I love a good movie as much as the next person. In fact, my favorite hobby hinges on the fact that there are good movies out there. But, as a self-proclaimed critic, the best movies for writing reviews are the bad ones. What can one say about Schindler’s List without going into a fluffy tirade of prose about how good it is, when the reader, for the most part, just wants to hear, “This movie rocks?” No, it’s the bad movies where the real meat is, where the reviewer can unlock his deepest, pent-up aggressions toward sloppy filmmaking and unleash, narrowing in on the direct causes that contributed to a picture’s downfall.

And in 2008, just like any year, there were a fair amount of movies that allowed me to play mean. At the same time, 2008 marks a continuing improvement on my part to avoid the movies I know are bad. One summer, way back when I was in high school, I went and saw just about every movie that came out – in theaters, no less – even if I knew they were going to be horrible. I was obsessed. I even backtracked to 1995 to see just about anything that had been released, just so that my database could be complete. When I could have been watching the classics of the century, I was instead watching some crappy movie from ‘97 that I knew was going to be bad.

One should not pay too close attention to reviews, because everyone has their own tastes and the more movies a critic watches, the more cynical he or she becomes. Nevertheless, there are movies that you don’t need a critic to tell you that they’re going to suck. And those are the movies I’m starting to weed out of my obsession, so I can focus on other important things, like my day job, friends, family and perhaps finding a girlfriend one of these days. (more…)