*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Wednesday, December 14th, 2016 7:00pm PST - promote requested by JiggaJonson.

So... has nerdwriter ever made an even "passable" movie?
(or even just written one, if not directed/produced/etc?)

1st world problems = "All of our movies aren't GREAT like they should be."

Maybe he has, maybe not, why does it matter?

You can criticise something without being able to create it. I've never written a book, but I can tell bad writing.

And you have entirely missed the point.
It's not that all movies should be great, but they should at least try. If you continually aspire to mediocrity, then an avalanche of mediocrity is what you get.

What he's talking about here is "cliche", but cliche's have themselves become so cliche, it's no longer effective to use that term to describe them.
This same phenomenon is found extremely widely in literature and music. I stumbled onto this following college, after being trained to have a critical eye for creative work, when I found myself hating everything that humans produced but not understanding why.
My personal theory is that 1) we've not yet learned to teach creators how to identify and cultivate truly unique ideas, and 2) the structure of our current systems for fostering creative work require said work to appeal fundamentally to the largest possible audience, which is easiest when a universal language (visual, auditory or written) exists.
We're trained to build on existing ideas, which is critical for success, but not how to reject established ideas and instead find new ones that are capable of maintaining familiarity, or communicating their core concepts without need of educating the audience.
It's an interesting evolution of process that I'm sure we can find in other areas of the human experience, beyond the field of creative media.

I agree with ChaosEngine here, you don't have to be a chef to recognize puke on a plate.

And, on an entirely different bent, if you needed to be able to create something to critique it, nobody would ever be able to critique a big-budget movie, because nobody can make one of them, it takes a huge team.

Finally http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3943342/

So there. He has written, directed, edited, and even done sound work. (though to be honest, I have a bigger profile on IMDB than him, and I'm not exactly well-known)

Thanks for the pointer. Looks like his movie is available on Vimeo- https://vimeo.com/16598921
(24 min, b&w)

And I never said that nerdwriter (or anyone else) isn't allowed to criticize movies.

My point is that anyone looking for art in modern movies will inevitably be disappointed. The art in filmmaking has been replaced with business. And like @artician mentions above, creative work has to appeal to a large audience.

I'm not saying that there aren't any well made artful movies anymore, just that the ratio of those to hollywood-factory-churned-mediocre-fest movies is steadily decreasing.