This countdown of movies – all but one of which was nominated for at least a couple of Oscars – is not a list of the worst movies of the last decade.  Instead, it counts down ten notable cinematic critical darlings that simply do not hold up over time.  They are not necessarily awful films – though some are transcendentally terrible – and many have good performances, memorable scenes or even a classic character or two.  But overall, the effect of watching them again today is similar to what you might experience at your high school reunion when you see how that sexy cheerleader you once dated is now a bloated wildebeest with a tat on her meaty hock reading “Hope and Change.”  You just shake your head, asking yourself, “Man, what was I thinking?”

10.  The Departed (2006):  This Martin Scorsese film is not terrible.  It’s just not as great as everyone – including the Academy, which named it “Best Picture” and Scorsese “Best Director” – wants to believe.  You get the distinct impression that after overlooking Scorsese for real masterpieces like Goodfellas and Taxi Driver, the Academy and the critics made an unspoken pact to see that he finally got recognized for something.  Sadly, there’s no disputing that The Departed is at the tail end of the Scorsese pantheon.  Its tangled, implausible plot relies completely on characters making consistently poor decisions and being blind to the obvious. Leonardo DiCaprio is too pretty and too whiny as the twitchy protagonist.  Jack Nicholson competently chews the scenery but just seems bored with the whole thing.  Matt Damon, who is from Boston, is unconvincing as someone from Boston.  While Scorsese’s use of a Drop Kick Murphy’s tune deserves props, The Departed is waaaaaaaaay too long, and the “romantic” scenes between DiCaprio and Vera Farmiga bring the action to a flying stop.  Rent Casino instead.

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9.  Little Miss Sunshine (2006):  Yuck.  It was hardly the original, groundbreaking comedy that it was made out to be – and hardly a rightful Best Picture nominee.  It’s really just an intermittently amusing road movie – very intermittently.  We’ve seen a million versions of Alan Arkin’s potty-mouthed grandpa.  Whoa, an old guy who swears and engages in debauchery – mind-blowing!  Particularly annoying is the character played by Greg Kinnear, the father who is so stupid he actually believes in the American Dream.  That drew plenty of guffaws from the hipsters, as did the up-tight, repressed know-nothing characters during the climax who were actually dismayed at the sight of a six-year old doing a modified striptease to “Super Freak.”  Yeah, take that fathers who care about their families and people who disapprove of kids acting like little tramps.   Unpleasant, smug, and unfunny – these are hardly the qualities of a great comedy.

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8.  In the Bedroom (2001):  In the Bedroom is a ponderous, slooooooow, glacially paced talkfest that somehow earned five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.  It was hailed as uniquely moving, and that was true.  In fact, about half-way through it, I moved directly to the exit.  I admit that it was probably immature of me to yell to the remaining audience members that, “This sucks – I’m outta here!”  On the other hand, perhaps it makes me a fearless truth teller who refuses to allow society’s conventions to silence his patriotic dissent.  You be the judge – but whatever you do, don’t squander irreplaceable hours of your life on this train wreck.

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7.  Children of Men (2006):  No one can argue that this confused, depressing sci-fi flick about a dystopian future without children is not a technical marvel.  It is, as its Academy Award nominations recognized.  But it is also an intellectually bankrupt, confused mish-mash of hazy leftist tropes, green preachiness and hackneyed Hollywood clichés.  Apparently people stopped being able to breed because of capitalism or something – who knows?  And while you might think this would be the ultimate fantasy for the climate change scammers and other Earth First/Humans Last types, consistency is hardly Children of Men’s strong suit.  All people are bad, except the illegal immigrants flooding England, who are good.  And so are the terrorists, sometimes, but no one else is.  Here’s my advice:  If you have to watch the stupid thing, do it with the sound off and speed through the talky parts to get to the action set pieces.  You’ll thank me.

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6.  Mystic River (2003):   Mystic River is painfully slow and it’s so calculatedly actor-y, with hammy portrayals by Sean Penn and Tim Robbins, that you feel like Jon Lovitz’s Master Thespian should show up to yell “Acting!”  You half expect Sean and Tim to break the forth wall to announce “And scene!”  Look, their politics are terrible, but their commie preoccupations are nothing compared to these awful performances.  Overwrought acting and the grim, melodramatic story together made for one of the decade’s least pleasant film-going experiences.  See it with someone you dislike.

