There's nothing like the depressing, soul-crushing feeling of being completely wrong. About this time last year the only consolation that we thought we could draw from a year of cinema that we'd rather tie up in a bag and drown than suffer through again was that, as D:Ream teaches us, Things Can Only Get Better. With hope in our hearts, a fire in our belly and a strange rash in our nether regions that we ought to get checked out sometime, we turned to face 2006.
Things Got Considerably Worse.
There's been even fewer highpoints in either mainstream or indie cinema compared to last year, and while the bottom of the barrel perhaps hasn't been scraped quite so brazenly this year if you can find more than a handful of films to become even vaguely ebullient about you're doing better than we are. With an air of tired, world-weary cynicism, allow us to resign this hateful year to its fate, and may whatever Dark Gods that so cursed us have mercy on our souls for next year. As usual, winners of these prestigious awards receive not only the honour (or shame, as the case may be) of recognition from the last bastion of movie related truth on the Internet but also the lowest denomination of book token we can find. The rough guidelines for eligibility in the awards is "stuff we've seen in a U. K. cinema this year, barring re releases and random one off showings
Worst Horror Film
Of course, the worst film of any year has a better than evens chance of being a horror film, so spinning this off into a separate category is really the only fair way to recognise the services to bad cinema that other, non-horror genre films rend unto us. Again, a bumper crop of affrontry to cinema was belched our way by Hollywood's Nightmare Factory, including such drivel as Hostel, When A Stranger Calls, Reeker, The Hills Have Eyes, Pulse and umpteen more we're refusing to see on general principle. However, the worst of these...
Worst Horror Film of 2006 is Reeker
A killer smell? While the final film turns out to be very, very slightly less lazy, stupid and irritating than the soul rendingly awful trailer, this is a very scant consolation for anyone unfortunate enough to have been suckered into ponying up the entry fee.
Best Supporting Cougar
One of the lesser used award categories, mainly because of a distinct lack of qualifying films outside of nature documentaries. However, feline props must be given when they are due.
Best Supporting Cougar of 2006 is Karen the Cougar (Talladega Nights)
This Year's Silly Will Ferrell Movie is always a dependable highpoint from a comedian that seems never to be off-form. Of course, having a tremendous supporting cast in the shape of Gary Cole and John C. Reilly helps, but the push over the top undoubtedly comes from Karen's sterling effort. Kudos and a wildebeest carcass to you, you big ol' cat, you.
The Weekend at Bernie's award for Weekend of Cinematic Releases That We'd Rather Be Brutally Murdered By Enraged Dean Cain Fans Than Sit Through Again
Some Fridays see the release of a veritable smorgasbord of succulent, delicious cinematic treats. Other Fridays essentially defecate into a paper bag, light the son of a bitch on fire and stick it on your doorstep, running away and tittering to itself.
The Weekend at Bernie's award for Weekend of Cinematic Releases That We'd Rather Be Brutally Murdered By Enraged Dean Cain Fans Than Sit Through Again 2006 goes to January 20th to 22nd
A dark time for U. K. cinemas; Underworld Evolution, A Cock & Bull Story and Get Rich or Die Tryin' being released on the same day. What Gods did we anger to deserve that fate? And all this while Running Scared was still lurking around like a bad smell. Christ on a hoverdonkey!
Most Horrible Spoilsport in the Field of Running Joke Demolition
We have, for the amusement of ourselves if no-one else, been honouring Ethan Suplee's performance in the astonishing The Butterfly Effect by creating a Fattest [insert culture sub-divisor] category for him the past few years. Except now he's went on a diet.
Most Horrible Spoilsport in the Field of Running Joke Demolition is Ethan Suplee
The ungrateful bastard.
Horror Film Least Likely To Induce Homicidal Rage
You could, I suppose, call this award the 'Best Horror Film of the Year', but the word 'best' sort of implies that it's also good. This is not necessarily the case. So, what the least worst this year? Much as I enjoyed Severance, it's really more of a comedy than a horror. This leaves us with the surprising choice of...
Horror Film Least Likely To Induce Homicidal Rage is Silent Hill
A video game adaptation to boot! While it may perhaps be a shade impenetrable to those who haven't played Konami's nerve-shredding weird-o-thons, there are few horror films that don't involve some degree of abstract, nonsensical bullshit. While it's a little too enslaved to its source material for its own good, there's some moments of true horror amongst the usual buckets o' gore that elevate this a little above the slobbering hordes of its sub-competent contemporaries.
Half-Assed Joke About Gay Cowboys That We Couldn't Be Arsed Finishing Award goes to Brokeback Mountain.
Meh. Too long ago now, the moment has passed. Oooh, wait a minute...
Most Sheep In A Motion Picture
Established by simple metrics on the tried and tested sheep per inch of film ratio.
Most Sheep In A Motion Picture goes to Brokeback Mountain.
Which of course brings us to the major salient criticism about the gay cowboy film, that the lead characters don't look after cows, but sheep. Therefore, this ought to be known as that gay shepherd film. theOneliner.com - campaigning for Truth.
Strangest Juxtaposition in a Scene of a Sexual Nature
The old in-out has been shown many different times in many different ways, from suggestive footage of a locomotive entering a tunnel to the abominable 9 Songs' ropy jets of jism. It's not uncommon for those makers of the beast with two backs to be thinking of something else while undertaking that which women often confuse with love.
