Usually when I'm not enjoying a movie to a certain extent, especially a critically acclaimed one, I just accept the fact that I'm completely missing something, but don't begrudge the film or filmmaker. I don't even take the line of "oh I appreciated it, but didn't enjoy it," I'll just straight up admit that I completely missed whatever the filmmaker was going for.

It's pretty rare that I'll be completely lost as to a popular or acclaimed film's appeal, but when I watched Tokyo Story, and more recently Toni Erdmann, I was able to follow the stories and recognize the character dynamics, but whatever reason these are supposed to be interesting or enlightening or entertaining was completely lost on me.

But my reaction isn't to go and say "oh those movies are overrated," rather I just acknowledge that I either don't have the context or cinematic vocabulary to understand what a filmmaker was going for, or maybe just wasn't quite in the right mood for it (which might have been the case with Toni Erdmann, as I saw it right after work without having eaten since lunch, so when my thoughts became dominated by dinner options rather than the proceedings onscreen, I realized that I might not have made the best decision).