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• It’s the tenth anniversary of Millennium Eve.

  December 30, 2009 @ 11:41 pm | by Donald Clarke

  And, of course, the end of a strange decade. To celebrate, The Ticket returns, for one week only, to Thursday’s edition of the paper. Happily, the supplement is as packed with unmissable feature articles and transcendent filler as ever.

  

  Why has Screenwriter put a picture of us on this post, we wonder.

  If you can bear one last list — oh go on, just one wahfer-thin leest — have a glance at the final deliberations of the Dublin Film Critics Circle. A few weeks ago, my colleagues and I had a slap-up lunch and voted for the best films of the year and the decade.

  The ten best of 2009 was as follows:

  1.    Let the Right One In
  2.    The White Ribbon
  3.    Up
  4.    The Hurt Locker
  5.    The Wrestler
  6.    Il Divo
  7.    A Serious Man
  8.    Mesrine Parts 1 & 2
  9.    Slumdog Millionaire
  10.  District 9/Moon

  No surprises in the top three. Let the Right One In, The White Ribbon and Up seem confirmed as the unshakable critics favourites of 2009. Interesting to see Mesrine figuring so high. I have to say, I felt it began to outstay its welcome halfway through Part II.

  Here’s the decade poll:

  1.    There Will be Blood
  2.    Downfall
  3.    Brokeback Mountain
  4.    The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
  5.    The White Ribbon
  6.    Hidden
  7.    United 93
  8.    City of God
  9.    Little Miss Sunshine/In The Mood for Love.
  10.  Spirited Away

  Now look, I don’t want to start a fight — I know many readers sided with my fellow reviewers here — but I really don’t think Downfall belongs at the very top. It’s an excellent film, but it’s really all about the performance. If Oliver Hirschbiegel directs another truly great film then I’ll eat my own head. (In case you’re wondering about the odd discrepancy as regards the relative positions of The White Ribbon and Let the Right One In in the 2009 and decade polls, there was a slightly different electorate for the two votes.)

  We also decided that Waveriders was the best Irish film of the year — though I voted for The Secret of Kells – and that the award for best Irish film of the decade should be shared equally between Hunger and Adam & Paul. You can have a gawp at the full results here.

  Also, in today’s Ticket, I ponder what cinematic delights are coming your way in the New Year. Yeah, we’re all gagging for Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Sure, we can’t wait for Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. But I know what’s really got you juddering with hopeful anticipation.

  

  Good grief! This looks awesome. We have been deprived of J-Lo’s talent for so long that this is akin to receiving a new novel from J D Sallinger. Then again, the film looks so different from her earlier work — it’s a romantic comedy involving pregnancy — that it is, perhaps, more like receiving a new opera or an original public sculpture from Mr Sallinger.

  Alas, you’ll have to wait until March for the film itself.

  Oh yeah. So why did we put a picture of Galaxy Quest at the top of the page?

  Comments (9)

• Grand Theft Auto IV and double time-wastage.

  @ 1:58 am | by Donald Clarke

  I’ll tell you what I hate about Grand Theft Auto IV. Bloody nothing, that’s what. Who knew recreational murder, casual arson and amateur car theft could be such darn good fun? In all the chatter about the best of the decade, the arrival of that gloriously amoral video game — resurrected from its top-down rudiments as Grand Theft Auto III in 2001 — has been scandalously overlooked. You didn’t get to blow up an oil refinery when reading Atonement. That bleeding Arcade Fire album offered no opportunities to slit the throats of strolling nuns. Does anybody get hacked to pieces in the average Martin McDonagh play? Erm. Okay. That’s a bad example. But, you get the point.

  

  Die, die, die! Oh God, I feel awful about myself. Die you motherf**ker!

  If, rather than listing best plays or best films or best operas, we stopped to list best stuff of  the decade then the Grand Theft Auto series would stroll into every sensible maniac’s top five. But, here’s the issue. There is something that annoys me about GTA and it’s annoying me right now. The so-called Sandbox genre — games in which you have the freedom to wander about an imagined world randomly — has introduced a entirely new class of guilt-within-guilt to the human condition. Here’s what I mean. If you have work to accomplish — as I do this week — then, when you displace yourself into GTA and begin murdering passersby, you, quite inevitably and quite properly, feel bad about yourself. Oh, no. I’m crashing cars into buses when I should be designing cathedrals or unplugging drains (or whatever it is you do).

