Enshrining illiteracy is a proud American tradition.
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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me_irl
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Right? Is there something in big macs that makes people anti intellectual?
So do they also just enjoy jingling keys for 2 hours?
Like it's not that hard. You enjoy it or you don't and everyone has a criteria on what's good or not.
Some people like to think about high concept stuff and a good movie gets their moral queries up.
Some like professionalism and it's about shot compositions and good editing.
Some want jokes and as long as they laugh it's good.
Some like Neil Breen stuff that's none of the above.
Truly exceptional movies usually are able to satisfy multiple groups of people and also may get you interested in lines of thought or art that is in a different realm than your normal standard of quality.
Saying you turn off your brain and have no concept other than colors make time pass is beyond a lack of critical thought.
Books are good when you don't realise you are reading.
Any film that makes you realise you are watching a film (bad sets, acting, dialog etc.) is bad.
I too have no media literacy
I'm exactly like that, but the other way around. 90 % of the movies I watch I don't enjoy. Mayhap it's just not my medium. Makes the 10 % I did enjoy realy worth it tough.
Depression is one factor, but I also realized that what Hollywood thinks a "relatable" character is is very far from who I am as a person.
Film is a medium that is truly coming to its technical maturity while also being at or near the absolute height of our artistic powers as a civilization. That's why it really sucks that at that same moment, studios are more risk-adverse and money driven than ever.
I didn't want to be a film snob, but I feel like I have to go indie these days to see anything worth my time.
Same thing with video games. I mainly play indie games and if you combined the budget and staff of all of them, it still wouldn't come close to the budget and staff of a AAA game. So much more creativity is allowed thought. A single vision rather then a design by committee.
Oh, hundy p. The closest thing in my library to AAA games are all Larian and From Soft titles from years ago. Indie is where it's at.
Right?!? Another thing is that plot lines are reused a lot. Often movies feel so very shallow and to me.
The most recent movie I likes a lot was "Everything Everywhere All at Once". That felt like something unique to me.
If the movie is not Extremely Good™ (or better), I get extremely irritated and will walk out of the theater or click on something else. Just feels like a huge waste of time
dude is stuck at a toddler level
I mean, I can certainly tell whether a movie is objectively good or bad while watching it, but that rarely correlates with my enjoyment of the movie. I can separate "this is really badly made/has bad writing/is a ridiculous premise" and "this is a fun distraction from the daily routine".
I kind of feel like being unable to make that separation and not being able to enjoy movies that are "bad" must be an exhausting and miserable experience.
Its a very mature and peak enjoyer mindset to be able to separate objectively good from bad AND being able to not feel bad about enjoying the good movie and enjoying the bad one.
Im bored to death watching marvel movies that are objectively kinda good but we had a blast watching only god forbids despite me reccomending people not watch it.
Saying this as a massive Bruce Campbell fan (i.e. I really enjoy "bad" movies).
While doing anything you can't enjoy would be "exhausting", I assume people who dont enjoy "bad" movies just... don't watch them.
I don't think camp is the same thing as bad. I've seen things that are very campy, but still manage to have compelling character arcs.
It's the issue I had with the Bayformers movies. Having over the top special effects wasn't an excuse for all the characters being rotten.
Evil Dead on the other hand bought fake blood by the barrel, but Ash's decent into madness was the real focus of the story.
Another example, Rocky Horror Picture Show. Certified classic; it's doing exactly what it wants to do. Is not trying to win Best Picture, and that's what's great about it
Evil Dead is one of the greats and easy to love, but I'm talking a genuine enjoyment of movies like Moontrap, Alien Apocalypse, and My Name Is Bruce.
The Bayformers are an interesting choice, because while I don't enjoy them myself, I've heard people actively enjoy the movies for the spectacle. Similar to how I have enjoyed some of the... less well written... Godzilla films. Folks are gonna enjoy what they enjoy.
I was about to say, I remember watching movies in childhood that I enjoyed the experience of, but did not take on board. It was a series of lights and sounds. I rate those films Stimuli/10.
I 100% get this and I think a lot of people are missing the point. It's like going to a football game without knowing the rules, which team is better, or who is winning and having fun anyway. It's not having fun watching people suck because shitty football can be funny.
Some movies (Marvel, Fast and Furious, Transformers) are Pepperoni Pizza. They are not a 7 course dining experience because THEY DIDNT SET OUT TO BE!
