Aftersun.
Like the movie we watched last night (The Fallout) there was no plot to speak of. Just people wandering around doing various activities, and we’re stuck watching basically a bad home movie. Is this what filmmaking is now? Just wandering around and shooting people doing random things on vacation?
F-
Thanks for reminding me to look. It’s terrific to see… as I still have clear memories of seeing this on the big screen when it first came out. A great parody on an old horror classic. Somehow it still feels fresh. What a great cast. Teri Garr… so beautiful. She was a great choice for Tootsie too. I’ve long felt that Lisa Kudrow was inspired by her acting style.
I think it was gold bars. That yellow shimmering light…
Lotta new movies are all about The Message™. Movies are made for the critics, not for the audience.
Like the recent one of the two women investigating… Okay, goggled “movie investigate weinstein” and it hit: “She Said”.
Like, nobody went to see it. Dismal showing at the box office. Critically acclaimed, a “must see” movie, but nobody went to see it.
Dunno if it was good or bad. Don’t rightly care. Sounds boring.
“Top Gun: Maverick” blew the doors off the theaters, pretty much saved 2022 for theaters, too. Same’s gonna happen with “Avatar2”. They have actual stories and are meant to entertain, not virtue-signal.
“Lightyear”… dead. “Strange World”… dead. “Bros”… dead. Burn ’em, bury ’em, and salt the earth. Nobody cares about The Message™. Nobody wants to be berated, chastised, ridiculed, lectured. They want to forget about their troubles for a few hours, enjoy a story that entertains, that provides a nice diversion.
People aren’t going to pay to go to theaters to be lectured. They’ll only go to be entertained. And that’s where Hollyweird is failing dismally, and doesn’t seem to want to learn.
Yah, well, I got my choice of entertainment of anything but that, instead.
Lots of Bad Filmmaking these days 
The Fallout (2021) is actually about something important in the real lives of many people these days in the USA - it’s about the lasting impact of a mass shooting at a school.
In reality, it’s difficult to get funding to produce movies that are not likely to generate a lot of revenue. That’s because they cost a lot to make, including the marketing costs, and because blockbuster hits have created an expectation from studios of big financial gain. Movie studios are for-profit businesses. They don’t exist to go broke satisfying the small number of professional movie critics or sending messages of one kind or another. They exist primarily to make money, and that requires selling their products to a lot of people.
Some studios have funded the small number of movies that appeal to small audiences with the revenues from the big popular hits, while other studios simply don’t make “small” movies now. So, it isn’t true that movies are made for critics, rather than audiences, unless you acknowledge the fact that most critics are regular movie fans, and the fact that most critics have the same general likes and dislikes as do regular movie fans.
I’m pretty sure not everyone has the same taste in entertainment or sees movies just to escape from reality for a “nice diversion,” or to be mindlessly entertained. It’s ok for people to have different tastes.
Have you actually seen it, though?
The vast majority of the runtime is this girl doing stupid teenage things like dancing in a parking lot while filming herself on her phone. I read the synopsis of the movie and thought it had a decent premise for a moving drama, and then we watched it, and realized we had been duped.
I usually crawl through Wikipedia links and check the filmographies of writers and directors before watching a movie now. You can avoid a lot of trash that way. For example, The Fallout was written and directed by a third-rate actress who had previously only written/directed two short films. Megan Park’s Filmography
However, I also practice the opposite—I hunt down movies and watch them solely for their concept (The One 2001) but then my disappointment is totally on me.
If I needed to describe Tarantino’s work with one word, that word would be “gratuitous.” It’s not for everyone but in most cases I find it comedic. But for me, Inglorious Basterds was depressing, unfunny, and unsatisfying narratively so I know what it feels like when one of his movies misfires. If one of his films loses you, it REALLY loses you—that’s just the nature of them I think.
There are issues I have developed with these movies over time. I recognize Tarantino’s “voice” in a lot of the dialogue now due to watching some interviews of his. And I know what he looks like so his cameos are pretty painful now too. I wish I could unhear and unsee Tarantino and watch his movies with no knowledge of him as I did the first time. I also wish I could forget that he has a foot fetish, that he insisted on personally “strangling” Diane Kruger, or that he pushed Uma Thurman to execute a stunt she wasn’t comfortable with causing her to be seriously injured. I still enjoy the movies for the most part, but he makes it difficult.
Nope, disagree. If you lookit scores on RT, for example, you’d think critics and normal earthers were watching 2 completely different movies.
