Over the years i have though about why films are great, and how they made me feel.
Everyone have different taste, that said i will tell you a little bit of my taste.

I have some examples about good and bad movies. Often the movies with a bad story sells alot better then the good ones. This is often because the use of well known actors. Alot of money spent on effects and alot of publishing.

Four of my favorite movies is: Braveheart.  The green mile.  Forest gump. The lion king.

These film are so good, to me that is. These films made me feel empathy, strong emotions and compassion.

I cant describe how well these films are made. The camera, the story, the directing, the music and the acting was so well done.
If a film makes you cry, that film is great! The story and the acting was so well done that you felt empathy for what was happening. That is impressive because you didnt experience what happened in real life, that stuff didnt happen to you. You just watched this story on a screen, and still it made you cry. Now that was a great movie!

There are several good movies that compare to these. The bright side of life, king kong and the lion king. I could go on and on, and still there is so many great movies that i havent seen yet.

Back to the greatness of these three movies i presented is: They all had good writers, the green mile for example were based on a Stephen King novel. And these writers wasnt scared to disapoint people. They were not scared to make something sad happen and they didnt care if the film didnt end with something like : And they lived happily ever after!

The examples on what the writers did:

In forest gump, his one true love dies after he just got her. That was sad. And the rest of the movie is fantastic! I cant describe.

In braveheart the main character gets killed and we know his people lost the war. That didnt matter, it was so brave, full of heart and it was really really sad. Ergo, the film was great!

In the green mile we see some many diffenrent point of views, so many damn evil and sad things. If that isnt enough the main character who is pure hearted, helping, kind and full of empanthy. And he is even a bit slow mentaly. Short said he is the kindest person on the planet, and he gets executed! Damn that was unfair we might think, and todays blockbuster moviecreators would never attempt this because it would lose overall rating, therefor less money in the pocket. But really, this was great. I felt sad and at the same time a bit angry. This film, and the others made me feel compassion, empathy and sadness. I rearly get to say that a movie made me feel something strongly!

The lionking is great! The journey, the death of the father, the songs, the contrast makes this film so great! The opening is probably the best thing ive EVER seen in films. The greatness and feel of that scene is too hard to describe.

The sad thing is that blockbuster movie creators often go after the overall rating, what makes most money. I realy see a expensive production with a story that isnt "safe" There are noe big leaps that could lead in great results. The thing that matter is to create a film that would make good money. Sometimes we get expensive films that aslo are great. The example is Lord of the rings triology, King kong, The curious case of benjamin button and many others. To reffer the two first films, Lotr and king kong. Films made by Peter Jackson. Jackson has said many times the importance of making films regardless to how the audience feel. And as Im saying, the importance of story. The films were of large budget and they turned out great because he made the film his way. Not the audience way. Many sucsessfull directors do this, Quentin Tarantino is a great example.

This is why I would rather work for Pixar than dreamworks, even if i would make slightly more at dreamworks.
Pixar allways spend most time on the story, like their "partner" disney. They both have allways created films depending on great story regardless of what the audience thinks. Something that Ed Hooks explained when I attended his workshop at Animex 09.
He said: Disney created films for children, and the child in grownups. The thing disney never was afraid of was to scare children. That may sound wierd since they do children movies, but the films turned out to be the best childrenmovies ever. And disney had huge sucsess since they did things their way, the way to create the best story's. Bambi's mother dies, the father in lion king dies. And all the evil and scary characters helped to make a really strong story. Without these things like fear, sorrow, and so on builds up the good story. If they were to make films conserned about how the child would feel, the movies would turn out to be crap. Like many other studios have done.

                                                   These three films are great examples of how bad some movies could get.

The thing that kinda pisses me of is blockbustermovies created for large audience. One good example is GI. Joe! That film was awfull, the trailer was better that the movie, and the trailer was bad in my oppinion. The story is hard to follow, because there is no good story, the shooting, the directing, the actors, the lines, the cliche. Everything has been seen before and it all brakes down to a really bad movie. One thing, the effects were overall good, and there was some impressive action. But that doesnt save the film. It seems like some directors think that if they put enough action and effects into a movie it becomes good. This is very wrong. Sure its entertainment, but after the credits i sat and felt, nothing. Nothing that moved me. This had been a bad use of time if it hadnt been for some cool scenes and effects.

And dont even get me started on the movies: Gamer and Jennifers body! That was a recent waste of time and money! I wont say more about them. I think this post would turn out a bit negative. Dont get me wrong, see the films. Feel the frustration and brake the dvd's after. I learned something essencial about these films. How to never create a film like that.

I have seen so many bad films over the years. I almost think that it would be easy to write a good story for a film if the right people directed it. There is like two great movies in a count of houndred. I then ask myself. How hard can it be to make a good movie? I know there is ALOT of work to make a film, but since you use so much time in making them. Why cant you use a bit more time to create the essence of the film. The story.

Story is everything!