@Young:
I agree with you about Avatar, but The Matrix was an original, cool, and good looking action film… even if the acting was subpar. Crash was intense, disturbing, controversial, and well acted which gives it a quality all good films have… memorable. This type of movie has its fans and critics… another good one is Crossing Over with Harrison Ford.
Getting back on topic though… I thought that the Hunger Games was overrated. They thought that some unique costumes, and a screen play based on a top selling novel can excuse the fact that it should have been more violent considering the whole premise.
Regarding The Matrix, I did not see it when it came out, and only first saw it about 3 years ago. It is entirely possible that my late coming and reference frame with many movies post-Matrix tainted my viewing experience. So I don’t claim my perspective on it as gospel. I do however stick to it being less than I expected.
It has been years since I watched Crash, and would watch it again to refresh my view on it, but I tend to dislike those movies with a plot that is no bigger than the characters in it and as it relates all of their lives as somehow connecting. It feels like a disjointed and contrived narrative which has no impact on the wider world. That is just my opinion. I disliked War Horse for the same reason. While I felt it had some of the best portrayals of The First World War I have ever seen, it was just depressing, overlong and too much of an emotionally driven movie for me to like it. It was well made though.
Yes, I agree The Hunger Games was WAY overrated. I personally did not expect much from the movie going in, and got even less coming out. But everyone else hyped it up and made it out to be the biggest hit of the summer which I am tremendously glad to say was not the case. This one also goes into my category of ruined by immediate capitalization and commercialization. The novel was a big hit very quickly, and the first thing people want to do when anything like that happens is make a movie of it. One reason I believe The Lord of the Rings was done so well as a film is because it had decades to grow and mature in culture and literature without the hyper-commercialization and shallow development of the digital age. Unfortunately, The Hunger Games and Harry Potter came out at a time when books jump straight to film and are not given time to really sink in with people. Anyway, I thought it was poorly done and felt hollow. Plus the adolescent actors were really not very good.
