The Rundown: O-VER-RATED

Spent last night finally watching There Will Be Blood.

I don't see what all the fuss was about.

Daniel Day-Lewis was really good, same as always and the cinematography and score were both really well done, but for me, this wasn't a movie that deserved all the hype that it received during the past Oscar season.

Of course, there are a lot of movies like that.

Today, we'll take a look at five of them from my list.

5 Painfully Overrated Movies

(Movies that got a lot of publicity and accolades that didn't do it for me at all...)

5. Punch Drunk Love

Paul Thomas Anderson just doesn't do it for me, save for Boogie Nights and this one tops Magnolia and last night's choice in terms of his flicks that got a lot of love, that just didn't do it for me. Maybe I just didn't get it - or any of his flicks for that matter - but it was just sort of a long winded excuse for Adam Sandler to be strange. Feel free to clarify this one for me... I just didn't get it.

4. Mystic River

This one pains me because I love the source material (it was a book first) and Gone Baby Gone proved last year (two years ago?) that Dennis Lehane's work can translate well to the screen. This wasn't one of those times. Sean Penn, while still as good as always, scored this Oscar out of being skipped for Dead Man Walking and it just missed for me. Making it worse is that Clint Eastwood was behind the camera and I normally love everything he does. Not this time.

3. Eyes Wide Shut

Not in a million years did this movie have a chance at success. Tom and Nicole together in Kubrick's last pic, one that delved into the taboo and was shrouded in secrecy. Ultimately, this was one big ball of awful, aside from the nice little debut of Leelee Sobieski who has since fallen off the face of the Earth.

2. Lost in Translation

I was most definitely lost with this one. My gut tells me that part of the praise came from the director's last name (Copolla) than the film itself. Murray and Mrs. Ryan Reynolds aren't a pair I can believe as sidekicks ever, even if they're connected in boredom and loneliness in Tokyo. In real life, Murray's character would have been hitting the sake and spending a lot of time at the massage parlours while ScarJo wouldn't have tagged along in the first place. I mean really, would you follow Giovanni Ribisi halfway around the world?

1. The Crying Game

Remember this one? Boy George appropriately sang the theme song for this big ball of hype that amounted to this: the chick isn't a chick at all... it's a dude... OMG! I know it came out before we were a more open minded society and it's British and they're traditionally more tight assed than us, but still, this movie got far more publicity than a mediocre movie deserves.