movies we hated

My colleague Hillary Weston and I see a lot of movies. Sure, we both loved a bunch of movies this year, such as the delightful Moonrise Kingdom, the biting Bachelorette, the lovely Beasts of the Southern Wild. But there were a few that we downright hated. While we don't always agree on which movies were, in fact, the worst, here's a brief list of the films from this year that drove us into fits of fury.

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88:88

Short films are a tricky business. Everything is thrown off kilter as you’re asked to deliver an idea and convey an emotional landscape in a brief amount of time but with the power of something autonomous. But what exactly makes a good short film? Well, it seems that Ridley Scott has been searching for the answer to that with his Your Film Festival. Back in June, we urged you to vote for the short film, 88:88, a 14-minute science fiction wonder by Joey Ciccoline. The film was one of fifty selected by Scott, and, this morning, it was announced as one of the ten finalists. The lucky filmmakers will be flown to the Venice Film Festival later this month to showcase their work before a grand jury (which includes Scott and Michael Fassbender) choose the final film. From there, the grand prize winner will receive a $500,000 grant to make their own original content produced by Scott, Fassbender, and a first-rate team.

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Bel Ami Trailer

Some people judge a movie based on reviews, other will go see something just because it features a favorite actor. Here, we're judging this weekend's offerings based solely on what we see in the trailers and ranking them accordingly.

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Prometheus Trailers

Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, an Aliens precursor, won’t be out until Friday, but anticipation is building—in no small part thanks to bits and pieces released on the web. Today’s tidbit is one of the most interesting of them all. A two-minute featurette has dropped explaining how the film’s namesake spaceship was designed.

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Michael Fassbender Prometheus

Ridley Scott’s Prometheus got its full length trailer premier at WonderCon yesterday.  For those who zone out at anything high-budget sci-fi, don’t click away so fast.  The flick functions as a sort of prequel to Alien and has got some major star power with Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, and a surprisingly (disappointingly) clothed Michael Fassbender as part of a team that sets out to uncover the origins of mankind and ends up going to battle with interstellar creatures. Tagline: “In space, something can hear you scream.”

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Cormac

Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy have at least one thing in common: they won't and perhaps can't stop doing their life's work, even at their advanced age. Scott is 74 years old, but he continues to pick up new films on the reg. Oscar obsessives will foam over his new project, as he's close to signing on to direct Cormac McCarthy's first ever spec script, The Counselor. McCarthy himself is 78, which means there's no time like now for him to get into the Hollywood game after so many of his books (The Road, No Country for Old Men, All the Pretty Horses) have been adapted into films.

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Prometheus

The first real trailer for Ridley Scott's Prometheus, dropped today, and it's like a checklist of cool stuff: people yelling, people screaming, some space ships, explosions, and Charlize Theron in a towel. There are a bunch of ominous looking locales (never trust a giant head made out of stone), as well as the most foreboding tagline of all time: "They went looking for our beginning. What they found could be our end." Shivers!

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prometheus top

Ridley Scott, who directed Alien and Blade Runner, two of the most influential sci-fi films of all time, is returning to the genre with the 3D epic, Prometheus. He's been keeping mum on the project, but rumors have been spreading for months that the film, which stars Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, and Idris Elba, is connected to Alien.

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blackbook.Image19597.ridley-scot

After such unvarnished turds as Alien Resurrection and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, it’d be easy to think of the Alien series as officially defunct. Ridley Scott did. “I sat thinking about the franchise, which died on the road way back and was lying in the dust and I thought, ‘What I should do is go back. . .’” To whit, Scott is currently planning to make not one, but two Alien prequels. He spilled a number of details at last weekend’s Hero Complex Film Festival in LA.

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blackbook.Image18663.crowe.png

Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott's latest historical action-opus opened the Cannes Film Festival yesterday morning and reviews from the blog-o-sphere have started pouring in. Peter Sciretta of SlashFilm wrote: "The film has good intentions, and the story is great in concept, but the movie is rather dull. The dramatic scenes don’t live up to the beautiful and epic visuals created in the establishing shots." Tim Adler of Deadline felt that " [the] press reaction to the first screening was muted, with some critics questioning the political correctness of the script." However, Anne Thompson of indieWIRE praised the "gorgeous scenery" as well as Scott's unimpeachable ability to film battle scenes and Crowe's fine acting, although she felt that Robin Hood was nonetheless doomed to commercial failure.

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