Dear Santa,

Why is it that no one seems to know how to make a good Christmas movie anymore? The last holiday film that I truly loved was “Love Actually”, which was released back in 2003. Since then, there have been a few that I liked (“The Family Stone” and “Fred Claus”), but being who you are, I think you have the right to protest this slew of lame and awful holiday-themed comedies or at the very least leave giant lumps of coal in the stockings of all these producers. It’s movies like “Four Christmases” that demonstrate how little Hollywood knows about making Christmas movies.

Instead of incorporating good and witty humor into their storylines, much like what I know has to be your personal favorite, “The Santa Clause”, producers these days seem to think audiences won’t come to see Christmas movies unless they’re filled with dumb slapstick humor (not the funny kind like in “Home Alone”) and bathroom humor. “Four Christmases” is filled with that stuff; it has a baby vomiting on a person on more than one occasion, a little girl inadvertently sticking a pregnancy test in her mouth after it’s been used and a man being pummeled by his UFC-trained “cage” wrestling brothers. By now Santa, you’re probably rubbing your forehead in frustration, and I share the sentiment. Obviously, you know that Christmas is better than a bad joke that falls flat on its face in almost every scene; with movies like “Four Christmases”, the good name of Christmas is getting dragged through the melted snow, and I think you should finally take action.

The movie stars Vince Vaughn (you know, that guy you almost had sued last year for using your brother’s name in a movie without your permission) and Reese Witherspoon. Their characters’ names are Brad and Kate, and they are an unmarried couple who are very content that way. Every year at Christmas, they create some elaborate, diabolical minefield of lies to get them out of actually spending time with their families so that they can take vacations to various tropical locations. If you actually delivered coal to adults, this pair would have enough to run their fireplace all winter. Each of Brad and Kate’s parents is divorced, so when their holiday trip to Fiji gets canceled due to major fog, they have no choice but to make the rounds to all four parental figures, hence the title “Four Christmases”. And Santa, if you’re wondering why Brad and Kate couldn’t just invite everyone over to their house, the answer is simply because then there wouldn’t be setups for different fun gags at each residence.

The parents are portrayed by Robert Duvall, Mary Steenburgen, Sissy Spacek and Jon Voight, visited in that order. What follows is a series of failed gags involving Vince Vaughn getting beat up and thrown around, and Reese Witherspoon being spit up on by babies and being attacked by children in a Moonbounce. Man, do I wish you could have come in and worked on this script!

So, I put together a short list for you of suggestions for fixing this and future potential Hollywood Christmas scripts:

1. Jokes that are actually funny. The jokes in this movie especially stink worse than expired eggnog, in particular the ones involving breast-feeding and baby vomit. This brings me to the next suggestion.

2. No babies vomiting, projectile vomiting, peeing on people or excreting any other bodily fluid while a character is within the target area. Putting stuff like that into a movie clearly shows how desperate you’re becoming, and you don’t want that to taint your image.

3. And finally, if you’re gonna have such refined actors in the roles of parents, make sure you actually give them something to do besides reading off perfunctory dialogue specifically written to cut down the actors playing their children. Otherwise, it’s all too clear that they’re in the movie just to dupe their own longtime fans into being robbed of their time and money.

I hope these are helpful suggestions and that I have successfully put you on alert for future bad Christmas movies. Oh, and this year, you can skip the houses of the four, count ‘em, four, writers who penned this screenplay.

I’m making my list of the year’s worst movies and checking it twice to make sure this movie is on it. Just one more question: are there any plans to progress to something worse than coal in stockings?

Rating: 1 star

Boy, 2008 was all over the map in terms of movies.  Most of them were torn down with varying degrees of critical hostility and, in the majority of those cases, the hate was justified.  From movies like 10,000 B.C. to The Happening, there have been some big stinkers among audiences this year.  What follows is my personal list of the ten movies from this year you should avoid at all costs, and if you have seen any of them already, then you have my deepest sympathies.  They are in descending order, with #1 being the absolute worst:

10. 88 Minutes - 88 Minutes was actually a movie I didn’t hate after my initial viewing, but as time went by and the more I though about it, I came to dislike it a lot.  Al Pacino, God bless him, is always a delight to watch on screen, but here he’s given material to work with that is just plain ridiculous (although not as ridiculous as that hairdo!).  Pacino plays criminal profiler Jack Gramm, who receives a call on his cell phone one day warning him that he has only 88 minutes to live.  Now, whereas most people would freak out and launch a desperate race against the clock to prevent such a thing from happening, Gramm seems not to care and casually carries on his discussion of a past murder case that may be connected to the threat on his life.  Does this guy have any idea how long 88 minutes is?  But Gramm walks through this movie as if he has all the time in the world, thereby taking away the time-crunch tension the plot presents.  But the most notable problem of 88 Minutes is how awful the writing is.  Let me share my favorite line of the movie: “I’m a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI!  Stop your car!”  Who says that in real-life situations?  Uh, that would be NO ONE!  But the screenplay essentially feels like it was scattered all over the floor by a gust of wind during the first read-through and when the producers were trying to get it back in order, they just said, “Oh, what the heck?  Let’s just film it like this!”  Plus, the film doesn’t even try to be interesting by aborting the notion of doing everything in real time, as it is 108 minutes long.  108 minutes of my life I won’t get back.  “Just give me more time,” Pacino says at one point in the movie.  Sorry, Al, but I have no more minutes to give here.

9. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - “I really hate mummies!” Brendan Fraser exclaims well into the flashy, fast and downright terrible hunk-of-junk that is The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, and I have to say that the feeling’s mutual this time around.  Now, I actually was really entertained by the first two Mummy pictures. This third entry into the franchise, however, moves from scene to scene without the lubricating humor or excitement of the first two; plus, did I mention it was terrible?  The first half-hour was especially mind-numbing, replete with boring scenes of stale dialogue and unbearingly fake British accents.  Strike one:  the absolutely great Rachel Weisz has been replaced with Maria Bello, in what could be the worst performance of her career.  Strike Two:  Rob Cohen, the man behind such dreck as The Fast And The Furious and XXX, is in the director’s chair this time, and he handles the action sequences like Michael Bay would on his worst day.  Strike Three: those darned Abominable Snowmen, who look so fake that you just have to laugh at them – like much of the rest of the CGI in the film.  I would also criticize the exhausted plot devices, the film’s serious lack of emotion, and the just really all-around bad performances, but I’m all out of strikes.  From now on, the undead should stay dead.

8. The Incredible Hulk - Fans wanted more action after Ang Lee’s 2003 film incarnation of The Hulk, and that’s precisely what they got in The Incredible Hulk.  However, there’s nothing really incredible about this version. It is deftly robbed of what little sense of character and story development that the Ang Lee version actually did have.  Style replaces substance in Louis Leterrier’s film and it in turn feels like a really bad video game.  The plot involves the teeth-gnashing General Ross (William Hurt) tracking the exiled Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) in order to extract some of Bruce’s DNA to manufacture an entire army of Hulk Soldiers.  The one glaring problem: what makes Ross think that he’ll have any control over this army once he creates it?  Because the entire point of Bruce hiding in Brazil is so that he can attempt to find a cure for the Hulk side of him that goes completely bonkers once unleashed. It’s not as if Ross doesn’t know -  I think the General needs to go back to the drawing board, as does Marvel Studios.  Marvel delivered one of the best superhero movies in recent years with Iron Man back in May, but a month later, they put this…thing in theatres.  They should have realized by now that The Hulk is their least interesting, least developable character and that any movie made about him will always be uneven.  In my opinion, Marvel has many better characters they could focus their attention on, and I personally hope that this is the last we see of The Hulk on the big screen, at least in his own movie.  C ‘mon, Marvel, just SMASH! the Hulk franchise already.

7. Mamma Mia! - I truly feel bad for anyone else who was dragged to the incessantly corny and nearly insufferable film adaptation of the stage musical Mamma Mia! This movie is so bad, not even the presence of the great Meryl Streep can save it.  You know, I absolutely loved last year’s big musical, Sweeney Todd, but whereas that film played like a smooth-flowing and hauntingly beautiful opera, Mamma Mia! instead plays out like a disjointed and bombastic karaoke night in Greece.  In addition, the songs are stretched out to the point where I felt like I was back in elementary school chorus on a really bad rehearsal day.  And the cinematography during the musical numbers certainly didn’t help, as that made the whole film feel like an overdone production of Riverdance. When the music is one of the worst things about a musical, you know something went wrong somewhere. Furthermore, Mamma Mia! manages to accomplish something that I thought no movie could possibly do, and that is it makes Meryl Streep completely and utterly bland.  Shame!  Shame on them!  And finally, the two shallow, giggly girlfriends portrayed by Julie Walters and Christine Baranski are the character equivalents of nails on a chalkboard.