  Meanwhile, within the game, rather than accomplishing the allotted missions, you find yourself idly firing at police helicopters or trying on new clothes in the boutique or attempting to jump motorbikes across urban ravines. “Oh Lordy,” you mumble to yourself as your wanted level creeps towards a fourth star. “I really should be delivering that package of cocaine to the  prostitute on the subway. Hang it. I’ll just slit a few more throats, try on a few more leather jackets, play a game of pool in the bar and then I’ll get round to it. I promise.”

  The work doesn’t get done. The missions don’t get accomplished. But the awful mayhem continues. Two levels of guilt eat away at you ruthlessly. Even J G Ballard didn’t imagine that happening

  Comments (3)

• Ah, the madeleine that is Rodney Bewes…

  December 24, 2009 @ 2:33 pm | by Donald Clarke

  In a classic Christmas episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? Bob Ferris found himself being diverted from his usual Christmas Day activities. “But The Great Escape is on. Isn’t it? It usually is,” he whined. Now, this was, at the time, regarded as a very funny joke indeed. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, we were, in the 1970s, incredibly simple people who still regarded fire as a gift from the gods and who would laugh crazily at, say, a novelty potato mounted on a coloured stick (or at Jimmy Cricket). Secondly, the notion of television referring to itself was still quite unusual — post-modernism was then the preserve of two obscure Frenchmen — and the idea that the medium might eat its own feces seemed genuinely unsettling. But, more than anything else, the joke was funny because (excuse the ancient cliché) it was true. Back then, the concept of the Big Christmas Film still had some currency. It seems hard to credit, but the first screening of, say, The Towering Inferno on telly was an event of some significance. Following the advance of video, the arrival of console games and, now, the opportunity — legally or not — to download films, the annual “first” screening of Harry Potter and the Endless Franchise seems about as enticing as a game of poke-the-leper.

  

  Come inside, Bob. 633 Squadron is on.

  You know this. The first articles moaning about this phenomenon were written more than 20 years ago. Yet it is amusing the way we newspapermen continue to write previews of the Christmas movies on mainstream television. Obviously, like everybody else, we’ll spend Christmas day playing Grand Theft Auto or watching You Tube lolcat videos, but we have to maintain the pretense that a midday Stephen’s Day screening of Garfield 2: A Tale of Two Kitties still matters to someone.

  Anyway, I set myself the task of finding one film over the next three days that you may not have seen in the cinema and that positively demands attention. Restricting myself to basic cable — no BBC4 or Sky indie — I eventually happened upon the imperishable Build My Gallows High at 1:50 am on Stephen’s night (or, more accurately, the morning of the 27th). Also known as Out of the Past, Jacques Torneur’s film noir features a career-best performance from Robert Mitchum and so much dryly witty dialogue you could almost call it a comedy. It was remade as Against all Odds, but that film bore the same relationship to its source material as dogfood bears to a horse. If that tickles your fancy then check out the other noir gems showing as part of BBC2’s late-night noir season: Farewell My Lovely, Dead Reckoning, The Big Combo. Or don’t. It’s your bleeding Christmas. If you insist on playing with your children or caring for elderly relatives there’s nothing I can do to stop you.

  (Beware! Dodgy segue coming up.)

  I guess, in a few years time, the  TV stations will attempt to sell Avatar as the big Christmas movie. Despite its early bad buzz — and, to my mind, being only modestly good — it has gone on to receive absurdly positive reviews in the US (though much less excited ones on this side of the Atlantic) and has now been installed as favourite for the best-picture Oscar. You can’t keep Uncle Jim down.

  Merry Christmas to him and to you and to all the little children.

  Comments (3)

• But not for viewers in Northern Ireland.

  December 21, 2009 @ 11:09 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Armando Iannucci used to do an excellent routine in which — remembering his childhood — he’d impersonate a BBC continuity announcer detailing the array of delights set to be broadcast that evening. I can’t remember the exact details, but I think he described unseen episodes of Star Trek featuring John Coltrane interspersed with in-depth interviews between Fidel Castro and James Dean. That sort of thing. Then, after raising expectations to breaking point, the imaginary announcer would say: “But not for viewers in Scotland”. A trailer  featuring Andy Stewart bawling at a frolicking haggis would then manifest itself before the young Armando.

