I used to be a big believer in the potential 3D movies, but over the years, my enthusiasm has definitely cooled.
For one thing, as Ebert said, "all movies are in 3D." When one is engrossed in the artistic experience of a good movie, one's brain accepts the 2D image as a representation of reality/3D. If you're watching the final scene of
Casablanca, and find yourself wishing the plane in the background was depicted in 3D, you're watching
Casablanca wrong.
Fast motion looks blurry in 3D, whether real or simulated, because our eyeballs are physically re-focusing to keep up. The best 3D filmmakers actually adjust the depth of consecutive shots to compensate for this, but it's a biological limitation. Therefore, for particularly fast action (say, a soaring basketball, or a flurry of fists), a 2D screen actually improves on stereoscopic depth. (For my second viewing of
Ant-Man and the Wasp, I went with 3D, figuring the shrinking/expanding element would make it a perfect fit, but, because the movement of that movie is so quick, the stereoscopy wound up being a hindrance as well as an enhancement.)
The novelty of 3D wears off, and fairly quickly. Watching a movie's studio logos fly around is exhilarating, and seeing actors' noses protrude toward the camera in a close-up shot is fun. After a while, though, the studio logos are long gone, and one is simply repeatedly noticing peoples' noses.
So, what sort of content works best in 3D? Perhaps counter-intuitively, talky dramas with several people in the same shot, and infrequent edits - scenes set in, say, a courtroom, a starship bridge, or an office. Performances, especially dance (ballet, acrobatics, etc.). And, stuff less than an hour long: the first two seasons of
Westworld could be great in stereo, as could shows like
Community and
The Good Place. Trouble is, by far the best way to experience 3D is with dual projectors and polarized glasses, and, while that's technologically feasible for a home setup, unless one
loooooves stereoscopic comic book movies, there just isn't enough available content to justify such an investment.
As for big-screen movies, I do think there's a place for the occasional 3D film, but it definitely helps when the story invovles an element of exploration (
Avatar and
Prometheus being prime examples.) Animation probably works quite well. And it could be neat to see a fairly ordinary movie, such as a simple rom-com or indie drama, get a 3D release for the heck of it - as in, something more ordinary than
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.
In conclusion:
.