A system based upon agents, massive conglomerates now produce publicists, and producers, films. Actors, directors, and other creative film artists are no longer "stabled- by studios, but are free agents, able to work when, for whom, and as regularly as they desire. Ensuing bidding wars for top talent and expenditures on bigger and better special effects have skyrocketed the costs of studio production, such as the massive blockbuster The Matrix which used a new idea of computer generating which looked visually stunning but cost big bucks to do. As a result, the big Hollywood conglomerates produce films that are designed to return big on investments. American films have become known for prioritising massive profits over and above any artistic or social considerations. Spectacular visual tricks and effects, often combined with rather formulaic plots and characters, have given American films a special reputation as some of the most entertaining, yet intellectually vapid, productions in the world.
Film Criticism and Theory.
It is easy to forget, in a time when most universities feature rigorous deconstructions of films in their curricula, that not so long ago the cinema was considered a debased form akin to vaudeville. Perhaps the earliest intellectual credence lent to the nascent medium came from the French Surrealists of the 1930s, all of whom appear to have been avid filmgoers. The movement's keystone figure, Andre Breton, maintained that within the worst films were at least five transcendent minutes; conversely, the most lauded efforts usually contained only five good minutes. A convenient axiom, one that enabled the artists to move from one flea-pit cinema to the next with remarkable expediency. The New York-based critic Andrew Sarris is generally credited with concocting the auteur theory in the 1960s. The auteur system of evaluation frames the entirety of a film's literary and visual content as a reflection of the director's personality, his personal agenda and assorted obsessions lurking below the surface of a given entertainment.
