For God’s sake, people really do feel like they deserve to be entertained. But they don’t! It’s AMAZING that movies exist. When I saw “Spider-Man 3,” I didn’t go “Oh my God the character motivations were all over the place and there were too many villains and pace was uneven!” I had non-spoiled, non-childish, grateful attitude about it and I thought it was an awesome movie. Do you know what’s better than watching a movie you hate? Watching a movie you like.
While the process of movie-making is truly magical and fairy dust comes out of every pore of gems such as “Red Riding Hood”, it’s not like they were invented yesterday. We don’t need to be grateful that movies exist because, as has been pointed out, directors don’t make them out of the goodness of their hearts - they want to make money, and that’s fine.
You’re damn right people feel they have a right to be entertained - because they spent 10 bucks on a movie ticket!
I agree that if you find yourself hating every movie you see you may want to examine your reasons, but do you like every song you hear on the radio? I’m sure there’s a lot of effort and craftsmanship involved in even the most derivative drivel, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t dislike it. There’s no virtue in undiscriminatingly loving everything. You develop a taste in films, music and food and you are allowed to criticize it, even if you are an abysmal cook yourself. “That hot dog from the vendor on the street corner gave me food poisoning? Oh well, I should be grateful that I didn’t have to starve to death!”
Yes, that is what I’m saying. Well spotted.
That’s absolutely asinine. There is no “correct” answer to the question, “Was this movie any good?” It’s a purely subjective experience. If I dislike a movie, it’s because the filmmakers have failed to make a movie that appeals to me. It’s possible, of course, that my reaction is idiosyncratic, as compared to the rest of the general public. I’ve disliked movies that were wildly popular. I’ve liked movies that were widely despised. I’m not “wrong” to feel this way - there is no “wrong” way to react to any work of art. If I watch a movie, and feel that it was absolutely execrable, a failure on every level, then that it’s an entirely valid reaction to the movie - and if you see the same film, and think it’s the best thing ever captured on cellulose, that’s an equally valid reaction. Neither of us needs to have a deep and studied understanding of film to have an opinion on the worthiness of any given movie, nor to voice that opinion. Certainly, a knowledge of the cinema, from both a technological standpoint, and a broader historical context, helps one articulate that reaction in terms other people can understand, but that sort of literacy is not a prerequisite for forming an opinion. To state otherwise, as you have, is arrant, elitist nonsense.
I’ve found it to be just the opposite, actually. Certainly, there have been times when someone has criticized a movie in terms that were disparaging to people who liked it, but those instances are dwarfed by the number of times I’ve heard someone (like yourself) talk down to people for disliking a movie they enjoyed. A lot of people feel very threatened when they hear someone criticize something they enjoy. I admit, I’m not immune to this myself. But I’m an adult, and I’m generally capable of separating my sense of self from the things I enjoy. When someone slags off a work that I enjoy, I can recognize that they aren’t (generally) criticizing me, personally.
This is somewhat ironic, given your posts in this thread. There have been over three hundred posts made here so far. Without a doubt, every single person who has posted here, as seen at least one mention of a movie they love. I know I could easily list half a dozen films named here that I consider to be all time great films. You, however, seem to be the first to get upset by it. This suggests, to me, that the only person here who has a problem with other people’s taste in movies is yourself.
I suggest you get over that. It’s an ugly character trait.
Actually, if I pay money to watch a movie, I do, in fact, deserve to be entertained. That’s why I’m giving them my money. If I’m not entertained, I think I’m entitled to speak up.
I’m glad you liked it. I enjoyed it, too, despite its flaws. But I can recognize that it could have been a much better film, I can understand why someone else might have found those flaws insurmountable to their enjoyment, and I don’t begrudge them their opinion. It’s just a movie. There’s a thousand new ones made every year - that’s more than enough for everyone to find something they like, without having to take anything away from anyone else.
Indeed. That’s pretty much the reason people complain about bad movies.
Incidentally, you should learn what the word “axiom” means before you try to use it in a sentence again.
I used the word “axiom” correctly.
Just because you individually replied to each paragraph doesn’t mean you actually had anything to say about any of those paragraphs. You’re only writing hazy rhetoric and insults.
