But some films do. The ones that cast Wanda Sykes as a mammy archetype, for starters; the tortured feel-good dramedies that contort themselves into pretzels trying to make Diane Keaton, with her knob turned all the way to "shrill psychopath," likeable; or documentaries about something important and tragic that smug documentarians manage to transmogrify into films about how much they care. If you used race, rape, or death and suffering as afterthoughts and second-class citizens to childish narratives played by petrified stereotypes, you probably showed up on this list. If you used more than one of those things, you definitely did. The temptation is strong to come down hard on Me and You and Everyone We Know for being the masturbatory product of an onanistic (even by the profession's standards) performance artist, or The Exorcism of Emily Rose for taking the monkey side of the intelligent design debate, or Bee Season for being a piece of self-righteous shit--but really, what's the point? Let's turn our baleful gaze to stuff that actually has credible defenders.-Walter Chaw

"Honourable" Mentions: The Longest Yard, The Weather Man, Havoc, Cursed, Rory O'Shea Was Here, Be Cool, The Wedding Date, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story, Must Love Dogs, Cheaper by the Dozen 2, Domino, Fun with Dick and Jane

10. Memoirs of a Geisha (d. Rob Marshall)
Embarrassing softcore Orientalism, should you manage to sidestep the appalling Western insensitivity of its casting and its "slightly Asiatic" accents. (full review)

9. The Family Stone (d. Thomas Bezucha)
Elizabethtown (d. Cameron Crowe)
Diane Keaton in full fluttery-psycho mode in a picture where an evil family is painted in a beatific white light. The year that gay became the disability du jour finds its literalization in a Family Stoner who is not only gay, but deaf, and--careful Utahans--partnered with a black guy, too. Meanwhile, Susan Sarandon's self-destructive soft-shoe is the most embarrassing thing I've seen in ages--well, until I saw Albert Brooks' version of the same in 2006's dreadful Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. (The Family Stone: full review; Elizabethtown: full review)

8. North Country (d. Niki Caro)
It matters whether or not a woman is imperfect when it comes to determining if it's "okay" when she's assaulted. That's a lot of things, but mostly it's just reprehensible. (full review)

7. Crash (d. Paul Haggis)
This and Brokeback Mountain have been hailed as breakthroughs in race relations and gay issues, respectively. Let's go out on a limb and say that neither are breakthroughs and both are the political equivalent of those drop-boxes where you shove your old clothes every six months. (full DVD review)

6. Rent (d. Chris Columbus)
The Producers (d. Susan Stroman)
Broadway goes to Hollywood courtesy the success of Chicago with these two dusty oldies, trafficking in ancient attitudes and atonal tunes to the tune of tepid box office and the realization, always late in coming, that the theatre and the movie theatre are two different beasts. (Rent: full review; The Producers: full review)

5. Hustle & Flow (d. Craig Brewer)
Monster-in-Law (d. Robert Luketic)
Aw, yeah, pimp makes good by beating the shit out of another rapper (and a few of his hos, but discreetly and off camera), recording a bad rap song, and getting paid. Meanwhile, Jane Fonda pays Wanda Sykes to make "lawdy" faces while loading luggage and opening doors. (Hustle & Flow: full review; Monster-in-Law: full DVD review)

4. Gunner Palace (d. Petra Epperlein & Michael Tucker)
Positioned as MASH and executed like a navel-gazing poetry slam, Gunner Palace makes Michael Moore's self-aggrandizing, scattershot, and ultimately suspect smear pieces come off like Ken Burns. (full review)

3. Pretty Persuasion (d. Marcos Siega)
Pretty girl talks dirty while an Arab girl smuggles a gun into her school to kill...herself. Ah, sweet irony. Ah, such bullshit. (full DVD review)

2. Derailed (d. Mikael Håfström)
Rachel gets raped, but not really, and black people have violent street cred in the year's ugliest, dumbest thriller. If you didn't get it from the trailer, you probably went to see Rumor Has It as well. (full review)

1. The Dukes of Hazzard (d. Jay Chandrasekhar)
More than just a bad film, it's a hateful, spiteful one that, like most things smug in this way, lacks the courage and the direction to be meaningfully hateful and spiteful. Of course, we could just as easily leave it at "another Broken Lizard production." (full DVD review)

10. The Ring Two (d. Hideo Nakata)
The most unworthy sequel since Staying Alive. Rudderless, joyless, and heartless, The Ring Two dispenses with the original's technophobia and neglects to replace it with anything substantial. (full review)

9. Winter Solstice (d. Josh Sternfeld)
Winter Solstice may be the best-intentioned of this year's suburban melodramas, but because he mistakes stasis for meditation, writer-director Josh Sternfeld succeeds only in eliciting more contempt for the genre than usual. (full DVD review)

8. Herbie: Fully Loaded (d. Angela Robinson)
Lindsay Lohan finds her onscreen soul mate in a similarly zaftig contraption likewise limited to two or three facial expressions. If only it had ended like Thelma & Louise. (full DVD review)