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5.  No Country for Old Men (2007):  Yeah, I know most everyone loves it and that it won Best Picture.  Yeah, I know Cormac McCarthy, who wrote the novel, is supposed to be America’s greatest literary treasure.  Well, I hated the book and the movie and wish I could get back the hours I wasted on them. The plot makes little sense, and it’s propelled forward only by having Josh Brolin’s character do the absolute stupidest thing at each decision point.  Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones both portray rural characters not as real human beings but as some sort of weird Hollywood image of what normal people are like.  Javier Bardem as the killer is initially interesting, but he suffers from Chronic Indestructibility Syndrome – the fact that he can’t be stopped kept me from caring that he wasn’t.  There are also gaping holes in the story where important events happen, but we don’t see them – just like in the book.  I suppose that it’s some sort of hip literary statement to tell a story by not telling it.  I guess I’m just one of those bourgeoisie knuckledraggers who demands his stories be coherent, interesting and actually told.

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4.  Superbad (2007):  This tiresome teen comedy got no Oscar nods, but it did earn an 87% fresh rating on Rottentomatoes.com.  I don’t know why.  Other than the amusing McLovin character, this was a pale imitation of truly subversive teen films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, yet it was hailed as some sort of cutting edge, revolutionary experiment in pushing boundaries.  And it did – of good taste, but without the laughs to justify the crassness.  Ridgemont dared to show its emotionally stunted, direction-less heroine seek out an abortion because she had no parental or social influences that provided her other options.  It made a powerful comment on the spiritual emptiness of a whole generation of affluent kids.  In contrast, the timid Superbad focuses on its lame protagonists’ efforts to buy-up beer and makes tampon jokes.  Edgy.  Superbad shows that if you expect nothing from your movies, you will get it.

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3.  Crash (2004):  I have to admit that I did not see this Best Picture winner.  When I first saw the trailer, the needle on my Liberal Sanctimony Detector went into the red.  No thanks.  So, allow me instead to quote a long-time friend’s assessment.  Crash is “an abomination.”  It belongs not on a list of the Top Ten Overrated Films of the Last Decade but “on the list of the Ten Worst Movies of All Time.”  Note that my friend is a proud liberal, so perhaps this provides some hope that those of us on both sides of our polarized American polity can come together once again on common ground, united in a shared contempt for Crash.

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2.  Pan’s Labyrinth (2006):  A bloody fairy tale set during the Spanish Civil War – how can that go wrong?  Where does one start on why this over-praised disaster is so lousy?  Well, there’s the child-like innocence of the communist guerrillas who are the heroes of the piece.   As anyone who knows anything about the Spanish Civil War knows, the reds spent a lot less time bravely trying to save little girls than butchering one another for insufficient political reliability.  How about the story?  Well, I still have no clue what it was about.  There’s a little girl, a mean fascist, some monsters, and then most everyone dies.  Like so many others of these over-praised films, Pan’s Labyrinth is boring, confused and generally unpleasant, and I wish there was a way to unsee it.

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1.  Lost In Translation (2003):  Sometimes you walk out of a movie and you know that it has, at some level, changed you.  Well, my life was measurably changed for the worse because I saw this film.  Watching it caused me physical, psychic and spiritual pain.  You haven’t been bored until you’ve been Lost In Translation bored.  Still, there are three good things about Lost in Translation.  First, Bill Murray is funny in one, or maybe two scenes.  Second, they use the awesome song “Just Like Honey” by the Jesus and Mary Chain on the soundtrack.  Third, it eventually ends.  Lost in Translation is just a terrible movie – dull, pretentious, and morally bankrupt.  Scarlett Johansson, whose ambition is apparently to prove that Winona Ryder is not the worst actress in human history, plays an immature, narcissistic, spoiled brat who whines her way through a trip to Japan.  Naturally, she is our heroine.  The problem is that the movie seems to think ScarJo’s character is awesome, and that the real problem is people keeping their commitments, fulfilling their responsibilities and forgoing transitory gratification.  Yeah, they sure called our society’s big problem – too many people not acting like selfish twits. 

Perhaps you have fond memories of one or more of these films.  Perhaps you recall enjoying, even loving the experience of seeing it back when it first came out.  Well, don’t take my word for it.  Put it on your Netflix queue.  Pop it into the DVD player.  But just remember – you were warned.

It’s my guess that a majority of those involved with the NEA — even those few who are talented — are always eager to roll over for left-wing politicians.  Partly it’s because they are so hungry for attention and partly because they lack anything resembling a moral compass. 