The most obvious examples.
Disliking food because it gave you food poisoning and slamming “Inception” because it didn’t live up to the hype have absolutely nothing in common, especially not figuratively.
When you dislike a movie, it’s not because the filmmakers have failed to make a movie that appeals to you. The filmmakers had no intention of making a movie that appeals to you because you are one of billions of people on earth. Filmmakers make movies based on a) the kinds of movies that they like and b) the kinds of movies a lot of people are going to see. If you didn’t like “Your Highness,” for instance, it’s not because the filmmakers have failed to make a funny film. I guarantee you that every joke in that movie got a laugh from the writers. It’s that you failed to appreciate their sense of humor.
You missed the point of this. Have you ever watched a movie you didn’t like then five or so years later you watched it again and liked it? The movie didn’t change over the course of those five years, you changed. If you had a more appreciative and less nitpicky attitude toward movies, you’d like more movies. You’ll never like all movies, that’s silly, but if you weren’t a petulant, whiny bitch about the movies you see you’d like a lot more.
How many movies have you ruined for yourself by being horribly disappointed that it wasn’t one of the greatest movies ever like you imagined? Take a movie on its own terms. Don’t expect magic. How many movies have you not even bothered to try to like because everyone said it sucked? Again, take a movie on its own terms.
Here’s a list of movies I think are amazing that no one else liked:
The Happening
Saw II, III, IV, V and 3D
Legion
Southland Tales
Freddy Got Fingered
My Soul to Take
The Box
Nancy Drew
The Village
Black Christmas (2006)
Club Dread
It’s Complicated
The Pink Panther
The Pink Panther 2
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
The Wicker Man (2006)
Dreamcatcher
Halloween II (2009)
and so on…
The way I see it, I’m better off because I had a fun time watching those movies. I really can’t think of any reason I’d rather be the hyper-critical non-grateful person who hated them?
Really, if you change your attitude, your emotional reaction will follow. Stop comparing movies to other movies, and comparing what you think of them to what everyone else thinks of them, and pointing out plot holes and vague character motivations in your head, and getting angry at the filmmakers if a joke doesn’t make you laugh, and just take the movie on its own terms for what it is.
But, of course, you’re not going to be able to do that until you acknowledge that if you don’t like the product of many professionals’ blood, toil, tears and sweat, it’s not their fault for failing to factor you into their movie-making equation as one six-billionth of the world’s population, it’s your fault for not cutting them some slack if their movies didn’t turn out to be one of the greatest movies ever made.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13719479&postcount=36
I mean, really, Miller: you’re arguing with a guy who claims that Transformers 2 is a better movie that The Godfather. Don’t you have better things to do? 
Given the list of movies that MC has enjoyed, it’s obvious that he looks for nothing more in films than splatter and brainlessness.
And it’s a special sort of thread-shitting to come into a thread dedicated to “Movies you didn’t expect to suck so bad” and claim that we’re being too hard on the poor workers and peasants who put together crappy films, can’t we all just get along, etc…
Not to butt in on the argument too much but…
From the way I am understanding it, Mister Cheech, you want us viewers of film to appreciate and not think negatively of a movie we saw simply because the movie exists by people who made it who aren’t us? Going off of that logic there is nothing in this world that shouldn’t be appreciated by anyone or anything because somewhere in the world there is someone who couldn’t make it…regardless of the opinions I have of it’s style or make.
Also I would like to go on record and say I absolutely could write a movie better than some of the movies listed.
According to the earlier thread that I linked, I believe that MC’s position is that movies made for purposes other than entertainment are worthless and should be avoided because they’re not as entertaining as films made merely to put butts in the seats.
You see! That’s why people so slavishly refuse to like movies that most people don’t like. That’s why people TRY to dislike movies that have low IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes scores and they deny themselves the pleasure of enjoying perfectly good if maligned movies.
If someone dares like movies that the consensus doesn’t like, automatically that person only “looks for nothing more in films than splatter and brainlessness.”
But guess what. I’m tough-willed enough to not be teased into only liking movies that crack the IMDb top 250. Most movies are good movies. I’m not going to be made to feel bad for liking movies that people dismiss for inane reasons now, and I never have, and I never will.
