“Troll 2″ is a movie so bad it’s great.  The same holds true for “Plan 9 From Outer Space” and “Showgirls.”

But 99.5 percent of terrible movies are just … terrible. That’s especially evident with the following five features, a quintet which cost millions to produce and yielded very little in return.

Dishonorable mentions include “The Change Up,” “Green Lantern,” “Larry Crowne,” “Sucker Punch” and “A Good Old Fashioned Orgy.” But these five movies went above and beyond the call of duty in draining precious hours from our lives.

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For the last couple days we’ve run several posts reporting on Sony Picture’s apparent decision to make a $50M+ soft money contribution to the Obama campaign a month prior to election day in the form of a Mark Boal/Kathryn Bigelow bin Laden movie.  The screenwriter/director tandem previously teamed up for the repetitive and subtly anti-military “Hurt Locker,” which won numerous Academy Awards despite not having a plot and pulling in a total gross domestic box office roughly equivalent to the opening weekend of “Confessions of a Shopaholic.”

But this isn’t Sony Picture’s only effort to subvert common decency that’s making headlines this week.  Their new film “30 Minutes or Less” is brewing up some controversy of its own.  From the Associated Press (emphasis mine):

PITTSBURGH (AP) – The family of an Erie pizza delivery driver killed eight years ago won’t be among those in line when the comedy “30 Minutes Or Less” opens nationwide Friday.

Brian Wells died when a time bomb collar he was forced to wear exploded after he robbed a bank. The movie plot features a pizza driver forced to rob a bank while wearing a time bomb vest. A spokesman for Sony’s Columbia TriStar Motion Picture group says the filmmakers and stars knew nothing about the Wells case, though he acknowledges the screenwriters were vaguely familiar with it.

The screenwriters haven’t responded to requests for comment through their agent.

Jean Heid of Erie is Wells’ sister. She says the movie isn’t funny—whether or not it’s based on her brother’s death.

Now that you know that the screenwriters (IMDB lists them Michael Dilibert and Matthew Sullivan) of this goofball buddy comedy starring Danny McBride (but I repeat myself) were inspired by pain and suffering inflicted on one man and his loved ones, watch the preview (above) again.  Go ahead.

Pretty messed up, right? (more…)

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What’s to Like

This comedy reunites Academy Award nominee Jesse Eisenberg with “Zombieland” director Ruben Fleischer, which could be a winning combination. The trailer reminds us that Eisenberg can be funny when given strong material and Aziz Ansari (“Parks and Recreation”) looks like a good sidekick for him.  “30 Minutes” could be another unconventional success story like “Zombieland”.

What’s to Dislike

The premise itself is extremely weak. It looks like Eisenberg’s character is forced to rob a bank after a bomb is strapped to his chest by men dressed like gorillas. If the script is funny, the movie could work, but the concept alone isn’t incentive to fork over your $12 ($14? $18?). Also, Danny McBride has appeared in a few clunkers recently so his presence in this film could foreshadow some problems with it.

The Verdict

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The Academy Awards for 2008 have been handed out, and the “popular kids” have Oscars on their mantles, but the dirty little secret about winning awards is that you’ve gotta campaign for them. Thousands of dollars were spent by the distributors and filmmakers behind Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight), Milk (Focus Features), The Reader (Weinstein) and other assorted winners and nominees, but not all performances received that sort of big money backing.

I am an unabashed lover of the acting craft. I see virtually every movie, large and small, that passes through the US marketplace, and, taking nothing away from Sean Penn, Kate Winslet, Penelope Cruz and Heath Ledger, not all of 2008’s best performances have been recognized. I’m not going to be obvious here. Clint Eastwood was snubbed for Gran Torino, but he received lots of acclaim for the role including being named Best Actor by the National Board of Review. My goal is to highlight 10 performances from last year that have received virtually no acclaim in the US. Many of these roles can be found in hardly-seen, under-appreciated movies that came and went without much notice. Each and every one of these movies deserve a spot in your Netflix (or Blockbuster) cue. (more…)