It's the truth; these days most movies suck. Todays audiance is fed more formula than a dehydrated three-day-old baby. Which makes reviewing pictures so much more fun for us.
http://www.mostmoviessuck.com
Why do most movies suck? That's like ask why do birds fly? or why is the sky blue? It's just the nature of things. It always has been and always will be. Just as there will always be people like us who appreciate bad movies despite their lack of virtues.
In my mind I think why there are so many bad movies around is that Hollywood got not so many talented people working there to make good ones to look at.
I agree, there hasn't been a creative, original or entertaining movie since 1994.
Now wer get bulls**t like Dude wheres my Car? and American Pie. Ugh.
Marketing, inside jokes, a quick buck and test screenings for a start.
"If you're in advertiseing, kill yourself. No. No. I know I'm a comedian, but this is not a joke. Go home. Put a loaded gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Look! Look! Bill is going for that anti-marketing demographic. He's using reverse psychology. No! No! No!! I hate you! You're scum! You represent everything that's wrong with entertainment today! Go home and paint your wall red with the blood from the back of your head! This is not a joke. If you're in advertising, KILL YOURSELF." - - - Bill Hicks
...because suck makes buck.
Try something different, and nine out of ten times, it will come out of Hollywood's butthole processed into pure Vanilla crap. If it doesn't, nine out of ten of THOSE times, audiences will say, "Ooh! This doesn't taste like Vanilla crap! Yucky!" and stay away in droves.
...and for that one time in ten when something original is actually successful, it is immediately Xeroxed and sequelized until it becomes the new Vanilla, to the point that the original has lost a lot of its flavor.
Repeat ad nauseum.
Nice analogy, Squishy.
Then again, some cool t.v shows are being created ( Sopranos, West Wing,Sex in the City ), so all creativity isn't quite dead yet, even on the idiot box.
You're 100% correct Squishy. But to reply to your post Mr. Rothchild,, consider the fact that one of those shows will probably turn into a hollywood movie. Thus proving Squishy's point. In fact, it's this very reason that Matt Groening has stated he will wait until the final season of the Simpsons to do the Simpsons movie. Let's just hope the movie doesn't destroy the shows legacy.
As an avid film critic, I always believe a film needs a good portion of creativity to make it look good. Mario Bava is an example of a creative artist. His films are colorful with lush photography combined with the usual twists and atmospheric action that happens in most of his films. Andy Milligan used reality as his creative angle in which he shows the world as it is and shows that it is always not in "black-and-white" as most people seem to think. But creativity is NOW LACKING in films.
AMERICAN PIE relys on some moron sticking his dick in a pie! DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR? is about unintelligent stones who you wish would be shot! PEARL HARBOR is a inaccurate film that has a boring 3 hour long love story and bad Japanese stereotypes that is in a "black-and-white" fashion! SCARY MOVIE uses pornographic humor that does not work! THE GRINCH is a bad 104 minute variation of a 25 minute book and cartoon! FREDDY GOT FINGERED is a film made by some jackass from Canada who thinks he is funny but is really some fruit with a wacko look so he can be "charming"! These are not creative movies but movies that are made to make a quick buck even though THEY REALLY SUCK! But the producers and distributors don't care! They just want that $7.50 so bad that they will make a film that will pull in the dumbest teen or adult who is quickly enthraled by the overproduced trailers! So yeah, most movies suck. But that is how Hollywood works and they don't care at all. Hell, they act like they know what the audience wants but they don't even have a clue. In fact, nobody knows what the audience wants and if so the audience's wants and needs cannot be fulfilled because the audience themselves have no idea what they want either!
But thank God we have directors like Herschell Gordon Lewis, Andy Milligan, George A. Romero, Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, etc. who knew how to deliver entertainment.
But Hollywood is just in it for the "Argent" (French for "money"). What are you gona' do?
They suck because "Cloverfield" That joke of a movie was bad enough for it will be definitely added to Hollywood's lowest list of those ever growing make a-fast-buck blockbuster garbage flicks. I Robot and the equally discussing sequel I am legend has turned off this moviegoer for keeps now. Speaking indirectly to all those big bad rich Hollywood producers out there, who no longer have an edge for making real audience pleasing science-fiction?