This is why no one takes Armond White seriously. He’s writing more interesting things than any living critic (including Mick LaSalle) and just because his opinions differ from other critics’, everything he has to say is automatically assumed to be worthless.
P.S. Transformers 2 is better than The Godfather.
Correct. Try to sit through Tarkovsky’s “The Mirror,” Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers,” Cassavetes’ “A Woman Under the Influence” and Godard’s “Detective” and then try to tell me that you disagree.
What was that “POOF!” sound I just heard?
Dude, T2 had a scene where Shia goes into the Smithsonian Institute (in DC), it gets blown all to hell, whereupon he runs out into an abandoned airfield somewhere in Arizona/Nevada. That’s not just a bad film, that’s an incompetent film.
To quote someone from another forum:
It’s just so, so stupid to get hung up on those kind of idiosyncrasies. You’re ruining perfectly good movies for yourself.
Also, Armond White is a better writer than I am:
http://www.nypress.com/article-20003-bad-boys-and-toys-transformers-revenge-of-the-fallen.html
Like I said in the other thread, I believe you are writing some of the best satire on the boards. Keep it up! :thumbs-up: 
No you didn’t.
No, you did not. An axiom is something that does not need to be proved, because it is universally understood as the basis of the subject matter being discussed. You are currently attempting to convince us that your position on film criticism is correct. By definition, your definition cannot be axiomatic.
Translation: I don’t really understand what you said, or have any way to respond to it intelligently, so I’m going to just ignore it.
And here’s the proof of that: I never slammed Inception, and I never compared a bad movie to getting food poisoning. Lesson number one in engaging in a debate: you have to actually listen to what the other guy is saying before you respond.
I don’t really care about an artist’s intention. I care about his results. It may be that the artist specifically intended to make something I’d hate. I don’t care. I don’t factor artist intentions into my judgment of a work. The work stands or falls on its own merits. The trick is, to understand what a merit is, you have to understand what a film is capable of. Which is where the value of comparative study comes in.
If the intention behind Your Highness was to make a film that a lot of people are going to see, then they’ve absolutely failed at their task, seeing as the movie’s world-wide gross was less than half the cost of making the film. Not that I’d consider money earned to be a reliable standard of quality - lots of great movies have been flops. And, of course, lots of bad movies have been wildly successful.
I have. I’ve watched movies that I loved five years ago, only to find that I hate them now. It’s certainly true that one’s appreciation of a movie is strongly influenced by one’s life experience and personal knowledge. A good example of this comes from literature: there is no author, living or dead, whom I love more than John Steinbeck. But when I first read him, I hated him. I ranted and raved about what a horrible author John Steinbeck was. Of course, I was twelve at the time. Reading him again in my late twenties, I realized that there were depths to his writings that I couldn’t have imagined when I was first exposed to him, that there was a pure, simple beauty to his prose that stopped my breath. Reading The Grapes of Wrath is a transcendent experience.
Of course, that experience comes at a cost - I can’t go back to the novels I loved as a child - ten-a-penny fantasy novels and media tie-ins, mostly - and enjoy them any more, because I can see how flat they really are, how unimaginative and clumsy. But my God, what a small price to pay to know Tom Joad and Rose of Sharon.
If you’d bothered to actually read this thread, you might note that prior to your own, unfortunate appearance on the scene, my one contribution to the thread was to defend Robert Downey, Jr’s depiction of Sherlock Holmes. In point of fact, you have absolutely no idea what movies I like, or don’t like, or what my attitude is towards the films I watch, or what informs those attitudes.
None.
Now that is just sad. Always expect magic, Mister Cheech, in every thing you do. It’s the only way to get through this life.
Oh, there have been a few. My time is, unfortunately, not infinite, and I cannot watch every movie out there. I need some sort of triage process to decide what I will and will not watch. It’s not a fool proof system, of course: there are movies that I avoided for too long because I listened to sources I normally found trustworthy. But there are a great many more movies that I watched, despite warnings about them, and found that I had been given good advice. The trick is to know your sources, and to know yourself. Art, in general, is a marvelous tool for the latter. Listening to what other people say about art, as opposed to blindly projecting your own prejudices onto them (as you do), is a good yardstick for the former.
