How do we value movies? Acting? Actors? Sets? Costumes? Critics? Director? Cinematographer? Soundtrack? Box office? Maybe the poster seemed interesting? A review in the paper? The aggregate score on rotten tomatoes? No, Oscars! I know that’s what you’re thinking. Every year the Oscars are there to tell us what is the best. So it should be very simple, just watch the Oscars, note the winners, cue up your Netflix, and you’re off to movie Heaven! But here’s the thing, only a fool or a masochist would want to sit down and watch the last twenty winners of the best picture Oscars. The winners are generally liberal-minded, do-gooder, sentimental pieces of pseudo drama. While the best films (the ones we like to watch) are not the avant-gardes, not the important, or the noble, but the films that rack up ticket sales like crazy. Popcorn movies! The movies where, at the time of their release, are dismissed as being there just to make a good buck and to entertain the masses. Well it turns out ‘fluff’ is what stands up. Personally I’ve always been a popcorn movie lover–Grease, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Home Alone. Are they philosophically deep? Will they help you adjudicate the death penalty? Will they give you the answer to our immigration problems? Will you study them in film school? Not necessarily. But boy if they aren’t entertaining as hell, and entertainment is underrated.
