Very Bad Films (deliberate capitalisation)

Abominably bad. DOA. Heinous. The Covenant doesn't even rank as a guilty pleasure or as a 'so bad it's good' flick. It's just an atrociously dull piece of shit. Perhaps it would seem petty of me to harp on about its failings and list some of the reasons why I hate it. Oh well. Here goes:

* The pompous, pretentious opening titles: "No one really knows how The Power came to be..."

* The cosmetically pretty, but empty-headed, charisma free vacuum that is the cast. I had trouble telling them apart except by using my own memory flash-cards: The main, dull, good guy hunk. The overly emphasised suspicious one. The mullet one. The Draco Malfoy knockoff. The one who doesn't do anything except turn up when they all get together. The main girl. The other girl.

* The main girl distractingly was like a mini Julie Benz. I kept expecting her to vamp up, and thus maybe enliven the story. She doesn't vamp up.

* The constant semi-nudity. There's plenty of butt, and even though there's no dick or beasts (and there shouldn't be - they're supposed to be like 17), it felt like the movie was verging on some kind of seedy softcore flick in parts. This actually had the effect of making me feel sorry for the 'stars' of the film, who, inevitably will surely become coke-addicted Z-listers.

* The piss-poor, lazy, insulting way that 'The Power' is used as a metaphor for drug-addiction, adolescence and sexuality. Someone should make writer J.S. Cardone and director Renny Harlin watch Ginger Snaps and Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Or just never allow them to 'contribute' anything to cinema ever again.

* The way everything is fore-shadowed to death, thereby making every 'twist' predictable - nothing unexpected here. I half expected Christina Ricci to pause the movie and say in The Opposite of Sex style voice over that "this is like, duh! Important!"

* The nu-metal score. Enough said.

* The endless barrage of establishing shots of the school and the hospital, just in case we forget where this crap all takes place.

* The fact that these kids are supposed to be kids. Some of them look like they're in their early thirties for chrissake. Check out any of the scenes involving them 'at class' in their uniforms (which pasted together probably amount for less than three minutes of screen time).

* Sample dialogue: "Come to save 'lil Miss Muffet... have we? Oh you're too late! A spider came and sat down beside her, and frightened 'lil Miss Muffet away!"

* The awful anti-climax, which unsuccessfully cribs The Matrix in its good guy vs bad guy with pseudo-bullet time effects showdown, and which has a character reveal that was so unintentionally funny I spat my coke everywhere.

For those still interested in seeing The Covenant, allow me to spoil it for you: the good guy defeats the bad guy. But the bad guy might not actually be dead - allowing for a sequel. Shudder.

Well, this is just plain bad. There's a germ of a good idea here (possibly put to better use in Kairo, the Japanese film of which this is a remake which I've not seen) but it's absolutely fudged in the execution.

Ghosts (or spirits, or malevolent beasties or whatever they're supposed to be) find a way through to our world by means of a virus on the internet (ahem), which soon spreads through PDAs, cellphones, electrical cables etc. These nasties 'infect' the living, suck out their souls and turn them into suicidal wrecks - though the infected don't seem to follow through with taking their own lives until they first spook their friends, infect them and/or spout off some sage advise ("they're gonna get you too!"). There could be a metaphor here for how the new digital age has made us all soulless, cell-phone/internet dependant junkies, but it's one that gets troweled on too thick in the beginning and then promptly forgotten by twenty minutes in. And for a film that's so reliant on depicting technology in use to foreshadow its (horribly CGI rendered) ghosties, it doesn't even have the decency to be technologically savvy. So we get the cliché of chat-room conversations being conducted at light speed, characters making calls on their cells to their friends by typing in the numbers (hello, never heard of storing numbers?), and since when do text messages get received centrally aligned? Little annoyances add up and it becomes increasingly hard to suspend any kind of disbelief.

Pulse starts bleak and goes down from there - the whole movie drained of any bright color and the actors either playing their roles in mumbled/sombre mode or shrill and exaggerated. According to the credits the script was co-written by Wes Craven, but there's none of his trademark black humor or sardonic dialogue, and the teen-speak is unconvincing. There's no sense of the passage of time here, and the story goes from affecting a small circle of characters to, risibly, THE WHOLE COUNTRY in what seems like a few minutes. There are precious few scares since the CGI work is unimpressive and you know when something is coming because the telltale green/screen outlines appear, or the music-score suddenly screeches in out of nowhere. The most effective moment occurs in the background of a shot when a figure circling the top of a tower suddenly jumps to their death, a genuinely jolting moment that this film otherwise completely lacks. The downbeat, apocalyptic ending could also have helped to make the film worth watching had the decision to put a pretentious, irrelevant Terminator 2 style voice-over not been made.

Even the presence of personal hero, the inimitable Kristen Bell, is not enough to save this.

