Obviously, everyone has different tastes when it comes to choosing a Movie. Sadly, most of the time people go to the movies and see whatever everyone else is seeing. Most of the time, however, the top grossing movies, while they provide a couple of hours of entertainment, offer basically nothing of value to the viewer. My favorite films are the ones where, at the end of it, I feel something and really think about my life. I will take the movies "Hitch" and "The Pacifier" as examples of movies which offer nothing to the audience. These cliche story lines and nice happy resolutions do not really reflect of our society and our modern world. In my opinion, these movies are guilty of adding to our social ignorance by keeping us in this kind of safety bubble, and help to detach us from the cynical, self-destructive nature of our current world. Of course, many will disagree with me and say that they want to see movies strictly for entertainment. That's fine, there are definately two types of viewers - the passive viewer and the active viewer. The passive viewers are the ones that I just described. They are the ones who like to just watch a movie because it's funny, or makes they happy, or gives them big explosions and let's them escape reality and escape their real life problems. The active viewer watches a movie and is always thinking about some element of the film such as the actual production aspect of the film, they may examine the social commentary it offers, or follow tangents of thought derived from the film's themes. Putting it in simpler terms, the passive viewer watches because he does not want to think, he simply wants to be entertained, and the active viewer watches a film and never turns his brain off. I would say that the majority of people are passive viewers, which is why films like Hutch and The Pacifier top the box office. Honestly, when I see movies like that topping the box office, I die a little inside. I don't think anything is going to change, but try to expand your horizons as viewers and watch films that you wouldn't normally choose - you might be pleasantly surprised at how much they can fill your soul (I know that was a little cheesy, but you get my point!). Think about films that you really liked, check out who directed them and watch more by the same guy. Some American directors to consider are : Kubrick, Scorsese, Stone, Joel Coen, P.T.Anderson, Wes Anderson, Jarmusch, Tarantino, Stone, Aronofsky, Welles, Hitchcock, Sayles, Ford, Capra.
With the saturation, and lack of originality of American cinema (sequels, repitition of ideas and story lines), I stress that as viewers, you examine other national cinemas. Japanese, Latin , and European cinema's especially are doing very beatiful and original things. (a few recommended directors: Kurosawa, Mireilles, Bergman, Renoir, Carne, Polanski, Forman, Lang, Murneau, Kieslowski).