bohemian slapfight

I can no longer tell if movies are being serious. I used to be able to watch trailers and say, “This is clearly a parody” or “This is just a bad movie.” But, these days, the gap between the two has become so blurry and thin, I’m like Nathan Poe, looking for some kind of winking emoticon that let’s me know what’s what. So many people will say that they love movies like Machete and Drive Angry and Snakes On A Plane “ironically” which is absolutely meaningless to me because A) I’m kinda dumb, B) irony as a concept was murdered by the Internet years ago and C) I only know how to like movies or hate movies genuinely. Some filmmakers are embracing this idea of movies being designed to be consumed ironically, while other filmmakers are just making shitty movies. And the frustrating thing is that there is no observable difference between the two. Once upon a time, I could finish watching a trailer and my only thought would either be “That was good” or “That was bad.” Now, I watch most trailers and I just scratch my head, thinking, “Hey, filmmakers: Did you really mean that? Do you think shooting a movie where Nicolas Cage has sex on a motorcycle while he shoots machine guns is a genuinely good idea, or a patently ridiculous (and therefore ‘ironically’ good) idea? Is any of this a joke?