It is no secret that, as a whole, the viewing public has terrible taste in movies. Out of the top 10 grossing movies of all time, there are two all-time classics (Star Wars and E.T.), one great movie (The Return of the King), one good movie (Spiderman), 5 floating turds (2 Star Wars prequels, a Pirates of the Carribean movie, Shrek 2), and one sinking turd (Titanic).
The trend is, as always, downwards. Last summer was the summer of
sequel sequels. No less than 12 movies that came out last summer were at least the third movie in a franchise.
Yes, 12. And this year, every comic book ever published was turned into a movie before July was over. Hollywood is completely out of original movie ideas. What they are not out of is ways to
shove these terrible movies down the gullet of the movie watching public.
It's been a long time since most major releases made any significant money on their theatrical runs. For big summer flicks, the theatrical run serves as little more than
a marketing campaign for the DVD release. Until recent years, the money was made on video rentals at chains like Blockbuster (these days its cheapo DVD purchases at Wal-Mart). The considerable evils of Blockbuster have
been well documented, but at least the possibility of finding a movie that wasn't in 3000 theaters six months ago still existed among the racks. Netflix and Blockbuster Online have further expanded the ability of video watchers to search the back catalogs to find an off the beaten path selection.
This is anathema to the movie release-as-promotional tool business model. Enter the
Redbox rental kiosks. You can find them in Wal-Mart, McDonald's, supermarkets, and anywhere else you'd find harried parents, screaming offspring in tow, looking to find a
cheap night's entertainment with the least possible effort. And these kiosks only offer the latest Hollywood releases - for $1 per night.
And thus the death spiral of Hollywood creativity is completed.
What can we do? If I had unlimited disposable income, I would travel around town to every Redbox, rent as many copies of The Bucket List as I could and
replace them with copies of Straw Dogs.
People go and rent the latest release because they have no better ideas. Sure, there are lists of the 100 Greatest Movies from AFI, or Roger Ebert's
Great Movies project, but sometimes a "great movie"
isn't what the people want. So, in that spirit, I propose the Movie Night Movie project.
Here are the criteria for a movie night movie:
- Under 105 minutes long
- A "fresh" rating on
Rotten Tomatoes- Domestic gross of under $50 million
And that's it.
Send me your suggestions or post them in the comments below. Together we can defeat the ugly scourge of the Redboxes.
Edit: In response to Jim's suggestions below, I am adding a criteria which I original meant to put in, which is that a Movie Night Movie cannot have been nominated for any of what I consider the top 5 Academy Awards - those are Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay.
