The Highs & Lows

After two and a half years of writing movie reviews, I've acquired a terrible reputation for hating movies. Let me set the record straight: I don't hate movies. I hate BAD movies. Eighty percent of Hollywood movies are pure feces, even when I see them for free.

Not that I suffer from seeing foul films-the most caustic reviews have been some of my best comedy pieces. But when you love something, you hate to see it done badly.

I don't do top ten lists. Everyone else does that. In my last venture as film editor, I'd like to pinpoint the little quirks about the movies we loved and hated within the past year. Then I have to go look for a real job.

Never let it be said that I don't enjoy anything.

• Best Movie No One Saw: The Limey

Steven Soderbergh's taut thriller starring Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda is a seductively simple tale of a British ex-con looking for revenge. It's a dazzling puzzle of a tale that you'll enjoy piecing together.

• Worst Movie No One Saw: Ride With the Devil

Tobey Maguire does his trademark sleep-acting through the Civil War along with Jewel, the Southern Belle. At least she doesn't read him her poetry. The two also get the award for worst sexual tension. Jewel, put that titty away!

• Worst Heroic Sappiness Involving Robin Williams: Jakob the Liar

Last year he played a Hell Trekker and a Happy Med Student. This year he saves us all from the depression of the Holocaust, and not as gracefully as Roberto Benigni. Thanks, "Jesus" Williams. He also captured second place in this category, with Millennium Man.

• Best Villain: Christopher Walken's Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow

I don't think you can get any funnier than ghoulish Mr. Walken with filed- down teeth screeching and raging without having to say a word. When he's not lopping off heads, he's giving painfully good French kisses. Yahhhh!

• Worst Villain: Robert Carlyle's Renard in the latest Bond flick, The World is Not Enough

This guy is the most boring villain ever to menace 007. He's numb and so he can't feel pain. Or have sex. This makes him invincible? No, this makes him pitiful.

• Best Hero: Johnny Depp's Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow

Ichabod Crane has never been so enchantingly funny or girlishly fearful.

• Worst Hero: Jodie Foster in Anna and the King

Hi, my name is Jodie Foster and I am the white woman come to save the country of Thailand with my books and learning. And Chow-Yun Fat and I don't make a sexy couple.

• Most Overblown Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

The three hours of sheer insufferable pretension that is Magnolia scream "I love my ideas, my writing and myself" in every shot. Pointless nonsense.

• Worst Voyeuristic Film Involving a Known Director: Eyes Wide Shut

They've told me I couldn't say that Kubrick was a pretentious pervert because he's dead. Well, he's a dead pretentious pervert.

• Worst Voyeuristic Film Involving an Unknown Director: Eye of the Beholder

I can't remember who directed this and I don't feel like looking it up. Random killing and pasty-faced staring with Ewan MacGregor and Ashley Judd.

• Best Re-Naming of a Movie: The Feel-Good Abortion Movie

That's what The Daily Show's been calling Cider House Rules.

• Character Actors Who Need More Recognition: Oliver Platt, Tony Shalhoub, Hank Azaria and Bonnie Hunt. Seek them out.

• Memorable Last Words: The World is Not Enough

"I thought Christmas only came once a year." Don't make me explain it.

• "What Were You Thinking?" Award Winner: Gabriel Byrne

In the foul Stigmata he is a bedeviled priest and then he plays Satan in the Schwarzenegger-battles-Beelzebub thriller End of Days.