It's around. There's lots of film sites that have a lot to say on such things. I believe http://www.filmsite.org/index.html <--this link has a lot of materials that can help explain such things, including a rather good essay on how to approach film criticism, though it's approach is not necessarily for casual viewing... It can still help, though.

Also if you read a lot of professional reviews as Ebert's or Ansen's or the like, they can tend to point out things like that and weigh them on how they work with other elements to make the film good or bad.

If you're really interested, there's all sorts of discussion forums and stuff around films. You could always come to ambidextrouspics.com and chat on the board that I moderate! Most of the people there are aspiring filmmakers but have an eye for just enjoying film as it was without getting too obsessed with film as an art. It would be nice to see some new faces there, especially from this crowd.

--PolarisDiB

Blair Witch Project, The is the absolute worst movie ever. We waited and waited and waited for the payoff. We got so bored we missed the dramatic ending. When we rented the movie from Blockbuster they handed us another video as a bonus. We thought was free movie to keep. We owed close to $ 20 in late fees for the bonus video we never watched. We almost threw out the bonus video. We were so pissed we threatened to sue and we made such a racket on a busy Friday that they canceled the late fee just to shut us up. [X-(]

Another good resource is the commentary track on many DVDs, especially those for classic films. I personally learned a lot from the commentary tracks Criterion did for its DVDs of Kurosawa's films. The commentary track for the Citizen Kane DVD also has some illuminating shot-by-shot analysis by Roger Ebert and Peter Bogdanovich. There are also magazines devoted to detailed analysis of film directing--check college libraries and large public libraries in your area. You can also check used-book stores and websites for film-school textbooks. There's so much more to making a movie than just pointing a camera and shouting "Action!" and learning about the craft of film-making adds to your enjoyment of a really good movie.

Sumytra: If you're going to use DVD extras to learn a lot, find DVDs of Robert Rodriguez's movies (The Mariachi trilogy: El Mariachi, Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico; From Dusk Till Dawn; Spy Kids). On most of them he has an extra he calls "10 minute film school" (Or was it thirty minutes?) where he discusses how he made movies and teaches techniques and stuff. His movies may not be very good, but Rodriguez is a very inspiring filmmaker who focuses a lot of his energy in showing other people how they can be a filmmaker too...

--PolarisDiB

Dune- the only movie I haven't been able to sit through AND the only movie where I've fallen asleep (in attempt to try and watch it again).