  

  “Alex Maskey! Do you get it? Do you?”

  He had it lucky. Most readers will now have access to several hundred channels on their televisions. Who cares if the stunningly unfunny May McFetridge is occupying the space that BBC London (say) has allocated to Noam Chomsky? You can always switch to BBC 4 or Sky Movies or the ferret-stuffing channel. A few older, more Northern punters may, however, remember the enormous disappointment when, during the three-channel 1970s, some science-fiction epic or raunchy inner-city drama failed to come the way of “viewers in Northern Ireland” because the people of Ulster insisted on watching f**cking motor f**king sports all the f**king day long. “And now, in place of coverage of our Lord’s second coming, we have go-kart racing from Downpatrick.” If it wasn’t f**king motor f**king sports it was the feeble comic stylings of some witless cretin who would barely get a job cleaning the lavatories in an English — or even Welsh — television station.”How’s about ye! See yer wee woman from the Shankill? Maisie ye call her. Gawd she’d make ye want to boke.” Shut up! Why  do you think being Northern Irish is funny in itself? Do a joke!

  In short, we ached for the likes of Andy Stewart.

  Some excellent television programmes have, of course, come from Northern Ireland. Indeed, you could argue — with absolute sincerity — that BBC Northern Ireland and UTV together delivered the most cutting dramas, the most incisive current affairs programmes and the most thrilling action shows of the last hundred years. Like Fermat when announcing his proof, I do not have space to list the evidence here, but I will do so in a future post. You can count on that, readers.

  I do, however, have a teeny, tiny issue with Northern Irish comedy programmes. Ms McFetridge is on my television as we speak and the grey pall of non-humour emerging from the device is so thick and fetid that I can barely breathe. What year is it? Is there anywhere else in the world where such a singularly awful drag act could find work? Surely, even the comedy troupes of Turkmenistan have got beyond this now.

  The tribunes of Northern Irish TV comedy remain, of course, the team behind the jaw-droppingly extraordinary Give My Head Peace.  This ghastly sit-com, now happily deceased, offered a terrifying practical demonstration of the delusions that define the province’s unlovely comedy culture.

  1. Being Northern Irish is, in itself, funny.
  Saying “’bout ye” or  “Ulster fry”stands as a joke.

  2. Simply mentioning any well-known local politician deserves a laugh.
  Whatever the set up, “Alex Maskey” will work as a punchline.

  3. High culture of any sort is also inherently hilarious.
  Ballet or “modern art” will always raise a laugh.

  4. The English wear bowler hats and say “jolly good” all the time.
  “Oh, I say! What do you mean, Uncle Andrew?”

  5. Americans wear cowboy hats and say “howdy” all the time.
  “This here little country ain’t big enough to park ma Cadeeelac in. Yee ha!”

  6. Being Northern Irish is, in itself, funny.
  Yeah, I know we said this before, but it really does explain all you need to know about this horrific, horrific movement.

  Oh, and, since you ask, I was raised in South Belfast.

  Comments (24)

• Trailerspotting goes down the rabbit hole in search of Irish films.

  December 18, 2009 @ 11:53 pm | by Donald Clarke

  What’s the most eagerly awaited film of 2010? There’s a stupid question. If you’re a big fan of the excellent Jennifer Lopez and her many splendid romantic comedies then you will, no doubt, be slavering for The Back-Up Plan. If, on the other hand, you have long admired the way Hollywood treats Irish mores and habits — you know, the way it never patronises us — then you may have high hopes for the promising Leap Year. If you like to watch Robin Williams in light-hearted, quasi improvised lad-coms then… What the hell is wrong with you? You should bloody see somebody about that.

  Where was I? Oh, yes. I reckon the mainstream film that most people circling this “blog” are interested in just might be Tim Burton’s upcoming adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

  

  Now, at the risk of bringing down the wrath of cinephiles everywhere, let me just tentatively note that I have never been entirely sure about Tim Burton. His films do look quite nice — particularly if you’re a sulky goth — and he does have great taste in actors: Michael Gough, Christopher Lee, Christopher Walken and, of course, Johnny Depp. But his work too often lacks a centre. You know what I mean. Mars Attacks! is funny, but the story flails around so much you end up feeling quite dizzy by the end. Sleepy Hollow is set design in search of a story. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was so shallow it could have stood as a work of conceptual art. For me, the best Burton films are the least fussy: Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and — the one film of his I think a genuine gem — Ed Wood.

