The two most discerning film critics I know - they work as a team - are Alex and Harry Solomons. That they are my nephews is irrelevant. They have impeccable judgement, and are regulars at their local cinemas.
They saw Pirates of the Caribbean last weekend, and their strongly expressed view is that it is the worst film they have ever seen. You have been warned.
They have, however, not seen The Family Stone, which is the worst film ever made - a film so nauseatingly, formulaicly cloying that, as I was watching it, I would happily have committed an act of violence on the person of anyone involved with the film.
And while we're on the subject of the worst films ever made, here's a trivia quiz. Which actress has been in two of the 3 worst films ever made?
The films are - as if you need me to tell you! - A Stranger Among Us and Shining Through.
The answer:
Melanie Griffith.
A Stranger Among Us was so preposterously stupid, and so shockingly badly acted, that I spent the entire film in a mix of embarrassed laughter and awe-struck admiration that such drivel could ever have been contemplated by a studio. Ms Griffith plays a NYPD detective (that alone would be enough to make the film preposterous) who goes undercover into the NYC Hasidic community to hunt down a murderer and falls in love with the rabbi.
Let me run that by you again, since the human brain cannot absorb such a concept in one go. Melanie Griffith - Melanie Griffith! - plays a NYPD cop who goes undercover as a Hasidic Jew, no one notices she isn't entirely kosher, and she and the rabbi get to make beautiful klezmer together.
The other film, Shining Through, is a Nazi double, triple, quadruple, I lost countuple 'thriller' in which she starred with Michael Douglas and was so mind-numbingly dull that when I realised, some half an hour into it, that I left my oven on, walked home to turn it off, walked back to the cinema, turned to my friend and asked 'what's happened?', she replied: 'nothing'.
There can, of course, be no debate as to these three worst films ever made. But if you have contenders for spots 4 or up, do please post a comment.
