Twas the Best of Movies, Twas the Worst of Movies

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I love disaster movies. If there's a flick that has meteors hurtling to the earth, tidal waves that topple New York, people getting flash-frozen in the midwest or Los Angeles getting smoked in an earthquake/volcano/alien invasion, I'm there. Which is to say why the Smithie, her girlfriend and I were recently in the audience for GEOSTORM, despite its abysmal rating of 11% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The terrible reviews are well deserved. This movie didn't just ignore actual science (which, frankly, is to be expected in this genre. There's zero explanation, for instance, of why the planet starts cracking like a hardboiled egg in 2012. The Mayans said it would, that's good enough for us.) GEOSTORM also ignored human nature, political reality, basic engineering standards, OSHA, the passage of time and the fact that a deputy undersecretary at the US State Department wouldn't show up for work with shaggy hair and a three-day SexyStubble(TM).

Nonetheless, we had a GREAT time watching it. We snorted at the ridiculous plot twists, whispered, "Wait, didn't he say earlier..." to each other, and every time a character said, "There's going to be a GEOSTORM!" (which happened, I'm happy to say, frequently) we would make faces like the Screamer in Edvard Munch's painting. The movie lasted an hour and three quarters, and we spent at least twice that long afterwards tearing it apart. It was that rare bird; a deeply enjoyable, thoroughly Bad Movie.

Reds, do you have any cinematic stinkers you love?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I burst out laughing, picturing you two. SO many great bad movies. And they are definitely a different animal than just a bad movie. Take, for example POINT BREAK. So ridiculous, with Patrick Swayze as an enlightened surfer who moonlights with the presidential mask-wearing surfing colleagues as bank robbers. So, of course, FBI agent Keanu Reaves learns to surf so he can infiltrate the gang. I forget the rest. but it is wonderfully bad. Especially the "ending."

BEETLEJUICE, but wait, that's actually good, right? And SPEED, again, sorry, Keanu Reeves as a state cop who has to keep driving the bus at 50 miles per hour so the speed-detonated bomb on it doesn't go off.  Or wait, does Sandra Bullock drive the bus? Anyway, fabulous.  CONTAGION, with Dustin Hoffman, I think, trying to stop the world from dying of plague or something.

There was recently a movie that I almost made Jonathan go to that was supposed to be so bad that it was famous for being terrible. Anyone know what that was? And forgive me, but I thought WONDER WOMAN, though fun to watch, was absolutely ridiculous. Made NO sense whatsoever. I KNOW it's fantasy. But fantasy still has to make sense. Don't get me started on what didn't make sense, because the list is too long.

I can't wait to hear what movies you all pick. And the old horror movies don't count. The Incredible Shrinking Man. That was great.


JENN McKINLAY: I saw SPEED eight times. In the theater. I am not kidding. It is bad and my girlfriend and I loved it so hard. Still do.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hank, you can't diss SPEED! I love SPEED! Who cares if Sandra Bullock could really drive the bus? But, seriously, the first thing that comes to my mind is THE LAST STARFIGHTER. In case anyone has missed this gem, it came out in 1984 and starred Lance Guest (did he ever make another movie?) and Robert Preston. Yes, THE MUSIC MAN. It's about a poor boy from a trailer park in New Mexico who is a whiz at video games, so aliens recruit him to fly a spaceship and SAVE THE UNIVERSE!!!! There is a car that takes off, and Robert Preston pulls off his human face to reveal his alien face! The space battle scenes look like they were done in somebody's garage with Star Wars toys. The dialogue is dreadful. But, still, there's something so charming about the trailer park that I'd watch it just for those parts. And, no big spoiler, Alex (Lance Guest) really does save the universe.

HANK: I LOVE The Last Starfighter. Brilliant. Genius.  What a great plot, right?  And Robert Preston, perfection.

HALLIE EPHRON: My vote goes to STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE. I'm afraid Jar Jar Binks hammered the nail in that coffin for me. But I've heard the SWs movies have gotten better since. In that one, it was like they fired all the writers and the actors ad libbed. Dreadful, except for special effects.

My daughter and I just disagreed on LA LA LAND. I loved it. She HATED it. Unbelievable, she said. Well duh, I said.

JULIA: Hallie, I just pretend the prequel trilogy never happened.

RHYS BOWEN: I am so picky about movies that I rarely see stinkers. I don't like disaster movies. I would have had to be dragged to Sharknado which my daughter in LA thought was screamingly funny. I enjoyed the first three Star Wars but my interested quickly waned from then on. I actually quite liked WonderWoman, but then I did watch it on a plane, snuggled in my pod with a glass of wine, with nothing else to do and nowhere else to be! Loved LA LA LAND. I've seen it since twice on planes (I seem to do much of my movie watching on long flights). I really hated THE HOBBIT--so different in tone from the book that they missed the point of it. But since most of the movies I go to seem to star Judi Dench or Maggie Smith or Kate Winslett or all three, nobody ever has to save the world from sharks or aliens!

HANK: Rhys, you had me at snuggling in a pod with wine.

JENN: Hank, you aren't alone with POINT BREAK. Hub loves that movie while admitting it's ridiculous. TREMORS with Kevin Bacon, we both adore. I mean, giant worms in the desert, come on, what is not to love? And, Julia, I hear you on disaster films. My favorite disaster type movie is Twister. Helen Hunt chasing tornadoes with Bill Paxton. Cows fly by. This is great stuff! Am I right?

JULIA: Oh, yes.

INGRID THOFT: SPEED is not a bad movie!  SPEED is fabulous!  I think I saw it about five times in the theaters, Jenn, and I watched a year ago on a long plane flight.  It held up after all this time!  I also share Julia’s love of disaster films.  TOWERING INFERNO is a winner, as is THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE.  I was so hopeful that the recent THE MOUNTAIN BETWEEN US starring Kate Winslet and Idris Elba was going to be good, but it tanked on Rotten Tomatoes and in the theater.  Fingers crossed it’s the good kind of bad, and it will become a new favorite when I can watch it on demand.

JULIA: Let us know, Ingrid! How about you, dear readers? What are your favorite bad movies?