The Worst Movie Of The Year
I believe it was Madonna who once said that the key to long-term popularity is to craft a persona that people love and hate in equal measure. Lars von Trier’s 2011 movie, “Melancholia,” starring Kirsten Dunst, may be around for the long term, as it certainly inspired extreme reactions. Count me among the haters. I found this apocalyptic tale that topped the lists of some otherwise reliable critics to be not even pretentious: just listless and inane. Only Charlotte Rampling‘s acid portrait of a mother at a wedding gave me any flicker of pleasure. My runner-up for worst movie of 2011: “Mars Needs Mums.” As The Independent pointed out: ‘Disney was desperate for ‘Mars Needs Mums’ to be a box office hit to help justify the cost of 3D cinema tickets, not to mention earn back some of the $175 million it cost to make. Unfortunately for them the film was a flop, making less than $7 million on its opening weekend and, as Geoffrey Macnab points out, raising serious questions about the long-term sustainability of 3D filmmaking.’
