New content every morning!

Gorko Entertainment Editor Mitchell Kennedy takes anvil and tongs to 10 of this holiday season’s most disappointing movies.

Hello fellow movie buffs! Myself and my movie dog Ampersat Todd wish you a Merry Bloxbuster Day!!! and a slappy New Year. What we do NOT wish on anyone in the wide world is any one of the 10 movies we watched between 8 am on the most recent 25th of December and just a few hours ago, because they were truly awful!

How, you may wonder, did we find so many bad movies, did we TRY to turn on a bunch of real Trashbin Tonies? The answer is no, we did not purposely seek out this experience, although we are aware of that peculiar cinematic habit indulged in by some, of purposefully exposing one’s person to aesthetics so bad that they are ‘good’. Editor Raddy in fact does this frequently, calling the experience ‘funny’. Yet what is funny about having to take one’s movie dog (in the dogbulance, my bicycle) on an emergency run to the vet at 2 in the morning, because he has overdosed on bad aesthetic????????????? Not funny at all, is the answer! Poor little @Todd almost went puppy paws up!

No, we did not choose intentionally bad movies, but simply had a run of bad luck as we pursued the theme of Esoterics, also suggested by Raddy and Rambo as they lay about the house in their underwear again, drinking beer straight from the can. In the interests of protecting you all, then, we share the following list.

10. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

More like a space-out odyssey, Ampersat! Has anyone even heard of this movie? Somehow it scored 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, but who voted, Raddy and his (extremely aggressive, very inconsiderate) dog Wolfman? This little-known cult snore-fest, which apparently won some big award a long time ago and so has not been destroyed, is about a monkey that flies through space contemplating existence. Not as deep as it thinks it is! There isn’t even any music!

9. THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

Even if Jodorowsky WERE all the rage, which he is not, why would I want to watch bare-chested women in glitter paint twirl on what is obviously a movie stage for 140 minutes? This movie can go back to film school! It made both @Todd and myself nauseous.

8. EYES WIDE SHUT

Cruise and are you kidding me? Another movie by little-known director Stanley Kowalski, this movie was ALL DIALOGUE. No explosions or anything, nothing romantic about it at all, and zero esotericism. ZERO THOUGHT PUPPIES. BAD, THOUGHTLESS DOG.

7. CLOUD ATLAS

After our experience with Cast Away, the thought-provoking retelling of Robinson Crusoe, I think both @Todd and I had a right to expect something better from Timothy Hanks, but this HUNK of space trash is probably the biggest yawner since the original Star Wars trilogy. Imagine Star Wars Episodes IV-VI all packed into 172 minutes, and you will understand why my dog and I only saw the beginning and the end (I always set our Movie Timer to wake us up at specific intervals in case we doze off during marathons, and it saved us this week).

6. THE FOUNTAIN

Whose idea was this, a movie that revolves around a grade school drinking fountain? Don’t put your lips on THIS fountain, it is contaminated with DEADLY BOREDOM.

5. JACOB’S LADDER

Movies about the Bible are usually taboo in Gorko HQ for a very good reason: Chef Rambo Bolillo is a fanatical, militant atheist, and will literally shoot your TV off the wall with his big boy gun if he catches you watching anything about Jesus. It happened with Passion of the Christ, it happened with Braveheart, and two days ago it happened again with Jacob’s Ladder. That makes 3 TVs now! (Fortunately I keep several spares in my locker in the basement, so we were able to continue the marathon.) Stay away from this movie if you know what is healthy for you and your screen.

4. TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME

I am as big a fan of the director Kyle MacLauchlin as the next film buff, but if this is Esoteric filmmaking, I am a turkey in the corn! There is not even much talking, just creepy music and a lot of unnecessary panning and slow fades. Turn it off before the 43 minute mark — that is when Ampersat had his attack.

3. THE SIXTH SENSE

‘I seen deaf people’ being possibly the dumbest movie line in the history of talkie cinema is only the beginning of this movie’s problems. @Todd was fortunate to miss this one, tripping on alprazolam as he was at the time, but I was forced to watch the whole thing. SPOILER ALERT: they all go deaf in the end.

2. THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR

There is not even a thirteenth floor in this trainwreck of a movie, and it looks like it was filmed inside an Apple IIC.

1. THE MATRIX

Another practically unknown movie that was recommended to me by my Life Doctor Lemon Reilly, who said, quote, ‘I recommend, nay prescribe this movie to you and Ampersat Todd for spoiled nerves and, you know, the hemorrhoids.’ Well let me tell you, this is in fact exactly the movie to AVOID for the hemorrhoids. Where did Lemon dig this one up? It is full of double-speak jargon such as neo (apparently a character), smith (dog food?), bug (insect), plug (cord that emerges from your head), cypher (large number), et cetera et cetera (et al). Eating steak is against the law in this movie (and presumably while watching it? nazis!), and every single person in it wears sunglasses. Weak-retinaed, abstruse for no reason, and the action scenes are laughable — half of them actually in slo-mo! I am not bluepilling you guys, stay away from this one, and have a safe and happy holiday!

ABOUT MITCHELL KENNEDY, M.F.A.

Mitchell Kennedy (M.F.A. Film Studies 1984, Leonard University) is the Gorko entertainment editor. He writes the weekly film column Mitch’s Movie Mash with his puppy Ampersat Todd.