Jack Mathews

Close call as to who's career has sunk farthest.

"Charlie's Angels," "Survivor," "American Gladiators" and "Girls Gone Wild" are just some of the bad influences on Hong Kong action director Corey Yuen's laughably silly adaptation of the video game DOA: Dead or Alive.

Adapted - badly and unfaithfully - Close Your Eyes is a convoluted jumble of paranormal psychology, occultism and pagan symbolism, topped off with a quest for immortality.

Slackers depends on the pathetic Ethan and the flatulent Sam for most of its laughs, and both characters are more revolting than amusing.

Two hours of the worst sort of sentimental sap.

If the point of this umpteenth posttraumatic stress drama is that war is hell, even years after it's over and you're sitting in a movie theater, Big Bad Love makes it.

Deuces Wild is the worst thing to have happened to Brooklyn since the Ice Age severed it from the mainland.

This is as cheesy and irrelevant as political documentaries get. Horvath, who is openly critical of the invasion of Iraq, makes game of a handful of Iowans and Nebraskans who are either too dumb, too drunk or too uninterested to have an informed opinion about it.

There is no excusing date rape, but the revenge conceived and executed by Rosario Dawson's Maya in this revolting, amateurish drama is something you might only wish on Osama Bin Laden.

The acting is more amateurish than Billy's diva act, and for all its ambitious editing, the film looks like something made in the Addams Family's attic.

The Worst Comedy of the Year race heats up today with the release of Keenen Ivory Wayans' Scary Movie 2. This one is so bad, even Adam Sandler will be impressed.

This is extremely dark and politically loaded material.

This badly written, badly directed and badly acted little movie about an ordinary guy from Jersey who discovers passion with a fashion plate in Manhattan looks great.

The actual fights between the predators and the serpents are too silly to contemplate. Both shiny and metallic, they look like kitchen appliances fighting it out. That's when you can see them. Writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson ("Resident Evil") has created the darkest, if not worst, sci-fi movie since "Battlefield Earth."

At the end of her spontaneous date, she says it's been the best night of her life. It will not be one of yours.

Boring is too active a verb to describe this minimalist psychological thriller.

His (Kaminski) first feature is so thoroughly awful, it isn't even interesting to look at.

The Musketeer is the worst Hollywood period film in -- it seems like ages since "American Outlaws."

So clumsy and unfocused that not getting it isn't half as bad as sitting through it.

Shows what can happen when a bunch of good actors get together without adult supervision. They emote all over the place, banging into each other, talking too loud, knocking over furniture, wallowing in clichés and otherwise behaving like rank amateurs.

Here's one for the Sick Voyeurs Club.

Vampire movies aren't what they used to be. How about a little mist, some shadows, some pale gray faces set off by stark red lips? Maestro, a little Transylvanian mood music, if you please.

An instant contender for cult status on the midnight-movie circuit, where lines like "Do we look like quantum wormhole specialists?" will be given the respect they deserve.

Say a little prayer and save your money.

Preposterous, physically hideous paranormal thriller.

If you liked "Van Wilder," which starred Ryan Reynolds and Tara Reid, be warned: The only person returning from the cast is the boring Indian kid Taj Mahal Badalandabad (Kal Penn).

There isn't a scene, an action or a character that rings true, yet the narrative summary of the events that inspired it is a matter of record.

In 1939, when "Ten Little Indians" was published, Agatha Christie mysteries were the crème de la pop literature. Her fans depended on logic in her stories, and they got it. Mindhunters would have insulted their intelligence, and it should insult yours.

This vulgar, equal-opportunity chick flick aims pretty low.

What might work as a narrative device in a novel - the spirit guiding readers through Nick's revelations - is just plain ridiculous in a movie.

Only Emily Mortimer maintains a measure of dignity, playing the slinky assassin named Dakota. Whether her restraint was by her design or the filmmakers', she'll come to appreciate that she all but disappears amid the caterwauling and purging of a story that should have died in Liverpool.

Rates an inquisition of its own. It may not be heresy to fill out an ensemble cast of Peruvian and Spanish characters almost exclusively with non-Hispanic actors, but it certainly destroys any sense of authenticity.

The sex may be real, but the violence and acting are comically phony, resulting in something that, while intended to shock, merely revolts.

Most of the incidents are harmlessly derivative, but the movie has a mean streak that undermines our empathy for the characters, particularly Tom.

It's 80 minutes of frantic mugging, of silly pratfalls and clown fights, of ideas lifted from other children's movies, design schemes from Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and characters from Toys R Us, all patched together without an innovative stitch of its own. [22 Nov 1996, p.F6]

Excess Baggage, a scruffy romantic comedy about a despairing rich girl who hatches a kidnapping scheme to test her father's love, is an aimless waste, a star vehicle without a compass. It wants very much to be both funny and poignant, but is more often just noisy and pointless. [29Aug1997 Pg 14]

There isn't a moment of genuine suspense or tension in the film, and the paltry laughs are supplied not by Murphy but by Hardison, whose character, a lowlife Brooklyn habitue forcefully turned into the vampire's bug-eating sidekick, spends the entire movie moaning about his decomposing body and embarrassing the boss with his earthy patter. [27 Oct 1995, p.1]

This is a bad time for NBA fans in Boston. Just as their beloved Celtics are about to wrap up a dismal season, with nearly 50 losses and no berth in the playoffs, Hollywood comes out with a comedy about the Celtics that’s even worse than the team. And not half as funny.

Italian actress, writer and director Asia Argento's performance in the godawful Scarlet Diva is one of those bawl, spit, scream and vomit exhibitions that provoke admiring applause in acting classes and great gales of laughter in theaters.

Warner Bros. quietly releases Hiller's latest film, Carpool, without advance critics screenings, without more than a whisper of promotion, without warning or apology to the lost souls who might wander in to see it.

The only good thing about this on-the-fly, low-budget quickie is its Cape Cod setting and the in-focus cinematography of Ernst Kubitza. Very pretty. Otherwise, it is a speechifying bore.

This will qualify as a spoiler only for those who have never seen a really bad movie before.

Never graduates above the boneheaded.

An early and daunting contender for worst movie of the year, writer-director Irving Schwartz's amateurish melodrama stars a hollow-eyed Piper Perabo as a self-loathing young woman who has every reason to hate herself.

Thekind of misfire that makes you understand why every waiter, parking valet and sushi delivery boy in Beverly Hills has a screenplay under his waistband.

It's fitting that the kangaroo gives the most lifelike performance.

Possibly the worst movie of 2007.

A shrill, amateurish two-character play that demeans women and leaves men with the quaint notion that the best way to a woman's heart is through enslavement.

One of the darkest, ugliest, most uninvolving and incomprehensible major-studio fantasies I've ever seen.

"Comedy is hard," said Steve Martin. For the writers of Date Movie, it's apparently impossible.

This is the biggest lowdown, rotten, disgusting, depraved sideshow in the megaplex. Check your brains, your taste and your self-respect right over there with the bearded ticket taker.

A little Disney Christmas release that comes wrapped in used toilet paper.

More than awful, more than dreadful, and easily the worst beach movie ever made.