“The Terminal List” was destroyed by critics as “some right-wing fantasy” and “toxic patriotism”, etc., but universally loved by normal people. It was intense, had a story, and was actually relatable to normal people, plus had that undercurrent of, yes, loyalty, patriotism, all those horrible horrible qualities that virtue-signaling critics despise.
“Velma” is a nasty nasty self-insert wet dream by Mindy Kaling, which destroyed a beloved IP that people remember fondly from their childhood. The few critics who bothered to review it gave it a forgettable 53% or so, last I saw, while real-world audiences positively despised it and it’s down to a 6% approval rating. Both woke and nonwoke sides hate it, strangely enough, so it’s not even that.
“Rangs Of Power”, “Kenobi”, “Halo”, “Strange World”, “Blood Origin”, the list goes on and on and on. Critics will compliment that trash, or at best be tepid about it, while real-world people hate it.
“Maverick”, “The Terminal List”, others, get trashed by critics but are smash hits at the box office (theaters) and in ratings (streaming).
To be fair, “She Said” did get good reviews both by critics and normal people. “A tough watch, but worth seeing”, things like that. But how many people will actually go to the theater for “a tough watch”? So in that sense, yeah, both sets of ratings did coincide (and were positive), but it still didn’t fill the seats in theaters.
I thought “The One” was a hoot!
All those Jet Lis running around… :laughing:
I agree the action scenes were fun at times, but it just wasn’t enough for me.
SPOILER SPOILERS SPOILERS
Having the movie end with neither of them actually becoming “The One” was disappointing to me. I figured one of them would accidentally die and we’d be treated to something epic. Instead they both survive and one gets imprisoned in a manner that allows him the use of his powers…really?
I also thought the earlier action scenes were better than the later ones.
So many missed opportunities:
I could probably think of more if I spent more time on it.
Nope, your list mentions an insignificant portion of the total movies made. And you mention one review site and an insignificant portion of the total reviewers. Anyone can cherry pick evidence to support one view or another.
Also, it’s easy to know which movies will fill theaters after they’re released. But movies have to be made before they’re released, and it isn’t easy to know for sure what will draw large crowds and what won’t. That’s why, after Jaws and Star Wars, the studios took control of movie production back 100% and have never given any of it up again. The money to be made is too big, and the expense of making and distributing movies too large now to allow the studios to take risks on movies that aren’t likely to have mass appeal.
i watched a few horror movies:
Smile (2022)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15474916/
pretty decent. i liked it enough to want to watch the sequel if they ever make it.
The Ritual (2017)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5638642/
i liked it a little less than Smile, but it's worth a watch if you are in the mood for some lost-in-the-woods horror.
La Llorona (2019)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10767168/
slightly confusingly, there is another "Llorona" from 2019 which i haven't seen -- "The Curse of La Llorona". these guys should really coordinate! (lol) but "La Llorona" sucks. i can't recommend it. pretty boring.
Assuming you meant Top Gun: Maverick….you might want to re-check the Tomatometer. 
Also…. Lightyear was fine. The moral panic over that one was absurd.
This suggests to me you’ve never actually been to Rotten Tomatoes.
What would you consider to be a ‘sigficant’ portion of total reviewers?
It was an interesting ride, for me it came down to just watching two masters (DiCaprio & Pitt) do their thing amid world class cinematography.
Oh man, that just reminded me of how DiCaprio was acting at being an actor in that movie. So good! This has motivated me to go and watch it again
Not only an actor, but one coming to terms with being on the back end of his career, realizing the glory days are behind him.
finally saw The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
it looks so much like King Kong (1933)
it even has Robert Armstong and Fay Wray.
lots of commonalities available on Google.
bottom line:
not that good. campy.
however, the dialogue
is the best part.
“What makes you think it isn’t just as much sport for the animal as it is for the man.
Now take that fellow, for instance. There never was a time when he couldn’t have gotten away, but he didn’t want to.
He got interested in hunting me. He didn’t hate me for stalking him anymore than I hated him for trying to charge me.
As a matter of fact, we admired each other.”
Read the story in the dim distant past. Thought it was really good to my teenage brain.
About that time I also read the short story “Leiningen Versus the Ants”.
South American coffee farmer vs an onslaught of Army ants.
Also really good.
Sometimes a movie just can’t fill in the story like the written word and your imiganation.
All the Best,
Jeff