Do cinephiles watch blockbuster films?

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Films are art.

It is possible for someone to both love art and to really dislike a certain artist.

Stalker after two different viewings, continues to be a
film for me. Basically every professional critic (and almost everyone on sites like this one) considers it an all-time great masterpiece.

Does that mean I don't love film? Is my reaction to the film (which is an honest, good faith reaction) "wrong"?

Loving movies doesn't mean bowing down to critical consensus.
Subjective opinions and personal preferences are sacred but you gotta recognize the credit and accept some facts.

I don’t like lord of the rings, but of course Jackson is a very good or great director and the trilogy is amazing.

I think the opinion of a producer, actor or critic is more reliable than a simple film enthusiast. In judging the quality of a product.

Whatever people like him or not; Nolan is a very good director, who is "polarizing" only with film snobs, due to his extreme popularity.

Even if he’s not the best director I just love inception and the dark knight too much, to not defend him :P



Subjective opinions and personal preferences are sacred but you gotta recognize the credit and accept some facts.

I don’t like lord of the rings, but of course Jackson is a very good or great director and the trilogy is amazing.
You can state facts, of course.

Nolan's films are well-received critically. Nolan's films are successful in the theater. Nolan's films are well-received by audiences.

Someone can still think he's a hack.

If everyone accepted "facts" because it's what most other people think, we'd still have a geocentric model of the solar system.

Vibing with someone who loves the films you love is a great part of being a movie fan, but trying to talk sense into people who don't like films you love is also a great part of being a movie fan.

I mean, 1/3 of the friendship I have with Wooley involves me trying to help him come around to the correct opinion of Haute Tension.



You can state facts, of course.

Nolan's films are well-received critically. Nolan's films are successful in the theater. Nolan's films are well-received by audiences.

Someone can still think he's a hack.

If everyone accepted "facts" because it's what most other people think, we'd still have a geocentric model of the solar system.

Vibing with someone who loves the films you love is a great part of being a movie fan, but trying to talk sense into people who don't like films you love is also a great part of being a movie fan.

I mean, 1/3 of the friendship I have with Wooley involves me trying to help him come around to the correct opinion of Haute Tension.
No, that's not how it works. Anyone, with some logic and intelligence know that it's his "problem" in that case.

I know about set pieces, cgi and can see that lord of the rings are great films and well made ones. They just don’t work for me, but that’s because I don’t like fantasy settings in general.

An opinion written behind a computer screen is not equal to an opinion written by an outsider or professional critic for a prestigious magazine.

I have talked with some that aren’t big fans of mcu and Nolan films and some of them atleast can recognize that they are fairly solid films on their own.

You can say someone is an hack when he’s Zack Snyder (all panned films and divisive with general audience).

The entire world wasn’t fooled about any trick. If both audience and critics loved the film, and it was well made and received multiple awards and praise then; you can’t say that Inception was a "terrible film".

at beta you can say that you didn’t like it. And that’s fine.

Just like i did with lotr trilogy



I don’t like lord of the rings, but of course Jackson is a very good or great director and the trilogy is amazing.

I think the opinion of a producer, actor or critic is more reliable than a simple film enthusiast. In judging the quality of a product.

Whatever people like him or not; Nolan is a very good director, who is "polarizing" only with film snobs, due to his extreme popularity.

Even if he’s not the best director I just love inception and the dark knight too much, to not defend him :P
You can also argue that Jackson is a 6/10 director that gets entirely carried by the strength of the source material on LoTR, the cast and the production surrounding the project. I don't remember there being a particularly great piece of directing in the trilogy. the story is just a 12/10.

And let the record show that Nolan is bad at stuff. I wouldn't call him a great director at all. Inception is messy as hell, comedically unimaginative (A secret in a dream represented by an envelope in a safe? Genius!) He has a very primitive way of making movies. Overloading the information and having emotions simply by having actors emote them, and projecting them using the score. Nicolas Winding Refn, Katheryn Bigelow and Kiyoshi Kurosawa are folks I'd consider great directors. People who know how to array the elements of the medium to convey, rather than essentially making plays with camera cranes and editing.