Strangest Juxtaposition in a Scene of a Sexual Nature goes to Eric Bana (Munich)
Doing the horizontal tango to the mental accompaniment massacre of Israeli athletes? Dawg, y'all gots problems, yo. Ahem.
Best Droopy Dawg Impersonation in a Motion Picture
If there's one thing that's vital to character acting it's an accurate representation of accents. Well, actually, it's not really that important at all, but it helps.
Best Droopy Dawg Impersonation in a Motion Picture goes to Philip Seymour David Hassel Hoffman (Capote)
Now, I don't actually know what Truman Capote sounded like in what we laughingly call 'real life'. I do know what Droopy Dawg sounds like, and he sounds like this.
The Full Frontal Memorial Award for Outstanding Awfulness
This year has really been the sort of year that would put men made of less stern stuff refuse to set foot inside a multiplex ever again. You could make a very marginal case for there being fewer out-and-out affronts to cinematic dignity this year, but at the same time there's ever fewer truly exceptional films released than last years' slim pickings. So much so that we'll struggle with selections for the traditional 'best film' gong. Instead what 2006 has dealt to us is a veritable mire of mediocrity, a brown, sludgy, muddy quagmire of two to three star quality shovelware bereft of inspiration, character, soul and originality. However, for the most laughable attempts at genre film-making you didn't have to look too far into 2006 to find this rancid monstrosity.
The Full Frontal Memorial Award for Outstanding Awfulness goes to Running Scared
There's an equally strong case for this award going to the, in all honesty, utterly irredeemable Underworld: Evolution, Date Movie or The Pink Panther rather than the just plain rubbish Running Scared, I'm going on the basis that everyone with any sense at all knew that the three new members of the zero star club admitted this year were never going to be anything other than zero star films from the outset, Running Scared not only had some small potential to be half-decent and also had woefully misguided critics telling us it was half-decent, and not the laughable shambles it actually is.
I... Well... There's... Harumph. I can't really describe what a vapid mess of cliche and overplotted bluster this abortion of a film is, full of relentlessly boneheaded characters that you consistently root for to be killed in as messy a way as possible. To say this film was full of shallow stereotypes is to do a grand disservice to shallow stereotypes everywhere. Still, the most truly offensive thing about Running Scared, as with The Butterfly Effect and Van Helsing, despite quite clearly and obviously failing at every single thing it tries to do, despite it being scientifically proven that they're shambling disasters that ought to be taken outside and shot, some people still enjoy them. A world gone mad, I'm tellin' ya.
The Most Irritating Thing In A Cinema This Year
Nothing actually film-related wins this one as, believe-it-or-not, there are things more annoying than endless remakes, and those are the endless crappy advertisements and warnings before the film even begins. While Orange's 'Don't Let A Mobile Phone Ruin Your Movie' spots, which have long since lost their appeal and any humour they had, and adverts like Toyota's Yaris 'BigSmall' campaign, are strong contenders, the clear winner in this category is...
The Most Irritating Thing In A Cinema This Year is FACT
Not content with their 'knocked up in 5 minutes in PowerPoint' ads about the legality of recording films with video cameras, they continue to screen adverts - on a cinema screen, to a cinema audience, in a cinema - about the advantages of seeing a film in the cinema as opposed to on a DVD produced from a video camera recording of the screen. STOP IT! I'm already in the cinema! I know the f(luxing, Ed) advantages of seeing a f(lickering, Ed) film in a f(udging, Ed) cinema! That's why I'm f(rangipane, Ed) there! This was particularly incensing on the night I was urged to see X-Men 3 in the cinema while I was in the cinema waiting for X-Men 3 to start.
And I think if I hear once more that the view on a camera recording will be obscured by the person in front going to the toilet, while they utterly miss the fact that being in the cinema instead the view will be still spoiled by the person in front going to the toilet, I will be forced to hunt down those responsible and feed them slowly, toes-first, into a mincer.
Scott Morris' Film of the Year goes to Brick
You may have written off the introductory spiel at the top of this page as the brain dead whining of a grumpy, aging, balding curmudgeon, and to a large extent you'd be correct. However, anyone who dares claim that there hasn't been a dearth of decent films this year is a shill or a liar, or perhaps an idiot. For the longest time it seemed like the only truly good films to appear would be the excellent, compelling, flawlessly executed but nonetheless utterly conventional Capote or Brokeback Mountain. Things went eerily quiet in the domain of 5 star cinema until Rian Johnson's phenomenal Brick appeared, a hard-boiled, sharply scripted, beautifully shot tale of Chandler-esque intrigue that just happened to be set in a high-school. With more effortless style than anyone else managed in a year of misfires and disappointments, Johnson shows a real love of cinema and eeks out bunch of lead performances displaying a sense of maturity and skill that you've no right to expect of anyone the low side of thirty. This is about as exciting, innovative, and technically beautiful as cinema gets, and while if you're going to be picky about it there's solid, boring, technical reasons why either of he other two films mentioned in this paragraph are 'better', they're not even a tenth as interesting, energetic and exciting as Brick.
Well, here's hoping that the coming year is better than the last for you, and hopefully for cinema in general as well. We'll be keeping tabs on the best and worst of 2007, so join us round about this time next year and we'll tell it to you straight. You can trust us.