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So Many Good Bad Films in the Junkyard
On Katharine Coldiron’s ‘Junk Film’
Katharine Coldiron just released Junk Film: Why Bad Movies Matter (Castle Bridge Media, May 2, 2023). Sometimes I preorder ebooks and they show up on my devices on their publication day, surprising and disorienting me, as if I were in a roughly scripted short film featuring my own e-library, an experience I do not mind and rather enjoy.
You Can Like Bad Art
Just because you enjoy a film doesn’t mean you think it’s good. “I’m not dragging things home from the junkyard to clean them up,” Coldiron clarifies. “I’m going to the junkyard and yelling at the assembled crows about what I see in the piles.”
While she isn’t primarily interested in trying to “define ‘good’ and ‘bad’,” it’s sort of unavoidable that she give us an operative definition so we know which art we’re looking at.
OK, so—a good movie succeeds at what it’s trying to accomplish, while a bad movie fails at its own goals and is “unconvincing as a movie.”
