My top five favorite movies of last year had a complete domestic total of $170,948,987 combined. The flicks I deemed the “worst of 2009”: just about $1.4 billion. Observe & Report deserved better. Moon deserved better. So why didn’t any of us pay to see them? One could argue location, and I could agree. I didn’t get to see Moon until last December due to the lack of theaters playing it in my state. I don’t expect you to drive 100 miles just to see the winner of best foreign picture this year at the Oscars because I myself wouldn’t and couldn’t afford to do that every weekend. Though Moon was a career-launcher for writer/director Duncan Jones, and it’s a movie future film geeks or maybe even fans of the potential hyped horror film Jones could end up making in coming years would seek out to watch. These movies hold cult status because they’re actually good. Take Observe & Report – I know a lot of people who fell in love with that movie. It opened to #8 opening weekend, behind the crapola most have probably already forgotten about in the form of Hannah Montana: The Movie.

Or just this last weekend, the incredibly safe A Nightmare on Elm Street opened to $32.2 million, $22 million away from second place’s How to Train Your Dragon. Where did one of my favorite movies so far in 2010, Kick-Ass, rank? At #8 with $4.5 million, after a studded spree of bombs weekend after weekend. Co-writer/director Matthew Vaughn used up $40 million out of his own pocket just to give Kick-Ass an R-rating instead of an egotistical screw-up label of PG-13. Sure, that decision would have gave Vaughn a bigger paycheck, but the quality would have suffered so. This is how his great movie is treated, kicked to the bottom of top ten lists after only three weeks in release. While Elm Street remakes and Titans clash, Kick-Ass wades in the dust the two have invited it to bite. I say no more.

I’m not specifically targeting you, dear reader; for I am also guilty of the crimes I’m accusing you of committing. I too dished $11 to see Clash of the Titans as well as Nightmare its opening day. This is a learning experience. Years past I’ve been increasingly pissed. Adventureland killed by Fast & Furious. The Fountain made irrelevant by Deck the Halls and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. Never more than this current day and age am I foaming at the mouth due to lack of originality and credited bullsh*tters taking their pay and cutting loose. Alice in Wonderland in its third weekend majored Greenberg, The Runaways and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Someone, somewhere, is offering but we’re not taking. Well, we need to start. See the aforementioned three films on DVD and recommend them to your friends, even if you didn’t like them. Most probably didn’t like Watchmen (neither did I) but look at the ambition director Zack Snyder brought to that movie. When the screenplay was thrown onto Warner Bros. table they should have passed the ball in someone else’s court, but they didn’t. They took a chance, gave Snyder $130 million and he made a flick that doesn’t come around too often. In turn how is he rewarded? A $107 million total domestic gross. In the States, it didn’t even make back its own budget.

These flops could also be due to poor advertising. I was watching a music video on New York Magazine’s Vulture Blog before I knew what Please Give was about. Meanwhile A Nightmare on Elm Street continued to slut it up between The Office and 30 Rock. Nowadays it’s whether you’re into film or not that determines if you see something like Antichrist over MacGruber. A movie I’m still dying to see, My Son My Son What Have Ye Done? has next to disappeared entirely. My local movie theater most times doesn’t pick up new releases before determining debut weekend box office. The magic phrase here is “profit increase”. As soon as something doesn’t perform as well as it could had it been pulled and replaced by Iron Man 2, it becomes harder and harder for decent filmmakers to continue to put stuff out. I recently attended a Q&A with Up in the Air and Juno director Jason Reitman who said that it’s harder to make your second movie than it is your first, as studios are always looking for the next, new great thing they can later exploit. Never has that been more true than today.

Film critics as well are becoming completely irrelevant if you weren’t a part of their fan base. Much as I love the guy, famed reviewer Roger Ebert has been giving flicks such as Death at a Funeral and The Losers 3 ½ star ratings and Cop Out and The Bounty Hunter critiques in the one-star range, yet people simply give him a laugh and see any of these without a care. If you’re a one-time or consistent reader of any of the reviews we put up on The Movie Banter I salute you, as you are part of an elite few. It pains us so to see Clash of the Titans succumb to a multi-million dollar total gross, week in and week out. People such as Peter Travers of Rolling Stone or Josh Tyler of Cinema Blend are only looking out for how you spend your money, and we as a nation gave Transformers five weeks in the top ten at the box office.

All is not lost, for we can still do much to save the dying independent brand. One of the things I love so of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook is the positive word-of-mouth a film can receive because of it. The Blair Witch Project, on a budget of $60,000 scraped up $140.5 million domestically alone. Paranormal Activity followed the same structure last year on a budget of $15,000, going beyond $190 million worldwide (though writer/director Oren Peli has fallen for Hollywood tricks, as a sequel is already planned for release later this year.) Precious, on a budget of $10 million, is circling $60 million around the globe; Up in the Air around twice that haul. Of course there’s always the Hurt Lockers of this race, though due to its best picture win at the Oscars this winter I know a numerous amount of people who now plan to check it out on DVD.

Miramax Studio’s demise hit me harder than Wall Street’s did. The foster home of Tarantino, the Coen brothers and quite often Scorsese was finally shut down by Disney last year after their two ’09 films Extract and Adventureland failed to ring up big bucks. It’s not the quality that’s been diminished of movies such as these, as many have begun to claim, it’s the risk. Put out a movie by Mike Judge or make durable bank on something starring Miley Cyrus? What also kills me is that Judge is likely circling another Beavis & Butt-Head movie just to make ends meet. Either buy into the Hollywood game or have a harder time finding someone to make your movie. Go big or go home. Indies like Extract are big in their own unique ways. They’re not given a chance to go big. Even after the wondrous success of the cheap, surprisingly witty Hangover last year director Todd Phillips is just starting production on a Hangover 2. Hollywood watches these numbers 24/7. I do like Phillips as a director, but I cannot in good judgment predict this pans out well in the long run.

Judd Apatow has constructed a beautiful model of no sequels or remakes, everything entirely original. The 40-Year-Old Virgin ballooned to triple-digit profits in 2005, and has since then been responsible for some of the most influential comedies to date. Step Brothers. Pineapple Express. The TV Set. Yet this past year his beautifully tragic Funny People was almost completely written off because word-of-mouth had it marked as “depressing” and “not funny”. It had the lowest opening weekend of anything that debuted at #1 that summer. You see, Funny People was way too far out of the norm for the mainstream to dig. Hollywood has them scared. The emotional realism of Apatow’s comedy was washed away with the like of G-Force and rival The Ugly Truth. Hollywood gave them a pacifier to suck on and told them to keep quiet.

I guess in the end the movie biz is all politics. Miramax tried hard enough and was taken to the alley by Disney to be put out of its misery. I still hold a good amount of hope. There’s such a big difference between people who want to make something and those who want to get credit for making something. Film critics, award ceremonies or epic movie studios don’t mean bullcrap. Everything concludes with your choice of what to see on a weekend evening: Hollywood’s latest IMAX 3D abortion your friends will probably be discussing or a small flick on the top floor of an AMC marquee? Get your heads out of your asses and grow a pair. Unless we take a stand now we’ll soon be seeing more Iron men and titans Clash than our wallets will be able to handle. Even in the off chance one of these blockbusters happens to be watchable, the quiet independents are quite often the ones that shriek the loudest. No matter how much extra you paid for those cinema speakers lined up against the theater wall.