2009 / Kyle Newman > Sadly, the funniest parts of this Star Wars geek-a-thon are all in the trailer. Probably a must-see for those who can recite the Boba Fett entry in Wikipedia from memory, the movie does nothing else to field itself away from a typical teenage comedy. It also comes off as a half-assed, stereotypical attempt at rationalizing the world of fanboys. Then again, we all know this bit to be true: Dan Fogler has made out with Maggie Q, and most of us haven’t.

2009 / Ken Kwapis > He’s Just Not That Into You is one of the most mediocre attempts at legitimizing the tough-love, romantic dramedy genre in Hollywood. It fails primarily because it tries to be street smart only to then fall into trite turns and twists seen a mile away. The lack of focus also doesn’t help: Proper storytelling needs to address the little nuances that tilt emotions, but here we’re dilly-dallying left and right, making sure the dots connect, and all the while, are being given advice and then being told it’s wrong. This again reminds me of Ben Younger’s much unheralded sophomore effort, Prime, which I recall as one of the last movies with similar themes and big stars that worked successfully on multiple levels. Plus, let’s be honest at this point: Scarlett Johansson’s sheer presence on a screen is enough to ruin any movie.

2008 / Tom Putnam > Last year, I was slotted a silly, amateurishly made yet almost jovial little sci-fi horror flick called Raptor for Lucid Screening’s White Elephant Film Blogathon. Because the film didn’t take itself so seriously, I was inclined to comment on it in a satirical fashion, tongue-in-cheek with lots of superlatives and naked praise. This year, I expected to do more of the same, but to my great surprise, Tom Putnam’s The Hottie and the Nottie is not a joke. This is a mostly serious production with mostly serious intents. But as it sits at #51 on the IMDb Bottom 100 (up from #1), one has to wonder where it all went wrong.

Let’s start at square one: Director Putnam’s last film was Red White Black & Blue, a respectable PBS documentary about the Japanese invasion of Alaska in 1942. It stands in out in history as being the first and only time since the War of 1812 that a foreign country has invaded American soil. Everyone from trade bible Variety to The Christian Science Monitor and The Boston Globe laid accolades on it, the latter calling it “a wrenching look at a forgotten battle.” So how does the director of that go forth in directing this, a movie that was pimped out to the masses in the guise of a Paris Hilton showcase? The truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know Putnam, but one thing is for sure: Hollywood isn’t easy, and every critic and commentator out there blindly splashing manure at this piece of work because of Hilton’s involvement ought to be ashamed of themselves for not being more considerate.

The Hottie and the Nottie is not a classic. It’s not even good enough to become a cult favorite. It’s mediocre at best, though it should be filed a couple of notches below that. But it’s also not as bad as the reviews would suggest. My disgust stems from incendiary commentaries around the Internet that knock this movie down simply because of Hilton’s involvement. There are proper ways to be critical and then there are half-assed ways. Much of what I’ve read is of the mooning assortment, devoid of respect for the hard work of all the individuals who actually did hone their craft on this unfortunate movie. Show your anger at those who caused this to be such a disaster. First of all, the marketing is terrible. The posters and DVD covers have Hilton (“the Hottie”) glowing in a white bikini while pal Christine Lakin (“the Nottie”) stands behind her looking like the offspring of The Goonies’ Sloth and the mother from Peter Jackson’s Braindead. It’s an unappealing sight undoubtedly Photoshopped for further effect, and simply a bad business decision. If there’s really anyone who could be blamed for the failure of such a production, it would have to be the marketers and whoever was responsible for the casting of Paris Hilton.

The writing is good enough for what the movie was supposed to be: A run-of-the-mill My Fair Lady with a slight twist. But Hilton cannot act. She’s statuesque, almost frigid and incapable of evoking emotion. She’s not even the lead, yet she ruins every scene she’s in. One could argue that her celebrity has caused us to take her less seriously, but then how do you respond to the way Angelina Jolie marveled in A Mighty Heart? Good and great actors work beyond their real-life egos to make audiences believe, but Hilton, flush with her family fortune, lacks that in spades. In fact, what may be scary is that her performance in this was only slightly worse than in 1 Night in Paris. Recast her character and we’ve already improved the final product by 100%.

Story-wise, the fundamental problem with makeover movies is that they’re predictable. You know the protagonist will get the once-ugly girl. That’s the formula, but give credit to screenwriter Heidi Ferrer for trying to change things up a little. Lakin (who most of us remember from the mid-90s TGIF sitcom Step by Step alongside Patrick Duffy and Suzanne Sommers) transforms in a more respectable fashion than usual in this sub-genre. It’s natural and readily believable. And while Lakin isn’t Rachel Leigh Cook, she’s still a formidable ugly duckling. Even Joel David Moore, known primarily for the portrayal of a wacky game designer in Grandma’s Boy, puts forth the kind of lovable loser performance that’s bound to tug a couple of heart strings.

So, about Putnam and Hilton and the film as a whole: How did this occur? Hilton is listed as executive producer, so maybe her Benjamins influenced the direction. Maybe Putnam realized making documentaries wasn’t the way to pay rent. Maybe the marketers saw the final product, realized it stunk of six-month old milk and decided to sell it to the VH1, I Love New York niche-market that loves celeb trash to death. But even they’ll be disappointed. Either Putnam or Hilton or someone else with muscles flexed them to the point where the film’s identity crisis forcibly looms over its path to success: Too serious to be taken as a gross-out romantic comedy, and too ridiculous to be satirized.

