Thursday, December 31, 2009

The worst movies from this decade that you saw because they were critically acclaimed

My mom points out that this is a much more useful idea for a list than the more common "worst movies of the decade." She explains:
I don't need a decade-end list of the very worst crap that you saw and I didn't see. I'd rather make a list of the worst movies that you, the movie reviewer, gulled me into seeing. What did you say was good that I wasted my time and money on?
She has her list at the link.

I haven't been watching many new movies this decade, so I can't make anything close to a definitive list. But with this severe limitation, here are the movies I saw and was baffled by the amount of praise they received:

1. Lost in Translation
2. High Fidelity
3. I Heart Huckabees*
4. Waking Life
5. Away We Go* (blogged)
6. A Scanner Darkly
7. Fahrenheit 911*
8. Amelie*

* Movies with an asterisk received mixed reviews, but many critics gave them effusive praise.

I just saw Lost in Translation last night. That's probably the movie with the biggest gap between the critical reception (Metacritic's aggregation of reviews gives it an extraordinary 89 out of 100) and my actual enjoyment of it.

Now, on the positive side, here are some excellent movies from this decade that fully deserved their critical acclaim:

1. The Pianist
2. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
3. Capturing the Friedmans
4. Sideways
5. About Schmidt [added later]
6. Ghost World

Happy new year!

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