An American Film Geek’s Bottom 4 Movies for 2006

Reader Comments

1. Helu 12/31/2006 @ 2:04am

   Why does everyone call Lucky Number SLevin a tarantino ripoof… it’s nothing like his films, oh I guess its a crime film, but seriously, im not saying it’s good, but it’s not anything like a tarantino film…

2. Vel 12/31/2006 @ 7:27am

   Dang, I liked Art School Confidential.

3. Adam Kinzer 12/31/2006 @ 8:56am

   The fact that you put Little Miss Sunshine on your dishonorable mention worst list pretty much null and voids all your other opinions.

4. scoville 12/31/2006 @ 9:57am

   I am glad that Lady In The Water didn’t make the list. It might not have been a great movie, but it doesn’t deserve the critical lashings it took.

5. Jim 12/31/2006 @ 9:58am

   “Lucky # Slevin” is a Tarantino ripoff in terms of dialogue laden with pop culture references. The movie is built on that. The difference between this and Tarantino is that Tarantino doesn’t build his movies on that, he merely uses such dialogue to build the ambiance & universe. I agree that “Slevin” is nothing like Tarantino - Tarantino is good! But would we ever have “Slevin” if “Pulp Fiction” never existed?

   ***"SUNSHINE" SPOILERS BELOW***

   As for “Little Miss Sunshine”, the movie could use a good knocking down in my opinion. It seems like roughly every year, there’s at least one of these “Art House comfort food” movies that shows up, allowing mainstream movie goers to venture off their usual course, and gather up a little indy movie-going cred. These are totally safe, innocuous films that are dressed up as something edgier or “outside”. “The Full Monty” might’ve been the start of the phenomenon, but since then we’ve had “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, “March of the Penguins”, among others. Don’t get me wrong, I tend to enjoy these movies - I just find them to be very over rated at the end of the day.

   “Sunshine” was hilarious, but in order to really laugh at the big payoff, you have to give in to the conciet that none of these family members know anything about Olive’s routine, despite the fact that her mentor is dead, and they’re all practially killing themselves to get her to the pageant. She’s still gotta be rehearsing, right? Or at least yakking up a storm about it? She’s seven for crying out loud! The routine is everything in this contest, and her’s would’ve NEVER gone down that way if mom or someone else had caught on in even the slightest way. And of course they would’ve. That’s a pretty big flaw in my opinion, demoting it from the cloud it’s currently on. But it is still funny. Just not “Borat” funny.

   So are all my other opinions still voided? I never understood that logic, by the way. All the movie critics I like jumps the rails into loopiness every now and then, and I disagree with them over something. Do you honestly expect to agree with everyone a person says in order for ANYTHING that person is saying to be valid???

6. Tyler Foster 12/31/2006 @ 12:12pm

   I liked Slevin and I didn’t take Da Vinci Code seriously and enjoyed it on the level of an action flick, but LMS is definitely Indie Lite. Regardless of whether you think either movie deserves the time of day, LMS was made for $10 million with not one, but multiple bankable stars, and 2004’s Napoleon Dynamite was made for under a million with complete unknowns. Both enjoyed a similar level of success, feature a similar ending, and were released by the same company. Call me crazy, but I might say LMS is Fox Searchlight’s valiant (and successful, I suppose) attempt to recreate ND’s success story.

7. Adam 12/31/2006 @ 3:27pm

   My statement regarding LMS isn’t really based on the fact that I was totally taken by it, “as a glorious achievement”, as some have stated but really to say that this charming, very enjoyable film was one of the worst of the year is simply a laughable opinion.

8. Jim 12/31/2006 @ 3:51pm

   I never said LMS was one of the worst of the year, I merely gave it a dishonorable mention for being “plagued with flaws.” Keep in mind that I only saw 23 ‘06 releases, and of that 23, LMS wasn’t one of my favorites. If I had seen more, I’m sure something else would’ve trumped it for me here.

   And for the record, I didn’t see “Lady in the Water”, so I can’t comment on that one way or the other. I do plan on one day seeing it, though…

9. micah9 01/01/2007 @ 8:00pm

   uh, lucky number slevin is a play on old skool noir...that’s pretty obvious from the dialogue...it’s sort of short-sighted to call it a quentin tarantino bite since it’s primary influences probably comes from films that were made just a little bit before tarantino was born.

   i mean, if a detective noir comes out next year, are people going to think “hey they ripped off sin city, because rodriquez invented detective noir (and select lighting in B&W;), right?” besides, does anyone see lucky slevin’s style being closer to a guy ritchie bit than tarantion, cuz from my weak memory that seemed to be the case.

10. Jim 01/01/2007 @ 9:53pm

    Uh, I disagree. Find me any “old skool noir” where the characters refer to old cartoons and TV shows as a means of communicating, and where every character is equally well-versed in all pop culture as to make such communication efficient & possible. Morgan Freeman describing the Schmoo while he’s making his first appearance as an intimidating crime boss was so off it was laughable.

    If anything, the zippy banter between Josh Hartnett and Lucy Liu was meant to be more in the vein of screwball comedies than noir, but go watch “His Girl Friday” and then see how “Slevin” measures up in that respect.

11. micah9 01/02/2007 @ 3:47pm

    hmm, yes, why don’t those films from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s refference pop culture from the last 30 years of our present more often? ok, they don’t talk about the schmoo but i do think there are other refference points of comparing LNS to an old noir.

    however i will clarify that i was mainly trying to make the point that LNS seemed more inspired by old noirs than tarantino (and for those arguing that, i think it was more guy-ritchie-ish than tarantino-ish anyway).

