Seeing bad movies organically

I'm having a debate with myself whether or not I should see Killers before my January 25th deadline to reveal my list of 2010 movies, ranked first to worst.

Reasons against:

1) Every critic in the country says it's terrible.

2) I hate Ashton Kutcher.

3) I've seen everything Katherine Hiegl has to show me on the big screen. (Well, not everything -- ease up on that nudity stance, Katherine. Wink wink.)

Reasons for:

1) Every critic in the country says it's terrible.

Wait a minute ...

You see, as I look over the list of 2010 movies I've seen so far, which is rapidly approaching 100, only the last 20 or so are movies I feel confidently in labeling bad movies. That brings up a different issue -- am I too easy on movies these days? Should a movie really get a thumbs up from me, just because it does a couple things right over the course of 95 minutes?

The reason the percentage is skewed in favor of movies I like is pretty simple: Like most people, I try to see mostly movies that will probably be good. The stinkers sneak through, of course, but it's not that often that you hate a movie most other people like. If a movie looks good (meaning you want to see it) and you heard it's pretty good (meaning others have liked it), there's a good chance you won't hate it. And those are pretty much the two conditions we try to line up before we see a movie: 1) Do I want to see it, and 2) Has it gotten favorable word of mouth. If so, plunk down that money.

But the difference between me and an average filmgoer is that I am also a part-time critic, and I want my year-end list to arise from the same conditions a full-time critic would experience. Full-time critics are exposed to both the wheat and the chaff, and so they have both a compelling "best of" list and a compelling "worst of" list. When I choose which movie is the worst movie I've seen this year, I don't just want it to be the worst movie I thought I'd like but didn't. I want to expand my search to include movies I knew I'd never in a million years like.

Enter Killers.

So everyone says Killers is terrible. Actually, I have one friend who saw it and says it was not terrible. But everyone else.

The debate I'm having is whether it's "fair" to my process, to stuff the bottom of my list with crap -- or whether the worst movie of the year should earn its title through totally organic means. I don't know why I consider this to be sort of important, but I do.

Then again, even bad movies have degrees of hatred. Within the group of movies we can all agree are bad, some of us absolutely despise those movies, while others have sort of an indifferent kind of dislike. It's possible I will indifferently dislike Killers, and it will only be the 15th worst movie I've seen this year.

It's also possible I will like it, and that introduces a whole different dilemma. Do I want my rankings to be tainted because I had to be fair, and tell the world that I did not hate Killers? Would it be easier to just shield myself from the possibility?

Then there's the whole issue that I brought up in this post, in which I bemoaned the fact that I was frittering away precious movie hours watching junk food. Many of the features on the "hit list" I posted in that post have not yet made their way into my DVD player, or onto my theater screen, or through my Netflix streaming.

But as I am fond of saying, watching movies is a function of opportunity. I have a decent opportunity to watch Killers tomorrow afternoon, on a split shift at work (working the morning, taking time off and then staying late). I'll have the baby, and I'd like to walk him in his carriage along the bike path while watching a movie. (For a discussion of the risks and hazards of this type of activity, and the precautions I'm taking to avoid those risks and hazards, see here.) It needs to be a movie on DVD, of course, so I can play it in my player. It also needs to be something my wife doesn't want to watch, and something I don't mind watching on a small screen with plenty of possible distractions. Lastly, it needs to be something I can pick up conveniently between now and then, most likely at a Redbox kiosk.

Hello, Killers.

This whole discussion may be moot anyway. Even with how bad Killers probably is, I doubt it will hold a candle to my current bottom-ranked movie. Just wait until a week from Tuesday and I'll reveal it. It's a doozy.