The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time: Ultraviolet
After watching Death Sentence, a terrible movie starring Kevin Bacon as a father in search of vigilante justice directed by Saw's James Wan, Gabe embarked on The Hunt For The Worst Movie of All Time. This is his sad journey.
What is it about Milla Jovovich and the end of the world? I mean, I wouldn't kick her out of bed for having the zombie virus either, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN, but she really has quite a streak of saving us all from total annihilation. The fact of the matter is if anyone's going to save us from zombies or vampires or Gary Oldman it seems like that person is going to look more like Paul Giamatti, and be way more versed in the production of vaccines and international diplomacy than, say, gun kata. But I hope Hollywood's right. I hope Milla Jovovich does ride her motorcycle to the rescue. Although, if the world in peril looks anything like the world in Ultraviolet, she needn't bother. Let us die.
Set in some distant future where the world has become dominated by a tyrannical leader and a tyrannical use of Photoshop's blur tool, humans have been devastated by the hemophage virus. It makes its victims super strong and super sensitive to light and sound, and it also gives them long teeth like vampires, and shortens their life span to 12 years from the point of infection. Ultraviolet is a hemophage vampire who poses as a courier to steal a secret weapon from the arch-ministry that's supposed to kill all the hemophages. She and the rest of the hemophage rebel alliance want to destroy the weapon because they don't want to get killed by it. Everyone is like "whatever you do, don't open the case," but it's weird because then Ultraviolet opens the case. Inside the case is a little boy. It's a boy and a weapon, says the hemophage leader who is also the worst actor. But Ultraviolet is like "no way, I love this little boy," and she kidnaps the boy and then she's on the run from everyone because also the arch-ministry or whatever wants it back. Meanwhile it turns out that the boy isn't a weapon against the hemophages, but actually a weapon against the humans! He's also a cloned version of the prime minister of Futureopolis! And he's boring! Finally after a million chases, the boy dies, but also isn't dead, and Ultraviolet has to fight the final boss in a fire swords fight and get the boy back and maybe the boy is a cure for the hemophages, and Ultraviolet may or may not be dead, but the one thing that's for certain is that in the future an hour and a half will feel like 10 hours.
As someone who likes apocalyptic science fiction and fight scenes, this movie should have been appealing to me. The problem is that the fight scenes are half-hearted and the apocalyptic science fiction has the depth and imagination of a Nissan commercial. Actually, the whole thing has the depth and imagination of a Nissan commercial. We vacillate between a Nissan commercial that features fighting, and a Nissan commercial that features terrible acting.
"Hey, what are you doing? Hey! Hey, you should jump off of this Adobe Illustrated ledge so that the movie ends!" My favorite part in all of Ultraviolet occurs at :26 of this clip when the camera goes in her ear and comes out a gun. Classic transition. It really gives the viewer the sense that the director has no idea what the fuck he's doing.
Now, everyone knows that I think Fighting 50 Dudes should be an Olympic sport, but how many fights with 50 dudes in a circle can this movie have? The answer is 6. This movie can have 6 fights in a circle.
That is too many fights in a circle.
The thing with an apocalyptic science fiction movie is that before you can get into the convoluted details of your mind-blowing plot, you have to set up a believable world, and the problem with that is that the smallest details can sink you really quickly. For example, I'm being asked to believe that humans have evolved to a point where clothes can change color on a whim, we can bend the space-time continuum to hide swords in other dimensions, and English has been supplanted by a squiggle language...
But that skinheads still dress the same way they did in the '50s?
And that in the future, coffee mug technology will have regressed so as to make the coffee drinking experience as unpleasant as possible?
Unbearable coffee mugs aside, Ultraviolet is a terrible movie mostly because, to paraphrase things I have already pointed out, it seems like the guy who invented Photoshop fucked a Zima commercial on sheets made out of the comic book a 14-year-old drew during a third period Health class he didn't do the homework assignment for. The end.
Next week: Boondock Saints. As always, please leave your suggestions in the comments or in an email. And if you haven't done so already, please consult the Official Rules.
Posted by Gabe at 5:20 PM in The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time
Tags: Milla Jovovich | Ultraviolet
Not to mention the "tyrant dude" has ridiculous air-filters up both his nose, but doesn't cover his month? Or seeing vampire, in a bad wig Violet laughing riding one of those spin-till-you-are-gonna-fly-off things in a playground; all in slow motion with sappy music over it.
Ultraviolet is so bad, you deserve a treat for sitting through it to the half-way point, let alone the end.
Score = 1
At least she's making babies instead of albums now.
I just got a weird pang of nostalgia for The Fifth Element. 17-yr-old me liked it, I wonder if 27-yr-old me will
Score = 1
Yeah, this movie is awful. I fell asleep half way through, and when I woke up it was still going...and going...and going. :(
Score = 1
So which movie is "winning" the hunt right now?
Score = 1
you should definitely watch The Butterfly Effect, it tops my list as one of the worst films i've seen...but that might not be fair because i only saw about 5 minutes before my friends and i all agreed to end it.
Score = 1
Speaking of the Butterfly Effect, the second part of Heroes was titled this and I started to hate it for the very reason that it reminded me that I saw that shit movie.