  So what do we make of Alice? Well, not that it matters, you wouldn’t say it looks very true to the original. The Lewis Carroll version managed to be unhinged while still remaining sober. (Carroll was a mathematician after all.) The Burton adaptation appears to be tending towards the screamingly camp: Alice reimagined by H R Pufnstuf’s fabulous younger brother. Also, the trailer suggests that the writers have worked a little too hard at expanding and fluffing up the original story. Another Where the Wild Things Are would be bearable. Another Popeye would not.On the upside, Depp has finally managed to win his long, backwards and forwards conflict with the English accent. The cat looks cool and Tweedledum and Tweedledee seem properly scary. I’m still not quite sure.

  On an unrelated note, you may like to ponder my consideration of the best Irish films of the decade in today’s Ticket. The good news is that the debate is now one that’s really worth having. My final five were Hunger, Adam & Paul, Once, Intermission and Pavee Lackeen.

  Comments (18)

• Golden Globessszzzzzz…

  December 15, 2009 @ 5:25 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  I sense that awards fatigue is already setting in among readers, so I’ll just offer a brief paragraph on the announcement of the Golden Globe nominations this afternoon. There weren’t many surprises and our pointers towards the Oscars — for which the Globes are, despite what you might hear, no great predictors — remain largely unaltered. The big three are still The Hurt Locker, Precious and Up in the Air, all of which received nominations for best dramatic picture. Avatar, coming up on the rails, defies early bad buzz to become an awards player and Inglourious Basterds, boosted by the Weinstein’s goon squad, also secures an unexpected number of nods. The biggest surprise was, perhaps, Basterds beating Clint Eastwood’s Invictus to a best dramatic picture nomination. Is it all over for the great man’s study of South Africa’s attempt to win the Rugby World Cup? Not at all. Clint is nominated for best director and Morgan Freeman gets a nod for his turn as Nelson Mandela. The film will certainly be one of the 10 best picture nominees at the Oscars and could, erm, manage a scrum turnaround to score a late try-goal. (Could somebody tutor me on rugby metaphors before the blasted thing opens?)

  The big loser remains the poorly reviewed The Lovely Bones. After its kicking from the American press, nobody much expected Peter Jackson’s adaptation of the Alice Sebold novel to get a best picture nod, but our own Saoirse Ronan looked like a good bet for the best dramatic actress shortlist.  Sadly, the call did not come.

  The most outrageous exclusion is, however, A Serious Man in the best comedy or musical category. How to put this? The Coen Brothers latest is one of the very best films of the decade; Julie & Julia does not even deserve to pass water in the same lavatory. Stupid Hollywood Foreign Press Association! (Whoever the hell they are.)

  Ricky Gervais hosts the awards on January 17th.

  Comments (19)

• Update on the Oscars.

  December 13, 2009 @ 10:23 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Back in the summer, the Academy surprised virtually everybody by announcing that the number of nominations for the best picture Oscar was to go up from five to ten. The strategy was not hard to discern: as less mainstream films dominated recent award seasons — flicks such as No Country for Old Men and Slumdog Millionaire — viewing figures for the ceremony plummeted. Punters want their movie stars.  With 10 films in the running, voters were sure to plump for a few mainstream releases featuring men with chiselled jaws and ladies in nice dresses.

  

  Mr Imhotep, one of the younger Oscar voters, seems unmoved by Bride Wars.

