[icebraining]

Movies seem to really be hollowing out the middle more. You've got a lot of very low-budget fliers and indie prestige stuff and a lot of $100M+ mega-movies, drifting now into attempts at Marvel-esque cinematic universe perpetual money-printing machines for increasingly dubious IPs.

I'm not sure I agree. Those two types have certainly risen, but if you look at films from last year, there a are still a ton of "middle" films with decent budgets (10-30M) and high praise from the critics - Selma, Spotlight, Carol, The Big Short, etc. I don't see a hollow middle.

[ghaff]

I pretty much agree. Honestly, even with the ready availability of rather low cost digital cameras, editing software, etc. it still takes a pretty decent budget to create something that really looks "professional." Certainly there are some indie/art films (perhaps especially documentaries) that stand out but most true low budget looks it and is probably hard to fully appreciate it outside of the smallish demographic that's into that kind of thing.

[douche]

All of those are Oscar-bait prestige pictures. They aren't really aimed at the middle.

[nl]

So, except for good expensive movies, good indie budget movies and good middle budget movies all movies are crap?

That's sounding a little bit like Sturgeon's law.