    1. the dialogue was particularly what reminded me of old noirs.....the dialogue structure and choice of wording in Lucky Slevin was contrived… but they more-or-less pulled it off (not nearly as good as Brick did, but..) if you chose to accept it which i did. I could only dig that style of banter because I love old noir. that slick and bitterly witty observance is a lot like some of the Robert Mitchum and Bogart noirs. you mention the “zippy banter” and I’m thinking Raymond Chandler all the way. That Chandleresque sub-genre is one of my favorite, and yeah, they are sometimes dark comedies or even tongue-in-cheek, but they’re still noir.

    Tarantino has unique dialogue, but it’s his ability to make it all seem casual and real that everyone praises. It’s butter. The dialogue in LNS was fun, but you have to work up some saliva on yer own to swallow it. My saliva was my love for old noir. Also, I was making out with your girlfriend. (sorry, this reply was beginning to sound too civil for the internet, lol)

    curious side-note, even when I do think of zippy witty banter in comedy films, i think of mainly British films and studio-era hollywood flicks with peeps like Fred Astaire. maybe in today’s musicals or something.

    also, the structure and twists, as well as many of the characters reminded me of various crime or detective noirs. A mashup for sure....concepts and scenes reminded me of this or that film, but of course it’s not a mirror image of any particular film that i’ve ever seen anyway. of course there will be some differences. but i don’t think that’s neccesarily enough to remove it from a genre and deny the past influences of that genre.

    just my 2 cents

12. micah9 01/02/2007 @ 4:01pm

    ps, before peeps complain....when i mention modern-era pop culture and a shmoo in seperate sentences, i seperate them intentionally

    i don’t remember all that much about the shmoo from the flick, but i know there’s a shmoo cartoon from the late 40’s / early 50’s if it’s the same one

13. Mike Wallac 01/08/2007 @ 9:28pm

    Ok, first thing:

    --"Lucky # Slevin” is a Tarantino ripoff in terms of dialogue laden with pop culture references. The movie is built on that. The difference between this and Tarantino is that Tarantino doesn’t build his movies on that, he merely uses such dialogue to build the ambiance & universe. I agree that “Slevin” is nothing like Tarantino - Tarantino is good! But would we ever have “Slevin” if “Pulp Fiction” never existed?” --

    We would never have Casablanca or Sunset Boulevard or if the Lumiere brothers hadn’t first shot a bunch of people leaving a factory. What’s your point? Nothing is original, everything pays tribute to something that was already done. It could easily be argued that there would be no Pulp Fiction without any of the french new wave films.

    Point being, Slevin is not a Tarantino “wana-be”, it is its own “pulp” movie that pays tribute to somone the writer obviously was inspired by. The dialog and story telling stlye do mimic Tarantino’s, but that’s why I like the movie so much.

    On being rated one of the worst 4 movies: Sure it’s not a smash-out blockbuster hit, but I enjoyed the movie, I laughed, and I was very happy with the way the plot was unfolded. I mean, Joh Hartnett, like him or not, goes through more than any normal person would go through in a normal day, all while wearing just a towel. While it’s unrealstic to the point of being flat out ridiculous, I thought it was actaully cool.

    Secondly:

    I’ll agree that When a Stranger Calls belong on the list and I havn’t seen Art School Confidential or DaVinchi Code. I think for somone to do an acurate review on the DaVinchi code you’d have to read the book.

    Lastly:

    Obviously you’v neve seen Lady In the Water, Black Christmas, Little Man, which all deserve to be on here.

14. EvilWingedMonkey 01/08/2007 @ 11:59pm

    Aaaaw C’mon. Tarantino is one of the biggest ‘thieves’ in the industry. he even says so himself, repeatedly. “slevin” had more to do with ‘oldschool’ than Tarantino. I didn’t mind Slevin. I thought it was clean, nicely shot and a much better thing to do with your time than the Kill Bill dual fiasco. Quentin is great, but dirivative at best. “Homage” is another word for stealing with credits.

15. Jim 01/09/2007 @ 9:28am

    “Point being, Slevin is not a Tarantino “wana-be”, it is its own “pulp” movie that pays tribute to somone the writer obviously was inspired by. The dialog and story telling stlye do mimic Tarantino’s, but that’s why I like the movie so much.”

    Okay, okay, geez! My gosh. All this makes me wish I never mentioned the name of Tarantino, and simply said that in my opinion, “Slevin” sucks because it’s stretching soooo far out of its way to be cute, edgy, and clever, that it’s just painful and embarassing to watch. All the characters sound alike, and they all sound badly writen. The plot idea isn’t a bad one (The Wrong Man in a towel in a crazy day of murder & mayhem), but the execution was botched due to a far excess of forced atmosphere and forced cleverness.

    “I think for somone to do an acurate review on the DaVinchi code you’d have to read the book.”

    And that should never be the case.

    “Obviously you’v neve seen Lady In the Water, Black Christmas, Little Man, which all deserve to be on here.”

    Right you are. I did not see those films. The former two, I would’ve seen if I would’ve been able to. But “Little Man” - ugh. I could barely make it through the TV ads or print ads without mentally wretching. In a better world (for me at least) I’d have time for more screenings and reviews, and who knows, maybe I would’ve seen enough other crap that lesser offenders like “Lucky Number Slevin” wouldn’t have made my worst list.

16. samira 04/21/2007 @ 3:50am

    please send summary film davinchi code thanks

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