Next year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is going to extend its list of best picture nominees to ten. That’s quite an extraordinary feat considering I have trouble selecting five nominees in any given year. This year, however, the selection of films I would consider great is thinner than ever.

Granted, there is always a slew of movies that I don’t get to see for various reasons (I’m still dismayed that I missed Inglorious Basterds at the theatre) but then there is also a handful of “must-sees” that simply fail to pique my interest.

Below are four of this year’s most popular titles that I simply can’t bring myself to even pretend to want to see.

  • The Blind Side
    Yes, it’s a true story. Yes, I’m sure it’s an extraordinary story. And yes, I’m sure it makes for incredibly tedious cinema (The Bland Side). That’s the problem with real life… it just doesn’t often translate into a compelling movie. Put it on The Discovery Channel and maybe I can be enticed to see it.

    • After watching the preview it’s also evident that there are no surprises in the flick. This is why I think Oliver Stone is the best director to make historical (JFK) or biographical (The Doors) movies: he doesn’t trouble himself with facts.

  • The Twilight Saga: New Moon
    I doubt I need to explain this one to any males over the age of 18. My wife and I broke down over the summer and rented the preceding episode only to be bored to tears by a bad vampire Back-to-School Special. Doesn’t it creep anyone out that the hunky lead vampire is a 108-year-old man who’s dating an underage girl?

    • Watch the Saturday Night Live preview for Firelight instead. Who knew Taylor Swift could act?

  • Sherlock Holmes
    Fun fact: I’ve never seen a Guy Ritchie movie. “Why,” you ask? Quite simply, they look like big-budget 80s B-movies that Chuck Norris would have turned down (except maybe Swept Away, which would have been a network mini-series starring Richard Chamberlain and Cheryl Ladd). Ritchie’s take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s popular detective turns a brilliant investigator and his witty friend and cohort into Oscar Madison and Felix Unger in a rendition of The Fight Club Odd Couple.

    • UPDATE: Another fun fact is that when one is married, one must compromise when selecting a movie to watch. Therefore, I saw Sherlock Holmes with my beautiful beloved. It is as I expected: sound and fury.

  • Avatar
    File this one under “I just don’t get it.” We’ve been hearing about this movie forever. How its special effects are “game-changing” and it’s going to be ground-breaking. We waited for what seemed an eternity to get a first glimpse at James (“There are two candles in the dark, Bud”) Cameron’s first feature in a decade. Finally, this technological marvel is unleashed and I was so taken aback by what I saw that all I could muster to say is, “Yup. That’s CGI, all right.”

    • When even the rave reviews are calling it a movie with bad acting, cheesy-dialogue, a weak script, and cut-rate CGI (“But the 3D is awesone, dude!”), one has to wonder why people would spend the extra cash (and a lot of extra time) on a gimmick that’s been around for more than half a century.

Disagree? That’s fine by me. Reply below.