> > but in evaluating a work of narrative fiction the choice of title is rarely if ever a significant enough decision to hold much sway.
>
> Sorry; I didn't understand that at all. Holds no sway from whose point of view?

I meant that I couldn't imagine sitting down to write a movie review and adding or subtracting a couple of stars to its rating on the basis of a well- or poorly-chosen title. Titles affect audience expectation but, except in cases so rare I can only think of one, do not impact a movie's overall worth.

> I'll say it impacts expectation. If I had known that the actual intent of two films having innocuous titles ("True Romance" and "Paris Trout") was to pile depressingly redundant violence upon violence "in a brilliant depiction of brutality and mayhem," then I doubt I'd have chosen to go see them. After TR, I started to read more detailed movie reviews before seeing any film. *Sigh*

Unfortunately that's important, these days. Gone are the times when you can wander into pretty much any movie, without any foreknowledge, and be reasonably assured that even if you don't hit upon a good movie, you won't hit upon an outright offensive or gruesome or shocking one. These days even a casual skimming of Roger Ebert's movie reviews will give a pretty horrendous picture of what kind of movies are being made these days. It says something that he gave "Crocodile Dundee In Los Angeles" a negative review, yet still "sort-of" recommended it on the basis of it not being disgusting or offensive. When a statement like that comes off as mild praise, it's a sad state of things.