no muller made a great point. The CGI in a film is only going to be as good as the filmmakers want to make it. But it also has a lot to do with the audience the film is geared towards. Flicks like "Anaconda" and "The Mummy" are aimed more towards younger audiences than anything else. Young teenagers (for the most part) just want the cool action scenes and don't pay much attention to the quality of the CGI (Boogeyman is a good example).

One director who's taken quite a liking to CGI that I personally dispprove of is Steven Speilberg. Minority Report and War of the Worlds relied almost entirely on CGI, and both of those movies are pretty terrible. With Munich he was more focused on telling a story well, and the CGI effects are minimal to none.

I would say CGI pretty much ruined Land Of The Dead and Ichi The Killer. It looked so horribly fake in those two. I think that using makeup and artificial gore and all that is like an art, and betters a movie. thats why im into a whole bunch of underground ones, because they dont use CGI. you can also really appreciate what they did with the little budget that they had, and wonder about how they did the efffect.

the worst example of CGI i've ever seen was in an otherwise decent movie : Zatôichi

i've also seen amazing CGI in dino and other big creature effects ..

i think the rule of thumb would be - use it when absolutely neccessary (an otherwise impossible shot) or not at all.

it shouldnt be a substitute for imagination - but there's no way in hell i want to see a dinosaur movie without it.

Zatoichi with that horrible cgi blood... bah still a good movie though. Same with Land of the Dead I liked it despite. For me effects don't matter as much because I can still watch a great 30s movie with awful special effects and love it just as much if not more as I do today. Hell, Army of Darkness has some awful effects but I don't care because I like the movie. I knock a few points off for bad cgi for sure but I could never let it stand in the way of a good movie.

Re: CGI Isn't Scary
 

i agree the american "grudge" stunk but i believe bad c.g. was the least of it's problems.

c.g. is just a tool...there's no way it can tell a story(despite what george lucas thinks)it's simply a means of fleshing it out.at it's best it's subtle and nuanced...hell maybe even a completely believable supporting character.at it's worst it's "american werewolf in paris" or something of that ilk.