Refn is an ok, style over substance director with duds into his resume. If that’s what you call great, like he’s got only one film worth mentioning or talking about (drive)... lol

I heavily disagree with you on Jackson and Nolan. So you can keep your only god forgives and ill keep my inception or Jackson’s work (I dig his first films)

And we don’t discuss it. Fine?



Style over substance is not a thing. Style is either the substance, or helps convey it. Refn offloads a lot of the emotional labor of the movie from the actors on to the technical aspects of his movies. He has a uniformly more focused way of constructing scenes than either Nolan or Jackson.

I'd consider Neon Demon, Valhalla Rising and Too Old To Die Young to be stronger than Drive as well.




Saying that he's an "hack" like Bay or Snyder is just wrong in any way, shape or form and shows an extreme lack of common sense and objectivity.
.
But it's ok to call other directors hacks, just not one of your favourites?

We get it. You like Christopher Nolan films. Not everybody has to.



But it's ok to call other directors hacks, just not one of your favourites?

We get it. You like Christopher Nolan films. Not everybody has to.
And to add to this (if you don't mind), there's no such thing as objective greatness, only general consensus.

Again, did most scientists thinking that the Earth was the center of the solar system make that a true thing? No. But it was a popular "critical" consensus from experts in that field.

Art exists at an intersection between technical practice and subjective experience (I know I've said this before). Different viewers may respond more to one end of that spectrum than the others, and different viewers may also have varying opinions about them. (Is Elizabeth Berkley's performance in Showgirls amazing and perfect or terrible?). This inevitably leads to an array of responses to different films.

I think that loving films just means engaging with them honestly. If someone's honest opinion is that a director is bad at what they do, you can certainly offer counterpoints to their criticisms, but I think it's not actually that compelling to say "Well most people love it, so you must be wrong."




Until proven otherwise, most of these people know more about cinema than you, and they are more reliable. I accidentally liked the post but wanted to reply lol.

No they dont. Being a critic doesn't suddenly embue somebody with insight. People should be judged on the quality of what they say about a film and not by some arbitrary job title. Most critics heads are full of cold farts.


Also, even if you choose not to refute critical consensus, you do know these change over time? Right? So, if the tide eventually turns against Nolan, should I expect you to start making endless threads about what a hack he is?



Nolan’s films have won 12 oscars out of 30 nominations (both for technical aspects and quality)

they are all critically acclaimed by professional critics, with many being in their respective best of decade and year lists.

he's gotten countless of awards and 5 Oscar nominations.

Also, many prestigious magazines and aggregators have put him in a fairly solid position in the all time list and one of the best of the decade.

Anyone who knows anything about directing can see that he directs his films well.

But somehow, a random comment in an internet board makes him an incompetent director? Are you serious?

Saying that he's an "hack" like Bay or Snyder is just wrong in any way, shape or form and shows an extreme lack of common sense and objectivity.

Or maybe an aversion, that revolves around extremely subjective "criticism".

Until proven otherwise, most of these people know more about cinema than you, and they are more reliable. I accidentally liked the post but wanted to reply lol.
You win!


...the FanBoy award that is.



No they dont. Being a critic doesn't suddenly embue somebody with insight. People should be judged on the quality of what they say about a film and not by some arbitrary job title. Most critics heads are full of cold farts.


Also, even if you choose not to refute critical consensus, you do know these change over time? Right? So, if the tide eventually turns against Nolan, should I expect you to start making endless threads about what a hack he is?
DePalma, Carpenter have fallen off and had plenty of panned films but that does cancel their great stuff? No.

So, in no way, Nolan can or will be described as an hack.

Also, I trust more about a professional film critic and those outsiders (producers, actors, directors) rather than a simple film enthusiast who wrote his opinion from a keyboard and not from a magazine or/and in an interview.

But it's ok to call other directors hacks, just not one of your favourites?

We get it. You like Christopher Nolan films. Not everybody has to.
Feel free to not like him, but hate and disrespect is annoying. There should be some sense of fairness when judging something.

I never called any other director hack.



That's an absurd question.

Yes, obviously.



I'm really surprised to see this thread have so many pages. I was totally expecting the OP to be a couple years old or so and the thread just got bumped.