  Well, the plan doesn’t appear to be working out too well. Soundings of Oscar voters have so far detected few psephological surges for mainstream critics’ favourites such as the smashing Star Trek or the splendid District 9. Worse still for the Academy, many of the supposed early front-runners — fat films based on Oprah-friendly books — have crashed badly with the reviewers. Some weeks ago, writing in this place, I ventured the 10 films I felt likely to receive  nominations. The following phrase appeared in the introduction: “It all could change if The Lovely Bones gets a kicking or Nine lives down to the standards of director Rob Marshall’s distinctly iffy back catalogue.” Well, what do you know? Peter Jackson’s adaptation of the Alice Sebold book received just such a hammering from US critics. (To put things in perspective, it currently rates below 2012 and The Box on Metacritic.) Nine has only been reviewed in a few places, but the early notices are not exactly stellar. Elsewhere, The Road — which, toying with review embargoes, I’ll own up to liking very much — did just about okay with the scribes, but seems too grim for sentimentally minded Academy voters. Only one of the late finishers exceeded critical expectations: Avatar, which had been generating some negative buzz, got more than a few thumbs up from the trade papers.

  All this means that the game is very much up for grabs. The Road is still just about in the running, but it will require some nifty work by the brothers Weinstein — remember their masterpiece of manipulation for the largely unloved The Reader — to crowbar John Hillcoat’s picture into the top 10. Inglourious Basterds, the Weinsteins’ more commercial, more critically admired picture, now moves from mere hopeful to certain nominee. The favourites for ultimate victory are The Hurt Locker, Precious and Up in the Air.

  And a degree of uncertainty has now become, well, certain. That is to say at least one film in the final list will cause Oscarologists to stare disbelievingly at Variety and drop their monocle into the cereal bowl. Could Couple’s Retreat make the final grade? Or Bride Wars? Hey, worse films have won the blasted thing.

  Anyway, here’s my revised final 10. Once again, I offer the usual qualification: this is nothing like my own list of favourite films; it’s what I think the Academy will like.

  Up in the Air
  Clooney, Clooney, Clooney. Appeals to many demographics.

  The Hurt Locker
  Serious subject. Very well reviewed.

  Precious
  May have peaked too early. But greatly adored.

  Up
  The pick of visitors to Screenwriter, anyway. In this weird year it might (just) have an outside chance of becoming the first animated feature to grab top prize.

  Avatar
  Did all that whinging on the internet lower expectations enough to make the eventual film seem like a masterpiece? I’ll tell you on Friday.

  Inglourious Basterds
  Got some awful reviews on this side of the pond, but, in American terms, it’s a rare combination of critical and commerical hit.

  Invictus
  Weren’t you listening last time? It’s a Clint Eastwood film starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela.

  Nine
  Still in with a chance of a nom, I think. Daniel Day Lewis is, as ever, a cert for an acting nod.

  An Education
  Nobody went to see it in America, but it has that classy, foreign look the Academy loves.

  The Messenger
  Coming up on the rails. The sort of serious, actorly picture the performance wing will gladly vote for.

  Out: The Lovely Bones, The Road, and (alas) A Serious Man.

  In: Avatar, Inglourious Basterds and The Messenger.

  Comments (15)

• Up sweeps the first Screenies Awards.

  December 11, 2009 @ 10:59 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  No more Cone of Shame for you, Dug.

  Eager for displacement activity from real work, your host finally got round to scrolling down the comments on the best-of the-year post and assembling a readers’ top 10 for 2009. The rules were simple: I counted one vote for every positive comment made about a film. There was — somewhat surprisingly — just the one tie in the lower reaches and, benign dictator that I am, I used my casting vote to separate the two candidates. Here we go…

  10. The Wrestler

  9. A Serious Man

  8. In the Loop

  7. Anvil: The Story of Anvil

  6. District 9

  5. Inglourious Basterds

  4. Moon

  3. The Hurt Locker

  2. Let the Right One In

  1. Up.

  The results confirm how very wise contributors to this “blog” are. Seven of the top 10 appeared in my own list and only one failed to make my “bubbling under” codicil. The one that got away, In the Loop, got four stars from me on release and could very easily have snuck into the lower reaches of the Screenwriter Ten. Hell, you could write this “blog” yourselves.

  A few further points worth noting: the post was set up very shortly after A Serious Man was released, so its true position may be a place or so higher. Also, though I wasn’t convinced by Where the Wild Things Are, that picture may, I suspect, have picked up a few votes if it had emerged earlier. Then there’s Avatar and Nine. I am not yet allowed to reveal my opinions of either, but a couple of votes may, perhaps, have drifted that way too. It’s also worth considering that there were nearly as many negative comments about Inglourious Basterds as there were raves. Quentin’s flick thus wins the 2009 Marmite Award for the film you either love or hate.