6. Fool’s Gold - I have a question: where is the chemistry that stars Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson allegedly shared on-screen?  ‘Cause I gotta tell you, after the horrible How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days and now the equally bad Fool’s Gold, I just ain’t seein’ it.  In fact, Fool’s Gold has everything going on EXCEPT chemistry between its stars. Not that any of what’s on the screen holds our attention for more than a minute.  It’s weird, because for a film showcasing underwater fights and high-speed sequences with motor scooters, Jet Skis and a prop plane, it all becomes unimportant – quickly.  There was a certain point I reached while watching Fool’s Gold where I just didn’t care any more.  And I find it ridiculous that the film expects us to suspend our disbelief so much that we swallow the notion that these two characters would willingly push aside their distaste for one another, as well as their recent divorce, just to go treasure salvaging.  I’ll be sure to keep that in mind if I ever have a really bad break-up with a girlfriend.  I can’t see any real reason why Fool’s Gold was made, except to show off tropical locations that can be used to check your watch in the dark and the intense tans of its stars.  You know they have to be spray-ons.

5. Four Christmases – The D.O.A. holiday comedy Four Christmases is full of jokes that stink worse than expired eggnog.  It’s movies like Four Christmases that demonstrate exactly how little Hollywood knows about making Christmas-themed movies that are actually good.  This alleged comedy is bursting at the seams with both slapstick and bathroom humor, and I have to say that Fool’s Gold is looking funnier and funnier by the minute.  All Four Christmases does is give us scene after scene of uninspired jokes that fall flat on their face, yet surprisingly keep trying to make us laugh.  Cue the baby vomit!   Vince Vaughn can definitely be funny, but here he’s given an abysmal script penned by four – count ‘em, four – writers that have no real sense of comedic timing.  I know what the producers of this piece of junk are getting in their stockings this year: lumps of coal.

4. Twilight – Vampirical lust meets teenage hormones in Twilight, and the end result makes you want to search for a wooden stake.  Twilight is the romantic horror phenomenon for teenage girls these days, and I don’t doubt that the millions of them who’ve seen it by now were more or less satisfied with what they got.  Everybody else who sees it, though, will think it’s laughable, slow, badly acted and B-O-R-I-N-G!  I actually had the misfortune of reading the book as well, and let me tell you that compared to this film, the book is far more bearable – but that’s not saying much.  Really, NOTHING happens in the first hour and a half, but when things finally pick up in the last half hour, it’s far too late to salvage whatever potential this thing ever had.  I blame author Stephenie Meyer for this, because the book had a similarly nonexistent plot.  And when the villains of the story come in toward the end, you just can’t help but laugh because the only way to recognize that these people are the bad guys is that they walk in that super-cheesy slow motion while sneering at the good guys. They’re about as intimidating as regular teens who are mad at their parents for grounding them.  Add on top of that the fact that stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson have ZERO chemistry together, and you’ve got the ingredients for one of the dopiest movies of the year …and in case you can’t tell by now, I hated this movie.

3. Speed Racer – No, Speed, no!  Alright, I can appreciate that The Wachowskis (Matrix Trilogy) were trying something unique and different with Speed Racer, but what I absolutely can’t appreciate is the end product:  CGI run amok, a hyperactive, bubble-gummish mess that moves so fast, you’d think everybody involved in the production was on speed themselves.  Fortunately, I didn’t waste any money on Speed Racer in theatres, as I saw it via Netflix, but let me tell you that the experience would have been just as mind-numbing on the big screen.  And don’t get me started on Speed’s little brother and his pet monkey…in fact, now that I think about it, it was the monkey that gave the most tolerable performance in the entire movie.  In the year 2008, did Warner Brothers really expect us to be impressed solely by CGI, which in this case makes the film look all the more cartoonish and serves the sole purpose of trying to cover up the film’s paper-thin story.  And it seems theater crowds shared my sentiments.  For all I care, Speed can keep on driving his race car right past the Finish Line until he reaches the Land of Story and Character Development.

