What Makes a Movie Great? (reflection, not debate)

Do you guys remember when The Matrix came out? People built it up so much that I overheard other people saying that they built it up too much and then if they watched it there's no way it could meet those expectations. But the people insisted and offered to pay for their friends' tickets to get them to watch it. And then after they watched it they themselves were blown away and conscented and payed their friend back for their tickets. I've never seen that for any movie before or since, and I was equally blown away by The Matrix. But I think everyone forgot all about it because The Matrix only delivers that the first time you watch it, and only back when it first came out because no one knew anything about it or had seen anything like it. The internet was still pretty young too, and people didn't really know about Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and it's other influences. Before The Matrix, I thought Anime was lame. After The Matrix I went out and watched Akira and Ghost in the Shell and fell in love with Anime. After The Matrix people started questioning the nature of reality and their own existence so much that Post-Modernism happened. I think the single greatest influence on Post-Modernism was The Matrix. I think The Matrix also got our culture more interested in martial arts. Now that The Matrix is a pop culture icon too much is known about it for people to still be able to go into it for the first time and be quite as blown away. It would be like discovering a new color, but after a while it just becomes an ordinary color. The Matrix is the greatest Hollywood movie I've ever seen. After all that, The Matrix is unimpressive to me by arthouse standards because it has too many flaws. It's content is strong, but it's cinematography, acting, and directing were not strong enough to match movies like The Sacrifice, or Cries and Whispers. I consider those elements essential to film, but content itself I don't consider a criteria for greatness. Only how meaningful and deep the content is matters as criteria for greatness as far as content is concerned.

The greatest movie I have seen was The Passion of Joan of Arc. I cried for about half the movie. Sometimes I couldn't see the screen because the tears blurred my vision too much. I watched it because I saw it on TokeZa's top 10 and that guy impresses me so much with his art film taste. So I had very high expectations, and they were shattered. The Matrix blew my mind. The Passion of Joan of Arc broke me completely and made me weep for the life I am wasting not pursuing the single greatest idea in the history of the universe with every fiber of my being.

To quote the apostle Paul, "I count all as loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ."

To quote King Solomon, "All is vanity, a striving after the wind."

The Matrix showed us the importance of truth and how the world is lieing to us to prevent us from discovering the truth, enslaving us to machines. But it failed to deliver the actual truth itself. The Passion of Joan of Arc delivered that Truth, and it did so 70 years before The Matrix. To quote the back of the cover, "The Passion of Joan of Arc convinced the world that movies could be art. Renee Falconetti gives one of he greatest performances ever recorded on film, as the young maiden who died for God and France. Long thought to have been lost to fire, the original version was miraculously found in perfect condition in 1981—in a Norwegian mental institution."

And now... Now that I know the truth. That God himself spoke directly to me and penetrated me so deeply that he is more real to me than my own family and everyone else I know, I am ashamed of myself for how I behave, for how selfish and ignorant and foolish and stupid I am. I am ashamed for the poor example of what it means to be a Christian I am to all of you. Can you ever forgive me for not taking this more seriously when so many of you may be heading towards death when I have been granted immortality? How lazy I have been with my morals. How unkind and rude and lacking self-control I have been. I'm sorry that I am such a wretched man. I hope and pray that some of you reading this may one day come to know the Truth as I have known it. These movies mean nothing. You all have one life to find the truth, to find God before you die, to find all the answers to every question and secret the universe holds. But it is God who grants this Truth and only to some. To those who are headed for destruction the wisdom of God is foolishness.

May God be forever praised.

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"Well, at least your intentions behind the UTTERLY DEVASTATING FAULTS IN YOUR LOGIC are good." - Captain Steel

Zotis, just work to get your own act together and we'll work on getting ours. Well, maybe not Omni.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

Did my act fall apart again? Dammit. The tape keeps comin' off...

I don't mind if you guys make fun of me or my beliefs, but please don't deliberately derail the thread. Maybe talk about things I said in my post about The Matrix and The Passion of Joan of Arc and ignore the religious fervor.

Omni, have you seen The Passion of Joan of Arc? Didn't think so. Go watch it and then come back and post a silly picture about it or something.

Mark, Minio, what were your initial reactions to The Matrix, and how do you feel about it now?

I'm fairly confused as to what I logged into, but, Passion of John of Arc was a pretty damn good film, and The Matrix, though sort of dated, I still like, I just never really loved it to the extent that everyone else does.

I thought that's what you did.

I made a number of earlier posts you still haven't responded to yet.

You know, Zotis, I watched Ikiru and Seven Samurai 'cause of you, surely you see that this "watch X and then you'll understand" game could go on forever?

Or is it less a matter of understanding and more a matter of credibility? I don't think there's any one movie in existence that will suddenly granted me the privilege declaring what makes movies great just by watching it.

Oh Ominiz..........

IT'S ON MY WATCHLIST. I just saw Enter The Dragon for the first time like 2 minutes ago, gimme a break.

Omnizoa, I don't respond to you because I don't know how to.

Alright, well I'll make it simple, what do you make of what Iro said here?:

What are your thoughts? Agree? Disagree? Why?

First of all, before I get into responding to that, what's my commission?

Your commission? I thought you were the one who put up the Help Wanted ad.

What makes a movie "great" is mostly a personal thing. Not everyones top ten is filled with movies that are widely seen. Some film makers will reach us deeper than others, for individual reasons.

For instance, somebody out there thought that Pauly Shore and Ernest were "great" at one time. Heck Ernest almost had as many sequels as Friday The 13th.

Zotis doesn't buy into subjectivity though. And to a large degree I don't either.

The first line of the opening post is "I want to talk about this without entering the objective vs subjective debate."

What does it matter if they're widely seen? Do you think that affects their critical reception?

It just dispels the idea that theres a formula for "greatness". For a movie to be great then there has to be a organic process somewhere to where the emotional resonance is deepest, and that goes to individual taste/makeup. Like a genre, lets say anime. Theres a certain film that just taps straight to your brain everytime. I bet its not the best drawn film, or even best written. There is something though that grabbed you.

This thread is similar to my "What was the movie that made you love movies?" thread.

http://www.movieforums.com/community...+made+you+love

Oh, TONGO, that's not even the best Jet Li movie.

Anyway, it sounds like I need to see The Passion of Joan of Arc.

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You seem to be suggesting that movies just... incidentally become popular and because they're popular they prove that they can consistently deliver this X factor making them "great".

There are popular movies with massive flaws that get overlooked. Sometimes it's just the message that clicks with people, not necessarily even how that message is presented like, for example, 2011's Cyberbully.

Cyberbully is essentially a propaganda movie that uses bullying as a excuse to push an internet censorship agenda, and yet it's main character demonstrates regular emotional instability and perpetuates reactionary conflict while the script struggles to create drama in the vacuum of a reality where bullying isn't something to pin on the medium through which it's used. The internet doesn't bully people, bullies bully people.

And yet it's got over 70% on Rotten Tomatoes meaning almost 3/4ths of everyone who watches it on the site think it's good, including these people:

It panders in the same way that Transformers does when Megan Fox bends over a car. It's empty pandering, showing the viewer exactly what their demographic wants to see. It's not unlike news networks flashing inflammatory but unverifiable headlines to reinforce peoples' political positions.

It utterly buckles under scrutiny and yet the vast majority back it. So TONGO, I think that X factor is a bit more complicated than you're making it out to be. Audiences can be extremely shallow judges of quality.

What do you think that is?

The One, obviously.

But seriously, I'd be more inclined to give it to Once Upon a Time in China.