2001 has finally passed into history—and what a year it has been! There were some horrible historical events that happened, which I don't need to go into, but there were still movies coming and going that we escaped to. This is my yearly list of the best and worst movie moments of the year (since I can never order my movies into a top ten list).

Most disturbing scene: Hannibal

I am always on the lookout for a movie that will really freak me out. I haven't been freaked by a movie since I was very a very young guy watching Godzilla in my PJ's on Saturday morning Sci-Fi Theater on channel 11.

I don't want to post any spoilers, so I'll just say that the dinner scene near the end of the movie really gave you some "food for thought" if you know what I mean!

Worst movie of 2001 (possibly worst in history?): Dude, Where's My Car?

I think this movie actually came out in 2000, but the coaster… oops… I mean DVD came out in 2001. I may be wrong, but I saw the movie in 2001 and I just want to post this warning anyway. I don't know why this was in the theater for a while, and Turbulence 3 went straight to video?

Dirtiest computer animation (this is a good thing!): Shrek

This movie really shows how far computer animated movies have come in the last few years. Toy Story was strangely "clean" and polished looking with all the shiny rounded corners and reflections. Shrek is a gritty, dirty looking movie, which brings out a whole new realism to the computer animation. Just look at the crud all over Shrek's shirt, it was amazing!

Best documentary movie: The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

An amazing story of survival that left me feeling kind of chilly. How did those guys live that long out in the remote Antarctic without the Internet?

Best Science Fiction movie of the year (- ˝ hour): A.I.

There wasn't much good Science Fiction this year, but if there was something that I missed, I guess it may not have been very good. As much as some people hated the movie, I kind of liked it (at least most of it). The last half hour was totally stupid, but the rest was like a good classic Twilight Zone episode.

Movie so bad it was good: Turbulence 3—Heavy Metal

If you are a regular Moviepie.com visitor, you should know by now that I'm usually the first to review the aviation/space movies that come out. I have been a great fan of the old yearly airport disaster movies: Airport '75, '77, '79… etc. So I was delighted to see a 3rd addition to the Turbulence series. What? You never heard of these? This movie was a straight-to-video bargain bin movie full of cheesy special effects, a rock-star impersonator hijacker, a nasty thunderstorm, and the usual silly "roger, what's my vector… over" pilot talk.

Please let it remain just a computer game: Tomb Raider

Being the typical computer geek boy, I have played some of the Tomb Raider computer games. Ok, I do admit I tried downloading the "nude patch" to see what behind those pixels.

As expected, games should not be movies and movies should not be games. Maybe part of it is that Angelina Jolie kind of bugs me for some reason. The movie was all action with no plot… It was just dumb. Enough said.

Worst and best war movie: Pearl Harbor

This is one of the few movies in my list that gets both a worst and best award. I was very eagerly awaiting the release of this movie for six months. When I saw it, it felt like six months before the movie actually got interesting. When the movie finally got to the Pearl Harbor attack (what was it, about three hours into the movie?) the movie was really exciting!

Best F-18-getting-shot-down scene: Behind Enemy Lines

When a plane gets shot down by a missile the whole event is usually over in a matter of seconds. In this movie, it was extended to last about five minutes with slow motion scenes of the plane getting blown in half with each rivet, screw, and pane slowly pulling apart as a result of the explosion. Good use of computer graphics.

Scariest movie without monsters: The Others

It's kind of a scary movie if you are afraid of the dark—or light in this case.

Most obvious sequel lead in: Jurassic Park III

Why don't they just stop with this series? The dinosaurs are extinct and so is Jurassic Park—PLEASE!! I fear that there will be another one though; the flying dinosaurs were headed off the island toward Tokyo.

Worst "What the...?" ending to a movie: Planet of the Apes

Huh? Why? I don't get it? That was sure a stupid excuse for a sequel! It is the most controversial part of the movie, so if you haven't seen it, this would be a severe spoiler, so I won't say more. You'll understand when you see it.

If you saw the preview, you saw the movie: Shallow Hal

I never felt so cheated out of $5 than I did after seeing this movie. If you paid to see Planet of the Apes and saw the preview for Shallow Hal before the apes came on the screen, consider yourself lucky—you just saw two movies for the price of one!