A smorgasbord of shitty movies.

The past few movies that I've watched have all been shockingly awful. In fact, if I didn't love films so damn much, these past couple of films and their sheer awfulness would put me off watching movies for life.

Expired (Cecilia Miniucchi, 2007)
Samantha Morton plays a shy traffic warden who embarks on a tentative and completely disjointed relationship with unstable workmate Jason Patric in this lame dark comedy. Not much actually happens in the film, and it trawls through the events at its own, very slow pace. Jason Patric does the best he can do with an extremely unlikeable character but Morton's contribution cosists of nothing apart from sporting a fugly perm. There are the odd moments of sweetness amongst the many sour ones, but overall, it proved an extremely pointless watch.

Towelhead (Alan Ball, 2007)
Alan Ball abandons his fascination with the dead for Towelhead with his directorial debut, which focuses on the living. In particular, one thing which is very alive is the sexual awakening of 13-year-old Jasira Maroun, who leaves her mother to go live with her racist, crazy father. Summer Bishil looks appropriately gormless throughout, but the things that are done to her in the movie (not least by Aaron Eckhart's fingers, ewwww) made me sick. Toni Collette offers modest redemption as just about the only decent person in a cesspool of human crap, but overall, this film left me feeling very, very repulosed. The fact that Ball retained the racist title of the novel in order to summon controversy in an attempt to get bums on seats for this piece of turd says it all.
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (Lee Daniels, 2009)
Now, I was really looking forward to Precious. The book, grim as it was, packed a real emotional punch. But the film... sheesh. There was poverty porn overdrive with the many shots of greasy food and the dialogue varied between corny after-school special to embarrassing blaxploitation. Gabby Sidoube was amazing, I'll give her that, the mastery of her performance even more impressive given that Precious was her cinematic debut. Mo'Nique was appropriately evil and terifying as Precious' Mommy Dearest. But, really. Any film that thinks juxtaposing a rape scene with frying an egg? As Precious might say, "that's jus' NASTY".

The Collector (Marcus Dunstan, 2009)
Um, yeah. This film was not good. It's about a guy who decides to steal a precious jewel from an affluent family in order to make child support payments, only to find that some guy, "The Collector", has rigged the house with traps. The traps aren't just mouse traps or anything either; they're real sadistic, saw type traps. Agh. Anyway, the only positive thing I can say about this piece of crap was that the little girl in it survived.

AntiChrist (Lars von Trier, 2009)
Yuck. Where to start, really. This was one of the ponciest, sickening, poorly acted and pointless films of all time. Following the death of their son (which occured when the parents were banging to the pretentious tones of Lascia ch'io pianga in a crappily staged sechs scene), the mother, "She", is so overcome with grief that her husband drags her out to the middle of nowhere, a supposed "Eden". Charlotte Gainsbourg walks around with her minge hanging out most of the time, the director of photography really could have done with bunging his camera on a tripod rather than purseposely shaking it and don't get me started on the rancid genital mutilation. It's not bad news all around, though - The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus? You're not the shittest film of 2009 anymore!