me_irl

I hate going into a movie with expectations. That’s the quickest way to end up hating it. Even if I might be a fan and am looking forward to a particular film’s release. It’s far easier just to go in to a film with few expectations. Things that make a movie “bad” for me are: bad acting, bad writing, bad effects, or bad plot contrivances. IOW, something so egregious it pulls me out of enjoying what I’m watching and draws my attention to it.

For example - the new Star Wars films. They were fine for a cast of relative unknowns. Yeah, they had some heavy handed writing in spots that was bad, the worst being the pointless casino and kid scenes in the last one. But regardless it was fun. The previous three otoh had a stellar cast yet some of the worst wooden acting, writing, and the abuse of digital SFX was offensive.

(Best SW film made was Rogue One, IMO, tied with ANH because that introduced us to the franchise and had no baggage.)

Of course this is all movie dependent. Spoofs and the like or comedy are entirely different vs something like a drama. One won’t be held to a high standard, the other will need it to keep the audience engaged.

Watch both Judge Dress films to understand the difference between a good film and a bad one.

Don't have fun = bad movie.

This is more an arthouse thing for me, as if the story becomes completely incoherent I just assume it’s expressionism and I’m being challenged.

Honestly, that is what matters. There's something to be said about "cinema" versus "movies" lol, not everything needs to have mass appeal to be good, but I think a lot of people rate things high even when they hate it and that's bullshit.

The Room is considered a movie so bad it's good, but if it turned out that Tommy knew what he was doing the whole time, would that make it just a good movie?

There are good movies, and then there is Popeye The Slayer Man. Nothing in between for me.

This used to be me. I enjoyed pretty much everything I watched. I figured, since a lot of people put a ton of time, effort, and money into making a film, it must have at least some redeeming qualities. No one trusted my opinion on films because I "loved everything."

It wasn't until I watched a ton of movie reviews from various reviewers that I started to be able to tell the difference between a good film and a bad film. Now I'm pretty critical of films, and even made a review blog to discuss what I like and dislike about certain films.

I had this exact train of thought when I was eighteen and ended up building a career and a half on top of that particular crisis.

I was going to say no regrets, but... you know, some regrets?

I can tell when a movie is good now, though.

Weirdly, that somehow became a huge political problem on the Internet and ended up killing democracy. I guess that's one of the regrets.

I think most movies are dogshit, but the bad ones are fun to riff on with my friends.

My criteria for what makes a good movie seem straight forward to me, but apparently I ask too much as shown by the vast majority of movies being frustratingly bad.

I can suspend disbelief for lore and character, but not for blatantly dumb decision making, plot holes, or forcing a story event. Entire plot lines based on simple misunderstandings ruin stories immediately for me, as do hamfisted agenda pushing, or stories hinging on "common knowledge" that's known bullshit. (Looking at whatever that movie was a few years back that started with the narrator stating we only use 10% of our brains, fuck off.)

Horror movies have their own indurating problems, which is too bad since it's my favorite genre when done well. For some reason, people always act like they're in a horror movie. Gotta check something in the basement? Better walk slow and look nervous, it's not totally unreasonable for someone to be afraid of their own fucking basement. Or the polar opposite, everything is fine no matter what, and I'm sure the several missing people are just playing a prank.

Can this problem be solved with simple communication? We better find some bullshit way to get rid of cell phones. uh, the battery died. Uh, ghosts aliens and monsters block signals. Uh the antagonists is a tech expert who jams phones. Uh, they're in the woods, there's no signal. (I've been in the woods, there's a signal.) Or they just decide to give up and base the plot in the 80s.

Lazy writing, in other words.

This took too long and I've lost interest in my rant, but I'll post it anyway.

It's pretty easy. There are bad movies, like Star Wars: The Last Jedi and most Marvel movies. Then, there are good movies like Waterworld, Demolition Man, and Battlefield Earth.

I think a lot of movies fall into that category tbh it takes a lot of qualities to stack up for the movie to be bad or good and most fall somewhere in the middle

Being I watch plenty of bad movies I have sorta the reverse. 90% of the time im like, did I just waste two hours of my life.