  At any rate, none of this is to take away from Pixar’s achievement with Up. The best animated feature Oscar the studio will (barring a miracle) pick up for the picture may mean more to them than this inaugural Screeny, but, in the era before Pixar emerged, it would have been hard to imagine any animated feature winning such an informal poll in The Irish Times. Pinocchio in 1940? Not, I think, over His Girl Friday, Rebecca, The Philadelphia Story and The Grapes of Wrath. I can’t imagine Bambi would have beaten Casablanca and The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942.

  Anyway, it looks as if it will be a long time before John Lasseter and his crew will be forced to wear the Cone of Shame. Up, up and away.

  Comments (9)

• Ho hum, it’s the end of the year.

  @ 5:35 pm | by Donald Clarke

  After all the end-of-decade lists, our round-up of the best films from 2009 may seem like a little bit of an anti-climax. At any rate, today’s Ticket features a comprehensive analysis of what’s hot and what’s not from the big ‘09 (as nobody’s calling it). My pal Michael Dwyer makes a welcome return in this article, but please note that — unless it’s been corrected since I last checked — his second “top 10″ of 2009 in the on-line version should read “bottom 10″.  You knew that. It was never likely that our distinguished film correspondent would choose the vile, unfunny, misogynistic, chaotic Observe and Report as his favourite movie of the year.

  

  Stop moping, young lady. You won!

  If you can’t be bothered to click, here is Screenwriter’s top ten:

  1. Let the Right One In

  2. The White Ribbon

  3. A Serious Man

  4. Up

  5. Il Divo

  6. Anvil: The Story of Anvil

  7. Moon

  8. The Wrestler

  9. District 9

  10. Tales from the Golden Age

  Bubbling under were Star Trek, Synecdoche, New York, The Hurt Locker, Encounters at the End of the World, The Hangover, Inglourious Basterds, Orphan and Public Enemies.

  And here’s the poo:

  1. The Boat that Rocked

  2. The Ugly Truth

  3.  Bride Wars.

  4. Couples Retreat.

  5. Surveillance.

  Also in this week’s Ticket, I break ranks with most of my colleagues in the critical fraternity by remaining unconvinced by Where the Wild Things Are. Do still go see it, though. I await the avalanche of complaints.

  Comments (9)

• Tomorrow belongs to us!

  December 9, 2009 @ 2:57 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Am I alone in finding the current Meteor phone commercial absolutely infuriating? I’m talking about the one with the carol singers. Maybe it’s my  age or the fact that I wasn’t raised by baboons, but I simply can’t understand why we’re supposed to identify with the inexplicably competitive, horribly bearded wazzock and his mope-faced associates. Here’s the story: three slovenly student-types slope onto the pavement and, with little enthusiasm and less harmonic commitment, began muttering their way through a grudging version of Deck the Halls. Then a much more smartly dressed and infinitely better rehearsed choir arrives and treats the lucky pedestrian to a perfectly charming version of Oh, Tannenbaum.

  

  Celtic Charles Manson, Hugh O’Conor’s gloomier brother and Gwyneth Paltrow’s severed limb don’t much fancy being shown up in this manner, so they phone a bunch of their equally scruffy, no more well mannered  friends and proceed to drown out the nicely scarved choir with an oikish explosion of rugby-pub bellowing. As the unfortunate Tannenbaumers — too polite to retaliate against the bullies — slope sadly off to a less hostile corner, the victorious gang wave their fists aggressively in the air. What on earth is going on here? I don’t want to overstate my case, but this is how the Nazis started out.  You begin by pushing around a few blameless carol singers and, before long, you’re stomping into the Polish Corridor. Mark my words.

  Comments (51)

• Boo! It’s the five #$*!est films of the decade.

