movies that suck – Lee Duigon

Amazon.com: The Vikings [DVD] : Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Ernest Borgnine, Janet Leigh, James Donald, Alexander Knox, Maxine Audley, Frank Thring, Eileen Way, Edric Connor, Dandy Nichols, Per Buckhj, Richard Fleischer, Calder

Honk if you can name a “spectacular, brawling epic” made in this century.

Hollywood is drifting into panic mode. “Why aren’t people going to the movies?” studio execs wonder… frantically. “What can we do to bring them back into the theaters?”

They are amazed that movies based on comic books aren’t packin’ ’em in. It doesn’t even work to turn the superhero Gay, or Trans, or Whatever. They flat-out don’t understand how anyone could possibly have had it up to here with movies based on comic books.

So “Stupid Movies” has to be Factor No. 1. For Factor No. 2, I don’t think we have to look any farther than the price. Why shell out $20 for a ticket when you can watch the same movie at home, on a streaming service, for a fraction of the cost?

And Factor No. 3 has got to be “The Competition.” To bring people back into the theaters, you have to offer them something that they can’t get at home and are willing to pay for, to get from you. This is economics so basic, even I can understand it. But Hollywood doesn’t. They don’t want to be creative, they don’t want to be original. It makes their heads hurt.

I grew up on movies. Every town had at least one movie theater–plus the big theaters and the drive-ins, both of which have been erased from the landscape. Now you’re lucky if you can find one multiplex that’s only open half the time. And then there’ll be nothing there that you want to see, and who needs to spend a wad of money on a movie that might so easily turn out to be ca-ca?

Hollywood, you might try making better movies and not releasing them to cable for a while. I know, I know–you’re busy saying snotty things about America and the people you want to lure back to the theaters. We know you despise us. Are you really surprised that we despise you back?

117 Family Campfire Camping Storytelling Stock Photos, Pictures & Royalty-Free Images - iStock

The stories we heard around the campfire at Y Camp in the 60s were better than today’s movie scripts.

The art of storytelling is as old as humanity itself. So what gives with all these current movies in which the story just totally falls apart in the last 30 minutes of the film? Like the writers have no idea how to end it?

How do you learn to tell a story? You listen to stories, you read as many as you can, and you imitate the ones you like. But if hardly anyone is reading anymore, who’s left who knows how to tell a story?

I’m tired of movies that promise much and wind up delivering nothing. We watched a film called A Cure for Wellness (2016), supposedly a psychological thriller about goings-on at a pricey, innovative wellness center somewhere in the Swiss Alps. Exquisitely filmed, well-acted… and we aborted the final 15 or 20 minutes of it because the writers had thoroughly lost the thread of the story and tried to make up for it with graphic sex scenes. And it was a long movie, too: we’ll never get those hours back.

The same thing happens with a lot of new movies: they just can’t wrap up the story. It’s like it only ends because they couldn’t buy more film. I have already deleted most of the titles from my mind. Not worth remembering!

I put it down to a shortage of reading. Nobody’s reading cogent stories anymore, so no one knows how to write one. And I suspect it’s going to get worse before it gets better–if it ever does get better. Can we only watch old movies anymore? Is there any way we can force today’s screenwriters to watch them?

We used to know how to tell a story. Now it seems we don’t. What a loss that is! And dumbing down the public is no way to keep a country running.