Of course, I cannot know what goes on in your head (a fact for which I shall remain grateful until the end of my days), but I know that, speaking for myself, my ability to critically analyze and deconstruct a film within the context of its medium, genre, and era grants me the ability to enjoy truly great films on a level that most films cannot even conceive.
Have you ever been moved to tears by a movie? Not because of cheap pathos and melodrama, but because you realized that you were in the presence of something sublime? Maybe you get that from Freddy got Fingered - like I said, I can’t see into your head to know the answer to that. But it seems unlikely to me, not simply based on my knowledge of the film, but based on what you’ve written hear. There are true works of genius out there, but they require work from you, too, to meet them half way. If flash lights and loud noises are all you ever want out of life, more power to you. You will never lack for nourishment for that appetite. But I think there is value in looking for something more.
In short, stop thinking. Don’t judge. Don’t value. Don’t engage. Don’t react. Don’t question. Just accept what you are given, and be happy for it.
No, I don’t think so. I think I’d rather live, instead.
I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine. He’s called the fallacy of the excluded middle. I suspect you two are going to get along like a house afire.
The correct answer is 2003’s “Hulk” with Eric Bana.
Goddamn it.
There is no way that I can actually argue with you when you’re creating a new straw man or false dichotomy (ironically) or false analogy for nearly every sentence. I would explain what’s wrong with them on a case by case basis but I just don’t have the time of day. What you should do is read my post a couple of times, figure out what I’m saying as a whole, and argue that. Not each sentence is a thesis in itself. They are all part of a greater thesis. You can’t disprove the thesis by trying to refute each sentence by itself. You’re never going to get to the point, which is what all of the sentences make when they’re put together.
It’s not that I “don’t understand” what you’re saying. I understand perfectly the flaws with all of your individual non-arguments. I just don’t know why I should respond to them when if you haven’t figured out that the kind of arguments you’re trying to get away with are bullshit by now, you’re probably never going to learn, and you’re always going to be an idiot who is going to “win” every argument by attacking your opponent with too much nonsense for them to actually discredit it all.
Here’s the thesis: if you don’t like a movie, that’s your fault, your failure, not the filmmakers’.
“Pandora’s Box” makes me cry, but “Freddy Got Fingered” makes me laugh. “Cria Cuervos” breaks my heart in two, but in “Transformers 2,” Michael Bay does things with editing, cinematography and special effects I’ve never seen in a film before and that’s as viscerally powerful as the end of Angelopoulos’ “Ulysses Gaze.” “Zabriskie Point” is startling and numbing in the way that only great art is, but “Nancy Drew” is a bubbly, joyous, hyper-entertaining, one-of-a-kind pop culture miracle. One type of movie doesn’t inherently negate the other. You’re not a big, smart, mature critical reader because you slam great entertainment and praise great art. You’re just cruelly dismissing great entertainment because of out some kind of weird, misguided attempt to inflate your ego.
To re-iterate: disliking an entertaining movie doesn’t mean you’re smarter than if you liked that same movie.
Think, value, engage, react, question, judge, sure. But you’re thinking about your own ego instead of thinking about the images and sounds you’re watching. You’re valuing one type of movie but not valuing another type of movie without reason. You’re engaging with some films and purposefully not engaging with others, again, without reason. You’re questioning and judging filmmakers when you should really be questioning and judging yourself - you should be asking why you didn’t like the film as opposed to why the filmmaker made a film you didn’t like.
My whole problem with this thread is that it’s called “Movies you didn’t expect to suck so bad.” It’s an entire thread of people who watched an acclaimed movies and then hated them because it didn’t reach their absurd, unreasonable expectations - which is the wrong way to look at a movie. Look at a movie as a movie. Take it on its own terms. Not every movie can be one of the greatest movies ever made. But most movies are good. If Movie A is better than Movie B, Movie B isn’t bad. It’s just not as good as Movie A. “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” is much, much better than “Your Highness,” but they’re both good movies.
Here’s the thesis: if you don’t like what someone else has written about a film, that’s your fault, your failure, not the author’s.