Surely in the year 2007 I shouldn't have to put up with homophobic rubbish like this that peddles easy, offensive stereotypes and then tries to do a 180 by having the lead characters 'learning a valuable lesson' (that they don't really learn anyway), and risibly become poster icons for the gay community?

I can't imagine for one second that the brilliant Alexander Payne (Sideways, Election), credited as one of the writers, could have been responsible for more than the pitch.

My best friend claims this is her favorite film of all time. I think my soul just threw up a little.

Urgh. Shudder. After spending the best part of two thirds of its running time objectifying women, in the most horribly misogynistic way possible ("half these girls are dumb cunts"), The Last Run tries to redeem itself by showing Steven Goodson (an icky Fred Savage) the error of his ways. Well, I'm not buying it. With the original American Pie films, however juvenile they may have been in execution and in terms of dialogue, they succeeded by presenting mostly likeable characters coming to terms with sexuality and being mature about their relationships. By contrast, The Last Run is populated almost exclusively by repugnant men and airheaded sex-mad women (flouncy, "not-that-hot" Amelia accepted). Lead character Steven is utterly repulsive, best friend Jack behaves out of character whenever it suits the narrative. Amy Adams, the only actor to hint at breaking free from the DOA script, has hopefully escaped the curse of ever having to appear in dreck like this again. I need a shower.

Jupiter Love, which started out intriguingly enough, very quickly became incredibly difficult to watch. Not because of any disturbing subject matter, but just because it's so dreary, un-relentless, pointless and boring. Anyone familiar with the cult UK TV Series Spaced will remember the character of Brian Topp: a struggling artist, whose pieces were filled with wanky self-worthiness; 'arty' and surreal for the sake of it. Of course in Spaced, it was played as pastiche and was extremely funny, but here Director/Writer/Actor duo Michael Andre and Nikka Kalashnikova are serious in their motivations. According to the statement on the official website, the film is about the "biological evolution of the sexes and the friction from their genetic collision". Which is presumably why the characters are merely know as "X chromosome" and "Y chromosome" (see what they did there?). With so little dialogue and not one, but two, repulsive characters whose reactions make no sense, and with an ineffective contrivance that wraps the film, the only thing that kept me watching was some admittedly stunning shot compositions, which include beautiful landscapes, sunsets, yellow grass etc. I suppose if you managed to find artistic merit in the thematically similar twentynine palms then you might appreciate this.

Keanu Reeves made an ingenious decision on this movie - not to star in it. Instead, we get Jason Patric, who is a poor substitue, and the action has moved from a bus to.... a cruise liner. Oh dear. Watch the Father Ted episode "Speed 3" instead.

If The Beyond represents Lucio Fulci at his best, then this is surely one of the nadirs of his career.

A serial killer, who uses a childish Donald Duck voice (and is actually only mentioned once as a 'ripper') prowls the streets of New York, butchering women in bloody, sexually violent ways. The police detective investigating the gruesome attacks enlists the help of a psychology 'expert' and together they try and track him down before he strikes again.

Exploitative, homophobic, insipid and violently misogynistic, The New York Ripper has little to recommend it save from some inventive camera work and murky color scheme. Almost without exception the women portrayed in the film are dim-witted, sex-obsessed prostitutes. Even the alleged heroine is without any redeeming characteristics. In addition, the men refer to women as bitches, dummies, little ladies and honeys. The story doesn't even have the decency to be half-way intelligent - the police come to ridiculous conclusions that turn out to be true and without irony (the killer is said to be "young, intelligent, affable, undoubtedly from a good family... there's only one minor defect", as well as "a very intelligent personality, with a refined, cultural family background" despite evidence to the contrary), and motivations make little sense.

The fact that the film has been banned in several countries unfortunately lends it curiosity value it frankly does not deserve. One to avoid.

The kind of film that gives GLBT cinema a bad name, 200 American is an amateurish, dreadfully scripted and laughably acted 'comedy-drama' that is neither intentionally funny nor dramatically impacting. It's a poor, facsimile photocopy version of Pretty Woman that doesn't have that films' guilty pleasure appeal nor a zillionth of the talent either behind or in front of the camera to make it work. The writer's attempts to pass of said similarities as knowing irony only makes the lack of originality more pointed. A low budget is not an excuse for a film to be a complete vacuum of interest, but that's what was encoded on the DVD that I watched.

Pretty much a complete waste of time; a blandly directed, incredibly badly acted and not even well written anthology of three short stories, strung together with piss poor animation sequences.

