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15 Great Moments From Otherwise Average Movies

According to the 2015 Guinness Book of Records, approximately 10,048 movies were released worldwide in 2013. Chris Hyams, founder of film festival submission company B-Side Entertainment, has even guessed that the yearly figure is more like 50,000, if all the independent, short and art-house movies are included. That’s 137 movies a day – or just short of six per hour. And yet, how many of these movies are celebrated for being great? The most official/brutal answer, if we go with the powers that be over at The Academy, is 10.

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Average means mediocre. It means regular, ordinary….unexceptional. An average movie that can’t generally have had enough of what would have elevated it to the status of ‘great.’

But, it must have had something that kept it from the turkey list. And this is where all those other movies – the reams and reams of them – that didn’t make it into Oscar territory, or get given a giant, spray-painted summer fruit, can finally have their day. In the recognition of those moments within them in which genuinely good filmmaking suddenly appears. These moments may be fleeting (thank God for the modern DVD pause/rewind functions), but they are often there, and they stand out against backgrounds of otherwise spectacular mediocrity.

By defining an average movie as one that won neither an Oscar nor a Razzie, there is obviously an enormous sliding scale within the range. 2014’s Wild, for example, may not have been nominated for an Oscar, but this was a year in which I, Frankenstein and The Expendables 3 also came out; in comparison to these train-wrecks, movies such as Wild have every right to refuse to be in the same room.

Also, opinions on movies will always vary, however they have generally been received. There may have been some people who enjoyed Sex Tape, or The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II (although these people might want to go and sit in a corner and have a good hard think about what they’ve done). On the other hand, Birdman was not for everyone.

For these reasons, some of the movies on this list may well divide opinion as to whether they deserve to be among the others. This is entirely understandable, but – crucially – the movies included here are not meant to be compared to each other. The only thing they have in common is how they have been judged as an “average” movie. The criteria is simply that they received mixed reviews, and if we mix all their mixed reviews together we get – mixed reviews.

With that definition in mind then, here are 15 great movie moments – ranging through comedic, dramatic, moving, weird and visionary – that are just enough to keep their respective movies in the awkward but good-company realm of the decidedly, most definitely….ok.