Best Movie That Was Bad, But Had The Potential To Be Good: The Kingdom – All-star cast? Check. Decent writer? More or less a check. Good story? Surprisingly, yes. Good director? Check.
So what the hell happened?
Honestly, I do not know. My best guess is that I think the director, Peter Berg, chooses to showcase the action pieces more than the heart that lies with Carnahan’s script. Even though the action pieces are quite good, it almost becomes too much in a film that could have had as much soul as the best action movie of the year, The Bourne Ultimatum.
5. Spider-Man 3 – Three is a crowd. The latest (‘Cause there is more to come) installment in the web-crawler’s trilogy falls short of the previous two. While it may not be a horrible movie, it is certainly a disappointment.
4. Next – “Las Vegas showroom magician Cris Johnson has a secret which torments him: he can see a few minutes into the future. Sick of the examinations he underwent as a child and the interest of the government and medical establishment in his power, he lies low under an assumed name in Vegas, performing cheap tricks and living off small-time gambling "winnings." But when a terrorist group threatens to detonate a nuclear device in Los Angeles, government agent Callie Ferris must use all her wiles to capture Cris and convince him to help her stop the cataclysm.”
That is the plot synopsis from IMDB.com. The scary part is that this is not the most ridiculous thing in the movie. Julianne Moore plays a tough FBI agent, but the cream of the crop is Nicolas Cage’s hairpiece.
3. Shrek the Third – I kind of knew what to expect going into this movie, but it was still bad. The joy that was in the previous two is just not there anymore and they plan on making two more films. Ugh.
2. Rush Hour 3 – I did not see this film, yet the awfulness is so palpable I had to put it number two.
Actually, I put it here because this movie raises more questions than answers.
Consider the following:
- Why was there a six year gap between Rush Hour 2 and Rush Hour 3? It is not like Chris Tucker wasn’t available.
- Did Rush Hour 2 leave that many questions unanswered?
- What does $50 million + $53.25 million + $7 million equal? You could say $110.25 million, and you would be correct. How about the paydays for Tucker, Chan, and Ratner? That would be correct too. How does this happen?
- Tucker’s character is from California, Chan’s is from China, yet the movie is set in France. What?
- You can clearly see the ridiculousness of this all
1. Lions for Lambs – I figured this would actually be a good movie, if not a great one. I looked and saw that Robert Redford was directing and producing the film, which has yielded such results as Ordinary People and A River Runs Through It. I saw Matthew Michael Carnahan, who is an up and coming writer and brother to Joe Carnahan of Narc fame. I saw Tom Cruise, who I admire and has previously worked with Joe Carnahan on Narc for great results. I saw Academy Award winner Meryl Streep, and rising stars Derek Luke and Michael Pena. I figured this was the first movie coming out of the United Artist stable under Tom Cruise’s guidance and he would not allow it to fail.
I was horribly wrong. This film fails on so many levels it almost mystifies me. Similar to this year’s All the King’s Men, I found myself wondering how all this talent just went to waste.
The only positive to this movie is that is clocks in at 88 minutes.
1 comment:
Nicholas Cage's hair was almost bad enough to keep me away from National Treasure too. I take more issue, however, with the fact that he spells his name "Cris". As if he's too good for the "H".
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