Score = 1
Wow, that creepy kid from the clip is also in the ultra creepy Nicole Kidman movie, Birth, wherein Nicole Kidman is sort of a WASPy Upper East Side pedophile.
Score = 1
Birth is the greatest/most audacious/most insane/incomprehensible/pretentious movie of all time. I loved it. There's a scene at the opera where it just shows Nicole Kidman crying for three whole minutes. Wacky stuff.
Score = 0
transformers, a clear winner. michael bay should have his hands cut off and his mouth sewn up for that piece of shit.
Score = 3
Oh, come on. Leave Boondock Saints out of this...
Score = -1
Yeah, Ultraviolet was bad, but it still can't top Sound of Thunder as the worst of all time.
Score = 2
I completely forgot about Sound of Thunder. It was released unfinished after a major movie studio backed out of it... I can't believe it saw the light of day.
Score = 1
boonock saints!?!? seriously? you guys are seriously scraping the bottom of the barrel if that movie is making the list
Score = -4
the person that wrote this seems seems like he'd be one of those pretentious dick bags that thinks the dark knight was just OK
not to say that this movie isn't terrible, but seriously
Score = -15
I see your point about fights in a circle, but did you count how many sunglasses transitions there were in the movie? That clip alone made me dizzy.
Score = 1
Ultraviolet, bad bad BAAAAD movie. i only saw the last like, half an hour, and it's badness seriously blew my mind. Ultraviolet wants to make women pay for their own rape kits.
and as an Irish person, bless you for taking down that awful shit show known as Boondock Saints next week. that movie is the Irish equivalent of a minstrel show, it brought us culturally back to before the potato famine. AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL FILM.
Score = 0
I say again: The Astronaut's Wife.
(esp because for the first two minutes of watching I couldn't tell if it was Johnny Depp or Skeet Ulrich, i.e. the poor man's johnny depp)
Score = 1
uh, second this with The Astronaut's Wife
Score = 0
Are you sure Ultraviolet is an actual movie, and not the demo disk that comes with Adobe CS3?
Also, your review is yellow-carded for a Zima reference: you need to warn us before you mention that shit! Brrr!
Here's a movie I dare you to watch: The Omega Code. It has former A lister Michael York, and B lister Michael Ironside, and D lister Casper VanDien. Good luck!
Score = 0
i have never been more excited to see the words "boondock saints".
Score = 0
Please do Lost In Space its so easy, THEY FLY THROUGH THE SUN!!!!!!!!!
Here's the link for the imdb page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120738/
Score = 2
I absolutely love that when the first guy fires the gun, the main bad guy standing a few yards across from him apparently has enough time to be full-on screaming by the time the bullet hits him in the face.
Also, when your crew is in a circle targeting a single person, it makes awesome amounts of sense to run firing wildly at chest/head level.
Also also, The Fifth Element is straight super. I know you said your 17 year old self loved it, and I'm uhh... still my 17 year old self, but regardless everyone, from Bruce WIllis to Gary Oldman to Chris Tucker to Milla to Luc Besson are just firing gold. Great fucking fun.
Plus you get to see Tricky eckshplode.
Score = 2
That is so not an Adobe Illustrated ledge.
It's clearly CorelDrawn.
Score = 1
hey who did that great new age music for the nissan commercial?
Score = 0
The Hottie and the nottie ... it stars Paris Hilton ... and guess what, she's not the only bad part of it!!!!!
Score = 1
Solo is the worst movie ever made (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117688/)
Score = 1
"humans have been devastated by the hemophage virus. It makes its victims super strong and super sensitive to light and sound, and it also gives them long teeth like vampires"
Sounds like the people from Ultraviolet have a plagiarism suit against "I Am Legend".
Also, Good Luck Chuck should be up there. I don't think I got through 20 minutes of it. I don't know how anyone could get through more than that.
Score = 0
I got some nominations:
Everything directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.
Everything.
Score = 0
howard the duck was and is the worse of all time.
Score = 1
howard the duck was and is the worse of all time.
Score = -1
Has anyone else noticed that the kid plays essentially the same part in X-Men 3? His range is astounding. Oooh and that horrible movie with Paul "Wallpaper" Walker!
Score = 0
You know, the one where they hockey puck his head? Best idea EVER.
Score = 0
How could you not mention the scene where she rides a motorcycle through a helicopter which promptly realizes how awesome this is and FUCKING EXPLODES FOR SOME REASON DON'T THINK TO MUCH ABOUT IT OK?
I'm not going to lie, I think this movie is kind of badass.
Score = 0
I love Ultraviolet. It thinks it's so cool and yet it's as cheap as the light show at a high school prom. The guy who runs the world is like a ninth-rate Bond henchman-- I want to see his campaign commercials, where they made him seem like a plausible leader and not the attorney for a strip club. And the final fight is in the dark because they ran out of money. And yet through all that, Milla tries so hard to be a 12-year-old's badass dream date. Worst movie of all time? More like, a tribute to the indomitable spirit of action movie wannabes.
Score = 1
ultraviolet is bad but milla is so gorgeus that makes a bad movie a good movie!!
Score = -1