'08 on Film? Please Pass The Duds

25 Stinkers Shared One Good Thing: End Credits

I love my job.

The worst movie I saw this year, in my capacity as film critic? "Punisher: War Zone."

Here's a film that inspired a critic from USA Today to ask, "Why punish us?" A film that features, in the title role of the comic-book vigilante, Ray Stevenson -- I had the same reaction: who? -- who jams a pencil up his nose to reset some broken cartilage. It's accompanied by a wet, gristly sound effect that suggests someone deboning a chicken.

And yet I say: Thank God.

Apparently I dodged a bullet here. "Punisher: War Zone" isn't even one of the 25 worst movies of 2008.

We asked our friends at RottenTomatoes.com to send us a rundown of the 25 most egregious duds of the past 12 months, based on the Web site's highly sophisticated "Tomatometer" ranking system. Here's how it works:

Any movie that received at least 30 reviews from a list of approved critics was eligible. Reviews come, for the most part, from such major media outlets as The Post, along with some online film sites. Each review is assigned a numerical grade, based on the critic's rating (or, if no rating is given, on an assessment by Rotten Tomato's genius editors). Those grades are then averaged into an aggregate score, from 0 to 100, just like in elementary school. In the case of a tie, the movie with the most reviews was considered worse.

This year's Hall of Shame includes "Made of Honor" (score: 11), "College Road Trip" (12) and "Superhero Movie!" (15), a parody of "Spider-Man" and its ilk whose bravely optimistic exclamation point was, apparently, not enough. By way of comparison, "Man on Wire," a documentary about tightrope walker Philippe Petit, got a 100. The animated charmer "WALL E," about a lovable robot, got a 96.

So. The best -- that is, least awful -- thing on the Rotten Tomatoes list of 25 bombs? M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening." That apocalyptic horror film gets a Tomatometer grade of 19 out of 100. As a comparison, "Punisher: War Zone" earned a whopping 22.

Other films that beat out "Punisher" in the race to the bottom include "In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale." The cumbersomely titled, two-hour-plus epic by Uwe Boll is, like most of the notorious German director's work, based on a popular series of video games. Boll has been widely described as the worst filmmaker in the world. Web sites such as UweBollIsAntichrist.com are dedicated to trashing him.

Here's the Onion AV Club take on him: "Boll has been compared to Ed Wood," wrote the humor newspaper, citing the legendary, and now perversely beloved, maker of such cinematic bombs as "Plan 9 From Outer Space." "But there's nothing personal about [Boll's] ineptitude; he's just a deal-maker completing a transaction."

Then how on Earth did the masterpiece of such a soulless hack earn a whole 4 points, placing it, at No. 5 on our list, just above -- or is that just below? -- "Meet the Spartans"? That flatulent, scattershot parody of such epics as "300" fared only half as well, with a Tomatometer score of 2.