Last weekend I was on the phone with my friend and sidekick Jeff Bayer, of “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider,” trying to get him to help me watch “The Apple” for Eric’s Bad Movies at Film.com.

“What’s it about?” he asked.

I read from the Netflix sleeve the DVD had come in: “Two Canadians, Alphie and Bibi, travel to America in the future–”

“Stop. I’m sold.”

As it turns out, the Netflix sleeve was misleading. We thought it meant the Canadians travel through time to the America of the future. But no, they’re already in the future; they just travel to America. What’s interesting is that this movie is so bizarre, adding a time-travel element to it wouldn’t make it any weirder.

My other Film.com feature, What’s the Big Deal?, this week focuses on “Annie Hall.” It won the Best Picture Academy Award, you know — instead of “Star Wars,” if you can imagine such blasphemy.

Since there’s that documentary called “Babies” coming out this week, now seemed like as good a time as any to cover “Baby Geniuses” for Eric’s Bad Movies.

Not that there is ever a good time for this. I had seen “Baby Geniuses” before, back in 1999, when I was a new film critic. It had escaped my notice when it was released, but in December, when my fellow reviewers were talking about the Worst Movies of the Year, “Baby Geniuses” kept coming up. I felt compelled to watch it, still tantalized, in those days, by the prospect of seeing something truly AWFUL. (Now it is old hat, of course.)

When I watched it again, last week, I’d forgotten many of the details, so it was sort of a fresh experience, like when you fall off your bike and get a big scab on your knee, and then it heals, and then you do it again.

Be sure to enjoy the audio component of the article, linked about two-thirds of the way down.

Whenever I ask for suggestions for Eric’s Bad Movies, I always say “no comedies, please.” When people ignore that and suggest comedies anyway, “Baby Geniuses” is one of the ones they suggest. The reason I don’t want comedies — as I’ve explained numerous times — is that it is very hard to make fun of a movie that already doesn’t take itself seriously. That’s all it is. Some columns are easy to write; others are hard. When the subject is a comedy, it’s hard, and the results are often not very funny. I will grant you that I have successfully done it on occasion — I think the “Baby Geniuses” thing came out OK — but it has nearly always been arduous and soul-sapping. Comedies with a fantasy or sci-fi hook to them, like this one, are a little easier to handle. Still, the appearance of a comedy in Eric’s Bad Movies is to be a rare exception, and only when I feel ambitious enough to struggle with a difficult writing assignment.

Also at Film.com this week is What’s the Big Deal?, about “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” A fine film, this is. It moves pretty swiftly and has a lot of funny parts, and it stars Jimmy Stewart at his most likable, which is really saying something.

(By the way, that thing I talked about on Monday, where I thought maybe I was pregnant, it turned out to be nothing. Not kidney stones, not appendicitis, not anything. The rest of the day was normal. Very weird. Still might be pregnant, though, so I’m not drinking anymore, just in case.)

This week’s new films, plus Eric’s Bad Movies, What’s the Big Deal?, Cinemaligion, Tribeca, and more, all crammed into one tender, juicy blog post.

The remake of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is fairly bad, mostly in the ways you’d expect: not scary, not funny, not original, not interesting. Its one saving grace is that I missed the screening and had to see it at the first public showing, last night at midnight, and a couple friends went with me, and we sat away from the (very sparse) audience in case we needed to whisper sarcastic things to each other about the movie, and it turns out we did indeed need to do this. Travis noted afterward that the cast consists entirely of people who are “discount beautiful” — almost good-looking, like movie stars, but not quite. BURN. Anyway, if you must see this movie, see it last night at midnight with me and Travis and Martha.

Also opening is “Furry Vengeance,” a family comedy about Brendan Fraser being punched in the nuts by animals. Missed this screening, too, for the same reason as the other one, which reason I haven’t told you yet. And there was no midnight premiere, alas.

In limited release, you’ll find the amusing and sophisticated “Please Give” (review at Cinematical) starring Catherine Keener.

The reason I missed stuff is that I was in New York for a few days for the Tribeca Film Festival. New York is always a blast, of course, but the festival itself doesn’t have much of a personality, and I didn’t see anything that totally blew me away. I didn’t have time (or money) to catch any Broadway shows, either, so it was kind of a strange NYC visit. But Scott Weinberg was there for a couple days, and you can never fail to have a good time when Weinberg’s around, as required by law.

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Bad news, everybody! Both of the new releases this weekend are bad. “The Losers,” which wants very much to be “The A-Team,” is the kind of bad that’s bearable. But “The Back-Up Plan,” starring Jennifer Lopez as a woman who gets artificially inseminated and THEN meets the man of her dreams, is the intolerable kind of bad. I will not tolerate it.

Oh, and there’s “Oceans,” a nature documentary, but it didn’t screen for critics in Portland, so it’s dead to me.

“Best Worst Movie,” a very fun documentary about terrible cult favorite “Troll 2,” opens today at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin. It’ll hit New York and L.A. in a couple weeks and spread out from there. I’ll remind you about it later, but any Austinites within the sound of my e-voice should check it out immediately.

What was I up to over at Film.com this week? Golly, there was What’s the Big Deal?, focused on “La Dolce Vita,” a film I like very much. Then there was Eric’s Bad Movies, featuring “American Ninja,” about a ninja who is — wait for it — American. I also wrote a piece explaining the differences between the upcoming “Furry Vengeance” and the upcoming “Nightmare on Elm Street” remake.

