This year will be the 35th anniversary of the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (spellcheck doesn’t like ‘Bueller’). It taught the important lesson that if you are a spoiled brat and you want to do something, you should. Director John Hughes made fun movies, even if they didn’t make a lot of sense. AMC is playing it repeatedly, evidently its one of their “movies of the month”. But that’s all it is, a fun movie. The hip, cool kids putting one over on the evil principal. Yet we are told its a “great” movie by the industry, yeah? I don’t see it myself.

In 2010 a British movie called The King’s Speech came out. Quite popular. But was it worth 12 Oscar nominations? And 8 wins? I don’t know about that. I have the theory that mediocrity is being heralded as greatness to cover-up for the shortcomings of the movie industry (its interesting we say ‘industry’ and not ‘art world’). I often use the example of the classic 1971 song American Pie. Its a good song, but is it a ‘great’ song? Does it really deserve the reverent mysticism it receives with critics? I question that.

I’ll try to put this diplomatically, I think there’s a lot of lame shit out there. I guess I see a lot of overpaid people of limited talent and creativity. They seem to think because of this they have a soapbox from which to tell us how to run the country and our lives. I suppose I resist that. They can’t run Hollywood right, and they want to run the world? I apologize for this oft repeated lament. But as I think back over the past 20 years I cannot think of 1 memorable U.S. made movie. Can you?

[I stand corrected, The Passion of the Christ, 2004. The Patriot is now over 21 years old, 2000, so I was right there. As was Saving Private Ryan, 1998. Okay, 1 memorable movie in 20 years.]