Is it just me or are they all just so bad these days? I’m so sick of watching this utter tripe time after time. The last two I saw were Super 8 and Rise of the planet of the apes. I turned both off after an hour.

Were films any better when I was younger or is that just some romantic nostalgia? I’m conscious I’m turning into my dad here but I’d just love some sort of plot and reasonably intelligent dialogue. For the record I love action thrillers so if anyone has any recommendations please share.

When you were younger, they seemed better because you were coming at most of it fresh. You can’t be tired of it if you’ve never seen anything like it before.

Becoming?

Two shit films doesn’t write off the whole film industry.

I thought those two films were pretty good as it goes. There is a lot of crap out there though, but there are some gems as well. I think you’re looking back with rose colour spectacles though, there was always loads of crap about. 90% of what Bruce Willis was in for a start.

I saw Drive the other day and that was excellent. I think films are better now then they’ve ever been if you separate the wheat from the chaff.

I was chatting to a knowledgeable film student at a party once (imagine how riveting that was..) he claimed that there are only seven Hollywood plots with many variations on each theme..

I would have said it was only four myself.. 😐

I must be still young as both those are 2 films that I’ve really enjoyed latterly, Super 8 was superbly directed Spielberg at his finest an almost self tribute his late 70s early 80s films.

Tempted to watch Super 8 now but PS3 is playing up and can’t be arsed to correct it tonight.

The 7 only plots has been around for years and is very vague, it covers so many films because it is so vague in it’s descriptions.

Sat watching Red Cliff at the mo,bloomin ace!

Ha, I suppose it’s subjective. But Speilberg at his best, really?! My sister loved Super 8 too so you’re both wrong!

I only mentioned those two in particular as they’re the last two I’ve rented from lovefilm and swiftly wished I hadn’t. I just find it so frustrating. Off to see The woman in black this week and I doubt that will be a patch on the original but fingers crossed..again.

Get a lovefilm account and trawl through all the amazing foreign, indie and old films out there.
There are staggering numbers and I totally agree about hollywood. They’re not *all* crap, but they mainly are – designed by committee, ultra-conservative and trying to appeal to too many people.

oh – I see you’re on lovefilm!

Your Sister has good taste in films then.

I’m watching Sherlock Holmes again great entertainment.

Get a lovefilm account and trawl through all the amazing foreign, indie and old films out there

+1 for that

I think that’s the good thing about LoveFilm. Because you end up watching so many films, you can afford to rent a crap film every now and then without shelling out £4 a pop at Blockbuster, and take chances on more indie stuff, especially with the on-line stuff.

I’ll give them a whirl definitely. I turned the planet of the apes one off when the CGI ape dragged the young lad across the floor. It looked absolutely ridiculous and reminded me of I am legend which was ruined by CGI.

+1 lovefilm

We’ve watched some great films recently,

Hollywood ones like – Super, Thor, Rise of the Planet of the Apes & more obscure ones.. The Ghost, In the Loop, Point Blank, Eagle Vs Shark & Troll Hunter.

People are making great films, just as they are with music but you have to search it out – it’s pretty rare major blockbuster releases are good films, they just have great effects, sound & merchandise…

The new True Grit is definitely worth a look if you haven’t seen it already.

Cheers, just added it to my list

Rorschach – Member
Sat watching Red Cliff at the mo,bloomin ace!
POSTED 35 MINUTES AGO #

So good you are being distracted by STW 😉

There’s a fair bit of regurgitated rubbish about.

But … ‘Prometheus’ is going to be released in a few months and all will be well in the universe.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=sftuxbvGwiU[/video]

Loads of weak stuff lately. I blame exceptional special effects.

It seems the attitude is “don’t worry if the plot is a load of semi-decomposed camel intestines just make the explosions REALLY BIG!”

I really liked Super 8 too.

Got mega bored in the monkey planet remake though

Loads of weak stuff lately. I blame exceptional special effects.
It seems the attitude is “don’t worry if the plot is a load of semi-decomposed camel intestines just make the explosions REALLY BIG!”

Then it just pays to be a bit more selective about what you go and watch. The last film I saw was The Artist. Decent plot, good acting and soundtrack, not too much CGI. You should check it out.

oh look, another reboot /remake of something

e.g. emo spiderman and total recall.

As with pop music & TV, the big blockbuster type films do seem to have become immensely dumbed down and designed just to extract money from 9 year olds.

As I get older there do seem to be few properly original or interesting ideas that appeal to me.

How much of this is because I’m older and therefore have ‘seen it all before’, or has the quality of films genuinely deteriorated over the last 30 years?

Maybe the film studios should concentrate on making fewer better films.

Having said all that, I enjoy watching Top Gear (& the repeats), so clearly I’m not looking for intellectual viewing 🙂

Its simple really. Just don’t bother with Hollywood tripe. We do from time. We watched Source Code last week. Utter twoddle! But quite enjoyable if you’re not in the mood to engage your brain

But for when you are in the mood to stimulate the grey matter again: Great films We’ve watched with our Love Film subscription recently

The Guard
The Disappearance of Alice Creed
Submarine

All utterly brilliant for having nowt at all to do with Hollywood, no CGI bollox and…. and this is the clincher… an actual real proper ‘human’ story!