Last Friday, I debuted a new column at Cinematical about religion in film. It’s called Cinemaligion! I love that title because it’s terrible but memorable. Cinemaligion! You should say it out loud. Anyway, the first Cinemaligion column is about “Footloose.” The feature will run every two weeks.

Thanks to everyone who’s been listening to “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider” at PDX.fm! Remember, you can listen live at 11 a.m. (Pacific) every Friday at PDX.fm, or get the recording a couple hours later at the website or from iTunes. (Once again, ignore the “explicit” tag. We keep it PG.) Jeff is out of town this week, so I have a guest sidekick, Portland filmmaker and personal acquaintance Andy Blubaugh. Listen to us, won’t you? WON’T YOU? WHY WON’T YOU??

Subscribe to Eric D. Snider’s “In the Dark,” a weekly e-mail bringing you the latest movie reviews, DVD releases, and other pertinent info, here.

This week’s edition of Eric’s Bad Movies at Film.com isn’t just another instance of me making fun of something terrible. It’s the 100th instance of me doing that. Yes, if I’d been paid $1 for each Eric’s Bad Movies column I wrote, I would now have enough singles to trade in for a crisp $100 bill!

And with 100 columns under my belt, could a book compilation be far behind?? Maybe one with a couple of new, never-before-published columns??*

I tried to think of a movie that would be fitting for such a milestone, but I couldn’t, so I went with “Jaws 3-D.”

Thanks for reading and loving all 100 of Eric’s Bad Movies so far! If you missed some, the entire archive is here.

*No such book is currently planned. BUT WHAT IF IT WERE??

Just one new wide release today, but it’s a good one! “Date Night” (review at Film.com) with Steve Carell and Tina Fey as a married couple! It’s not quite as funny as you’d hope a movie with those two would be, but it’s pretty close. And if there are people who don’t like Tina Fey, I don’t want to know about them.

At Film.com, my columns this week were about “Bonnie and Clyde” (that’s What’s the Big Deal?) and “Heartbeeps” (that’s Eric’s Bad Movies). As it happens, both of those films were also mentioned in today’s edition of “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider,” Jeff Bayer’s and my new Internet radio podcast program on PDX.fm. You can download it here or at iTunes.

http://www.ericdsnider.com/misc/eric-d-sniders-in-the-dark/

To sign up for the “In the Dark” e-zine, which brings you all the new movie reviews, DVD releases, and other pertinent info in one handy weekly e-mail, visit this page.

“The Rules of the Game,” which I had not seen until I watched it for this week’s edition of What’s the Big Deal? at Film.com, is an unusually smart French film from 1939 that’s hard to pin down. It’s part farce, part tragedy, part satire. It’s also something of a Big Deal, hence the column.

Also a big deal? Hercules! That guy was huge. For Eric’s Bad Movies this week, I watched the 1983 version of “Hercules,” starring Lou Ferrigno as the muscular Greek. Good ol’ Weinberg suggested it when I said I wanted something to coincide with “Clash of the Titans,” and he was right about two things: It’s terrible, and it’s a lot like “Titans.” I saw the movies back-to-back, and afterward I had a hard time remembering which film had used which plot device.

By the way, y’all gave me quite a few good suggestions for Eric’s Bad Movies and What’s the Big Deal? when I solicited them a few weeks ago. Some of them will definitely wind up on the schedule. Thanks!

For What’s the Big Deal? at Film.com this week, I figured I might as well tackle the big one, “Citizen Kane,” which even people who haven’t seen it know is “the best movie ever made.” Entire books have been written on the subject, so I just tried to summarize the basics of why the film is so widely praised.

For Eric’s Bad Movies, I addressed “Body Rock,” one of several hundred breakdancing movies released in 1984, starring Lorenzo Lamas. This is yet another film that I’d never heard of until someone suggested it for EBM, and boy, am I ever glad/angry they did.

Ugh, that sounds so undignified, the dumpage of many links. Movie reviewing is not a pretty business!

Someone suggested the 1986 horror comedy “House” as a candidate for Eric’s Bad Movies, and while it looked promising — some fairly negative reviews, William Katt from “The Greatest American Hero” as its star — it wasn’t an obvious slam-dunk like some films are. So I called my friend Scott Weinberg, who has seen every horror film ever made, to get his expert opinion. He said it probably wasn’t bad enough for Eric’s Bad Movies, but if I wanted something REALLY awful I should check out the sequel, “House II: The Second Story.”

This I did. On the one hand, Weinberg’s advice proved to be highly useful, as “House II: The Second Story” — which has nothing whatsoever to do with the first “House” — is indeed terrible. But on the other hand, Weinberg advised me to watch “House II: The Second Story,” which is not something that a person should ever encourage a friend to do. It’s an excruciating movie, full of bad comedy done badly and a story that makes absolutely no sense. It caused much moaning and agony in the Eric D. Snider Memorial Screening Room. (Yes, I have named my screening room after myself, and in memory of me, even though I have not yet died.)

Meanwhile, for What’s the Big Deal? this week I covered “Rebel Without a Cause,” a noteworthy film from 1955. Several people mentioned it last week when I asked for suggestions for this column; coincidentally, it was already on my schedule anyway. We think alike, you people who suggested it and me.

These columns will not appear next week because of South By Southwest, which I will be at.