1 SIMON BIRCH
The retching essence of sentimental ick. It's the tale of a saintly junior dwarf who changes the lives of everyone around him, but even though we're supposed to ''love'' dear Simon, this dewy-eyed homuncular Christ is really just there to make us feel superior. The movie is like a Hallmark adaptation of one of those National Enquirer look-at-this-cute-little-deformed-person photos.
2 MEN WITH GUNS
The talented but lethally self-serious John Sayles has made the ultimate politically correct dud. It's set in an unnamed Latin American country, it's about the victimization of mournful peasant folk, it's filmed in Spanish and assorted native Indian dialects (for that subtitled Peace Corps effect), and it's paced slower than a Robert Bresson film festival. I spent the entire movie wishing I were back in school.
3 SNAKE EYES
The trash apotheosis of Brian De Palma. In this seriously deranged suspenser about the assassination of the U.S. secretary of defense during a championship boxing match (oh, that old plot!), not only does he reference Vertigo, the JFK assassination, and '70s conspiracy films; he references his own earlier rip-offs of same. The result is nearly metaphysical in its awfulness. We can't believe a minute of what we're seeing, but we certainly believe that Nicolas Cage, clad in a party-on jacket the color of dog puke, has come to think that really bad acting is good acting.
4 BLADE
Wesley Snipes, as a fearless vampire killer, looks deader than the undead in this flashy, frenzied, incoherent glitter-gore junk-athon. Please, no more movies based on comic books -- they're about as appetizing as blood-filled Twinkies.
5 FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
It's like dropping acid in a garbage can. Terry Gilliam adapted Hunter S. Thompson's hyperactive road-trip screed with more grunge, faithfulness, and madcap visual ingenuity than other filmmakers have lavished on the Bible or Dickens. The result? A movie that makes you wish Hunter S. Thompson had never picked up a typewriter.
