The Room (2003)

Staggering in its artlessness, mystifyingly plotted, and abominably acted, Tommy Wiseau's The Room, often cited as the worst movie ever made, tells an apparently autobiographical story of a love triangle and features go-nowhere subplots, inconsistent character psychology, and actors who clearly are not even having a good time, and so it is no wonder it has gone on to become the cult classic it has, a riotous midnight screening to jeer and holler at.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Disaster Movie (2008)

Another in the string of Friedberg/Seltzer comedies of the 'Adjective Movie' franchise (Epic, Disaster, Scary, Date, etc), this one at least goes one postmodern step further than other episodes and uses its puerile jokes, talentless cast, not-quite-right impersonations that require the viewer to be told who the impersonations are of (says one character of a woman in a blonde wig and short shorts, 'Everyone, look! It's Jessica Simpson!'), inexplicable spoof (Juno? Disaster?) and male characters leering at the female form of various "bitches", to raise awareness of the disaster state of the Western world.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Howard The Duck (1986)

As with the more recent Ted and Ted 2, the basic tenet of Executive Producer George Lucas' infamous box office bomb seems to be that a furry or fluffy creature doing human adult things like smoking cigars, drinking beer, and bar brawling is funny, but this Marvel comic-inspired movie about a 3 foot 2 inch and - except for his pink skin eyelids - frozen-faced duck alien who somehow ends up trapped in Cleveland, is so mundane that a more suitable title would have been Howard The Turkey or HowAwful The Duck.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Shape of Water (2017)

Director Guillermo del Toro works hard to defy genre conventions in his The Shape Of Water, a thirteen-times Oscar-nominated movie that the world went crazy for and, seriously, you are all bats**t crazy because the movie's moments of Quentin Tarantino-esque violence, Spielberg (E.T.) fantasy, cloying Amelie romance, Hidden Figures social commentary, and bad taste Peeping Tom voyeurism involving nudity, masturbation and interspecies sex are meaningless flourishes in what is, most consistently, a stultifying ham-fisted fairytale pantomime like a 'Walt Disney's Splash On Ice' that dramatically flatlines after ten minutes.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Stranger Within (2013)

With the look, feel and pace of a daytime soap and populated with actors who appear to think their only job is looking good, this hard-to-watch psychological thriller about a woman dealing with trauma, paranoia, jealousy and fear in a remote mansion is of only momentary interest for featuring William 'How did I end up here?' Baldwin; the rest of the movie reeks of four friends with a camera giving movie-making a go on a 'swingers' weekend away.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Dance Flick (2009)

Like the Scary Movies before it, this comedy suggests that among the unfunny things the Wayans brothers find funny are king hits, glassings, violence against women, schoolyard bullying of homosexuals, sexual innuendo, suicide, and Chris Elliott.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Freddy vs Jason (2003)

By pitting Nightmare on Elm Street's dreamstalker Freddy Krueger against Friday the 13th's undead serial killer Jason, this largely incoherent slasher contributes nothing lasting to the mythology of either horror icon, only detracts, and in the end proves not as scary as it is unpleasant with its constant refrains of "bitch", "faggot" and "sweet dark meat" to describe victims.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Letter (aka The Stare) (2012)

The director of a play seems to be losing her grip on reality in this movie of such utter awfulness it is almost worth sitting through its so-bad-it's-funny Z-grade Black Swan plot with its tedious voiceover narration and zombie-like performances, just to see.

☆☆☆☆☆ (no stars)

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Scary Movie 2 (2001)

The especially sober moments in this laugh-free horror movie spoof are any of the scenes featuring Chris Evans as the repulsive-looking manservant of a haunted house, and the scenes in which the homosexuality of Shawn Wayans' character is repeatedly offered up sans comedic effort because apparently this is a hilarious thing in itself.

☆☆☆☆☆ (No stars)

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Mystery Diners

Perhaps the worst acted series ever to grace television screens (but surely only until viewers find their remotes), "Law and Order: Restaurants" stars Magnum PI-lookalike Charles Stiles as the charismatic head of a team of surveillance agents which he deploys from his Mystery Machine to secretly film culinary crimes that his restaurant- and bar owner-clients have been unable to solve presumably because they've been too busy to open their eyes.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Wicker Man (2006)

This dreadful remake of the original mystery thriller of 1973 - a sinister movie about a policeman investigating a child's disappearance from a creepy, cultish remote island community - updates the story by wheeling out a big, hollow wooden figure at the start the movie, too: Nicolas Cage in Edward Woodward's police officer role.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Family (2016)

Thrown together, I'm sure, to cash-in on other recent cult-themed documentary releases, this one about Anne Hamilton-Byrne who in the 80s took advantage of Australia's lax adoption laws to steal, raise, and generally mess-up as many as 28 children, is a boring and unfocused mess of information that leaves viewers nonethewiser about how much of what happened was masterminded by Hamilton-Byrne and how much simply grew out of circumstance, and ultimately you are left with the impression the documentary makers themselves didn't know what story they were telling.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Jack and Jill (2011)

As the credits roll, voxpops are shown of actual twins discussing twindom as though the preceding movie, which has Adam Sandler playing fraternal twins Jack and Jill, was a celebration of twin-love and not an unfunny embarrassment for everyone involved (but especially mortifying for Katie Holmes as Jack's wife and Al Pacino in a career-low, appearing as himself.)

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Magic Magic (2013)

A young female traveller trapped in remote Chile in the company of a constantly whelping puppy and three personality-free travel companions (the worst being Michael Cera's incessantly talking Brink) witnesses animal cruelty, overdoses on unprescribed medication, doesn't have the others' confidence to jump off a rock into the ocean, and so descends gradually into madness and anyone watching this shrill, pointless, infuriating "psychological thriller" will likely do the same before the movie's exceedingly daft final exorcism scene.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

A serial killer's victim is found minus a foot and hand but still alive, however when she wakes up in hospital she claims to be someone else entirely, not the victim, in this truly lamentable psychological thriller featuring what would have to be one of the most imbecilic plots and laughable denouements ever committed to celluloid.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Dirty Grandpa (2016)

An unusual sex fetish plays out amusingly near the end, but otherwise this is a revolting two-hour grind that makes you lament the state of comedy given 90-minutes of laugh-free genital and bodily fluid references emerged from a multi-million dollar production boasting, of all people, Robert DeNiro and Zac Efron.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Random Hearts (1999)

Random Hearts tells the incredibly boring story of two complete strangers, played by Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas, whose worlds collide when their respective partners die in a plane crash together and it is revealed they'd been having an affair.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

InAPPropriate Comedy (2013)

This dire comedy skit compilation features some surprisingly big name stars (Adrien Brody, Lindsay Lohan, Rob Schneider) delivering zero laughs in skits called "Flirty Harry", "Blackass", "Sperm Lake" and the especially unfunny "The Amazing Racist".

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (1993)

Even less funny than The Hungover Games and as puerile as Movie 43, this National Lampoon's comedy is a Lethal Weapon spoof featuring Emilio Estevez in the mulleted Riggs role and Samuel L Jackson in the Murtaugh role and is yet another film belonging to the bigger-than-you-realised Hollywood genre, dismal-comedies-that-you-can't-believe-really-famous-people-agreed-to-appear-in.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

The world revels in Wes Anderson movies and this was especially the case upon the release of this precious, childish, irritating, laboured pantomime about a hotel concierge involved in a theft and murder, a movie which plays out like all of Wes Anderson's movies, like a storyboard - stylised and empty.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS