One of my favourite movies of all times is "Big Fish". It left me thinking about life and truth and fantasy and the relationship between parents and children even though it did not evoke any intelectual discussion. I would still call it a good movie because it has a certain depth and a high cinematographic level. Most people would not call it an entertaining movie, I think. But for meit fits into both categories you define.

What I am trying to say is that your system does not work for me. But I get the idea. I also divide movies into categories. Now that I am writing about it, I realise the difference between your system and mine. To me, a "good movie" is one that touches me emotionally, not intelectually.

What you call "entertaining movies" I call "popcorn movies". I would say that Jurassic Park fits in here, or Peter Jackson's King Kong, or Inception. I love watching them. They are fine pieces of film making, but they don't have an emotional impact on me.

(Well see, there's the problem again. Inception left me with an emotionally impact,but not as deep as other films.)

Big Fish on the other hand, or Juno, are films that touch me deep inside.

This topic reminds me a bit of the traditional categorisation of literature in Germany: E literature (ernst = serious) and U literature (unterhaltend = entertaining). The problem is that both often seem to exclude each other. Serious literature cannot/must not be entertaining and entertaining literature cannot/must not deal with serious issues. I have always regarded this as an impediment to enjoying literature as such. Therefore I would as far possible avoid such categories. Of course there are films that are purely meant to be watched and forgotten soon after and others that are so very intellectual and difficult that they reach only a small group of viewers, but in general I think films (and books) should be somewhere between these extremes. They should entertain and give food for thought at the same time. 

Could you give some examples for the different categories?

I have to admit that I used to prefer films in the past that didn't make me think too  much. I was satisfied with "superficial" entertainment. Only a few films I watched, most times more or less "by accident" really touched my heart or made me think. Guess who changed that.
That's true. Shame on me.
It's funny how Benedict changed my point of view. Now I also discover depth in films I've seen before without noticing any emotinal relationships. Do you know what I mean?

P.S.: Nevertheless it all is a matter of taste and point of view. One example: In December I watched a German film called "Honig im Kopf", a story about a man in his sixties suffering from Alzheimer's. He did a lot of funny things and the whole audience at the cinema was laughing. For them it certainly was a popcorn movie. But for me ... the film made me really sad and touched me.
It's difficult to place films in categories.

Last edited by gently69 (April 2, 2015 9:14 am)

What influences what I would like to watch varies. A lot of times I decide upon a movie based on the actor(s) in it. Sometimes a story interest me. Sometimes I just want to sit back and be entertained, sometimes I want something more. It varies.

Examples will always be subjective, but here are some from me:

Popcorn movies
LotR
The Hobbit
Titanic
The Imitation Game
Star Trek


Good movies:
Maborosi
Tokyo Story (most of the modern Japan movies from Ozu)
The Tree of Life
Solaris (Original Russian movie)
Melancholia


Movies inbetween categories (entertainment movies that also has elements of being good):
Hero 
Sunset Boulevard
Casablanca
The Matrix (debatable)
Blade Runner

Come to think of it, I'm not too happy with either of my category names. Good movies imply that popcorn movies can't be good. But of course they can - you will probably never find movies with higher production quality than Hollywood. They can have brilliant acting, good score, good script and be overall of a very high quality.

But the "Good movies" category is something else for me. It goes beyond the script formula of Hollywood. (In Hollywood, you have genres that usually follows a set pattern and tropes. So if you've seen a few movies of a genre, you can often predict a lot of what will happen in other movies of the same genre). The movies are often easily accessible, play on melodrama, and there isn't much to get from the movie beyond the surface.

I know I probably sound negative and arrogant towards popcorn movie, that isn't my intention. I love a lot of them myself. I cry and cheer when I watch LotR, I love them to pieces. But they are still popcorn movies.



 

I knew I would probably get reactions from putting that movie up there, but yeah, I think it's a popcorn movie. A really good popcorn movie (that's why I don't like the name of my category, "good" is not a fitting word for what I mean). 

TIG is a story-driven movie, streamlining the story to fit a movie formula, it has melodrama and is easily accessible. That does NOT mean the movie is stupid, bad or anything of the sort. But the movies I talk about for the other category are very differen. They don't follow the set formula of modern movies, they are usually not that story-driven, they often avoid melodrama by not "forcing" or "manipulating" you to feel what the director wants you to feel through close-ups and an emotional score.

 

I agree. There are good and bad popcorn movies. The movies you listed are action movies. TIG is... historical drama? So a different genre, but to me still the same category. 

I would've agreed with how you view it a few years ago. My views on movies changed after I saw Tokyo Story for the first time. I remember the movie left me with my hair metaphorically blown backwards and I was thinking: "So that's what a good movie is!" It was just a whole different category or ball game than anything else I'd previously seen, and it completely changed my view on what I think are good movies.

But again.... bad choice of wording. Because TIG is a good movie. It's just not a Good Movie. I wish I had some better words to use for the categories. 

Harriet, that could be.

But now you're talking about genres and not categories. Action and historical are genres. Of course you can even have a film which sort of has both, action and history (we watched Oliver Stone's "Alexander" last week, I didn't expect anything but it actually was pretty interesting and had both, action and history), very often genres get blurred and you rarely have a film which belongs to only one genre.

Still, I just think that your way of categorizing films is not for me.