FUNNY STRANGE OR FUNNY HA-HA?: The Agitator has posted his lists of Awful Movies Seen Recently and Funniest People. This inspired me to post similar stuff. (More substantive posting, like part one of a response re Julian Sanchez and abortion, coming this afternoon. For now, I realized that I have already read 1/3 of the books on my fall reading list, so I’m gonna slack a bit.) I don’t watch enough TV to give you a Funniest People list (although here’s a start–the kid who plays Dewey on “Malcolm in the Middle,” Drew Carey and many of the other people on “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”, the Simpsons writers, and especially Stephen Fry). But here’s my bad-movie list.

WORST MOVIES SEEN EVER: 4) “Wings of Desire.” I know I’m gonna get flak for this, but I found this an incredibly pretentious art flick. (I have a very low tolerance for German Deep Thoughts.) Does the world really need another movie about preferring the evanescent and temporal to the eternal? Are we really beset by a passion for eternity that denigrates mere fleshly life? Two irksome/cheap touches: The pain felt by the angel (sorry, but the nick you gave yourself shaving or whatever really does not work as a stand-in for the pains and terrors of fallen human existence–where is the real agony in this movie? If the angel saw that, and chose our life anyway, I would have much more respect for this film), and the sexy, elusive, Meaningful acrobat. Does this woman have any lines? Or is she just yet another abstracted and cliched Eternal-Feminine? I wanted to like this movie, since at least two of the people I most respect named it as their favorite, but I really couldn’t. If you think I just need to watch it again or something, please email, since this is the movie on this list whose awfulness I’m least sure of.

3) “Fellini’s Satyricon.” What was the point of this movie? Apparently it makes a bit more sense if you’ve read the actual text of the Satyricon; for me, it was a five-hour trip to Wacky-But-Dullsville. An insipid boy who for some reason is very attractive to those around him; endless scenes that close with a sunset, tricking you into thinking the movie is over; and nothing remotely resembling a point, a plot, or a conclusion.

2) “Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadddaassss Song.” Or however you spell it. The first and last moments of the movie were great–“Starring the Black Community” and “Watch Out!” So that’s about two good minutes. The rest of the movie was crapsploitation. Gross, boring, etc. Why is Sweetback having sex with hippies in the desert? Why are we viewing a close-up of his fake wound? Why is he eating a rubber lizard? Why are the gospel tunes in the soundtrack so annoyingly off-key and out of synch? These are only some of the mysteries that await the viewer of “Sweetback.”

1) “Prinzen in Holleland” (Prince in Hell). An indescribably bad German art-flick. The wanderings of distressed young heroin addicts. The disgusting antics of a dog. A hanging. A turtle with its neck snapped off. Much artiness. I can’t believe I watched this.

You’ll note the theme here–I can watch any number of lame-o B movies (“Critters IV,” anyone?), but I hate, hate, hate pretentious artsiness.

MOST RECENT BAD MOVIES SEEN, FROM MOST TO LEAST RECENT: 1) “The Last Laugh.” F.W. Murnau silent movie about a proud doorman at a ritzy hotel who’s fired and reduced to serving as a lowly washroom attendant. I would have liked this movie except that a) the camerawork, lighting etc. were nothing special, and b) the ending is bizarre and unearned.

2) “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” The only Tennessee Williams I can deal with is “A Streetcar Named Desire,” which I really like. COAHTR, on the other hand, had all the sturm-und-drang I associate with Williams, plus the kind of Suhthuhn Hollywood acting in which every male character has a one-syllable name that the female characters stretch out to three or four syllables–“Oh, Rhay-ah-yett, honey!” However, this movie wasn’t as bad as I’m probably making it sound; it’s just that I haven’t watched many movies lately, so I have a smaller pool of lameosities.

3) “The Haunting.” The Boring is more like it. Subtle horror = A-OK. But this movie was so “subtle” I almost fell asleep.

4) “Burnt Offerings.” A haunted-house movie. There is no actual burning in this movie.

5) “Cloak and Dagger.” Again, not actually a bad movie, just a mediocre one, but I judge it harshly because it was directed by Fritz Lang, who is not allowed to be boring. C&D; had many nice touches, and good acting, but the plot petered out and didn’t justify the movie’s length. Oh, and while I’m beating up on generally terrific directors, Hitchcock’s “Frenzy” is trashy, gross, and unworthy of the master.

Now you know.