Kristopowitz’s Top 5 Movies That He Hates: Batman Begins, Pulp Fiction, More

The Top 5 Movies I Hate

Over the years I’ve been writing on the internets, I’ve found that it’s much more fun to write about movies that you like than movies that you don’t like. It’s never any fun to write a bad review for a movie that just doesn’t work for you. Sometimes you have to do it, though, because not every movie is great. Sometimes, you just hate a movie.

And so, without any further what have you, here are my Top 5 Movies I Hate.

Honorable Mentions

Blade Trinity: Written and directed by Blade franchise creator David. S. Goyer, this movie is just a mess. The story stinks, the idea of Blade fighting Dracula is underdeveloped, and it’s obvious that Goyer would have much rather made a Nightstalkers movie with Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel. Even the action is lame, and that’s half the joy of the first two Blade movies. Killed the franchise, although it did sort of lead to a decent TV show. Wesley Snipes should have gotten another chance to be Blade.

From Dusk Till Dawn: I’d probably like this movie more if Quentin Tarantino hadn’t been in it. He’s a terrible actor, and having to look at him for so long is just an excruciating experience. And I really don’t care if Tarantino wrote the script, is best friends with director Robert Rodriguez, and it’s a love letter to B-Movies and exploitation cinema. It’s awful. Why couldn’t Steve Buscemi be Richard Gecko?

Against the Dark: Easily the worst direct-to-video Steven Seagal has made, appeared in. On paper it sounds like a brilliant concept: Steven Seagal vs. vampires in a sort of post-apocalyptic world. The reality is it appears as though the producers were making a low budget, direct-to-video horror movie that didn’t work but needed star power so it could get distribution, so Seagal and his “team of mercenaries” was added in so Seagal’s name could go on the front of the DVD box. Seagal is in the movie for like 5 minutes, though, and he doesn’t do much in that ten minutes. What a waste of an idea.

Battlespace: Easily one of the worst movies ever made, this mega low budget sci-fi “movie” is a fine example of what writer/director Neil Johnson brings to the table: a movie that always looks kind of good but is, instead, incomprehensible and utterly boring. And every Neil Johnson movie I’ve seen is like that. People used to ask how Uwe Boll could keep getting money to make movies. Uwe Boll is Martin fucking Scorsese compared to Neil Johnson. Do not seek out Battlespace or any of Johnson’s movies. They’re just not worth your time.

5-Hatchet III : The first two Hatchet movies were fun, gory slasher comedies that were both send ups of the slasher genre while also being well done slasher movies in their own right. The third movie in the Hatchet franchise, Hatchet III, is just mean-spirited garbage. It’s incredibly violent with a high body count but it never once feels fun the way the first two movies did. Victor Crowley just kills and kills and kills and it’s a slog and a half. This is mostly due to franchise creator Adam Green stepping away from the director’s chair so BJ McDonnell can direct for the first time. That’s cool, sure, because McDonnell got a chance to make a movie and he’s technically brilliant, but he doesn’t have the same goofy touch or eye that Green did. The Hatchet franchise improved dramatically in Victor Crowley, as Green returned to direct and the whole enterprise was fun again.

4- The Shining: The Shining looks great, is visually stunning, and has a top notch cast, but it’s not the least bit scary. You know that Jack Nicholson is bat shit fucking crazy before anyone gets to the Overlook Hotel, and the only real suspense in the movie involves when, exactly, Nicholson will go completely off the deep end. And even then, so what? I just don’t understand what it is people find so appealing about this movie. I will admit, though, that the stories surrounding the making of the movie are interesting. All of that effort to make a movie that’s ultimately lifeless. The mini-series directed by Mick Garris is better.

3- Jennifer’s Body: Jennifer’s Body is the kind of horror movie you get when people who really don’t know how to make a horror movie make a horror movie. It’s just a relentless mess from the second it starts. The bullshit about the Satanic rock band that turns Megan Fox into a succubus, the middle part where Amanda Seyfried talks and talks and talks and nothing particularly scary happens, the big confrontation between Fox and Seyfried that is incomprehensible, to the ending where, I guess, they were “really” making some sort of quasi-superhero movie, the whole thing is just pointless. I mean, did director Karyn Kusama and producer Jason Reitman think they were making some sort of “elevated” horror movie here? It’s just mind boggling to me that anyone involved in this thought they made a good movie in the end. I really wish Mary Lambert made this. She would have at least tried to make a scary movie. Or Mary Harron.

2- Batman Begins: I have three basic problems with Batman Begins. First, it spends way too much time on Batman’s origin story, something that the world already knows and, cinematically, isn’t that interesting. Does any Batman movie really need to spend almost an hour on this shit? There’s like ten minutes, at most, of story there. Second, the whole Scarecrow section of the movie should have been its own movie, but instead is the underdeveloped middle part of a movie that is already way too long. And third, the idea of the League of Shadows, led by badass Liam Neeson, is a great idea for a movie, too, so why the hell isn’t that the bulk of the movie? You know, Batman trying to stop that from happening? There’s just so much in this movie that’s totally unnecessary. I get why the Batman franchise had to go in this direction since Batman & Robin was such a disaster. The world wanted a “serious” and “dark” Batman movie. It’s too bad Christopher Nolan and company couldn’t have also found a way to make a serious and dark but also sort of fun Batman movie. The Dark Knight is better but not much better. The Dark Knight Rises is the best of the three Nolan movies but that movie, too, has serious problems.

1- Pulp Fiction: I’ve really tried to like this movie but I just don’t. There isn’t a second of it that I find appealing. I hate just about every character in the movie, I don’t really care about anything that happens in the movie, and it’s a prime example of why I find Quentin Tarantino exhausting. You get the sense that he’s so in love with himself from the second the movie begins (and by himself I mean his script) that it just overwhelms the entire thing. And the experience, at least for me, is just boring as fuck. Who cares about any of this? Why is this entertaining? I don’t know. I don’t get it. I don’t think I ever will.

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