Sure there are some great movies, I'm not denying it but the vastest majority of the films shown in cinemas are garbage. You often hear people espousing such drivel with "oh leave your brain at the door and enjoy it". Well it just so happens that part of my enjoyment of most things is how they stimulate my intellect, make me curious, show me the world with eyes anew. And i mean curiosity beyond wanting to know how an audiovisual faecal mass has been assembled in such an artless fashion.
I don't think nor demand that all films have to be great art but I lament that the overall standard is piss poor. However that isn't what annoys me the most. It is that people will routinely go and see these excretions. Friends of mine go to the cinema on a weekly basis and will go see any piece of crap going. Dinguses over at the SDMB often rail against what they perceive as anti-intellectualism, well such a phenomenon is in evidence at all it is in the realm of film consumption. Apparently I'm not meant to take it all so seriously.
I rarely go to the cinema for a number of reasons. I like being able to go to the bathroom during a film and not miss a major plot point. This is of course when I go to see a film that contains a plot, which unfortunately is as rare as hen's teeth. I don't like having people who I'm not otherwise intimate with sitting right beside me, it's the same on buses.
The big screen doesn't wow me. I know there are certain films made for enjoyment on a big screen but I can't understand why this goal (as laudable as some find it) seems to be mutually exclusive from making a film with a decent plot, a realistic universe et al.
There are good, and great films that come out on a regular basis but where does the audience come from for all the garbage? And no this isn't just a matter of taste. Some films in all genres are well structured, thought out, acted etc but most aren't.
Films (even ones that have been critically panned) also generate so much PR that even if you want to avoid them it can be hard. The amount of quasi-journalistic verbal ejaculate surrounding releases such as Avatar has been astounding. I'm never too clear how much of this morass of PR is paid and orchestrated by the film companies and how much of it is just indicative of a severe lack of imagination on the part of writers and commentators.
Anyway, movies are a waste of time, please discuss.