Hey folks! Just like this time last year, I’m planning to actually use this blog for movie reviews and commentary now. The fact is, I watch movies with almost all of my free time anyway, so I figure that I might as well throw my opinions on them into the great void of the internet. So, I am going to aim to write about them (consistently) on here. There are a few differences this time around:

The IMDb Bottom 100

In the first week of 2014, I froze the listing of IMDb’s Bottom 100. My goal for the year is to watch through all of the miserable movies on the list from that particular point in time. Some of the entries are admittedly a bit obscure, so I have a contingency plan of sorts if I get down to the wire and can’t find some of them.

Without further ado, here is the list as I froze it:

 

As some of you are probably aware, the IMDb Bottom 100 is a living, democratic list. It tends to be a bit volatile because of this, so movies come in and out of the list on a regular basis. In addition, there is a minimum vote quota to qualify for ranking (1500 votes), meaning that at any point new movies can qualify for the list if they gain enough votes.  If it comes down to it, I may use some new additions to the Bottom 100 that have popped up since my beginning of the year list freeze in lieu of movies I just can’t find. 

To add a bit of a random element to the mix, I also have a fun new tool to help me randomize my selections:

The Wheel

For the better part of a decade, I have been watching shitty movies with my friends on a regular basis. A number of years ago, I started the tradition of a holiday shitty movie distribution, in which I would collect the worst films I could dig out of the city’s bargain bins and distribute them to my friends through some form of chance.

This Christmas, inspired by the folks at Red Letter Media, one of these friends built a “Wheel of the Worst” imitation for this specific purpose. Equipped with a mocking smile to rub in your our cinematic viewing choices, it has so far been dubbed the “Wheel of Regret”. In its inaugural use, we sat through “The Untold”, an episode of “BibleMan”, the “Black Christmas” remake, and 2002’s “Rollerball”, along with shitty movie distributions to all in attendance. It was a tough night.

In any case, I’ve been using that spinning, grinning monster to help me randomize my Bottom 100 selections. I pick 8 numbers representing listed films I have already acquired, place them on the wheel, and then spin away. Speaking of which…

The Acquiring

Believe it or not, finding these movies isn’t particularly easy. I managed to luck out during a recent road trip to New Orleans, running into a head shop with an extensive used DVD selection and a BlockBuster having a full clearance. Aside from the stack of generally bad movies I purchased for next to nothing, I came back with hard copies of seven of the Bottom 100.

After some local digging afterwards, I came up with another seven or so. Also to my luck, a huge number of Bottom 100 films were featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, meaning they are easily located on YouTube and/or Netflix. Through all of that (and the ones I already owned), I’ve already found a huge percentage of the list. That said, I’m still in an ongoing hunt for some of the obscure European / Bollywood entries.

The Watching

As of writing this, I am 16 movies into the list. I have been following each movie up with a mini-review on facebook, and occasionally doing live commentary. I’m planning to expand on all of the mini-reviews a bit and post them here over the course of the challenge.

I’m planning to cover some other generally bad movies as I watch them as well. For instance, I recently watched “New Gladiators” and “The Toxic Avenger” for the first time, both of which I have a whole lot of thoughts on.

So, you can look forward to a whole lot of content here shortly. In the meantime, you can check out some reviews I did last year on Les Miserables and Django (1966). Or I guess you could go outside or something, that’s cool too.