I'm disappointed in Hollywood
 

I think it's been years since I went to a movie, and came out thinking "wow, that was an amzing movie..."

It just feels like everything coming out of Hollywood in the past decade or so has been money grabbing bullshit movies. CGI special effects, predictable action movies that have been made over and over before, or the same old sequels to movies that were bad to begin with.

I heard on the radio awhile back that Sex and the City made a lot more in it's opening weekend than anyone thought it would do, essentially ensuring a shitty sequel to a shitty movie.

Am I being unreasonable here? I mean.. I'm not all about the art-house movie necessarily, but where has the quality gone? So many great movies were made in the 30s, 40s, 50s.... Is it too much to ask to make a movie for a reason other than money? Do they all have to be re-makes, sequels, or based on comic books? Hollywood wake up. You're creating a junk-pile of DVDs.

The super hero shit has really gotten old. Did we really need another Batman movie?

Which is why i hardly ever bother going to the movie theatre now.

Most of the shit now lasts around 3 hours aswell. No thank you!

I've seen one that made me go wow recently, it was a foreign movie ;-)

The majority of Americans are fucking retards...show them something getting blown the fuck up, a gay motorcycle race or a big titty heroine and they're happy.

DatingGameExpert is hung like a midget, at least thats what Donny Long has said.

Even the low budget movies are now commercial pieces of shit.

I watched a Rob Schneider film last night, i almost threw up some in my mouth. It was low budget & looked like it could be good. (Yea i know you don't have to say it)

It's not so much Hollywoods fault btw....its the American consumer for begging for more dumbed down candy-popcorn pg-13 crap.

Where the fuck is 2008's Apocalypse Now?

I just think there hasn't been a quality film since 1990 :2 cents:

you are spot on EC!

fuck all the CGI crap and remakes of remakes....

give me a script, another Magnolia, American Beauty, Network, blah blah blah

I was thinking the exact same thing. AN is one of my all time faves.

If you want a quality movie don't go to the theater during the summer. During the summer they put out the action and crap movies because they know the teenagers are out of school and will pay to see anything. In the fall is when they tend to put out the better quality movies (although there is still plenty of crap released then too).

I do agree that the amount of crap verses the amount of good stuff put out there is high. You look at some of the classic movies like Apocalypse Now or Taxi Driver and chances are they would never get made today.

There is good stuff still out there, you just have to look harder to find it.

you are completely right, out of 100 movies released recently, 90 are complete crap, 9 are watchable, 1 is pretty good...

I rented Bucket List .... 2 seasoned actors with great rapport.
I know what you mean though most movies are a let down. Too much hype not enough substance.

It's frustrating to see producers attitudes... If they can make back the production costs in the theatre and then turn a slight profit on dvd sales, they see it as a successful business transaction. Rinse, wash, repeat with the most mindless crap.

Unfortunately movies stopped being an art form and started being 100% business a long time ago :(

All the newest movies out right now are incredibly HORRIBLE!

I'll take an HBO original series over any given blockbuster from the past 15 years.

The only quality movies that I have seen the past few years have been on the Indie movie channels on my Comcast cable. :thumbsup

Many of these movies feature some of the same high profile actors and actresses but do not follow the worn out Hollywood formulas stated in previous posts. I highly recommend taking some time to check these out.
_

True.

Very few good movies coming from US.

Last good movies that I saw coming from there was "Little Miss Sunshine", "Into The Wild" and "Savage Family".

And I´m just talking about good or very good movies, nothing amazing or really special.

And also, what about so many remakes? There is not people writing scripts?

I just watched "Be Kind Rewind", but while the concept was unique and could have been a really good flick, perhaps even on the level of a Clerks, the movie didn't live up to it. No fault of Jack Black or Mos Def though, they played their parts perfectly; the writing was all over the place though and by the end I felt more like I was watching a Spike Lee Joint and not what I had wanted in the movie.

There were crap movies in the 30s, 40s and 50s too...it's just that when they bombed, they disappeared...this was before TV, video, cable, etc.
Now crap movies stick around longer and there are also more places to view movies, so more are being made.

I can enjoy a good explosion flick, a badly acted $1.37 budgeted z-grade horror movie and an artsy fartsy arthouse pic and enjoy them all equally...but, yeah, quality is down and it does make it worth that much more when you do find that hidden gem amongst the roughage...

Movies became a business the minute they started charging admission ;-)

Have you guys checked out some of the kids movies. Ice age 2 was pretty good. Horton hears a Who was good and Wall E was good as well.

why see all those crappy hollywood movies then? There are loads of good movies from other countries too

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh I thought the exact same thing.

Americans are too lazy to watch subtitles.

