Soole

Soólè is a solid nominee for the worst movie of the year, any year. It would be wonderful to report that the badness is comic, but sadly it's just boring. A character cautions, "Let us not be collectively unfortunate," but those who stumble on this title will most certainly fall into that category. The clownish acting, the misjudged direction, and the senseless story are all part of a picture of overall incompetence. Even the mind-boggling absurdity of the plot fails to make this interesting. Nearly all communication among characters is delivered in loud voices and states of agitation bordering on bonkers. Whether prompted by the mere uttering of words from the Bible or by men shooting automatic weapons, the characters' responses are the same: panic, fury, spitting anger, jumping up and down, and yelling. This state of constant unnatural excitement makes it difficult to sort out important information from the unimportant and justifiably emotional moments from ones in which emotions seem to run high for no good reason. The first half-hour is just shy of unwatchable. The rest is worse. Just for fun, 30 minutes or so are shot almost entirely in red light.

With an annual output of nearly 2,500 films, Nigeria's Nollywood is the world's second-largest film industry, right behind India's Bollywood. Perhaps the films that don't make it out of the country are actually good. One would like to hope. As one character observes, "Even a bad clock is correct twice a day." Sorry, not this clock.