I want you to think of a movie you dislike. Not the worst movie you can think of, but one that you thought was pretty bad. Chances are, whatever that movie is, I enjoyed it. Now, I used to think that the secret to enjoying movies was ignorance. Being ignorant of the process, of what makes good actors or scenes good, you would just enjoy everything that came your way. While this is mostly true, I have a found another way. A way to enjoy almost every movie while still being extremely knowledgeable of the film industry.

First, I've noticed movies are better when you can relate, which for most things I can. Find movies with events or ideals you can relate to. For example: Super 8 is an under viewed and often undervalued movie, in my opinion. In the very beginning of the movie, the main characters mother dies and he gets heavily depressed. Him and his friend also film movies together. Both of which had heavy influences on my life. So right off the top of the movie, I was invested.

Movies can also be as amazing or bad as you want them to be. Theories that aren't expressed in the movies, you can implement yourself. If you find a movie bad, do yourself a favor and make it better by theorycrafting reasoning and motive. You can only get so deep in two hours. As a last thought, give the film companies a little bit of leeway. Hundreds of different people are involved, most of them without artistic power. But ultimately, the people with the money make the decisions. Most of us aren't masters of film, so we don't need to be master critics.