Awful is the new awesome

Columbia Pictures

“Memoirs of A Geisha” — Costumes? Check. Beautiful sets? Check. Actors with countless hours of dialect coaching under their kimonos? Check. Okay, let’s get that “Showgirls” script and we’ll change the dates, location and race of the women. Now, where’s our Academy Award nomination?
Why you should see it anyway: Because you never knew that a P.F. Chang’s vision of “Oriental” would make this kind of cultural comeback. And when “Showgirls” made its bow in the mid 1990s, no one could have predicted it would become the cult phenomenon it is today. Seeing this now will guarantee you a spot on that future-camp bandwagon.

Touchstone

“Shopgirl” — A how-not-to on landing and maintaining a Sugar Daddy. It was better when they called it “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”
Why you should see it anyway: Because it’s maddeningly, fascinatingly insistent that it’s about relationships when really it’s about booty calls and who’s got the power. It even goes so far as to punish the film’s sole character, a golddigging slut played by Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, who dares to announce the truth about the female lives on display.

Special Bonus Mention: “War of the Worlds”

Paramount

Fast-paced, scary, tense, exciting, meta-terrorist fear-stroking-as-popcorn-movie. It’s so much dark fun that you forgot that just two weeks earlier you were wondering why Tom Cruise was jumping up and down on couches on national television acting a fool and really freaking you out. And then come the last 10 minutes of the movie when it all comes crashing to a screeching happiness halt, all the main characters — even the ones that should have been dead by then — safe and sound and dressed in cozy sweaters, the world spared from doom. Hooray.
Why you should see it anyway: To see what happens when directors of remakes are too slavish to the source material, too full of self-esteem and too happy to be hanging out with weirdo A-list actors.

Dave White is the film critic for Movies.com and the author of the forthcoming “Exile in Guyville.” Don’t argue about movies with him at www.livejournal.com/users/djmrswhite.

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