Maybe it’s because I’m switching buildings after a year and a half here at the Google (so, if you had been planning an elaborate way past security to murder me, HA! Too late. Unless you do it before 5:00 PM Pacific), or maybe it’s just been long enough, but today I crown a new “Worst Movie Ever.”

Those who know me or that have ever asked “what do you think the worst movie ever is?” know I have an immediate answer. I have never needed any time to think about it, because the movie stood out as the worst movie-going experience of my life:

25m.jpg

8MM is was the worst garbage I had ever seen. It was long. It was stupid. The plot was boring and uninteresting. The “twist” at the end was not even remotely exciting nor was it “a commentary on the absurdity of human preconceptions.” It was just terrible. I remember seeing it in the theater and, despite going to a 9 PM showing, fully expecting to leave the theater and it be daylight out.

But. It’s reign of near 9 years as worst movie ever has ended. Today, officially, it is replaced by the new Worst Movie Ever. This one will be more controversial as, apparently, everyone can appreciate this movie except me.
10m.jpg

Atonement is the worst piece of trash that has ever attempted to pass itself as a movie. And I’ve seen “Envy” — I would rather watch Envy twice than watch this even partly again (except, maybe, the chocolate bar scene).

First of all, the beginning was drawn out. You’re placed in this colonial-styled world wondering when something, anything will happen. People show up. There are twins. People are suspicious. A play is written by a little girl who is, as we are told, “quite fanciful.” A strange chocolate magnate acts as one would expect the Monopoly man to act after having a life-altering stroke. You see Keira Knightley’s butt, or rather, just the beginning of it. There is a Keira Knightley sex scene, which, originally was sold to me as reason to see this movie. It is not. The last sex scene sold to me through lies and mistruths was in “Brokeback Mountain” before I knew it was about gay cowboys (not that there is anything wrong with being gay or a cowboy. Also I wrote that as “coyboys” the first time and I don’t know what that means). I feel just as betrayed this time. An urn is broken. There is a bee. At some point you watch people watching things for a good couple minutes.

Also, the producer apparently contracted someone to create a little recurring diddy throughout the movie that involves a typewriter used as a musical instrument. The main character also uses a typewriter. It’s all very apt. Apparently the producer thought it so much so that it’s played every minute. Click-click-CLICK-click. Ding. Fortunately near the end I believe they either ran out of royalty money or forgot about it.

FINALLY something starts happening – a rape occurs and a false accusation is waged by our “protagonist.” You start wondering what really happened and

All the sudden, people are speaking subtitled French and are at war.

It is unclear why.

Then, Hedwig is there. From the Harry Potter movies. That was pretty sweet. Later in the movie you see a bunch of dead wizard children as well. I hate to ruin the best parts for you, but you need to know the truth.

Anyway, you sit through these war sequences, which are relatively pointless and irrelevant (go watch “Saving Private Ryan” instead), until we get to find out what really happened in the first part of the movie.

Or so you would think. Apparently the producer, the same guy who loved that typewriter song, wanted to win an Oscar. So he rented an Oscar award winning picture at random, and decided to emulate it. The movie he picked was “Titantic.”

My general summary of “Titantic” is that the old woman was a liar, and a bit of a tramp (this summary stolen from Seinfeld, because it is so succinct and correct).

So at the end of Atonement you find out that the woman (who we already know as a liar) makes up for her misdeeds by lying some more, except this time instead of to the police, she lies to the audience. Also, if not being liar is enough, she’s got dementia so who knows what really happened? Fortunately, I don’t care. I was just so excited that she was like 90 years old; it meant the movie couldn’t possibly last much longer (this is true; if you are forced to see this film, know that when she becomes old your misery is almost at end).

Do not go see Atonement. It is bad. It will make you unhappy.