Last week I weighed in with my top 10 unwatchables of 2008. When it comes to terrible movies, I feel my credentials are impeccable. And yet the New York magazine culture blog Vulture failed to contact me when compiling their critics’ survey of the worst movies 2008 had to offer. Still, I am willing to overlook this slight, since all of us who endured The Love Guru are part of one traumatized brother-and-sisterhood. “But what about the awful films of 2008? Who will remember them? The Shyamalanian disasters, the failed epics, the oeuvre of Al Pacino? Who will tell us which, of the 300-plus films shat out by Hollywood this year, was truly the most awful?... We've undertaken the most comprehensive survey of crappy movies ever, contacting dozens of major critics and asking them for their least-favorite stinkers, turkeys, botches, catastrophes, and fiascoes.”

The list is amusing enough, but it’s the critics’ comments that make this exercise truly worthwhile. Carina Chocano on Speed Racer: “Was any other movie of the year as likely to provoke grand mal seizures in viewers while simultaneously putting them to sleep?” Matt Zoller Seitz on Strange Wilderness: “This inexplicably self-satisfied non-movie was half-assed even by stoner-comedy standards, and it transformed its versatile, self-deprecating star, Steve Zahn, into a snide boor.” Michael Sragow of the Baltimore Sun: “Was 10,000 BC this year? If not, could we fit it in by going by the Hebraic or Eastern Orthodox calendars?”

What I’ve learned from this list is that I’m going to have to subject myself to Seven Pounds sooner or later. (“One of the most transcendently, eye-poppingly, call-your-friend-ranting-in-the-middle-of-the-night-just-to-go-over-it-one-more-time crazily awful motion pictures ever made,” A.O. Scott gushes.) Let’s make it later.

Related:
Film Threat Unveils Frigid 50 of 2008
The Most Unnecessary Movies of 2007