"Movies these days are getting so bad!"

"I don't go to the theaters for movies anymore..."

"I'll just wait for it to come out on DVD..."

"Mom, Dad, can we go see HERBIE, BACK IN ACTION?"

"Movies these days are getting so bad!"

"There's nothing good to rent...oh well, let's just rent WHITE CHICKS..."

"This weekend, FANTASTIC FOUR made a record $50 million dollars in one day!!"

"Movies these days are getting so bad!"

These are all statements I've heard, overheard, or have uttered myself recently. Do you think ANY of these statements are related to each other? Where is the movie-going industry (and more importanty, the movie-making industry) headed? I really hope I'm wrong, but I don't think it looks good. But it's hard not to notice when all you hear about these days is how box-office revenues are going down down down while the cost of making a movie is going up up up.

Since the movie studios (big and small) are all about making money, what do you think they will think when a movie like FANTASTIC FOUR totally clobbers a film like MILLIONS or MAD HOT BALLROOM? They're going to think that the movie going audience doesn't care for smart, funny or interesting films. We had 1/3 of the country plunk down $10 to see FANTASTIC FOUR a few weekends ago, and it's a movie that I haven't heard a single person who's seen it say that it's good. Critics said it was so bad next to other good comic books films like BATMAN BEGINS and SPIDER-MAN 2 that it should've been ashamed to show it's face.

Yet, Hollywood pumps out mediocre films like RESIDENT EVIL, ALIEN VS PREDATOR and BEWITCHED (and really really bad films like WHITE CHICKS and RACING STRIPES) that all get rewarded with hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. It's like the Microsoft philosophy: it doesn't matter that the software is crap, just make everyone buy it!! So why do you think that is? Either we, as a collective movie-going audience, have lowered our tastes for cinema in the last 10 years, or the public box-office and movie-going industry just simply does not work anymore as a business model.

In my opinoin, there are a few factors that have kept even me from going to the theaters lately:

    - ever rising ticket & concession prices
    - ever rising gas prices
    - increasingly annoying audiences memebrs at theaters (we all have our stories)
    - advances in home theater technology

These are the reasons I don't go see smaller films and save the larger films for the theater. That "big screen" experience is still the only way to truly experience a film in it's purest and unadulterated form (even the small films). Once it goes to DVD, everything changes.

So what are we to do? I really don't have any answers at all. I can only offer an observation that because we do reward bad movies with our hard earned money and snumb smaller films, that this will no doubt make studios stay the course and make crappy flicks forever and ever.

Take for instance, this summer. Although I haven't liked all the films that have come out this summer (just read my review on WAR OF THE WORLDS), I do feel that this is the bravest crop of summer films (creatively speaking) in a long long while. If you can believe it, there was only 1 sequel in this entire summer season (STAR WARS, EP III)...although, there are a ton of remakes now. Well, anyways, they're still risky endeavors. This summer has really impressed me with their subject matter. BATMAN BEGINS, CHARLIE and THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, and even WAR OF THE WORLDS were all risky films because they're so dark. And films like THE ISLAND, CINDERELLA MAN, and THE BROTHERS GRIMM, and DARK WATER are all ORIGINAL concepts. That's a really gutsy line-up of films from a "studio exec" perspective. The studios have been really brave and "thinking outside the box" with this summer's films.

However, what do you think is going to happen when this summer doesn't make as much money as last summer? All the studio execs are going to say "oh well, we tried making smarter films for them, and people just don't want 'em!! They don't want smart, risky films...they want more mindless, numbnut films like VAN HELSING and HERBIE...let's keep making those!" I'm sure some studio exec somewhere has said: "Oh, he's one of those smart and creative directors, but we can't give him a job because we don't need smart or creative films anymore!"

So you see, eventually our wallets will be the deciding factor in what movies are going to get made next. I just hope one day small movies like MAD HOT BALLROOM and MILLIONS will gain the same kind of exposure that the big movies do. And while the best big-budget blockbuster film so far this year for me, is easily BATMAN BEGINS, my personal favorite is MAD HOT BALLROOM, a simple documentary about kids.

Thanks for listening.