Is it just me or are they all just so bad these days?

How old are you?

I’m knocking on the door of being 40. Everytime I go in blockbuster cannot, for the life of me, find anything new I really want to watch.

I think there are loads of good films coming out – this is a list of (IMO) decent films I saw at the cinema last year – most of which will be out on DVD/ Blu Ray by now

Animal kingdom
Blue Valentine
True Grit
Black Swan
Attack the Block
Source Code
13 Assassins
Hanna
Bridesmaids
Kill List
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
The Tree of Life
Submarine
Scott Pilgrim vs the World
Catfish
Drive
Melancholia
We need to talk about Kevin
Troll Hunter
Tyranasaur
The guard
The future
Tin tin
Take Shelter

I agree that there are too many films that seem to rely on CGI and

3D

to make up for a thin plot. I guess it works on some people but I get bored of the effects after the first few minutes. And a great plot, good direction and pacing will forgive crap effects – I could still watch Jaws happily even though it is clearly a plastic fish.

I don’t see much that interests me enough to make the time to go see.
Then the odd film I do catch doesn’t always live up to expectation.

These days I’m more into the writing and directing.
I enjoy a well written film, films with good camera work and I’m listening / watching for that now as much as anything else.
Sometimes I may like a film for some of its parts, more than the sum of the entire effort.

For example, I enjoyed the first Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes film as much for his protrayal of England while in Imperial decline.
As for the action and story line.

There are so many shockingly bad films out at the cinema, that I’m not going to take the risk of loosing £XX on the ticket price.

So I download them – watch them – and delete them if they’re crap (most likely before the film has finished!)

” crap “

Please define.

There is the small matter of the new Muppets movie.

I have not seen it yet, but am wetting myself with glee at the prospect.

Try exercising your critical faculties by reading reviews before you see the film.

Otherwise, you are enabling your petard to effect personal hoistage…

The Hollywood machine has always been formulaic imo, but there is more to American cinema. A couple of recent films I really like are Red State (John Goodman awesomeness) and Peacock with Cillian Murphy (amazing performance from him). +1 for Drive as well.

I always read the Guardian reviews. They’re always incredibly accurate

If they absolutely cream their silkies over it, that means it’ll be a 3 hour semi-autobiographical yawn-fest of a noble oppressed people mumbling in dark rooms, in Icelandic, then everyone dies of bad AIDS, or a tsunami at the end. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES GO AND SEE THIS FILM

If the review starts with them bemoaning the amount of exploding helicopters, you’re probably ok

Oh…. 16stonepig… I’m also getting giddy already about taking the kids to see the Muppets 😀

grievoustim – I agree with most of the ones that I’ve seen on your list. Good stuff. Although I think it’s a shame that many ‘serious’ films also seem to want to be deliberately maudlin or listless.

I’ve seen the muppets – it was not good 😥
Most of the jokes were lost on the little ‘uns as they referred to the Muppets of old, and there was no decent slapstick/ funny jokes for the kids to laugh at. Lots of the jokes were aimed at adults (there was a joke that referenced transexuals!)
Poor film, not one I could recomend in any way.

Hollywood does churn out some right dross

There is the odd gem

I’ve taken to watching European stuff over the last few years, I know plenty of people just don’t do subtitles, but that’s their loss

I think historically people always produce more low quality stuff than high end. There are relatively few famous paintings, books, furniture, musical instruments that are viewed with high regard over time, compared to how many of these things would actually have been widely produced.

Quality old films get shown on TV because some of the more rubbish stuff just gets lost in time, as with books.

However having said that, I think we lack variety these days. The studio system would nurture a star and run their career for decades to gain very long spanning profits – so quality older actresses and actors would be found or included in plots or had them written for them – leading to a bigger variety of ages, scenarios, plots and role models than I think we get now.

Also fear of financial loss is a problem. Studios and stars would turn out multiple films per year. Stars worked pretty continuously, none of this one film per year or less stuff. It gave more room to experiment as the films were cheaper to make and one failure in a bunch of 10 was not the end of the world, but it is if you only make a single film per year.

This has lead to the ‘security blanket’ attitude of
– Grasping at novelty and the new (awe the viewer with technical effects and use their curiosity to get them to any old film, no worries about a plot)
– Remake good films (usually a failure, repeating perfection is pointless and no one tries to improve a bad film even if there is scope)
– Pander to male audiences/movie exec egos by always pairing old men with young women and generally showing little interest in non-youth, non older male audiences
– Use focus groups and then change film plots to fit the broadest common denominator that can be obtained ( with emphasis on youth and older males).

I think cinemas are not helping at the moment, as the admission prices are absurd, so the audience is trapped into not taking risks as well as the studios – so more quirky films loose out even more as its too risky to spend £40 upward taking a family to an unfamiliar film. £8-£11 quid for one adult ticket (the price of one or more DVDs which you can repeat show or lend to friends).

Price means no hope of taking a family and getting kids into the cinema habit.

I used to go on my own at least 4 or 5 times per month, did that for many years. Last 2 years not been at all as the ticket prices are no longer affordable and I don’t even have a family to keep.

Cinema/multiplexes – an industry killing the best of itself off.