Where are you guys getting these lousy scripts from a class of kindergartners? Who writes these neanderthal brained scripts, and how many millions do these jerks make for purposely distorting our sense of real theater. Is it possible that today's movie scripts were rescued from trash heaps? It's now time for me to challenge Hollywood with this real science-fiction masterpiece of a manuscript. Unfortunately for all those incredibly cheap minded producers out there today, bringing this science-fiction story to a large theatrical screen will require something they no longer possess" the true interpretation of science-fiction" for that you must have some intelligence.
In conclusion, I won't be so low to just rent a few cameras and higher a special effects computer whiz, to do the movie cheaply. No, I believe that the American audience deserves better than what those Hollywood producers can deliver, to make that fast buck. Therefore I shall wait until Hollywood goes bust, and when those big-name producers are standing in long unemployment lines, my movie Deniability the alien element will continue drawing those movie crowds, who have already seen it twice.
From the author of the unpublished manuscript "Deniability, the alien element"
Movies suck because we allow them to suck . . . in fact, we ENCOURAGE them to suck by paying to see them in theaters, renting or buying DVDs, or watching them on pay cable channels. Here is one example of why movies suck:
I was working in a video rental store in the 1980s. A woman who appeared to be in her early 20s came in and wanted to rent MANNEQUIN. It was a fairly new release and none of our copies were in stock. I told her we had none in stock, but it was a bad movie anyway and maybe she could find something better. She asked about a couple of other (equally crappy) new releases, but they were all rented out, too. So I started suggesting good, older movies (and when I say "older," I believe some of them were only a couple of years old). She admitted she had not seen any of my suggested titles, but was not interested in renting them. She kept saying, "Do you have anything new?"
Finally, I said, "So, you'd rather rent a new, terrible movie than an older decent movie that you've never seen before?"
She paused for a moment, then said, "Yeah."
And that, my children, is why movies suck.
Too much CGI. Not enough plot.
And, Hollywood has ran out of ideas.
Seven years on, and movies still suck. We are losing the fight, people!
Quote from: Oldskool138 on May 15, 2008, 03:43:50 PM
Too much CGI. Not enough plot.
YES...Gimmicks have replaced actual content!
-Ed
Its funny (and sad) that I got all the way up to the reply that mentioned Sex & The City as a "new, current" TV show until I noticed the age of this thread. Nice.
Simpsons Movie foretold.
Irony that the Sex & The City movie is now released, showing Hollywood relying on old TV shows for scripts, still.
What was released in 1994 that was so impressive? Just curious.
I did like The Devil's Rejects, though.
And Clerks II is a real treat.
edit:
That's the 2nd Bill Hick's quote I've run across on the net in as many days. Spooky!
Movies suck because stars get paid too much money to do a s**tty job acting. They know that the sheep will pony up the money to see whatever movie they're in so they don't have to try too hard.
Also, original, edgy ideas aren't welcomed in Hollywood. And we all know there's no such thing as an original idea any more.
Movies suck because Hollywood is a monopoly. There may be several studios, but for all intents and purposes there may as well just be one. They all have identical corporate philosophies, there would be more variety in five divisions of most single corporations. Sure, there are plenty of small independent movie makers out there, but they can't get their stuff in theaters. Unlike most other products, everything made in other countries is excluded from the marketplace, because they're in foreign languages. Like any monopoly, as long as you keep putting out some sort of product, no matter how &*#%$ it is, you can stay in business. Windows Vista anyone?
The studios are out to make money . . . and if they reap large profits by churning out crap, why should they change? Only the paying public can change this.
This is the primary reason I watch mostly older films, like back in the 30's and 40's and I have a ever increasing list of foreign films where they still have an original thought.
Pound for pound the number of good enjoyable movies that come out of Hollyweird are a tiny fraction of the truly purely crap movies they produce. The movies today are so full of fluff and devoid of story it's pathetic. Go to any movie story and look at the the number of new releases and the vast, vast majority of it is little to unknown DTV garbage. AS most of you know there are BAD MOVIES and then there are REALLY BAD MOVIES and I refuse to pay $4.00 to rent crap or pay $8.00 or more to see it in theaters. At least the local rental store has a policy that says "If you don't like you're movie, the next one is free." Well it's not hard to cash in on the policy with the trash setting on their shelves, even the big budget blockbuster films are crap most of the time or they rely so heavily on cussing and nudity (nothing wrong with that if it's part of the story.) to fill in for the lack of a story and between the over blown CGI and endless use of product placement todays movie are overwhelmingly just crap and do suck.
