The worst of the worst: And the award goes to …

As film fans struggle to see every Oscar-nominated performance before March 26, I created a counter project: to identify the worst movie of 1999. Selecting the movie was the easy part. While 1999 provided some horrific films – The Haunting, The Astronaut’s Wife and Message in a Bottle, just to name a few – The Other Sister, starring Juliette Lewis, was obviously going to be the most insufferable movie. The difficulty came when I realized that in order to officially anoint The Other Sister as the worst movie of 1999, I actually had to rent it. While I like to think of myself as a basically confident person, asking for The Other Sister at a trendy Manhattan video store is as daunting as ordering ginger ale at a keg party. I entered the store wearing my coolest pair of plaid hip huggers and a brown suede peacoat, my Manhattan Portage bike messenger bag draped comfortably across my body. I looked about as East Village as I can get. After spending several minutes staring at the towering wall of new releases, I finally approached the counter. Like a teenager buying condoms, I tried to bury The Other Sister in a sea of hip picks. “Can I get Rushmore and The Godfather?” I asked the cooler-than-thou clerk. “Rent two, get one free,” he said, tugging at the tip of his pony tail. “Ok … I’ll take … The Other Sister.” He arched his pierced eyebrow as if to say, “Are you for real?” “It’s for this article I’m writing,” I stammered. Obviously unimpressed with my explanation, the clerk disappeared into the dark video library. “Phew, thank god that’s over,” I thought. Little did know that renting the film was the nothing compared to what I was about to endure. The horror Directed by Gary Marshall, The Other Sister is not only insufferable, it’s embarrassing. Juliette Lewis stars as Carla, Diane Keaton’s mentally disabled youngest daughter. Having just returned home from a “special” boarding school, the movie chronicles Carla’s reintegration into her family. Like any teenager on the verge of womanhood, Carla is curious about sex. Rather than deal with her questions in a realistic manner, the film sets up a series of awkward moments where the audience is expected to laugh at the retarded girl’s gaffes. In one excruciating scene, Carla asks her older sister if she and her fianc