Cell and Unbreakable figure
among 'worst movies'

A correspondent

The Cell, directed by Tarsem Singh and Unbreakable, directed by M Night Shyamalan figure among Paul Clinton, the CNN.com reviewer's 10 worst movies of 2000.

Said Clinton, ''Talk about an embarrassment of riches! Some critics have gone as far as to call the year 2000 the worst year since 1930, when Hollywood went through the awkward transition from silents to talkies. So, the selection for this latest dubious honour of the 10 worst films of the year ranges far and wide.

But, continued Clinton, as usual, some stand out above the rest as films that are a ''complete waste of your time and movie-going dollar''.

The movies in the list are Battlefield Earth (directed by Robert Christian; starring John Travolta, Barry Pepper and Forest Whitaker), The Beach (directed by Danny Boyle; starring Leonard DiCaprio), The Cell (directed by Tarsem Singh; starring Jennifer Lopez, Vincent D'Onofrio and Vince Vaughno), Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (directed by Joe Berlinger; starring Stephen Barker Turner, Tristine Skyler, Erica Leerhsen, Kim Director and Jeffrey Donovan), Gun Shy (directed by Eric Blakeney; starring Sandra Bullock, Liam Neeson and Oliver Platt), The Next Best Thing (directed by John Schlesinger; starring Madonna and Rupert Everett), Mission To Mars (directed by Brian De Palma; starring Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, Don Cheadle and Connie Nielsen), Autumn In New York (directed by Joan Chen; starring Richard Gere and Winona Ryder), Unbreakable (directed by M Night Shyamalan; starring Bruce Willis, Samuel L Jackson and Robin Wright) and Dr. T and the Women (directed by Robert Altman; starring Richard Gere, Helen Hunt, Kate Hudson, Laura Dern, Farrah Fawcett and Tara Reid).

The Cell, according to Clinton, smells. Despite spellbinding visuals, breathtaking costumes, fine performances by Vaughn and D'Onofrio -- not to mention a stop-the-clock perform by Lopez's body -- this slick, sci-fi thriller is stupid... the critic said.

Unbreakable, said the critic, is the follow-up to writer/director Shyamalan's wildly successful debut The Sixth Sense. ''As such, there were a lot of expectations, fair and unfair, riding on this film. It failed, big time. The film is slow and ponderous, for one thing, but to make up for that, it's also dark and tedious,'' Clinton said.

Once again Willis stars, this time as someone who may be "unbreakable", but this time there was no critical or public payoff, Clinton stated.

However, in a related article, Paul Tatara, another CNN reviewer, listed Unbreakable among the 10 best movies of 2000.

Wrote Tatara, '' Unbreakable has suffered as much as any movie I can think of from its built-in audience's narrow expectations. A film of slowly building power, it boldly denies heroic release much in the same way that Taxi Driver denies its protagonist's sexuality. Shyamalan intentionally holds back for most of the picture, then forces the main character to confront a physical manifestation of his own paralysing grief.''

''Shyamalan simply refuses to permit his hero a conventional form of action-film emancipation. That's the whole point of the movie, and it's exactly what many viewers are missing,'' Tatara added.

''This is a formidable work of popular art, an example of commercial film-making at its finest. Whether people understand it or not, you can rest assured that Shyamalan is the real thing. If cornered, I'd say this is the best film of the year.''