7. Steamboy (d. Katsuhiro Otomo)
Contrary to popular belief, the Director's Cut simply prolongs the agony. Hayao Miyazaki stumbled in 2005, too, but not like this. (full DVD review)

6. Cinderella Man (d. Ron Howard)
Of its myriad sins, Cinderella Man's most unforgiveable is how it turns penitent Max Baer into The Crusher from Bunny Hugged. It's an underdog sports intrigue with no one to root for and a period piece with all the flavour of chewing gum left on the bedpost overnight. (full DVD review)

5. The Pacifier (d. Adam Shankman)
Setting mores back fifty years, The Pacifier--in which Vin Diesel plays Hattie McDaniel to five hellspawn--resurrects hateful totems, perpetuates conservative attitudes, and fosters Boo Radley paranoia. You know, for kids. (full DVD review)

4. Monster-in-Law (d. Robert Luketic)
My colleagues sum it up here better than I could. (full DVD review)

3. Elizabethtown (d. Cameron Crowe)
Cameron Crowe lapses into self-parody with an ode to fathers and sons so disingenuous that the only true figure of veneration to emerge is, once again, Crowe's mommy. Fun fact: Lodge Kerrigan's by-no-means-amateurish Keane could've been made 67 times over (yes, sixty-seven) for the cost of this mess. (full review)

2. In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger (d. Jessica Yu)
The titular recluse's worst nightmare, In the Realms of the Unreal is a work of spectacular invasiveness that only helps to immortalize Henry Darger less as an outsider artist than as a pariah. (capsule review)

1. Must Love Dogs (d. Gary David Goldberg)
Watch as Diane Lane and John Cusack roll over and play dead. (full DVD review)-Bill Chambers

"Honourable" Mentions: Crash; The Island; Pretty Persuasion; Four Brothers

Notably Missed: Alone in the Dark; Son of the Mask; The Family Stone; The Producers

For the Love of God, Please Go Away: (tie) Jennifer Aniston & Susan Sarandon

10. Kingdom of Heaven (d. Ridley Scott)
It's impossibly beautiful, it's about a key moment in history, and it's maybe the dullest movie Ridley Scott has ever made. For all the huffing and puffing, the Crusades come off as a joyless trudge--which they probably were, but did I need Orlando Bloom to tell me that? A film that sits on your chest and tries to suffocate you. (full review)

9. The Great Raid (d. John Dahl)
Nothing pulls its punches like a WWII movie, and so the sickly, starving survivors of the Bataan death march never seem to have anything more serious than a hangover and jointly spout the same inspirational blather while simplifying American-Philippine relations more than a touch. Tedious at any other time, but dangerous in the current martial climate--or it would be, had anybody been fool enough to go see it.

8. (tie) The Upside of Anger (d. Mike Binder)/Imaginary Heroes (d. Dan Harris)
Both of these John Cheever Afterschool Specials confuse bald statements of bourgeois dissatisfaction with actual explorations of same and trivialize a host of social ills and personal crises in the name of writing a screenplay. Smug when they're not completely deluded, they only succeed in making something like Junebug seem even more sparkling than it did to begin with. (The Upside of Anger: full review; Imaginary Heroes: capsule review)

6. Son of the Mask (d. Lawrence Guterman)
A film most people had forgotten begets one you wish you'd never heard of--an assaultive, bludgeoning, unfunny "kids" movie that leaves you dazed and wondering if anyone at New Line is really driving the train. Wasting Alan Cumming is bad enough, but burying him in relentless, atrocious CGI is too much to bear--ditto the prospect of another film starring Jamie Kennedy. (full review)

5. xXx: State of the Union (d. Lee Tamahori)
Another totally chaotic sequel with entirely different above-the-title personnel--and another film that seems to have generated itself out of spare parts rejected from other movies. If xXx was no great shakes, at least it delivered some dubious goods. (full review)

4. Monster-in-Law (d. Robert Luketic)
The misogyny of this film is well documented, as is its horrible reduction of Wanda Sykes to the Sassy Black Assistant role. (The low point of the year is no doubt Sykes exclaiming, "I think I just dislocated my vagina!") Leaving aside the fact that Jane Fonda has never been funny, the politics of this film are disgusting and its aesthetics would embarrass '80s television. (full DVD review)

3. (tie) The Pacifier (d. Adam Shankman)/Are We There Yet? (d. Brian Levant)
Two "family" entertainments that dishonour the whole concept of the family and a gentrification of two declining vulgarians in films more repugnant and unpleasant than their worst glory-days romping. Their mutual success is proof that there will always be an audience for car-puke and dirty-diaper jokes, much to my chagrin--and nausea. (The Pacifier: full DVD review; Are We There Yet?: full review)

1. Alone in the Dark (d. Uwe Boll)
You can argue whether Michael Bay and Brett Ratner are more evil, but for sheer ineptitude, Uwe Boll surpasses even Ratner. This was the jaw-dropping, mind-dislocating disaster of the year, and you couldn't even say it was a good time. A friend of mine insists that the director is a descendent of Nobel winner Heinrich Boll and that the film is a deliberate Brechtian enterprise, but I'd much rather read the paper on it than ever suffer through it again. (full review)