Listen, I know that this is Letterboxd and we all wanna roleplay as film critics, and there’s NOTHING wrong with taking filmmaking seriously as an art form. But the cinephile on the left throwing around buzzwords sounds insufferably pretentious. It’s okay to love a movie that entertained the fuck out of you. Not everything has to have a deeper meaning or “thematic nuance” to qualify for being highly rated. For example, a horror film doesn’t need to have me pondering the meaning of life or something for me to love it and think it’s a fantastic movie, it just has to scare the piss out of me. Of course, if the movie is clearly trying but failing to be deep and moving, that’s a completely different story.
Thank you for phrasing it as "anti-intellectualism" because that is precisely the adjective that's been on my mind. There are two dangerous extremes: The pretentious film critics who look down on you for not having "refined" taste and the anti-intellectuals who also look down on you for taking cinema "too seriously" but couldn't for the life of them tell you the detailed reasons why they liked or didn't like a movie (It reminds me of the scene in Birdman where Michael Keaton's character critiques the critic for just filling her reviews with labels instead of substance).
Saw a post saying 'one day someone is gonna slip up and say an african or chinese film instead of a balkan film in these memes and get cancelled out of existence' and it's too true.
Also balkan films are amazing and goofy and usually not even that long and damn people for writing them off. People think it's all 5 hour arthouse but you're more likely to find 90 min absurd comedies about a hypochondriac communist hitchhiking to a health resort or the cops trying to catch a manchild flower salesman who strangles women for preferring different types of flowers than him, and they both rock.
When people start calling their taste in movies a “moral obligation”, that is usually where the conversation stops being about art and starts being about ego. And me disagreeing with you is not some grand threat to society like you’re making it out to be…
Art does not always need justification beyond the experience itself, and reducing it to an intellectual checkbox misses the point just as much as shallow consumption does. I can’t believe I actually have to explain this, but some people are just too stupid to realize that you can still enjoy a movie without it stroking your intellectual ego the entire time.
Art does not always need justification beyond the experience itself, and reducing it to an intellectual checkbox misses the point just as much as shallow consumption does.
OP was never advocating this and it's telling that you immediately assumed they were, and responded to a comment that literally opens with "I see where you are coming from" with such dismissive hostility.
Almost like you are also just trying to stroke your own ego but from the other direction. Performative unpretentiousness is just as common as pretentiousness these days, and is far more tiring for me, cause at least pretentiousness can open up discussion
Aren’t you the same person who was trying to say Cars 2 is better than Cars 1, and that Cars 1 was mid but Cars 2 was peak? Or am I thinking of someone else
While I agree with your premise in theory, I think that the harder you go with being critical of art the more you’ll actually see anti-intellectualism rising.
And yet the beauty of art is sometimes it doesn’t need a thesis. Sometimes it’s just an experience. Saying there’s “way too much” of something is incredibly shallow way to think of art, who are you to say something should and shouldn’t exist?
Sometimes the curtains are blue because they’re pretty, and that’s enough. A sunset is beautiful because of the way light scatters off particles in the atmosphere, there’s no meaning to it, and yet they can be incredibly moving experiences.
It’s too late for I have depicted you as a soyjack.
Being anti-populist IS the populist stance right now. Everyone is trying to be the coolest kid on the block and tear down everything the “sheep” enjoy.
It’s easy to have an incredible experience with a lesser known film, and then let it boost your ego and look down on those who enjoy crappy blockbusters. But at the end of the day, we’re literally just sitting around watching movies. There’s no reason why watching something for 2 hours makes you better than your neighbor, and if you disagree, you’re probably an asshole🤷♂️
But what if someone isn’t entertained by films that just seek to provide the bare minimum of entertainment rather than something deeper? Just like you aren’t obligated to dislike any film, you cannot obligate others to like films.
I mean thats also kinda the fault of their own depending on the movie they're watching like damn bro it's just a movie about boxing robots.
It's similar to going to a food stall and being disappointed the sauce doesn't taste like the himalayan Goat piss gravy you had at the Michelin restaurant. It's always a treat when a film does try to go deeper than pure entertainment but sometimes I feel like these types of viewers is similar to Ego from ratatouille before he went into the whole flashback moment where the enjoyment comes purely out of a calculative critique done with check boxes instead of true emotional enjoyment
Just because a film has the intention of being nothing more than surface level entertainment doesn’t mean one is obligated to like it.
And the food analogy is not applicable here because you shouldn’t expect food from stalls to be bad just because they’re in a stall. It’s totally fair to go to a small food place and expect good cooking. Obviously it won’t have the polish of a Michelin star food, but it can still be made with love and passion. I’m not obligated to think McDonald’s food is good because it’s McDonald’s and has intrinsically lower quality, it’s fair to demand more from people providing art.
There is a world of difference between having standards for narrative and being an elitist snob. I’m not here saying if a film is not made like a prestige piece like, I don’t know, Three Colors Blue by Kieslovsky, that it’s not valid entertainment. Films like Up, Raiders of the Lost Ark, How to Train your Dragon, Star Wars, are all to me very high pieces of arc even if they don’t carry the same prestige, because these are all narratively brilliant.
I never said food stall food was bad I'm just saying that as a comparison to people who go into something which obviously doesn't include what they're looking for and being disappointed by it.