1923 / Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor > Often forgotten amongst Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin is silent comedy master Harold Lloyd who, a year before Keaton’s special effects bonanza in Sherlock Jr., created a comedy of lively proportions in Safety Last! Most famous for the image of him dangling from a clock atop a Roaring Twenties skyscraper, the film is an entertaining comedy that centers around Lloyd trying to make his girlfriend back home believe that he’s become a successful store manager in the big city. This simple act, which has worked as a story basis for hundreds of films afterward, leads to all kinds of hilarity and stunts by the actor. Personally, I found that it barely aged, and that a film of such a nature could not benefit from the addition of sound or color. It feels honest and authentic, and with a running time of roughly 70 minutes, it also packs in quite a punch without testing one’s patience.

1924 / Buster Keaton > If there’s one thing anybody can take away from a viewing of Keaton’s Sherlock Jr., it’s that the kind of special effects we see in movies nowadays had their roots way before we could have ever imagined. Some of the tricks pulled off here are, even now, not easy to replicate. And some are as clever now as they were then. We tend to forget that Hollywood has matured over almost a century of ups and downs, but thankfully works by great minds like Keaton and Charlie Chaplin are always there to remind us of the wonderful stash of cinema still existing from our often forgotten past. As for Sherlock Jr. specifically, I did find a few tonal shifts in the film a bit jarring, mostly stemming from the need to show off effects and techniques when such hullabaloo were not necessary. The film tends to stand firm on its own footing as a cornerstone of visual effects but not necessarily as a storyteller. But Keaton is so very watchable, you just might not care.

1979 / Ridley Scott > See, I get it now. Scott’s primary objective in Alien is to portray the relationship between a woman and her cat. Everything else was simply fodder. And why not? It’s a serious issue worthy of further discussion in our society. It was as relevant in 1979 as it is now. As dogs are a man’s best friend, cats are a woman’s. No? Well, alright. Maybe I’m just being a bit a harsh, but I just found my experience with the original Alien to be quite underwhelming. In short, the film did not age as well as I’d hoped. Visually, it’s still quite crisp, even if some of the special effects (e.g., the android sequence) are comic. But it’s the pacing that really gets me. The first half is a bit of an exploration, languishing scene by scene, setting up for the arrival of the beast from outer space. The second half is a considerably more tense rush for the crew’s survival. But from a viewing distance, I couldn’t justify the anticipation early on for what came after. The action sequences are tame, even if the birthing scene remains one of the greatest moments in cinematic history. Scott said he shortened some scenes to tighten the film, but that could never streamline this if the existing content isn’t compelling to begin with. In comparison, 2001 gave us a philosophical pill to swallow (whether you liked the taste of it or not), Aliens gave us the excitement we’ve come to expect from the genre and Sunshine attempted, in what may have been an honorable failure, to fuse the two formats. But this? It’s an impressive stepping stone that’s simply been left behind.

1968 / Sergio Leone > Most of us who grew up in the 80s only knew Charles Bronson as the man who answered your Death Wish, but before that came the man who stood tall against screen-legend Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West. Now, I’m not generally a big fan of Westerns—I have a hard time identifying with them, especially the setting and rural lifestyle. But that definitely didn’t keep me from respecting what may be the finest film I’ve ever seen in the genre. Unlike The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, everything here just fits. The long shots linger, making sure we notice Fonda’s gray hair and blue eyes, the glean in Bronson’s squint as he plays the harmonica, the hidden softness beneath Jason Robards’ beard and the mystique of Italian beauty Claudia Cardinale. The story develops in a calculated manner, and then deconstructs itself in a near mirror image. Ennio Morricone’s score is subtler, but still comforts every scene with its soothing touch. But most importantly, there’s a sense of moral ambiguity. Nobody’s outright good or bad, and everybody’s got a bit of the ugly in them.

2008 / Jonathan Demme > As I watched the Oscars, my quiet, secret hope for a coup lay in Anne Hathaway. Our princess with a diary who created havoc while breaking mountains had somehow ended up at her sister’s wedding, half-broken, trying to be resilient and drawing attention to herself in an effort to not do so. Hathaway plays the role with such tact. Her character isn’t particularly likable, yet by the end, it’s nearly impossible not to feel some level of empathy, because we’ve all been in situations where we’ve been misunderstood, been misguided or simply didn’t know better. Along with Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt (the Rachel in question) and Bill Irwin (their father) hold up their own ends with simply excellent performances that puts Rachel Getting Married near the top of best ensembles of the year.

For Demme, this is a nice, flowing, rhythmic piece, and arguably his finest since 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. (Yes, it’s been that long.) The direction seems so hands off, with organic angles, lively dialogue and an actual band being cast to provide the music for the film, some sort of homage to Dogme 95. To top it off, TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe plays the groom and even has a bit of a vocal solo that fits in seamlessly.

This is the kind of family drama that is completely hit or miss for most viewers. Some will find it cynical, contrived and downright boring, but many, like myself, found it true-to-life uplifting. (Sure, the actual wedding is a bit new age, but the family troubles are as bread and butter as they come.) But let me be fair: This is not the kind of uplifting that makes you think you can go and conquer the world. It’s more about hope in people, and that family can work even with a few very large kinks.

2008 / Clark Gregg > I’ve never read anything by Chuck Palahniuk, but between Choke and Fight Club, one has to be closer to the truth. The latter is a masterpiece, a testament to the modern twenty-something in deep need of guidance. The former is ridiculous. Well, at least the movie is. The gimmick of a sex addict doesn’t really do much in terms of driving the plot, though I’m sure it got a couple of people to buy the DVD hoping for some Kelly Macdonald nudity (sorry, there is none). Halfway through, I was wondering what the point of it all was, and there wasn’t really any ending I could have imagined that could have saved it. I was right. At least it gives you an idea or two about airplane etiquette.