Faust (2011)
Mauricius agrees to help Heinrich Faust win the affection of his beloved Gretchen in exchange for his soul.
There are plenty of better adaptations of the Faust legend, including the 16th century play by Christopher Marlowe.
This film by Alexander Sokurov can’t decide if Mauricius is the devil or just a very talented man and the spiritual ramifications of the film are cheapened by the indecision.
Sokurov’s most famous film Russian Ark (2002), a continuous tracking shot through the Winter Palace, manages to elevate the ordinary to the divine. Sadly, this film devalues the divine to the pedestrian.
Baby Geniuses (1999)
Convinced infants lose their innate intellectual ability when they “cross over” and learn the dumbed down language of their parents, Dr. Kinder (Kathleen Turner) kidnaps babies from a local orphanage, conducts experiments on them, and uses this information to build an empire of children’s educational toys.
This horrendous film is as bad as advertised, a poor idea, poorly executed.
How did talented people like Kathleen Turner, Christopher Lloyd, Peter MacNiccol, Kim Catrall, and Ruby Dee get involved in something this asinine? I’m assuming they were blackmailed, or their agents are idiots, or they’re in desperate financial straits.
Unbelievably, a studio executive liked it enough to move forward on a sequel.
Battlefield Earth (2000)
Psychlo security chief Teri (John Travolta) is condemned to remain on Earth. With the help of his subordinate, Ker (Forest Whitaker), he enslaves native earthlings to mine for gold which he will sell at a premium.
One of these slaves, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) leads a rebellion against the Psychlo occupation.
Based on the novel by L. Ron Hubbard and widely seen as a Scientology apology, this vanity project is a stupendously bad movie and effectively ended Travolta’s comeback following his career resurrection in Pulp Fiction (1994).
The Scientology elements certainly didn’t help the film’s box office appeal, but the bigger problem is it never bothers to make us care about its characters.
It’s as bad as its infamy would suggest.