Allow me to give you a few notable examples of the way that people who earn their living in the areas of art and entertainment can voluntarily blind themselves to those matters that have moral implications.  Just recently, we got to watch a swarm of Hollywood retards climbing all over themselves in a rush to defend Roman Polanski, a piece of Euro-trash who confessed to having sex with a 13-year-old child.  All sorts of big name, small brain, celebrities lined up to sign petitions on his behalf.  By attesting to his character, they merely confirmed that they lacked any themselves. 

Hollywood is the place where the members of the Motion Picture Academy were once so angry at producer Jack Warner for casting Audrey Hepburn, instead of Julie Andrews, in “My Fair Lady,” that they refused to even nominate Ms. Hepburn for her terrific performance as Eliza Doolittle.  However, proving, as usual, that they shouldn’t be allowed to vote even when politics aren’t involved, these lunkheads then gave the 1964 Oscar for Best Picture to “My Fair Lady,” which enabled the very same Jack Warner to stride onstage to thunderous applause. 

Then there was the matter of Cliff Robertson and David Begelman.  When Robertson, an Oscar-winning actor, discovered that Begelman, the head of Columbia Pictures, had forged his signature on a $10,000 check, he blew the whistle.  After a police investigation, it turned out that Begelman had been financing his gambling habit with a lot of other people’s money, including Judy Garland, whom he had blackmailed.  The upshot was that Robertson had his acting career short-circuited, whereas Begelman, who was only sentenced to community service, was then hired to run MGM. 

Shortly after the scandal occurred, I happened to be having lunch with my agent in a restaurant loaded with Hollywood types.  When Begelman entered, there was such a flurry of people competing for his attention, you could have mistaken them for a covey of Cardinals vying to smooch the Pope’s ring. 

It’s not just actors, directors and producers, who act like dopes.  Consider writer Norman Mailer.  Perhaps because he was the fellow who once tried to settle a domestic dispute by stabbing the second of his six wives, Jack Abbott, who was serving time for bank robbery and murder, decided he’d be the ideal pen pal.  Mailer became so enamored of Abbott’s writing, he not only used his considerable influence to get Abbott’s book, “In the Belly of the Beast,” published, but got this career criminal paroled.  In New York, quite naturally, Abbott became the toast of the literati crowd, but only for a little while because six weeks after his release, Abbott stabbed 22-year-old Richard Adan to death. 

Saving the best for last brings us to Leni Riefenstahl.  In Berlin, in the 30s, as in Hollywood at any time, it wasn’t what you knew but who you knew, and Leni was a chum of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda.  Think of him as the head of Germany’s NEA.  It was Herr Goebbels who helped get her the opportunity to make “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia,” a couple of over-wrought “documentaries” dedicated to hyping the Third Reich. 

After the end of World War II and for the remaining half of her 101 years, American and European cineastes — the same twerps who do cartwheels over Michael Moore’s propaganda flicks — showered her with honors and acclaim.  This in spite of the fact that although she claimed she wasn’t a Nazi and would barely have recognized Hitler if she’d tripped over him, had said, “To me, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived.  He truly is without fault, so simple and at the same time possessed of masculine strength.”  Sort of sounds like Chris Matthews going on about Obama or Oliver Stone mooning over Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro, doesn’t it? 

In 1993, Riefenstahl had the gall to deny that she deliberately attempted to create pro-Nazi propaganda.  For good measure, she claimed she was disgusted that “Triumph of the Will” was used in such a way.  It was reminiscent of Captain Renault’s shock upon discovering that gambling was taking place in the backroom at Rick’s, all the while pocketing his winnings. 

Having seen her most famous films, I can assure you that unless you cut the movies up into a million little slivers of celluloid and used them for toothpicks, there was no other conceivable use for them except as Nazi propaganda. 

Moreover, in 1934, Riefenstahl said that “Mein Kampf” had made a tremendous impression on her. “I became a confirmed National Socialist after reading the very first page.  I felt a man who could write such a book should undoubtedly lead Germany.  I felt very happy that such a man had come.” 

She was so impressed with the book that she wrote the author a fan letter.  The letter led to a meeting.  The meeting led to her directing “Victory of Faith,” a movie about the fifth Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg.  So much for her claim that she really only knew Hitler from his photos. 

In fact, for someone who spent so many years churning out propaganda films, she was rather inept when it came to lying.  For instance, on one occasion she claimed that she was totally unaware that concentration camps even existed, while another time she swore that she only worked for the Nazis because Goebbels had threatened to send her to a concentration camp if she didn’t cooperate. 