  December 6, 2009 @ 7:04 pm | by Donald Clarke

  You haven’t escaped from this end-of-decade stuff, yet. Oh no, my friend. There’s a great deal more of this idiotic list-making still to come. Obviously, picking the worst films released theatrically this decade is — for those of us infected by snark, at least — a particularly delicious activity. If, however, you write about film for a living then you are presented with several difficulties. For starters, we see a great deal of obscure garbage that only stays in cinemas for minutes and, were we composing an entirely objective list of the most unspeakable ordure, it could end up looking something like this:

  5. FeardotCom 4. Botched 3. I Want Candy 2. Paparazzi 1. The Calcium Kid.

  “Huh?” I hear you say. If you don’t watch films as part of your job — and you’re not an inmate of a mental institution — then I wouldn’t boast about having seen too many of that bunch. One or two of the titles above do, it is true, pass into that near-mythical so-bad-it’s-good territory — I wouldn’t have missed Botched for the world — but, for the most part, they induce such discomfort they should be banned by a UN directive.

  It seems unfair to include stuff that was really aimed at the straight-to-DVD market (such as FeardotCom) or pictures made on a very low budget (Botched, again). What we want is spectacular catastrophes from major studios or  films that have genuinely malevolent intent. Here, then, is the real bottom five. Having issued that proviso in the opening paragraph, I am aware that at least one of these films was seen by virtually nobody, but sometimes you have to sacrifice your principles for the greater good. That’s the Realpolitik of filth documentation, comrade.

  5. PUFFBALL (2007)

  

  It gives me no pleasure to reveal that one of most appalling films of the decade was by a truly great director. Nic Roeg came to Ireland and, rather than delivering a new Don’t Look Now, spewed up a borderline-racist pile of quasi-satirical hokum. The late-night screening at the Galway Film Fleadh seemed to last about 12 hours.

  4. CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS (2004)

  

  This, you’ll be surprised to hear, is the real answer to the question: “What’s the worst film ever based on a John Grisham book?”. Christmas with the Kranks  stands in for a whole raft of gut-bustingly unholy Christmas films — The Santa Clause 3, anyone? — that fouled up December throughout the decade, but, with its quasi-fascist argument for suburban conformity, it comfortably takes the mince pie.

  3. REVOLVER (2005)

  

  Is that the sound of clattering bullet shells or is it the noise of the audience’s jaws collectively dropping to the floor? For those of us who defended Guy Ritchie in the early days, this fantastically pretentious, monumentally boring voyage up his own ring-piece constituted a kind of awful betrayal. Maybe Sherlock Holmes doesn’t look so promising after all.

  2. SEX AND THE CITY (2008)

  

  “Just get me a really big closet?” Okay. Then I’ll lock all four of you in it, put a breeze block against the doors and listen happily as you starve to a deserved death. A controversial choice? It shouldn’t be. The movie — to a significantly greater extent than the series or book — is witless, reactionary bilge that seems intent on going to the lavatory over the most significant achievements of feminism. I’m so looking forward to the upcoming sequel.

  1. WHAT THE #$*! DO WE KNOW!? (2004)

  

  What now? Yes, this mind-numbingly dishonest, consistently deranged slice of new-age propaganda did actually play in a commercial cinema during the last decade. An attempt to use the physics of the subatomic to prove that big macroscopic objects such as you, me and that woman out of Children of a Lesser God interact in ways outlined by Dr Bonkers of the Mumbo Jumbo University, the picture would be funny if it didn’t have such sinister undertones. Featuring a great many students of something called Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, this terrible, terrible film — the dramatised sequences have to be seen to be believed — makes arguments that increasing numbers of otherwise sane folk take seriously. For all the wretchedness of, say, Norbit, you couldn’t say it pointed the way towards global collective insanity. Mind you, The Da Vinci Code was a different matter.

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• Readers SLAM Screenwriter’s best of the decade (not really).

  December 2, 2009 @ 11:21 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Well, wouldn’t you know it. For the first time since this blog started, due to a mild technological irregularity while holidaying, I was unable to moderate comments for a full 24 hours. As it happened, that was, of course, the day Screenwriter had by far the highest number of posts in its brief history. No surprises there, I suppose. Who doesn’t have an opinion about the best 20 flicks of the decade? Anyway, normal service is now resumed.

  To be fair, though there were dozens of posts suggesting omissions, you were, for the most part, very polite and acknowledged the impossibility of selecting a definitive list of 20 films. However, as the comments built up, the exclusion of one film in particular began to seem more and more conspicuous. In one of those mild ironies that make life worth living, I spent a good portion of Tuesday — the day the comment avalanche hit Screenwriter Gulch — wandering round the excellent DDR museum in Berlin. Over here we have a typical flat from East Germany circa 1982. Over there you can examine Stasi surveillance equipment. In the gift shop, you can buy a copy of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s fine thriller The Lives of Others. You know, that film the moron from The Irish Times failed to put in his top 20 of the noughties.

