> You've got to remember that most people, I'd wager on the order of 80% to 90% of people who go to see movies, see them to be "entertained". And for most of these people, Entertainment != thinking. For many, if not most people, entertainment is something that is done for you, not something you do for yourself. Also, most people probably don't read Ebert's reviews every week. So their only exposure to the opinions of the major critics *IS* from the advertising of the movies. And you said yourself it's usually the slow, plodding character studies (what most people woud call "boring" and "not entertaining") that show off the fact that the critics loved them.

I have to agree with you; personally, I prefer more "arty" and "intellectual" films (I believe "elitist snob" was the title you gave me ;-}), but I certainly know how to watch a "fun" movie without complaining about its brainlessness. I mean, I'm the guy who liked Godzilla 2000. But, in a sense, I find it a bit depressing that people deliberately (and frequently) won't watch more intelligent movies just because they might have to think. I mean, as Sam says elsewhere, there are times when one just wants to go watch some mindless drek and see things explode and chicks get naked and whatever. Fine. No problem with that. But I don't understand people who *refuse* to think; my mother, for example, refuses to watch any foreign films, because reading subtitles is "too much work." I don't get that at all.

So, for my part, I understand why mindless blockbusters are, in fact, blockbusters; people are easy to sell on things like that. What I don't understand isn't the popularity of those, but the unwillingness of the masses to think.