I'm sure the ratio of sucky films to good ones has pretty much been constant since the beginning of the medium. Only the good ones stand the test of time, the 30's and 40's had their fair share of crap. Same concept with foreign films, they don't go out of their way to export lousy films because they wouldn't sell. As long as crap produces box office numbers then they shouldn't change what works. There will always be other options for the discriminating viewer.
To me, a movie is good if it's something I'd watch again in the future. How many movies have come out in the past 30 years that make that list for me? Not many when compared to the first 50 years of movie making. For example, compare movies from the 1970s with any decade since. It's like comparing the quality of music from the 1970s (Disco NOT included) with any decade since. THERE IS NO COMPARISON. In fact, now that I am off on this tangent, the entire entertainment industry SUCKS!! I am negative you say? Think about it: TV (with all of its Reality crap and FOX News) SUCKs, MUSIC absolutely BLOWS, and MOVIES STINK!! It's crystal clear: The dumbing down of America has succeeded . And, if that doesn't prove the dumbing down theory this will: We elected George W. Bush, twice!!!!!! But, please forgive me, as I digress.
I think the final nail in the coffin for the future of quality Hollywood movies was CGI. Take some time and look back at pre-CGI movies. For example, the special FX in movies 30 years ago was pretty bad when compared to todays CGI. So, maybe, back then Hollywood had to rely on a good script, good acting, good directing, good cinematography and a good soundtrack. Maybe Hollywood had to actually use it's brain, so to speak. CGI is the new brain in Ho;;ywood and it's killed the quality of movies coming out of Hollywood. But, then, maybe Hollywood is pumping out just what the fat and stupid majority in the screwed up country want. CRAP!! Because we keep buying the product, don't we?.
They suck because the idea is to entertain as many people as you can JUST enough to get them to spend money. They do this for so long that any old garbage passes as a blockbuster from time to time *coughtitaniccough*. It's a completely stupid formula: Would you expect to pay the same $s for a Ferrari Enzo, a Yugo, a PT Cruiser, an F-150, and a moped? Of course not, but we get charged the same for all movies, so, we all get a moped. Yes it gets us from point A to Point B, but some, but not all of us want the Ferrari, some need the pickup, and those than need the pickup, can't really do with any of the other choices.
Sure someone has said this before but I'm too lazy to read the whole thread so don't care if they did. If they did and you gotta point it out to me, well then you are gonna find that I don't care that you pointed it out either. (sorry in a surly mood.)
Movies suck because they are so out of original ideas in general. What we get is formulaic crap that has been used to death, old TV shows made into lame big budget productions, bad stage plays that pseudo-intellectuals think are brilliant, countless numbers of sequels, or remakes of other films often which weren't that good to begin with. The basic idea seems to be well it made money before or it made money for them so why not us.
Quote from: meQal on February 27, 2009, 01:54:31 PM
Movies suck because they are so out of original ideas in general. What we get is formulaic crap that has been used to death, old TV shows made into lame big budget productions, bad stage plays that pseudo-intellectuals think are brilliant, countless numbers of sequels, or remakes of other films often which weren't that good to begin with. The basic idea seems to be well it made money before or it made money for them so why not us.
Why, what do you mean "out of original ideas"? We had the original idea of taking somebody else's TV show ideas and turning them into movies, like you said. And we had the original idea of taking somebody else's SNL skits and turning them into full-length movies. And now we seem to have the original idea of taking somebody else's superhero ideas and turning them into movies. And there's always the original idea of taking a movie somebody else did in another country and doing the exact same movie in English. Or taking a movie that was already done in HOLLYWOOD and doing it again.
"No original ideas", indeed.
However, rants aside, there is interesting stuff going out there. Just not in Hollywood.
Besides, as Theodore Sturgeon famously said, "90% of everything is crap."
Quote from: schmendrik on February 27, 2009, 02:15:27 PM
Besides, as Theodore Sturgeon famously said, "90% of everything is crap."
This, I think, is the point of the matter. Back when independent stuff kept your drive-in and local theater hopping (do any of you remember theaters showing a movie for only two nights because they had a crapload of other features they had booked? Man, those were cool days.), you could have, in the course of a month, up to twenty different films roll through in a month. More if you had more than one theater and/or drive-in. Now we have 16-screen theaters and three films are showing on 12 of those screens.
20 movies being tossed out on a weekend -- apply "90% crap" rule, and you have two possible winners.
6 movies (two of which are remakes of one of the other four) -- apply "90% crap" rule, and you should stay home because you're doing good if you get 30 minutes of entertainment.