EvilChris is canadian ;-)

Is there really any time in the past that was any different?

"Great movies" don't come along often, that's why they are so great. If every movie was "great", we would probably see one every other year.

It depends what you like I guess. Years ago when they first started doing the comic movies I thought they were pretty bad... but now, I love them. Most of them anyway.

Over the past two years I've probably been to maybe 8 different movies... all of the ones that I actually really enjoyed were comic related.

300, Spiderman, Batman, Iron Man... I guess that's just the type of movie I enjoyed.

i hear ya

The last really good Hollywood movie I've seen must have been 'American Beauty', like 8 years ago or smthg like that. When 'Batman Begins' came out I thought "WHAT?! More Batman!!" Anyway if you don't like it, then you get twice as much. Indy is another example. I guess Hollywood is running low on good scripts... but I have faith, I'm sure there are still good writers with good ideas out there. :)

Best post in this thread. At least one person has some common sense! Comments like the one made by the OP are very very typical. And it wouldn't matter the decade, there's always people that are negative like that. And would rather see the negative through the positive. Because if the OP and others did their homework they'd find that there really are some good movies to be seen out there. You just have to research and find them. You can't just randomly pick a movie and expect to like it.

It's kind of like randomly buying a car and then not liking it. Did you read the reviews on the car, talk to others, etc? 2007 was actually one of the best years for movies in recent movie history. Sweeney Todd, No Country For Old Men, Lust Caution, Talk To Me, I'm Not There, Juno, Once, Into The Wild and Before The Devil Knows You're Dead were all great movies. There's lots more too from last year that were excellent. I bet most of the people posting in this thread didn't even see a third of the movies I just mentioned here. They have no right to complain.

Another example...

The other night the wife and I rented 'Paranoid Park' (directed by Gus Van Zant, the same guy who did Good Will Hunting).

It was unwatchable. We wasted half an hour on the rubbish before the foam bricks started flying at the screen.

Did you read what the movie was about before hand? Did you check out any user reviews?

Naw, just read the dvd jacket in the video store...like most everyone else.

While the plot seemed potentially intriguing - the movie wasn't.

I seldom go online to read reviews of movies beforehand. Usually they're too subjective.

Don't blame Hollywood, blame the retarded crowd directors need to please to make money these days.

Over 30% of ratings on IMDB give "Transformers" a 10. 80% give it a 7 or higher.

Meanwhile, the writing in that movie is an intentional and barely disguised insult to the viewers. It basically says: "Hiya! We're fairly sure your intelligence is lower than that of the average brick, so here's an incoherent, vomit-like soup of special effects, pretty girls and bad jokes! Enjoy!"

With the millions of morons who eagerly gobble up such utter and complete shit, it's only a matter of time before Idiocracy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and inspires some crafty businessmen to make a movie called "Ass", which consists of a single, two hour long video of... well, an ass. And I'll tell you right now: that movie will break box office records worldwide.

It's the one bad part of capitalism. As long as you have enough money to consume, you opinion matters, no matter how much of an idiot you might be.

Jacob's Ladder?

Indeed.nothing seems very original anymore,just take offs from the past

i knew two movie writers when i lived in LA. both were screen play/movie writers and told me they basically take an existing idea and make it better... its the only way someone will fork out a few mil for a movie.

sucks, but think about it though. starting a movie is all a HUGE gamble. If you saw that there was 5 other movies that did well in the last 5 years with the same plot and same story line, its a much safer ROI than something completely new. especially with costs of movies these days they dont want a big risk.

in the 40s, 50s and up to the 70s movies were a lot less to produce. I read that "Clerks" cost $10k to make in 1994, while "Clerks II" was over $5 million to produce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerks_II)

Yes you are right, most movies these days suck.

There are some good movies

there willl be blood?

Every movie that I have seen from Hollywood this year sucked! I recommend you to watch some European movie productions, they rock.

There's still a few good ones here and there... Pan's Labyrinth, Brokeback Mountain, and There Will Be Blood come to mind. And hey, I liked WALL-E... but then, I am a sucker for cute, clumsy robots.

But yeah, there's a lot of crap to wade through. My problem is, I am very sensitive to camera movement and I get motion sickness pretty easily. The new thing is to make things "documentary" style, so the camera is moving slightly even in wide shots with no action. I guess it's to make things seem more real, like you're really there, but I think it's just a cheap trick... like hey, "This is so exciting I just have to move the camera a lot and I can't even show you what's happening." Argh. I have walked out of the theater with 2 out of the last 3 movies I have seen. Hancock being the latest. I didn't mind though, because it really started to suck halfway through.

I like movies that buck the system a lil bit...

Harold and Kumar 1 and 2
Pineapple Express
Grandma's Boy