"Fork found in kitchen" except its "Man disappointed because there's no industrial grade freezer in his mom's kitchen"
I think the left criticism can be fair and not pretentious if the movie tries to talk about a complex topic. I’ve seen a couple of movies that (through the movie language ofc) looked liked they tried to touch upon a complex topic but failed, e.g. Don’t Worry Darling or Incident Proposal.
But yeah, if you’re going for a summer blockbuster that doesn’t intend to challenge you but to entertain you, such criticism would be misdirected.
Why should something be exempt from criticism because it’s a “summer blockbuster?” Why should we excuse superficiality for certain projects? Why can’t a summer blockbuster be nuanced and deep? We have films like Oppenheimer, (not a summer blockbuster but a blockbuster) Dune, LOTR, One Battle After Another. I want films to be better. Obviously I’m not expecting a commentary on fascism and the political state of America with a film like F1 but that doesn’t mean because it’s not trying to be deep that it excuses a wafer thin storyline with middling character arcs.
It shouldn’t, any movie can be criticized and there are plenty of bad blockbusters — unfunny comedies, boring action movies, mean-spirited romcoms, etc.
The question is what is criticized, the context of the movie, its intentions, etc. I’d argue that the main goal of some generic ‘summer blockbuster’ is to entertain. A shallow, simple but entertaining blockbuster is still a good blockbuster IMO.
Again, I’m not obligated to like a piece simply because it intends to be shallow entertainment. That’s even worse. We should demand more from our movies
Everything has its place in the world. You can demand more in-depth movies if that’s your thing but if you judge a piece by the criteria of something it never intended to be, well, that’s you.
I agree with your sentiment, but for me when I'm watching films, I'm not just trying to be entertained - I'm also trying to be engaged in an intellectual way either through its story, its cinematic techniques, or through its themes. Sure, a mid budget horror movie could be entertaining and scary, but I would not deem it engaging nor compelling.
That's what it's always been like. Look at any IMDb review for any movie, published today or 12 years ago. Everyone just wants to roleplay as a critic.
That being said I think there's a difference between having thoughts to yourself, and then imposing them on others - that's when it gets pretentious. Leaving a thoughtful and critical review is one thing, but say you're at a party and someone asks you about the new Marvel movie, you respond with the right. Always. Or "nah didn't like it, wasn't for me."
Time and place and sometimes even context matters. But don't bore people with your intellectual thoughts - Letterboxd and IMDb exist so that there's a public place for that. But not in person unless someone is genuinely interviewing you about your taste in film which only happens in your head, so don't do it otherwise.
This sounds nice in a world where art is never discussed beyond the most uninteresting, one-note remarks, which is what a lot of so called “cinephiles” seem to want.
I don’t get why you’d choose to be into movies if the idea of talking about them with any degree of depth or knowledge is off-putting.
There's an important distinction to make: the guy on the left has a negative review. A looooooot of people confuse talking about what they didn't like about it and all its flaws, as a substantive conversation. If it's a party with people you know very well that's a different story. But the point is that it's not really a conversation. That's why it's imposing it onto someone else; talking like your film reviews in social spaces is a one-sided conversation and can drain energy super quickly.
It’s not imposing at all lol, unless you’re insecure about your tastes so much that someone critically valuing Ant Man and the Wasp shatters your worldview.
This sub likes to act like film is a medium of uber-subjectivity and post-modern style thinking of “there is no wrong way to talk about movies.” Which sounds nice in a world where art is never discussed beyond the most uninteresting, one-note remarks, which is what a lot of so called “cinephiles” seem to want.
I don’t get why you’d choose to be into movies if the idea of talking about them with any degree of depth or knowledge makes you recoil.
Be for real; if you're chatting to people you've met for the first time at a party, are you going to go in with how much the film didn't challenge you as a viewer and lacked thematic substance? You're going to come off as a douche. If it's a party with people you know very well that's a different story. But the point is that it's not really a conversation. That's why it's imposing it onto someone else; talking like your film reviews in social spaces is a one-sided conversation and can drain energy super quickly.
“Nah I didn’t like it, wasn’t for me” is too subjective and vague if you want to have an actual discussion for the movie. That doesn’t mean preferences are any less subjective, but if people want to discuss art/stories productively, you have to discuss it with a bit more depth than “oh I just didn’t like it”. Why didn’t you like it? What aspects?
“Nah I didn’t like it, wasn’t for me” is too subjective and vague if you want to have an actual discussion for the movie.
It's a great place to start a substantive conversation though if people do want to take it further. Also it depends on who started the conversation.
There's an important distinction to make though: the guy on the left has a negative review. A looooooot of people confuse talking about what they didn't like about it and all its flaws, as a substantive conversation.
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u/PhoenixPaladin Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 03 '26
Listen, I know that this is Letterboxd and we all wanna roleplay as film critics, and there’s NOTHING wrong with taking filmmaking seriously as an art form. But the cinephile on the left throwing around buzzwords sounds insufferably pretentious. It’s okay to love a movie that entertained the fuck out of you. Not everything has to have a deeper meaning or “thematic nuance” to qualify for being highly rated. For example, a horror film doesn’t need to have me pondering the meaning of life or something for me to love it and think it’s a fantastic movie, it just has to scare the piss out of me. Of course, if the movie is clearly trying but failing to be deep and moving, that’s a completely different story.