Checking out Vulture’s Critic’s Poll for Worst Films of 2008 this morning, we were shocked! We made a glaring omission on our own Worst Films of 2008 list! One of our most loathed films of the year was the uber-sappy indie, “Henry Poole Is Here.” We called the painfully insipid film “hopeless,” and gave it a C- grade (which was generous).
We wrote, “somewhere along the mid-way point, the film bursts wide open into the great blue yonder of terrible. [Director Mark] Pellington opens up the sun-soaking aperture, the slow-motion devices, warms up the crane shots and goes full on music video with tons of atrocious and painfully obvious musical montages – the movie devolves into one gigantic MTV video and you can’t help but recoil and cringe in pain and disgust.”
The poor director lost his wife in a car accident (and he was left a single parent) which inspired him to make this hopeful tripe and we really feel for the guy, but after seeing, ‘Poole’ it’s hard to feel anything for him other than human sympathy.
We like the throwndown cojones on some of the rest of the New York magazine ppl’s picks (some are compiled lists of other writers from other publications). David Denby from the New Yorker gave his #1 worst pick to “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” the New Yorker’s Richard Brody gave “Synecdoche, New York” his worst pick and good ol’ Nathan Lee of The New York Times gave “Rachel Getting Married” his number one worst slot, noting the film was “insufferable bobo hysteria.” Hey, that’s what we felt! (Lee also threw down and gave “The Wrestler” his #2 worst slot. Controversial!).
The hilariously contrarian Armond White from the New York Press gave his worst three film slots to, get this: “The Dark Knight,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Wall-E.” He writes, “This trifecta celebrates the reign of pessimism, the ubiquity of television, and the end of culture.” Don’t give it too much attention or too much credo. Basically all those films were too popular so he hated them. That’s how White rolls. He’s a 50-s0mething child.
Unfortunately, The Playlist was not one of the critics they polled. Oh well, better luck next year.
