Fatso's Top 50 Worst-Rated Movies

Ever wondered what the worst-rated movies on fatso are? I have. So I got this report pulled of the Top 50 current worst-rated movies we have on the site. The criteria: (1) movies that have been rated 0.5 (our lowest rating) and (2) the most number times it's been rated 0.5, the idea being that the film has elicited such a negative response that so many viewers have flocked to rate it as such (if sorted by average rating the list looks slightly different). It's quite a startling, bizarre, funny list - definitely shows a snapshot of the sort of genres that aren't too popular with the majority out there, i.e. artsy movies with big stars, like The Tree of Life, The American, Black Swan. I love the fact that both Battlestar: Los Angeles AND its Asylum knock-off Battle of Los Angeles are on there. Anyway here's the list, tell us what you think!

1. The Tree of Life 
2. Skyline
3. The Other Guys
4. Buried
5. Monsters
6. The American
7. Sucker Punch
8. The Green Hornet
9. Somewhere
10. Your Highness
11. Four Lions
12. Defcon 2012
13. The Last Airbender
14. The Tourist
15. Black Swan
16. Blue Valentine
17. Tomorrow When the War Began
18. Inception
19. William & Kate
20. National Lampoon's Dirty Movie
21. Hobo with a Shotgun
22. Eat Pray Love
23. Machete
24. Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon
25. The Killer Inside Me
26. Bad Teacher
27. Twilight
28. The Social Network
29. Justin Bieber: Never Say Never
30. The 7 Adventures of Sinbad
31. A Town Called Panic
32. Meek's Cutoff
33. Battle of Los Angeles
34. Greenberg
35. Vampires Suck
36. Room in Rome
37. Dogtooth 
38. Rachel Getting Married 
39. Dinner for Schmucks
40. Battle: Los Angeles
41. The Twilight Saga: New Moon
42. TRON: Legacy
43. Bridesmaids
44. Avatar
45. Catch .44
46. Where the Wild Things Are
47. Frozen
48. Little Fockers
49. The Dilemma
50. Grown Ups

Cannes You Dig It?

Howdy, here's a quick Cannes round-up if you've been missing all the fest action:

•  Leos Carax's Holy Motors seems to be the talk of the town at the moment. No one can seem to really explain what it is - nor do I care to read too much about it right now - but they're all calling it "bug-nuts" or "bonkers", which means it's just topped my must-see list for the next year. Usually hard-to-please critic Mike D'angelo's tweet pretty much sums it up: 

• David Cronenberg's hotly anticipated adaptation of Dom DeLillo's novel Cosmopolis, starring R-Patz as a billionaire trying to get across Manhattan for a haircut, hasn't wowed critics as much as I'd expected, leaving most of them cold. Looking forward to the avalanche of tweets from Twilight fans going WTF is this.
• Click here for a full list of the winners, with Michael Haneke's Amour being particularly notable for winning the Palme d'Or since he also won the prize back in '09 for The White Ribbon.

 Let's hope we get to see some of these films at the NZFF later this year.

Teaser Trailers: The Master & Skyfall

A couple of pretty sweet teasers for you today: First up is Paul Thomas Anderson's long-awaited The Master, which is finally coming out later this year after taking forever to get off the ground (it's been a good 5 years since he made the magnificent There Will Be Blood). In the film Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a cult leader with perhaps-not-unintentional similarities to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, and Joaquin Phoenix, in his first feature acting role since 2010's faux-doco I'm Still Here, is a troubled WWII vet who comes under his wing. Secondly is the first glimpse of the new Sam Mendes-directed 007 outing Skyfall - I have to say it's a lovely, elegantly constructed teaser that makes the film look kinda, um, sensual and beautiful. I'm already confident that it'll be better than Quantum of Solace. For some deeper analysis of the teaser by a Bond expert click here.

Random Stuff #28

The Raid... with Claymation Cats!

The title says it all! Watch the ultra-violent Indonesian martial arts The Raid remade as a claymation short featuring... cats! If you missed it at the movies, The Raid will probably be coming out on DVD & Blu-ray in August from Madman.

Trailer: Killer Joe

William Friedkin's new crime thriller Killer Joe looks to be a winner for both its veteran director and star Matthew McConaughey alike. Friedkin's late-period work has been kinda patchy - though Bug and The Hunted are pretty underrated IMHO - but this flick seems to be giving him some of his best reviews in a while. Likewise McConaughey's performance as a hired killer is getting a lot of praise for the actor who's somewhat been off the radar until he bounced back with The Lincoln Lawyer last year. Killer Joe's rated NC-17 in the US, so I think we'll be in for quite the ride!
Incidentally: Friedkin joined twitter recently:

And Joe just may pop up in the upcoming NZ Film Festival... fingers crossed.

Cabin Fever

If you've been reading around the film corners of the web in the past week you probably would've come across the furore over Roadshow deciding not release The Cabin in the Woods in theatres and sending it straight to DVD and Blu-ray. If you haven't here's a quick run-down:

• Cabin in the Woods is a horror flick directed by Drew Goddard and co-written by Joss Whedon of Firefly, Buffy and The Avengers fame. Check out the trailer here.
• It's been generating a lot of buzz since its US release, and currently sitting on a healthy 72 score on Metacritic.
• Roadshow Films in Australia announce on tumblr that it won't be getting a theatrical release there, which more than likely means it won't get one here.
• Fans go ballistic: go to Roadshow's facebook page and check out the comments. A lot of calls for pirating the film as a response.
• A petition page is set up.

However disappointing this is - and fans certainly have a point of the film possibly being able to piggyback on The Avengers' success - I'm not really all that surprised that it's going to DTV. Heaps of horror films get dumped on DVD regularly here, and Cabin - quality of the movie notwithstanding - seems like it would fit in that scheme of things.

The last few biggish horror films that received a theatrical in NZ had a bit more going for them: Paranormal Activity 3 was already an established and successful franchise, Fright Night had the Colin Farrell (not sure how much of a pull Farrell is these days but..) and Twilight-vampire angle (more attractive than cabins!) ... I can't remember what else came out recently, which says enough about the faith of distributors in the ability of the genre to make money in this country. Going against Cabin? The generic, DTV-ready title, lack of name stars (local actors don't really equate box-office pull), that nebulous, puzzle-box-type artwork, and Joss Whooo..? Let's face it: while Joss Whedon has a sizeable cult following, he's still very much niche, he hasn't achieved the clout of say, Christopher Nolan ("DIRECTOR OF THE DARK KNIGHT AND INCEPTION"). When you put it all in context of our small nation, Cabin starts to look like it probably wouldn't last long enough to make it worthwhile for the distributors to give it a theatrical release.

Anywho... my ideal solution (as someone who doesn't know tooo much about the business of theatrical distribution)? Have it sell out a few sessions at the film festival before heading to DVD...