A major shift in my reading habit occurred as soon as I left school - reading up as much as I could of any author that I found interesting. As much of his/her work as I could lay my hands on. The same with music. And then movies, chasing up directors.

Guess I realized that ... +

... I was no longer interested in WHAT they were telling me/showing me. What hooked me was HOW they saw those things and HOW they decided to express what they felt about them.

The writing or the music or the film was just a vehicle for insight into the auteur's mind.
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A consequence of this, though, has been a decided avowal of whatever is being "talked about" currently. Or is "celebrated".

I think this came into sharp focus when I recently allowed myself to watch 'Three Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri' without ... +

... checking up on it (it's rare that I allow stuff randomly to take up my attention for any length of time; there's an asymmetry here - I reserve the right to direct my full attention towards any random thing).

There's an interesting turn of phrase in a review I read later -
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- that captured it brilliantly: "McDonagh is also too obvious at carpentering his plot points, such as they are".

And that's what I saw it as - a 'sophisticated' (actually, more of polish and less of sophistication) "performance". For the approval. From those of his kind.
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The director, for sure, knew what he was doing. Which is what was the problem for me. This was calibrated. Designed for the effect it elicited. From those that it elicited.

One reason for iritation is the intended manipulation of viewer response. What makes it worse is ... +

... projecting it as some sort of high artistic or intellectual endeavour. The sophistication is, unfortunately, limited to how the surface is polished.

There's a word that's resonant with what I seem to recognize here: 'vapidity'.

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On an not unrelated aside, I've often wondered if we have the wrong kind of emotional associations with the word 'disillusionment'. Isn't that, actually, a great thing? (Provided, of course, one has the emotional maturity to ride out the initial sense of disappointment).