Frankly, what confounds me is why she wasted even a single second lying about her past.  I mean, even if she had been good at it, why bother?  After all, sensible and moral people never believed her self-serving malarkey; and, as for the celebrity crowd, they simply didn’t care.  They never do.

Malden was instrumental in pushing the Motion Picture Academy to give a lifetime achievement award to writer-director Elia Kazan, who directed Malden in perhaps his best and most memorable role, that of Father Berry in “On the Waterfront.”

Kazan had been an outcast in Hollywood for several decades before the 1999 award, because of his opposition to communism. Malden’s support of him carried a great risk of ostracism by Hollywood’s political correctness police.

A measure of Malden’s integrity is that he was married to the same woman for seventy years and was surrounded by family members when he died.

By no means handsome or dashing, Malden was seen by critics as an Everyman type, but he did not settle for allowing his characters to be ordinary or dull. Having grown up in no privileged environment, he knew just how much strength it often took for ordinary people just to survive. Thus he invested his characters with real strength, regardless of whether the person was basically good or not. He succeeded purely on the strength of his acting ability and the availability of roles playing real adult human beings in real, dramatic stories.

Malden clearly made an effort to understand why his characters did what they did, and as a result his performances emphasize the characters’ freedom of moral choice and consequent moral responsibility for their actions. Thus his performances worked against the prevailing cultural notion that our actions are determined by our circumstances.

Malden had numerous memorable film roles, including Gen. Omar Bradley in “Patton,” the complex sheriff and former bank robber Dad Longworth in “One-Eyed Jacks,” the cuckolded husband in “Baby Doll,” the domineering father in “Fear Strikes Out” (an awful film), and of course as Lt. Mike Stone in the 1970s TV series “The Streets of San Francisco.”

The credit should go to producers Lawrence Mark and Bill Condon, although I can see why the streamlined show is a bit of a Rorschach test for viewers. If you love movies, and especially actors, last night’s show was respectful and enlightening. If you are inclined to dislike awards shows and actors, then the telecast would be pretty dreary.

I loved the multi-presenter set-up for the four acting categories. Each nominee was treated as a winner with a past winner talking about what made their performance one of the year’s best. It was cool to see people like Sophia Loren, Robert DeNiro, Joel Grey, Eva Marie Saint and Ben Kingsley take part in the presentation of major awards. (I had the opportunity to interview Kingsley when Schindler’s List was released, and he is a student of acting. He described another actor’s performance as “letting the monster out of the box too soon,” and it stuck with me.)

Next up for Hugh Jackman is X-Men Origins: Wolverine set for release May 1

As for Hugh Jackman as host, he was very different from the string of comedians we have seen in the job. He didn’t feel the need to riff on current events or politics, instead playing it as a fan, and the two musical numbers were hit-and-miss. I was really worried about the opening number until the Anne Hathaway as Nixon finale. It was a bit strained and a little desperate. The second number created by Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge!) worked better with Beyonce, the High School Musical kids and the duo from Mamma Mia!.

Overall, in the modern post-Bob Hope, post-Johnny Carson era, I rank Jackman in the upper tier of those that have tried their hand at the impossible job. He’s well below Billy Crystal and Steve Martin, but much better than John Stewart, Whoopi Goldberg and Chris Rock. It’s apples and oranges really, because Jackman is so different.

As for the structure of the show, I enjoyed the layout of the broadcast from screenwriting to cinematography to post-production and music. One of the reasons the show came in at less than 3:30 is that presenters handled multiple categories. Steve Martin and Tina Fey were an inspired pairing. The same can be said for Natalie Portman with a Joaquin Phoenix-style Ben Stiller.

The two hilights of the show? First, there was Judd Apatow’s inspired mini-feature starring Seth Rogen and James Franco in their Pineapple Express characters, randomly recruiting two-time Oscar winning DP Janusz Kaminski to be part of the fun. Hilarious. The other high point was the way that the three Oscar nominated songs, winner Jai Ho and nominee O Saya from Slumdog and Peter Gabriel’s Down to Earth from WALL-E were blended together seamlessly with a mix of Indian dancers and African rhythms and John Legend stepping in on vocals for Gabriel.

Danny Boyle refrencing Tigger while accepting Best Director was nice. Kate Winslet was more put-together during her speech than she has been at previous awards stops, and Sean Penn was Sean Penn. “You Commie – homo-lovin’ sons of guns,” kind of says it all.

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.