Ross and the Refrigerator of Doom

There is something acutely loathsome about most movie reviewers. Whenever you peruse their work, vainly trying to justify your feelings about a movie, you can rest assured those odious critics will almost always disagree with you in a condescending way.

This is not Bob Ross, long time movie critic for the Tampa Tribune. Instead of being the argumentative and condescending critic artiste, Ross is down-to-earth and deferential.

In his 22 years at the Tribune, he saw some great films, and witnessed a transformation in the way our society sees films. Nowadays, everything is a numbers game. The news media focuses on how much money a film made at the Box Office. That is the singular goal of today's film industry.

Oscar-worthy has come to mean a film you see once. Whereas the movies that make money are usually not intellectually threatening or unconventional in the slightest. This system rewards mediocrity and punishes the daring. A film about gay cowboys was hardly recognized in monetary or artistic measure. And yet, think of the money made by those three prequels spawned from George Lucas' syphilitic brain.

Here's a peek at the Box Office's top 100 films, there's some solid evidence that money earned does not equal quality of script or acting performance. Case and point: Star Wars Episode I and III are in the top 10. The only Indiana Jones film on the top 25 is the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels beat out the original.

If the Box Office is any judgment of how good a film is, then I must immediately submit my request to dissolve our society. We cannot be trusted.

For all its faults though, movie criticism has retained its sharp edge and unwavering loyalty to quality and not currency. "Movie criticism hasn't been battered into total mediocrity" unlike other forms of critical journalism, said Bob Ross.

For a long time, he enjoyed a community upheaval to every review he wrote. Some would never see a movie that he liked, while others would always go to see a film he reviewed positively. The perk, Ross said, is that "you get to inflict your opinion on large groups of people". By the way, love the use of inflict. Like a disease.

Honestly though, I applaud his ability to be deferential about what does and does not make a good film. I don't have that virtue. People who enjoy mediocre films, I simply cannot comprehend.

I think Ross would agree that the system encourages mediocrity. Tired plot devices and ludicrously flashy effects have replaced the soviet budgets of the films of yesteryear that came to define our culture. As a result the movies we now worship are ludicrous.

A refrigerator has the ability to shield its inhabitants from a nuclear blast because of lead paint? (Indiana Jones' diabolical new incarnation) Nonsense.