I’m guessing you don’t actually know the meanings of the terms “straw man,” “dichotomy” (false or other wise), or analogy. You can, of course, prove me wrong by pointing out where I’ve done that in any of my posts. I’d be very surprised if you could do that, though.
The problem with understanding your point is that you contradict yourself regularly. Just for one example, you criticize people for disliking movies just because they’re popular (which is an entirely baseless claim, incidentally) and then link to Armand White, whose built his entire career out of attacking popular films and heaping outrageous praise on unpopular ones, to the point where he has absolutely no credibility with anyone who has the slightest familiarity with cinema. If the attitude you are taking with me were founded in honest reflection, you would absolutely despise Armand White, because there is no one living today who better exemplifies the attitudes you are imagining exist in this thread.
If my arguments are such bullshit, it should be trivially easy to tear them apart. Even if you don’t think you can convince me, I’m not the only one reading your posts. As a general rule, debate isn’t about changing your opponent’s mind in the first place: it’s about swaying your audience. You’ve been unable to directly address a single thing I’ve said to you - a fact I suspect has not escaped anyone reading this exchange. “You’re too stupid to understand my rebuttal, so I’m not going to make one,” is a pretty piss poor way of demonstrating the superiority of your position.
Yes, I know. Congratulations, incidentally, on figuring out the difference between a thesis and an axiom. The problem with your thesis is that it is, frankly, deeply stupid. There is such a thing as skill and ability. Some people have more skill than others. Some people have so little skill, that they have trouble creating something of worth. This applies to all fields of human endeavor, the arts no less than any other discipline. Some people are simply bad filmmakers, and you can spot them because they make bad films.
And here’s where you demonstrate your basic failure to comprehend virtually every other poster in this thread: no one is criticizing movies by their genre. There are lightweight comedies that are brilliant. There are action movies that consist of nothing more than a sequence of protechnic-laden action sequences, that are absolutely amazing. There are simple, by-the-numbers romances that leave anyone with an ounce of emotion in them weeping. And there are comedies, action films, and romances that are utter failures. Just because someone hates Freddy Got Fingered, it does not follow that they hate all slap-stick or gross-out humor. It just means that they found that particular example of the genre to be a failure.
At the heart of things, what you fail to understand is that there is no dichotomy between great art and great entertainment. If a film is greatly entertaining, then it is great art - even if it has no higher aim than to make you laugh like a loon for ninety minutes.
You’ve also, again, proven that you haven’t read, or at least understood, a single word of my argument here, by insisting that criticizing a film is part of some ego trip. I’ve stated, repeatedly, that you cannot judge someone’s worth by the sort of films they like. I am not a better person for disliking Michael Bay movies. You are not a worse person for enjoying them. I don’t criticize movies because it makes me feel better about myself, I criticize movies because I’m interested in what makes a movie work, and towards that goal, one can learn almost as much from the failures as one can from the successes.
No one has claimed other wise. This is an argument that exists no where in this thread other than your imagination.
Again, you have no idea what sort of movies I like and what sort of movies I dislike. You are projecting a huge array of motives and opinions on to me with absolutely no basis, other than the fact that I find your attitude odious, and your manners insulting.
Again, you are projecting. You are assuming people disliked movies simply because they are popular, but you have no evidence at all to support this supposition. It is possible to dislike a popular movie purely on its own merits. In fact, that is exactly what the vast majority of people do. The sort of person who slags off on something purely because of its perceived popularity is generally a rarity, particularly once you start dealing with adults. Forming an opinion on something based on its popularity is a fundamentally adolescent mind set. The vast majority of the posters to this board have long since out grown that.
Remember when you used that term, “false dichotomy,” earlier in your post? This is how I know you don’t understand the term, and were just throwing out a phrase you read somewhere, because this right here is a false dichotomy. There are miles and miles and miles of space between, “This was a bad movie,” and “This was one of the greatest movies ever made.” Indeed, that’s the specific point of this thread: movies that you did not expect to be the greatest movie ever made, but still managed to be surprisingly disappointing.
And this is how I know you don’t understand what a “strawman” is, for the same reason. No one has listed a movie in this thread simply because they could think of another movie that was better.