Here we go, the big daddy of them all, the category to end all categories, Best Picture. Best Picture winners get a lot. Cushy 3-picture deals. Free limos. Dames. They get a lot for their recognition and what do I get for writing all this crap that I pray the 3 people who are going to end up reading it are going to like? Hand cramps. [Ed.: I thought you'd beat that condition since you'd gotten a girlfriend?] Something in this deal just doesn’t seem right. Anyway, with that being said, I will now list the nominees for Best Picture. One of these movies will crush its enemies and hear the lamentations of their women while the other four will have to run home to their Mother’s complaining that the bigger kids stole their lunch money. Here they are:

Good Will Hunting

Well, I have to admit this is the only movie in this category I haven’t seen. Yeah, I managed to somehow sit through Titanic and As Good As It Gets, but I avoided this one for some reason. It’s just that I’m sick of these angstful people who just don’t want to be different in movies. But enough about that, we’re here to judge these movies based upon the badness of the people involved in projects they have done before. Well, Good Will Hunting doesn’t really have much going for it here. Ben Affleck was in Chasing Amy and Mallrats, both of which I liked. I’ve never seen Matt Damon in anything. Sure, Minnie Driver was in Hard Rain, but I never saw that either. [Ed.: this is the time when we give thanks] Well, the director did make My Own Private Idaho (the first and hopefully last movie ever named after a B-52s song), [Ed.: ?] but still, he made a few others that were kind of good. The whole badness of this movie rests upon your opinion of Robin Williams, making it a very subjective choice. If you think he’s a god, than you will probably think this movie is good. If you’re sick of movies with talented savant types who just don’t know how to love and think Robin Williams has been pushing (and pushing and pushing) the same shtick for 20 years than it’s probably pretty bad to you. Because of this, it just can’t get enough of a Badness Quotient (BQ) to really beat the competition.

The Full Monty

I did see this movie, not expecting much, and was blown away by how much I enjoyed it. I liked this movie a lot and since I haven’t seen any other movies the actors have been in (except for Trainspotting, which was pretty good) or any other movies by the director, I can’t give this any kind of BQ score. It’s a damn fine effort by all involved and I give it mad props. Huzzah!

As Good As It Gets

Oscar voters love quirky characters. They like the disabled or the insane. This movie’s got Jack Nicholson in it, who’s played both, [Ed.: with equal aplomb.. and equal facial expressions] and was made by the guy who did Broadcast News and produces The Simpsons. Unfortunately, it’s also got The Mad About You Chick and is also from the guy who made I’ll Do Anything and produced The Tracey Allman Show. So it’s a win-lose situation. Despite Nicholson’s Corman experience and Kinnear’s strong Talk Soup points, and in spite of Helen Hunt’s Trancers donation, the movie still doesn’t get enough points to place it on the map. Sure, the movie was a piece of cow dung left to dry on barb wire, but it still isn’t stamped enough with the bad movie seal of (dis)approval. It no getta the Oscar.

Chinatown- err, I mean L.A. Confidential

Now here’s another movie I really liked. Sure it was filled to the gills with random Australians, but I still loved it and I think it was probably the best movie I saw last year. Still, it does come with a high crap pedigree. It’s got the guy who played the holographic serial killer in Virtuosity and, of course, Kim Basinger, who's not bad, she’s just drawn that way (I know that Kathleen Turner was Jessica Rabbit but I’m tired, durn-garnit!). The director really surprised the dunghole out of me, though. Who woulda thunk that this movie was made by the same guy who brought the world gems like The River Wild, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and the seminal coming-of-age drama, Losin’ It. Still, despite this resume of destruction, it still can’t hold a candle to the greatest blockbuster of them all, my pick for the bad movie of the year, Titanic!

Titanic

Why did I pick Titanic as the bad movie Best Picture of 1997? It did make more money than any other movie ever and tied the record for most Oscar nominations in a single year, after all. Well, I truly believe that whether or not you liked the movie, it clearly has the most dubious bad movie history of any other nominee. We’ll start with the actors. We’ve got Leonardo DiCaprio who, as many of you will recall, was the kid who stole all the presents in the Christmas episode of Growing Pains. We’ve got Kate Winslet, who was in A Kid in King Arthur’s Court. We’ve even got THE PHANTOM, for God’s sake! Billy Zane?! Come on! Can you ask for a gimme like this! The man wore purple tights for half a movie! In the jungle, no less! But the main factor involved in the sinking of this vessel is its director. "What?" I hear you cry. "But this is the man who has made Aliens and Terminator 2, some of the best action movies ever!" Sure, he did and I like both movies. But to know James Cameron is to know his roots. He didn’t just walk into a studio one day and make The Terminator. He started by working with the Frank Capra of bad movies, Roger Corman, doing special effects and stuff. In fact, it was Cameron who designed the ship with breasts and fallopian tubes (really!) used in Battle Beyond the Stars (and later in Corman’s Caged Heat 3000). He then went on to make the classic Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, which not only featured the guy from Millennium, but also had flying killer piranha! You don’t get crappier then that. Add to that the Celine Dion song and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a bad movie Oscar pick! Yup, with the Phantom, a former bad movie maker, and a really loud, French Canadian sung theme song, you too can make a world box-office leader in the comfort of your own home. Don’t forget to add a guest star from Growing Pains, though...

Okay, there are my choices for the bad movie Oscar picks. Remember to watch the Oscars on March 23rd to see how amazingly prescient I am and to see if Celine has a guy run out on the stage with "Soy Bomb" painted on his chest. Also, remember to write us with your thoughts and tell everyone you know to read our page at least three times. And they’ll get money and stuff. Really. Um, yeah. End of Monkey.

[Ed.: Let the flame mail begin!]