Oh, to have been given the assignment to write about the 10 best films of the last 10 years! Sure, it would have required some hard choices. But the number of good or excellent films in any given decade, except perhaps the '30s or the '70s, is decidedly finite. Not so the sheer deluge of mediocre or godawful movies, which seem infinite in number. I quickly realized that the task was damn near impossible when my list of possible contenders reached a dozen single-spaced pages, and I hadn't even gotten to 2014 yet. Not to mention that simply being reminded of most of these turkeys began to bring on symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

It seemed pointless to mention the endless numbers of horrific sequels, remakes and reboots that have come to dominate multiplexes. Nor did it make sense to shoot fish in a barrel; it would be easy, for instance, to come up with 10 titles with just Tyler Perry and Transformers movies. Or nearly anything starring Katherine Heigl, Gerard Butler, Nicolas Cage, Adam Sandler, Bruce Willis, Martin Lawrence, Steven Seagal or John Travolta (although some of them do indeed make the cut).

The list below is in alphabetical order. If one of your most hated movies isn't on it, or one of your favorites is, take solace in the fact that I've suffered enormously in the course of my professional duties. And that for every title mentioned, there are at least 50 others that could just as easily have taken its place.