There’s been a pointless poll about films that are regarded to be guilty pleasures. Topping the list is Striptease, the ’96 Demi Moore film where she shows her terrifying boobs to the world while they all laugh. And of course, secretly enjoy it.

Swordfish, House Of Wax and Carry On Cleo also made the cut (more about all that jazz here). It’s outrageous that Showgirls didn’t top the poll as it is quite clearly one of the finest films ever made.

However, this notion of ‘guilty pleasure’ doesn’t sit well here. If you like something, you like it. Big deal. There’s no accounting for anyone’s taste. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a massive jerk. We’re more concerned about Guilty Displeasures, namely, the things that seem to have been canonised and everyone loves… but really, we just don’t get it.

There’s so many films out there that are deemed universally great, leaving some people to nod along and agree because they don’t wanna feel like a tool for voicing their real opinion of it.

So here’s a list of films that we’re told we should like and feel bad for not enjoying them in any way.

1. Shawshank Redemption

This film has virtually been given a sainthood, leaving even the most laissez-faire of movie goers breathless and muttering about how powerful and moving a picture it is. However, this writer has never been able to enjoy it once. Tim Robbins? Don’t care. Morgan Freeman? Beyond listening to his nice speaking voice, don’t care. It’s a slow film that plods on and on abzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

2. Napoleon Dynamite

Not very funny ugly kid in not very funny stupid clothes displays not very funny social awkwardness while being taunted by his not very funny and not very smarmy brother who talks to girls online and it all drags itself painfully slowly toward a not very funny dance routine and a not very funny wedding. Success of film prompts not very funny people to wear not very funny Vote For Pedro t-shirts.

3. Lord of the Rings Trilogy

The books, which are also not particularly enjoyable, give a sense of hugeness and a whole other world to get lost in. Not figuratively. The feeling of Tolkien’s writing makes you think of planet sized problems. However, the film feels piddly and small and features rubbish CGI monsters, too much average looking rain and wind, actors mistaking their roles for Shakespearean ones and… the whole thing is just really, really boring.

4. Donnie Darko

Handsome but crashingly dull boy has dreams and shit which involve a bloke dressed up like a rabbit. Then a plane engine kills him, thereby because cinema’s first plane engine hero. Has double meaning which stoned teenagers like to froth up about. Effectively, the film is the most needlessly complicated suicide in film.

5. The Matrix

Oooh! Is everything real? Or not? Yes! NO? Hang on. Keanu Reeves says “Whoa!” and wears the kind of leather jacket that metal fans are generally mocked for.

6. Fight Club

Oooh! Is it him? Or not? Yes! NO? Hang on. People get punched in the mouth repeatedly, Helena Bonham Carter has manky teeth. No-one admits that the only reason 90% of people liked the film was because Brad Pitt wore a grubby vest. Ed Norton can add this, along with American History X, to canonised films that aren’t actually that great.

7. Godfather

5000 hour long film that basically was summed up in a much more fun way by Goodfellas and Casino.

8. All Kevin Smith Films

Kooky-stoner bollocks with a sprinkling of Jedi jokes, or, people in plaid shirts trying not to be pricks around a girl, or The One Where It Took Him Ages To Tell Us That Alanis Morrisette Is Our Lord. Clerks was an impressive independent hit, but really, nothing about it deserves the status it enjoys.

9. The Princess Bride

Irritatingly quotable film that is adored by anyone who watched it when they were little. Of course, it’s not much better than any other saccharine love-story with occasional barbed asides, but that hasn’t stopped this fantasy romp being held in high-esteem. Unfathomably, no-one seems to mind the awful Mark Knopfler soundtrack.

10. Romeo and Juliet

We’re talking about the ’96 Baz Luhrmann effort here which manages to make a brutal and savage tale of love and woe into something that looks like the wet-dream of just about any ’90s teenager. Bad curtain hair-dos, mewing and a soundtrack that is just as overrated as the film itself. Especially that awful Radiohead song about fucking packed-lunches.

Feel free to add your own guilty displeasures in the comments or, of course, add your ‘HOW DARE YOU?’ diatribes.

Everyone loves a sequel, and everyone else loves a remake.

After all, why should you have to get to know confusing new characters and unfamiliar situations when what you really want is a temporary lobotomy to shield you from the trials and banalities of actual life? It’s far more comforting to see a slightly different version of something you already know about, like the recent TRANSFORMERS 2: HELL YES and STAR TREK: BUT FASTER.

