Looking for a DVD to rent this weekend? Don’t pick any of these! They’re the five worst movies of the year so far, and they should be viewed only by trained professionals.

5. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It’s hard to believe, but dumb-and-proud-of-it Michael Bay actually managed to make a movie that was bigger, stupider, louder, and more incoherent than the first Transformers. And please stop pointing to its large box office haul as “proof” of its quality. By the same logic, Titanic would have to be even better — the best film ever made, really — and I suspect most Transformers fans would disagree with that.

4. Confessions of a Shopaholic. Isla Fisher, who is lovely and talented but makes poor career choices, stars as a woman with a dangerous psychological addiction to shopping that threatens to ruin her. Luckily, Hollywood magic steps in and lets her take the easy way out. Meanwhile, viewers, don’t you love all these pretty clothes? Don’t you wish you could go tens of thousands of dollars into debt to buy them, and then be rescued from actually having to pay for them?

3. Dance Flick. Because what the world really needed, in 2009, was a Flashdance parody. If White Chicks and Little Man didn’t prove how untalented the Wayanses are when it comes to comedy, Dance Flick does.

2. New in Town. Take all the cliches of romantic comedies, fish-out-of-water comedies, and save-the-small-town comedies. Write them down on one list. Then neglect to fill in any charming details, funny dialogue, or likable characters. Release the film as New in Town, and then scratch your head as you wonder why nobody wants to watch it.

1. I Love You, Beth Cooper. Right up until the last minute, Fox wasn’t going to screen this for critics. Then, perhaps wishing to avoid the stigma associated with hiding movies from the press, they went ahead and showed it. They should have gone with their first instinct. A whopping 88 percent of all the critics who endured this train wreck eviscerated it. You’d think it was the work of a first-time filmmaker, not a director with more than a dozen movies under his belt. His name is Chris Columbus. His ships are called the Niña, the Pinta, and the Lousy Filmmaka.

(I only considered films in wide release for this list. If we include limited-release movies, the vile Downloading Nancy makes the cut, as does Jim Jarmusch’s pointless exercise The Limits of Control.)

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Eric D. Snider (website) hasn’t forgotten about you, Next Day Air. Not by a long shot.

Tags: eric d. snider, the five worst films of 2009, transformers: revenge of the fallen