Just say no to the movies...

My main comment on this passage;

Hollywood honchos continue to wring their hands over why you've stopped going to the movies. They blame ticket prices and DVD availability. They had better start considering the fact that filmmakers are so disconnected, so nihilistic, that the hopelessness and hostility they feel toward the world now permeates their work. Americans will no longer go see movies which are nothing more than the manifestation of the backwash of malignant narcissists. We're also sick and tired of listening to actors lecture us about how awful the US is, and
more recently, why a cold-blooded mass murdering gang founder should have been
given clemency. Enough is enough.

is right on!

Also, I don’t mind being surprised by a movie. To a degree, that is what I am paying for. To be whisked away from the every-day and told a story. Movies like “The Village”, “6th Sense”, SAW, and “Flight Plan” were able to do that.

What I DON”T like or want is to be fooled and it seems that Hollywood is more and more getting into the ‘fooling’ game instead of the ‘surprising’ game. The earliest example of this type of movie that I can easily remember was “The Crying Game”. A more recent example is “Million Dollar Baby”. Both of these movies were sold as something other than what they were. They were meant to shock “vanilla middle America” and to “open our eyes”. I don’t go to the movies to learn Hollywood’s lessons.

Lately it just feels like a lot of what Hollywood does, it does “because it can” or because “the director wants to make a statement” or wants to make the story “their own” or to show ‘America” how wrong/bad/evil/stupid/dupes we are. Get over it. If you want to make movies for yourself, more power to you. Have at it and have fun but that does not give you the right or the moral high-ground to get into a snit when no one wants to see your “great vision”.

For example, compare “The Big Red One” with “Jar Head”. Both are war movies but “The Big Red One” was a war story told from a solder’s perspective about the war. It covered the suffering and hardships of war but was entertaining and satisfying. “Jar Head” is about Hollywood’s expectations of modern solders. One was compelling and entertaining and the other was a waste of film.

Oh, and my wife and I completely enjoyed “The Incredibles”.