It struck me, watching an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus whilst eating lunch, that this comedy troupe found an aesthetic equal in the late Bruce Conner. While often brilliant, Flying Circus, is usually not associated with the world of fine art from which Conner hailed. Whether any direct connection links the two is unimportant. Rather, it brought to mind a sort of equality of arts.
I have enacted harsh judgment on countless movies. A few years ago I divided those which I watched into three categories: films, cinema, and movies. The first was undoubtedly art by intention, the second was a product which became art through skill and craft in manipulating the medium, and the last was, more or less, a consumer product good for entertainment but nothing else. Such divisions are indefensible.
Jean-Luc Godard postulates that film, as a medium whose material is reality, creates and recreates actual reality rather than producing a fiction. Filming on location changes that location. I look at parts of Chicago and see The Dark Knight. But without going into this theory too much, suffice it to say that if one film can create than all films create and are thus worthy of being considered art of the highest degree. Even a tired story with bad actors and poor direction create something unique, even if it is something small.
Under such an interpretation, and even if film cannot create but simply reframes reality, than even Transformers may need to be considered worth watching. The question is no longer whether a movie is art but whether, considering time restraints, it is the best creation/framing possible(which is difficult to ascertain) and a more fundamental moral question of whether the reality which is created is beneficial to the audience. Things get pretty fuzzy at this point. Probably too fuzzy to ever say anything definitive about a single movie. If Flying Circus came from Conner and ended up with Brazil, than the supposed three categories become merged together in history.
This leads to the question of film evaluation. Most common is according to levels of enjoyment or involvement. This depends so much on surrounding conditions and entirely subjective tastes that I am confused as to why such a method would gain popularity. Reducing a movie to enjoyment is robbing it of the possibility of communication. Also falling into this category are those which simply summarize the plot and give a star rating. A better review can be many things but it can't be a value judgment. In short, it can describe how the film fits into the art, not whether or not it does fit into the art. This can be a difficult stance to take, especially in light of certain Hollywood blockbusters which seem to defy the audience to participate. It can be painful watching some films and some will be avoided. But in avoiding any film there is an inevitable loss that must be associated with it.
