talented people to make you laugh at its subject matter, and so making the subject matter seem terrifying to a degree that sober-faced when-they-drop-the-bomb movies such as On the Beach can only dream about.

THE BIRDS (1963)

This Hitchcock film has been the subject of considerable textual analysis and speculation as to its symbolic meaning, but I like to think that Sir Alfred made it just so that he boast that they'd let him. Imagine what the pitch must have sounded like: "So, Alfred, it's called The Birds, huh? What's it about?" "Check the title, Einstein. It's about the birds." "Birds, huh. The birds, though? Is it about any particular birds?" "Nope, it's about the birds. Pigeons, parakeets, ostriches, penguins, crows, buzzards, ducks, tufted titmice... " "I see. And what do the birds do exactly?" "Turn on us. Wage war on us. Peck our eyes out." "But... why do the birds do this?" "How the hell am I supposed to know? You think I speak toucan?" "Okay, fair point. How do we stop the birds in the end?" "We don't. They kick our ass. Make Rod Taylor their bitch." "Un-huh... so... um... " "Hang on, I'm sorry, I have to take this. Mildred, did you get ahold of the gentleman with the bulldozer yet? I really need to get those bags containing the money I made off Psycho out of the driveway, they're blocking the jet... " Hitchcock himself fought with the studio to prevent them from actually tacking the words "The End" onto the final shot of our feathered friends gathering to welcome the new day, sensing that it would count as overkill.

TIME OF THE WOLF (2003)

When Michael Haneke, the European director known as the master of everyday horror for his uncanny ability to wrench suspense out of the slightest disruptions to bourgeois culture, decided to make a post-apocalyptic film, it was dead certain that it wouldn’t be a typical mosh pit of explosions, zombies, and atonal stings on the soundtrack. And, indeed, Haneke succeeded in making one of the quietest, most subtle visions of the end of the world imaginable — but also one of the most disturbing, and probably the most depressing. Haneke gives us almost no clue as to what happened to bring about the end of civilization; all we know is that the authorities are gone, the power is out, the water is tainted and no help seems to be coming from anywhere. As with all of his films, we aren’t overwhelmed with gore or beaten over the head with abject terror: instead, we’re presented with the even more profound horror of constant uncertainty and abject helplessness. When Isabelle Huppert’s family arrives at their rural cabin in hopes of waiting out the nebulous catastrophe that’s taken place, they experience the one moment of hope in the entire film; Haneke, of course, strips them of it swiftly and heartlessly, and before you know it, Huppert and her children are utterly alone, with no more possessions than they can carry and no one to protect them against a world that has grown almost instantly feral. Soon enough, they are huddled in an abandoned train station where xenophobia and sexual assault are almost tangible stinks in the air and where they are completely at the mercy of the few people bothering to pass themselves off as authority figures. Through it all, very little in the way of violence or disruption actually takes place: what chills the soul is the omnipresent fear, the certain knowledge that just as it did in a fatal and inexplicable moment at their cabin, everything can go horribly wrong at any moment and there is no safe place, no safe time. A remarkably skillful, effectively understated, and powerfully upsetting drama that conjures an apocalypse that is terrifying because it is so small and petty.

WATERWORLD (1995) & THE POSTMAN (1997)

It is the mark of a true artist that he is never satisfied with his work. Take Kevin Costner, for example. Unhappy as a mere sex symbol, he transformed himself into an Oscar-winning director, but that, too, was not enough for this nobly ambitious man. He took the only logical next step: spending close to a third of a billion dollars making two ridiculous, overblown, awful post-apocalyptic epics that would almost single-handedly destroy his career. Now that’s dedication! First came the notorious Waterworld, an early global warming scare flick that became much more famous for its colossal cost overruns (and its feeble box office) than it did for its clunky story. In it, Costner plays Mariner, a gill-festooned mutant piss-drinker who comes into contact with a bunch of unmotivated pirates called the Smokers. The leader of the Smokers is portrayed by Dennis Hopper, in full-blown Hindenburg mode as always; pitted against the supremely wooden Costner, he is as overwrought and bombastic as the Mariner is stone-faced and boring. Between the two of them, you might just be able to build one decent performance, which would be one more than is featured in Waterworld. The movie, which cost $200 million and made back about thirty bucks, was such a disaster that Costner, never a man to rest on his laurels, decided that the best way to follow it up would be to basically make the same exact movie, except this time he would direct and star in it. Of course, The Postman cost a mere $80 million, not even enough for half a Waterworld, but it made up for it by being even worse. At least the former had decent sets and costumes, whereas The Postman was a jerry-rigged piece of junk that still cost a king’s ransom and yet ended up looking bad, sounding bad, and probably even smelling bad. In this post-apocalyptic world, civilization has collapsed and America has been taken over by the Promise Keepers. Costner, a bad movie actor who here portrays a bad Shakespearian actor, poses as a postal carrier from the reformed U.S. government in order to cadge free meals off of local yokels, but soon enough, he is dispensing real hope to the legions of downtrodden mopes who have to appear in this cruddy movie. The movie only once loses its putrid reek of vanity project, and that’s at the end, a jaw-dropping exercise in the inability to suspend disbelief: the Promise Keepers, despite their inhuman levels of military discipline, have a rule that anyone can be the boss if they defeat the current leader (played by a nose-holding Will Patton) in a punch-out. Naturally, the mighty Costner prevails, and then turns to the vast army of murderous brutes who have been marauding the countryside for a decade and says "There’s gonna be peace!" They all shrug noncommittally and wander off to become chartered accountants or something, and we’re treated to another replay of the scene where Kev makes a little girl cry by wrapping himself up in the American flag. In the annals of postal lore, this thing rates slightly below Patrick Henry Sherrill’s bloodthirsty Oklahoma rampage as a point of pride.

— Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Click here for Part 1.