The first story, Old Chief Wood'n Head is a ghastly, cliche, unfunny and unscary tale of Native American justice, and features the worst performances. Next up, and little better, is The Raft which concerns four horny teenagers (though they look like they're in their late thirties) stranded on a, ahem, raft in the middle of a lake, whilst a malevolent puddle-thing that looks like a cross between puke and diarrhoea picks them off one by one. There are no surprises, bad gore effects, worse acting and the ending, presumably supposed to be shocking, is unintentionally hilarious. The final story, The Hitchhiker, which is also the most successful - though not by a long stretch - stars the rather repugnant Lois Chiles as an adulteress who mows down a hitchhiker and does a runner, only to be continually pursued by him over and over.

The back cover of the DVD (which for some reason I bought, and so will probably end up on eBay at some point) has a quote from the New York Daily News "as scary as anything you're apt to see!". Populated by some exceptionally dumb characters, pathetic 'acting', awful gore (tomato ketchup is chucked about liberally to little effect) and directed by a hack, the only thing scary about Creepshow 2 is that Stephen King and George Romero are associated.

An unwatchable mess with no break to the tedium in sight from the offset until the end credits, its 'based on a true story' credentials doesn't make this any more 'shocking', just highlights the fact that some people are stupid, ignorant or easily compliant fuckwits. Another of my Billy Baldwin guilt-flicks, another slab of boring Grade-A shite.

Urgh, this was appalling. One of those "look at me, I'm so trendy" early 90s films that flirted with bisexuality and/or a girl-guy-girl love triangle; the desperation here is palpable and the writing, acting and direction are all sub-sub-par. I sat though this when - for some reason I hope never to explain - I had a fixation for William Baldwin films. I don't want to talk about this anymore.

As dumb as they come, White Noise 2: The Light is a stinker of a film. A sequel only in name - the events here have no relation to the Michael Keaton failure - this is frustrating, wholly unoriginal fare. The dialogue is truly terrible (every conversation has a choice of clunkers) and the acting flat. Nathan Fillion and Katee Sackhoff are both very talented actors but even their gallant efforts don't help. They're frankly slumming it here - surely they didn't need a pay cheque that badly? As for the plot... being derivative is one thing, but White Noise 2: The Light has the gall to completely rip-off plot devices and twists wholesale from the likes of Final Destination, Unbreakable and Lost Souls to name but three. Director Patrick Lussier tries to disguise the unoriginality by throwing in so many camera tricks and unusual compositions (a couple of which admittedly are quite striking) that the film descends into campery, and the bizarre editing means that scenes transition without any logic. The biblical imagery becomes tired and eventually sickening and the ending holds absolutely no surprises. AVOID.

Urgh. This is bland stuff. There's a below-average 40 minute TV episode here, trapped in a 2 hour plus film, padded out with endless scenes, flat, sparse dialogue and some occasionally still impressive special effects. The first hour is particularly dull as the Enterprise crew are re-united with surprisingly little fan-fare. The central story of an artificial intelligence that is 'alive' is neither original nor interesting, the philosophising ("what is life?") is dull and the self-sacrifice is far from emotive. Odd that the writers should choose two new characters to center their film around - Stephen Collins and Persis Khambatta both give good performances but surely for the first big screen adventure the plot should revolve around the characters of Kirk, Spock et al? Shatner's delivery is, as always, affected and bizarre, and is especially horrible to watch in a film that is all po-faced sincerity, taking itself FAR too seriously. What a terrible film.

Wow, this is bad. Ok, I quite liked the production design, and especially liked the opening underwater sequence and the scene where Bening drives her car off the cliff near the beginning. But this is all flashy style over any kind of substance. Restless, chaotic, nonsensical and horribly plot driven, In Dreams features a toe-curlingly awful performance from the usually great Annette Bening and an eye-rolling, OTT act from Robert Downey Jr. I can't believe Neil Jordan made this film, it's utterly risible but too dull to be enjoyable, and doesn't even have internal logic. If you fell in love with the equally flashy The Cell then you'll probably appreciate this, too. I'm angry I wasted my time with this rubbish.

An awful wreck of a film, worse even that The Motion Picture, because whilst that was merely dull, this one doesn't even have the decency to feel like Star Trek. The search for god, of all things, is a horribly uncomfortable proposition for a Trek picture; Gene Roddenberry's future vision was a religious-less universe made up of atheists, but that is thrown out for this picture as the crew behave completely out of character to further the plot, which actually doesn't start proper until over an hour of the way through a 105 minute film. Incredibly slow paced, filled with juvenile attempts at humor and pratfalls galore, terrible special effects and a very rushed and completely underwhelming finale that says nothing worth hearing. This is the nadir of the series, an ego project for director and star William Shatner that fails on every conceivable level. Avoid.

The dodgiest Scottish accent I've ever heard on film, courtesey of the usually ok Paul Walker. Oh, and the story is terrible, the characters are awful, the direction a mess and the ending sucks. Worst Michael Crichton adaption ever!