Worst movies I saw in 2006

Continuing my tradition of bringing shame to the worst offerings I had to sit through last year.

#10 - The Fast & the Furious
A dumber version, if that's possible, of 'Point Break'.

#9 - The Dukes of Hazzard
A dumber version, if that's possible, of the original TV show. At least the TV Duke bros weren't lobbing molotov cocktails at the local police.

#8 - Eight Crazy Nights
Adam Sandler's animated comedy isn't funny in the least.

#7 - Assault on Precinct 13
Another remake. The attacking police act more like lemmings than highly trained SWAT members. The ending... the ending...

#6 - Elektra
I'd consider myself pretty knowledgeable about older comics but I had no idea what was going on here. Annoying teen sidekicks don't help either.

#5 - Kicking and Screaming
I love Will Ferrell but this was tough to watch. A weak kids' movie where Ferrell isn't allowed to be funny.

#4 - The Pink Panther
This Steve Martin remake was just bad. I wanted to watch the originals again to wash the bad taste out.

#3 - Bewitched
Another awful TV series remake, and another stain on the career of Ferrell. He's not really to blame though as the entire story here was trash.

#2 - Catwoman
From 'Monster's Ball' to 'Catwoman' has any actress fallen further down the ladder of success? Multiple Razzie award winner and deservingly so.

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#1 - The New Poseidon Adventure
The Made for TV version created solely to deceive people who want to buy the new feature film 'Poseidon'. This movie is a perfect template for how not to make a movie.

Roads less traveled

Movie Review: The Polar Express (2004)

Tom Hanks stars in this digital Christmas adventure. In fact he provides voices for 6 of the characters. The story, in short, is that a young boy who is losing his faith in Santa Claus embarks on a magical train ride to the North Pole to meet the fat man himself. Most of the film follows the train ride itself through a series of strange encounters and sudden predicaments putting the train ride at risk. They are pretty oulandish but keep the film's momentum going. I was a little confused by the homeless man who rides on top of the train. He seems to be invisible to even the other 'amazing' characters such as the conductor and has the ability to disappear at will. Is he supposed to be an angel or something? No hints are given here but he is even more magical than Santa's regular crew of characters. 7/10

Movie Review: I Heart Huckabees (2004)

I didn't know the first thing about this movie going into it and what a real treat it was. It's a fantastic ensemble piece with a philosophical penchant. Jason Schwartzman plays an overly dedicated environmentalist who wants to save the smallest pieces of nature he can. The film opens with him beaming about saving marshlands from developers when in fact he has only saved one roped-off boulder. Jude Law plays the executive hotshot who wants to use Schwartzman's organization to help him move up the corporate ladder. Naoimi Watts plays his sexy but ditzy girlfriend who is the face and jiggly body of the chain of 'Huckabees' stores until she goes through a personal evolution. Mark Wahlberg, who really steals the show, plays a troubled firefighter who is so concerned about the world's depleted oil supplies that he will only ride a bicycle to fires. Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin play a pair of existential detectives who try to demonstrate everyone's place in the universe and make everything all right. A very witty movie that touches on deeper issues, this is a real gem. 8/10

Movie Review: Napolean Dynamite (2004)

Great look at the life a 'geek' in the American midwest. Jon Heder plays Napolean Dynamite, a social alien who believes the skills most girls want in a man are 'nunchaku skills' and 'bow and arrow' skills. He does have a few friends though and they are just hilarious together. On his own he doesn't do as well as he is constantly being berated and shoved into lockers at his high school. His family, besides his cool grandmother, are a bunch of social misfits too. Not too much of a story here but this is a great slice of life film. 7.5/10

Movie Review: The Da Vinci Code (2006)

I'd recently reread the book by Dan Brown again before watching this. Overall I enjoyed the movie but I have both good and bad points to make about it. The bad. The beginning of the movie felt very rushed. They were out of the Louvre in a very short time. Now I know that they don't have the time to explain things at a leisurely pace like the book does but riddles were solved too quickly and history/theories presented too fast.

Audrey Tatou's character seemed to be really dumbed down from the version in the book. She's a cryptologist who's been trained by the Priory's Grand Master but other than deciphering the Fibonacci sequence at the beginning she really does nothing. In the book it was her figuring out the anagrams left behind, but here that skill is given to Hanks' character. That really weakens her character.

The ending. Whoa, where did that come from. For an ultra secret society they had all sorts of unimaginably valuable things not hidden all that well. And who were all those people? There seems to be a lot of members of the Priory living in that small Scottish town.

Now for the good points. I like how Hanks' character was more pragmatic than he is in the book. In the book he is all for believing in the Priory. The movie version is much watered down and openly debates Teabing on many contentious points. He very much seems to be in doubt about the whole story here.

I really like the scene where the image of St. John/Mary Magdalene from Leonardo's 'The Last Supper' was cut and pasted to fit neatly next to Jesus. I hadn't seen that trick before and it looked really good.

As I said before, forget all the controversy surrounding the material this is just a good thriller. Here's hoping Umberto Eco's 'Foucalt's Pendulum' becomes a movie someday. 7.5/10

Book Review: Star Wars: Jedi Apprentice #7 The Captive Temple - Jude Watson

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan return to the Jedi temple on Coruscant to investigate a series of crimes being commited within the temple. Obi-Wan must deal with the sense of betrayal all the other Padawan feel about him while Qui-Gon suspects it is his former Padawan, Xanatos, who has infiltrated temple security.