If you sit down to a pizza and tell me its the worst soup you ever had, you're a dumbass.
I don't think this is proving the point that the people who say this want it to make. If you're trying to champion what the movie is trying to be, then that's one thing. (i.e. Marvel movies want to be fun, fast paced, action packed, and humorous)
But championing what a movie is not trying to be doesn't really work. For example, saying that a movie isn't trying have the traits that make a movie good (pacing, plot, framing, blocking, cut speed, color grading, etc), especially when all those elements are present simply by virtue of the medium.
That's like saying a watch isn't broken just because it doesn't tell time. You can like a broken watch. It can be a fun fashion accessory. It can have a pleasing design or be comfortable on the wrist. But it still doesn't tell time. And thats not a dig on those who like it, it's just a true statement about the watch.
It's not even about does this movie live up to the hype or type of movie or does it tell the story well. It's there is a giant tv in front of me, stuff is happening on it, I'm with friends, there are snacks, I'm not even sure who's who, what's going on, or even what language this is in, but I enjoyed doing that we are doing this thing. It's just the entertainment clears the absolute lowest bar. And I had fun doing that. The 10% not enjoying it is if something takes away from that like being sick or them being out of milk duds.
So we're going to ignore the assholes that talk in the theater too huh?
Know how to tell of a person is a movie snob? They'll tell you.
First of all, the term is actually ‘cinephile’. And second… 😄
Basically linux users
I'm often very enamored by camera work, type of shot and things like how they translate certain things to film with limited options.
Especially when it's Drama related and has to do with heavier emotions or things like disorders and other issues.
But usually i'm just a: "watched movie, had fun" kinda guy.
I watched a stoner movie a while back about some guys that got stranded in their van and hotboxed their asses back or forward(can't remember) 30 years...as an avid non drug user i had fun but i did think it was a shit movie tho.
Sounds like someone who never watched House of the Dead in theatres.
Movies can be fun bad tbh. They can have cheap budgets, horribly low quality CGI, but still be a fun watch.
Yea but this is telling the difference beyween a good and bad movie
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Yes. This is why I hate movie critics. Your PhD in post romantic Spanish literature does not qualify you to make a determination if the power rangers movie was good or not.
Whether you had fun and the quality of the movie are not entirely related.
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That's why I watch video essays that are longer than the actual movie and explain why it's bad instead of watching the movie
Me enjoying a movie does in no way exclude it from being a bad movie.
Seeing as I do enjoy watching bad movies. Terrible acting, bad cuts, awful dialog. I love it.
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Good movie: the one you enjoy
Bad movie: the one you don't
Simple as that, my metric of scoring isn't good or bad, it's whether i enjoy it or whether it annoy me. I pick what i watch and will go through review and score so most of the time i know i gonna enjoy it, but sometime an outlier will pops up. I'm still not over how annoyed i am for 28 Weeks Later.
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Must be nice to be able to just completely switch off your brain like that.
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I mean hey, if you have low standards, and you're completely honest about it, nothing wrong with that... and it also puts the onus on the people with higher standards to actually explain why they do or do not like any given movie, easier to suss out the people who don't actually have consistent standards, but instead just have an amalgamation of their favorite influencers opinions.
Win win win as I see it. I'm a bit of a movie snob, and I can explain why I do or don't like a movie...
But I am also self-aware enough to realize that other people have other standards, and 90% of the time, if there isn't some utterly reprehnsible trope or caricature or very very misleading depiction of real events in a 'based on a true story' type thing... eh, whatever, we have different tastes, wanna get pizza?
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Good movies are self-aware. Not everything needs to be a masterpiece of acting and cinematography, or have the best effects, or the best writing. But they have to know what they are. I don't mean breaking the fourth wall or self-deprecating humor. More like understanding their limits.
The people making Sharknado knew they were doing a campy action film (series) with sharks in tornadoes. Fun Movie. Would watch again.
M. Night Shyamalan is a great writer and director, but a lot of his films have a feeling of over-dramatized self-importance, where it seems like he really wants you to know how clever he is. So they get panned.
Chrisopher Nolan (I think) puts similar importance on symbols and archetypes with a dramatic and artistic style, but his movies have a feel of like "I don't give a shit if you get it, just enjoy the ride." He makes good films.
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Sounds like 10% of the time you did not have fun watching a movie. That's a bad movie.
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