A list of grievances against current movie offerings.

Hollywoodland's Kim Masters recently basked in the Tinseltown pastime of interviewing industry titans eager to explain other studios' box-office failures. The movie at issue is Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton, starring George Clooney.

Fraysters offered up various verdicts, ranging from the bland title to Clooney himself.

The disconnect between Hollywood and its audience emerged as the most recurrent theme of discussion. Normdepalma specifically targets the critics who "live in a cocoon and reflexively consider any anti business film to be accurate, layered, sophisticated etc... On the other hand, many audience members recognized this film to be an inaccurate and sophmoric portrayal of business and law. This led to poor word of mouth."

More to the point, the serious, politically driven movie fare currently being churned out in abundance is out of sync with the national mood. Enough with the gritty realities "we live everyday," what about the escapism that movies traditionally provide, wonders jinkyjoy?

Papajon_s1 declares himself "done with the movies that shove a political or social or 'causal' message down your throat." Alittlesense is similarly wary of " 'message' pictures that have the subtlety of a concrete block dropping from 5 stories up."

Then there is formula fatigue. "Give me a little variety and the occasional surprise, and I'll go see the actor," imploresChasmosaur.

Many lay the weak b.o. performance at the feet of Clooney's "pugnacious" political activism, which fensterlips suspects deterred more than one would-be moviegoing couple from "running out and spending $50 at a theater" to see him in Clayton.

Speaking of cost, try making movies a little more affordable for families, too, adds mother of six nikitif13. Theaters might actually sell more tickets.

If you're struggling in general with the deluge of Oscar-motivated offerings, DakotaJay's system of triage  divides upcoming releases into three categories: "1) Hate it…2) NetFlickit…3)See it in the theater." According to this regime, Clayton "falls squarely" into number two. For lucabrisi, this type of viewer sentiment is no accident, but anticipated by the studio in its marketing strategy:

The theatrical run of "mature entertainment" is generally designed to create a "theatrical aura" for the movie, earn first dollars and -- hopefully and occasionally with the right movie -- generate hit money during the theatrical release ("Sideways," "Crash," "Million Dollar Baby")