When the director’s new movie was announced, I avoided watching the trailer. To maximize my surprise and enjoyment I wanted as little information as possible. Unfortunately, this also gave me higher expectations than the movie deserved.
It was average. I was disappointed. But I wasn’t fooled by the press or by the fans, so I wasn’t outraged.
That kind of outrage inspires a contempt of passion. It is reserved for overrated movies. The type of mediocre movie that is smug about it extraordinariness. I despise smugness in art.
These are not necessarily blockbuster movies. A majority of non-fans in the audience know that the “must see” “movie event” “that is sweeping the nation” will trade a strong story for flashy, expensive and vapid special effects.
No...overrated movies come in all forms. Art house, Modern Gangster movies, Historical Comedies, Horror….
I went to see some gore porn with my friends in high school—movies that I could only revisit nostalgically. But it’s years since I’ve been convinced to jump off the same bridge as the rest of the country just to “see what everyone is talking about.” The reason horror movies can accomplish this isn’t just the screaming they elicit and the blood they spill; they have the loudest target demographic: teenagers.
Some classic horror movies deserve the massive acclaim: Jaws (open water), The Exorcist (the corporeal devil), Alien (hunted in a tight space). And three in my lifetime that were phenomenal, insofar as they became of cultural importance: Paranormal Activity (surveillance), The Blair Witch Project (found documentary footage), The Sixth Sense (twist). That being said, not all phenomenons, even outside the horror niche, will reach every individual. The culture is too scattered now. I’d never heard a single song from Frozen, a movie that apparently made billions of dollars.
Well behaved overrated movies quickly fall out of audience minds, like Winter’s Bone (white trash, nothing happens). Others hang around for too long a time, and unfortunately become classics themselves, like Goodfellas (smug gangsters). I am fighting a war against an overrated movie that is working to become a cultural classic: Get Out (intriguing premise dissolves into convention).
This just effort requires constant subversion on my part, and I am labelled a bummer by many. It shows that my efforts are working.
A bad movie is simply ineffective. An overrated movie is effectively ineffective. It’s premise intrigues on paper because the plot is expertly plagiarized; its characters either covertly unsympathetic or obviously boring.
Movies are agreed upon lies by the studio—much in the way the Japanese all lie about The Rape of Nanking. Or Muslim taqiyya. And an overrated movie is when the audience not only buys the lie, but spreads it without prompt or hesitation. Like when George W. Bush calls Islam ‘peace.’
Recently, sadly, the one-hit director of an overrated movie, John Singleton, passed away at 51.
Jordan Peele, the director of an overrated, overhyped movie, was inspired by John Singleton.
Their movies are nothing alike, but they are both black, (except that JP is also white) and the cycle of smug self congratulation continues. The studio wants us to think about JP because JP has another overrated movie in theaters and another overrated TV show that was renewed for another season. John Singleton is mourned and then replaced by JP.
Movies and TV are commercial art. They are created to be packaged and sold for consumption. Whenever “everybody is talking” about movies/TV, it is a mass delusion—a massive lie—and it is no conspiracy that Hollywood is a propaganda machine that does not hide neither its collusion nor its intentions to steal your money (and your time).
This just effort requires constant subversion on my part, and I am labelled a bummer by many. It shows that my efforts are working.
A bad movie is simply ineffective. An overrated movie is effectively ineffective. It’s premise intrigues on paper because the plot is expertly plagiarized; its characters either covertly unsympathetic or obviously boring.
Movies are agreed upon lies by the studio—much in the way the Japanese all lie about The Rape of Nanking. Or Muslim taqiyya. And an overrated movie is when the audience not only buys the lie, but spreads it without prompt or hesitation. Like when George W. Bush calls Islam ‘peace.’
Recently, sadly, the one-hit director of an overrated movie, John Singleton, passed away at 51.
Jordan Peele, the director of an overrated, overhyped movie, was inspired by John Singleton.
Their movies are nothing alike, but they are both black, (except that JP is also white) and the cycle of smug self congratulation continues. The studio wants us to think about JP because JP has another overrated movie in theaters and another overrated TV show that was renewed for another season. John Singleton is mourned and then replaced by JP.
Movies and TV are commercial art. They are created to be packaged and sold for consumption. Whenever “everybody is talking” about movies/TV, it is a mass delusion—a massive lie—and it is no conspiracy that Hollywood is a propaganda machine that does not hide neither its collusion nor its intentions to steal your money (and your time).
