Very Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes has recently put out a list of the worst 100 movies of all time entitled “The Worst Of The Worst”. The list rounds off with these final ten:

10. Half Past Dead
9. The Master Of Disguise
8. Twisted
7. National Lampoon’s Gold Diggers
6. Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2
5. King’s Ransom
4. Pinocchio
3. Crossover
2. Alone In The dark
1. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever

In order to determine their list they applied the following algorithm: (r ÷ (r+m)) × t + (m ÷ (r+m)) × a, with “r” representing the number of rated reviews, “m” the minimum number of reviews needed for a movie to qualify, “t” the Tomatometer score, and “a” the average Tomatometer of all the qualifying movies.

Fortunately/unfortunately I haven’t seen any of the movies in the top ten and very few of the movies in the top 100. Personally I think both “The 5th Element“, “Face Off” and “It’s Pat” are missing from the list. As a side note, Rotten Tomatoes has some great “best of” lists.

Wikipedia also has a list of box office bombs. The formula they use to calculate their bombs is: dg ÷ b, where “dg” is the domestic gross sales of the film and “b” is the budget. According to them, the ten worst box office bombs are below (followed by their sales to budget ratio):

10. Ride with the Devil 1.8%
9. Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker 1.6%
8. Mini’s First Time 0.8%
7. An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn 0.5%
6. The Boondock Saints 0.5%
5. Shade 0.25%
4. The Bridge of San Luis Rey 0.21%
3. D-Tox 0.14%
2. Scorched 0.11%
1. Zyzzyx Road 0.0015%

Again I haven’t seen any of these movies but this list looks a lot more interesting to me than the Rotten Tomatoes list. At least I don’t think I’d mind wasting my time in these movies as much. Interestingly, “Zyzzyx Road” only opened in one theater (Highland Village Park Theater in Dallas, Texas) ran for 6 days, and amassed a final total of $30 in box office takings and had a $2 Million budget.

The Internet Movie Data base runs a list called the “IMDb bottom 100”. Created by “People Votes”, this list is the worst films as rated by registered users of the database. Each movie must have at least 650 votes to make the list. According to this formula the ten worst movies are as follows (followed by their average user rating):

10. Santa with Muscles 1.8
9. Car 54, Where Are You? 1.8
8. From Justin to Kelly 1.8
7. SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 2 1.8
6. Going Overboard 1.8
5. Bottoms Up 1.7
4. Snowboard Academy 1.7
3. The Hillz 1.6
2. Crossover 1.3
1. Anne B. Real 1.3

Here we finally have some crossover on the lists with “SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2” and “Crossover” which received some serious hate from the IMDb peeps.

The Razzies are the antithesis of the Oscar’s. The Razzies annually presenting dis-Honors for worst achievements in film in categories ranging from the obvious (Worst Picture, Actor and Actress) to the obtuse (Worst Remake or Sequel and Worst Screen Couple). Below is a list of the worst pictures for the last 10 years:

1997 The Postman
1998 An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn
1999 Wild Wild West
2000 Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000
2001 Freddy Got Fingered
2002 Swept Away
2003 Gigli
2004 Cat Woman
2005 Dirty Love
2006 Basic Instinct 2

I can’t say I disagree with anything of the Razzie awards, but I can say that “Freddie Got Fingered” is the only movie I’ve seen on the list above and I can’t remember if I liked it or not. I am looking forward to wasting a Sunday afternoon on “Gigli” some day though.

Digital Dream Door has a list of the 100 worst movies of all time that is worth looking at because of its variety. Digital Dream Door states that “there is nothing ‘Official’ about these lists. They are compiled by the ‘editor’ using the stated criteria [poor acting, poor
direction, poor script, poor cinematography, poor storyline, and lack of success], and revised considering the competent suggestions of visitors. The top ten are below:
10. Ishtar
9. Valley Of The Dolls
8. Spice World
7. Swept Away
6. Maximum Overdrive
5. Baby Geniuses
4. Glitter
3. Howard The Duck
2. Showgirls
1. Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000

A nice list, but I actually liked Maximum Overdrive if only for the AC/DC soundtrack.

Metacritic also has a really interesting list of top 200 worst movies since around 1999. I like this list a lot and plan on watching all these films at some point. It contains the 200 lowest-scoring films in Metacritic’s database with a minimum of seven reviews. Below are the top ten:
1. Bio-Dome
2. The Singing Forest
3. Chaos
4. Vulgar
5. Strippers
6. Dirty Cop, No Donut
7. National Lampoon’s Gold Diggers
8. Baby Geniuses
9. Screwed
10. Perception

Of course Roger Ebert has a fairly lengthy list of movies he hates and Two A Day has a pretty good dissertation on what criteria make for a horrible at the DVD Film School