Films: art or entertainment?

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what do you think? are movies/films art forms or just entertainment?

You forgot a box for both....

Armageddon and Transformers are nothing short of Entertainment.

Movies like Baraka, The Piano Teacher and Irreversible aren't really entertainment - they're art.

It's rare, but occasionally something (American Beauty?) slips through as both.

I regard a lot of "art" as pretentious drivel created by elitist jerks. The word "art" is invariably used to make a certain author, director or entertainment medium appear superior to everyone who in their view "panders to the masses".

In reality (at least in my reality), whether it's a novel, film, video game or comic book, and regardless of its genre (or lack of one), it's all just entertainment. Some of it is good entertainment, and some of it is bad. Some of it makes you think, and some of it doesn't. And usually that has nothing to do with whether or not anyone calls it art.

Well, there's no "just" in entertainment.

A good film should be primarily entertainment, or else it then slides into the realm of pretentious crap. But it is also an art form, and storytelling.

Both. Ideally, anyway. There are some films that aren't at all entertaining and some films that have no creative/artistic merit.

I need to be entertained by a film to appreciate its artistic merit, because films that aren't entertaining come across as pretentious BS to me, but if a film has no real creativity then it's a guilty pleasure at best.