2. 10,000 B.C. – Talk about a train wreck of historical proportions – oh my God!  This obviously inaccurate “historical epic”, if you could call it that, is so bone-headed, cliche-ridden and downright laughable that you’d think it was written by Neanderthals.  The plot is so mired in exhausted plot conventions it wouldn’t be able to stay afloat if thrown a life raft.  And without a life raft, the story has its characters take what feels like a disjointed trek through an issue of National Geographic.  One minute, they’re in snow-covered mountain terrain; next they’re in a thick jungle and, finally, they arrive in a barren desert.  You know, I would’ve loved to see the location shooting sites on this film.  Now let’s see, what’s a writer to do in order to salvage whatever credibility hasn’t been sucked dry by this movie?  Stage both a slave AND mammoth revolt!  If there was any upside to 10,000 B.C., I guess it was that after watching those creatures that look like a cross between a raptor and a turkey, I didn’t feel so bad at Thanksgiving.  Seriously, cave paintings are looking more and more entertaining by the minute.

1. You Don’t Mess With The Zohan – So, what could be worse than vampire stare-offs, CGI on meth and the stupidest Neanderthals ever put on film?  The answer: an Israeli commando who dreams of becoming a hair stylist.  Talk about stranger than fiction!  I’ll openly admit to never being a fan of the Adam Sandler schtick, but it is at its worst in You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, the lowest point of Sandler’s career that’s made even more unwatchable by the painfully fake accents and the typical Sandler humor. That by itself is so tired out by now, it’s hard to feel a pulse.  Whoever thought a decent movie could be made from this concept needs to have his authority to greenlight movies permanently revoked.  Not five minutes into the film I said “You’ve got to be kidding me,” because the attempts at stringing bad jokes onto a thread of Israelis and hummus are astronomically uninspired.  Not once did I even begin to crack a smile; I was too busy staring at the screen in utter disbelief and revulsion.  And what makes this even more sad is that this marks the second consecutive year that an Adam Sandler comedy has had the dishonor of appearing at the bottom of my year-end list.  You Don’t Mess With The Zohan is the cinematic equivalent of dry-heaving; you’re empty but really feel sick, and that feeling stays with you no matter how hard the convulsions wrack you.  The title says that you don’t want to mess with The Zohan, but quite frankly, who would even care to?

Now, if any of my picks upset anyone in any way, I apologize – but keep in mind that these are my own personal choices.

If anyone wants to argue with me, I’m willing to defend myself.

And be sure to stay on the lookout for my forthcoming list of the Best Films of 2008, where I count down my personal choices for the year’s top ten films.

No doubt one of the hardest things for a man to do is come back from a weeks vacation to over 500 emails at work. And want to read them all. While I have to do this, I thought I would get in some real work first, here at Atomic Popcorn.
Below is an update on the goings on of the Hollywood arena.

The latest revamp of the love affair in Titanic between DiCaprio and Winslet, is now called Revolutionary Road. What more would you want than to watch something you have seen before. A budding relationship in the mid 50′s between folks you know have chemistry on screen. I will pass on this one. Maybe a Netflix.

Eva Longoria, is no longer a prime time goddess? Rather she is ending up on the big screen as a comic book character? I don’t even think she has the skill for this movie. The boys over at /Film are trying to say Longoria is trying to become the next Avenger. Will this movie actually get off the ground, just because its a Marvel product?

There is no Doubt in my mind that just because you put two great actors of our time together it will make a solid movie. The trailer for Doubt is out and looks terrible. Streep and Hoffman are extremley talented in their own right, but this looks like a kid made it!

Four Christmases, staring Vince Vaughn and the ever glowing Reese Witherspoon, has a new trailer out. Enjoy it below.

One of the best films of 08, Kung Fu Panda, has a sequel already and its coming to DVD? What the heck is going on here and why didn’t Paramount call me about this! Damnit!

It seems that everyone loves a good XXX and that is what Vin Diesel is wanting to give to the fans. A new movie is in the works staring the correct person for the role. Sorry Ice Tea, err Ice Cube or whatever drink you are.