With that in mind, I’ve come up with a list of films for you to watch next summer while you sink into your air conditioned seat, overdosing on Minstrels. I hereby proudly present my Top Twelve Non-Existent Sequels…

1. PORCUPINES ON A HOT AIR BALLOON – After the underwhelming Bees In A Car, Samuel L Jackson teams up with ‘hilarious’ ‘actor’ Martin Lawrence to deliver the final instalment of the animals-in-vehicles trilogy in a movie event that can only be described as ‘awesome’.

Martin Lawrence wants to get these monkey-fightin' porcupines off this Monday-to-Friday hot air balloon.

2. REMIND ME AGAIN WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER – Jennifer ‘Love’ Hewitt and Freddie ‘Prinz’ Junior receive threatening phone calls from an old man who can’t remember why he is trying to kill them with a hook. So scary you will literally shit yourself.

She's happy because she's forgotten about the hook.

3. MY NEW BEST FRIEND’S BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING AND A FUNERAL – Martin Freeman navigates a series of awkward parties, fumbling his way through faux pas after faux pas until he dies of food poisoning and has to be cremated. Contains awkward nudity.

..and a funeral

4. THURSDAY THE 12th PART NONE - Horror prequel in which a group of young friends packs to go on holiday, with a nagging sensation that they’re forgetting something. Contains bad decisions and extreme violence.

Young Jason

5. BATMAN BEGUINES - Bruce Wayne must win a ballroom dancing contest to prevent clown shaped villains from taking over the town hall with their clown shaped knives and guns.

6. DIE HARD ZERO – Rookie cop John McClane (probably played by Shia LaBeouf) busts heads on the streets of New York City while his wife grows ever more disillusioned and drops hints that she might one day think about moving to L.A.

Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker

7. TERMINATOR 5: SOFT TARGETS – a robot carefully designed to look like an old Arnold Schwarzenegger travels back to Victorian times to kick John Connor’s great-grandfather in the nuts. Contains mild peril, and kicks in the nuts.

I need your clothes, your boots, and your penny farthing

8. MATRIX: REMORTGAGES – an old man sits in a white room, painstakingly describing the other Matrix films to Keanu Reeves. Contains padding.

He totally gets it

9. INDIANA JONES AND THE EPISODE OF THE CRYSTAL MAZE – Indy, young Indy, old Indy, and the shadow of a former Indy, explore four challenge zones, completing basic tasks to collect crystals, while Richard O’Brien plays the harmonica sarcastically.

Turns out it's an alien spaceship. Seriously.

10. MAD MAX: THE PASSION OF THE MAX – Mel Gibson directs and stars in this action redux. Contains unsettling graphic scenes of genuine masturbation.

Almost... there...

11. ALIEN VERSUS KEVIN: LOST IN NEW SPACE – Hilarity ensues as Macauley Culkin rigs up a collection of tar-and-feather style booby traps in an abandoned spaceship, during a violent alien onslaught.

Tee hee! It's gonna get hit by a bucket of paint!

12. AUSTIN POWERS: A QUANTUM OF BOLLOCKS – Mike Myers fantasises about the 1960s in a Scottish accent.

Dr Evil

There. Hollywood can have those ideas for free. All I ask for is a 5% cut of Minstrel sales and an advanced copy of the special edition DVDs. Apart from the Mad Max one.

This was a guest post by Jimi Odell from Blogtired, and he’s pretty much Captain Brilliant as far as we’re concerned.

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10 - If you haven’t seen this yet, consider it a public service. Have fun at dinner!

9 - The one good bit from the rubbish second Matrix movie, but with puppies and kittens – YouTube

8 - World leaders accused of being the Antichrist - Cracked

7 – God, monkeys are perverts aren’t they? – Liquidgeneration

6 – Choose your favourite advert, win a massive telly – Channel4

5 – Tony Hart RIP. Very sad - Guardian

4 – That Brett Ratner, he’s a funny guy isn’t he - YouTube

3 - Apparently yesterday was the most depressing day of the year. Let’s keep that going with a list of signs that you’re about to be dumped – MSN

2 - How to fight: an instructional video - Funnyordie

1 - This is berserk – play Street Fighter II on YouTube – Destructoid