  

  Team America World Police? I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Send in the goons.

  In a good-natured post, Anton Chigurh (no doubt troubled by his own exclusion) suggested  that I was a “crazy jellyfish” for leaving it out. About a third of the posts also mentioned the Cold War classic’s omission. Yes, classic. Readers will be relieved to hear that the picture was in and out of the list during the hours up to deadline. Other frequently mentioned exclusions such as Adaptation, No Country for Old Men, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were also penciled in and, had it been a top 25, I suspect those five (with, maybe, The Descent and Dead Man’s Shoes running them close) would have made it into the winner’s enclosure.

  So, I couldn’t really, in all good faith, justify launching into a pondering of “what’s wrong” with The Lives of Others. It seemed to me to a deeply moving and thunderingly exciting picture. Perhaps it just felt a little bit — don’t yell, just a little bit — like a high-class soap opera. And I’m not sure young Florian shows that much directorial flourish. (But, then again, I hear you say, when a director can tell a story this well, he doesn’t need flourish). In any case, I still don’t think I would include the film if I were re-doing the chart tomorrow, but, when I see it in other folks’ lists, I nod in near-complete agreement.

  What of City of God? Fernando Meirelles’s electrifying tale of the Favelas has certainly picked up legions of enthusiasts and driven quite a few young talents scurrying behind a camera. Many here felt its non-appearence, to quote Murta, an “unfathomable omission.” Indeed, only Lives of Others had more supporters. Again, I think it’s a very fine piece of work, but, after several viewings, it still seems like the classiest, zippiest sort of penny-dreadful. It never quite made my long-list.

  What interested me most here, however, were the objections to inclusions and to two in particular. In the nine years that I have been battering keyboards for The Irish Times, the review that generated by far the greatest number of angry e-mails was neither my bored shrug at Harry Potter and Whatever it is This Year nor my facetious denunciation of Watchmen (though, as you can imagine, those notices did anger the Nerdisphere). It was my five-star rave for a film that received consistently excellent reviews elsewhere and (not that this really matters) picked up an Oscar for best original screenplay. Yes, a legion of readers hated Lost in Translation. And it’s still going on. Again and again, comments raged about Sofia Coppola’s odd comedy making in into the top 20 “Did Lost in Translation have to cheapen itself by trying to stuff in as much stereotypes as it did?” Fearghal said. “Totally empty” Mike said. “Lost in Translation sticks out like a sore thumb here,” Hairy Cake added. Phew! Well, I do acknowledge the problem with Japanese stereotypes, but, as a depiction of numbed dislocation and the emotional surges that result, it still seems right on the money. Surely it deserves credit for that gloriously romantic last sequence: the kiss, the unheard remark, the Jesus and Mary Chain? No? Does anybody out there still like the picture?

  The other highly contentious inclusion was David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. Now, since its release, this has been a Marmite film: you either love it or it makes you want to vomit. To those who preferred Eastern Promises, I would say that the latter picture is about as good a film as it is possible to make from a poor script. A History of Violence — though stubbornly odd — is a beautifully balanced whole that makes more sense the more you wallow in its ugliness.

  What else? Well, other films mentioned often included Donnie Darko, Requiem for a Dream and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (all of which I like). I was going to end by saying that I was amazed nobody cried out for The Dark Knight. Then, as I began typing this paragraph, Brian did just that. Well done, sir. You have provided us with our full stop.

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• The best bits of the outgoing decade.

  December 1, 2009 @ 2:52 am | by Donald Clarke

  (Unless you’re the sort of pedant who insists the decade ends in 2011. In which case, write a furious “rant” to the “letters” page.)

  I am not currently at my desk, so excuse the brevity of this note. Today, we published my humble suggestions for the films of the decade. Feel free to rant away about which films have been outrageously omitted. (Or, indeed, nod towards those that deserve their allotted position.)

  There may be a wee delay on the moderating of comments over the next day or so. Apologies again.

  

  There’s seems to be an omission here, sir!

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