Cutscenes

Cutscenes... They are in almost every game. Some of them are casted by real people, some are animated. Some are really long while others are short... In short terms, cutscenes are like mini-movies sometimes.

What are your favorite cutscenes? Do you think they are important for the story? What do you like about them and what not? Which cutscenes do you dislike?

That depends on the kind of game.
If the game is heavy in terms of story, I say the cutscenes are called for. A couple good examples would be the Myst games, or many JRPG's, such as Final Fantasy or Fire Emblem.
In a game that is more straightforward, like the Super Mario games, very few cutscenes are needed due to having very little story and, for the most part, no actual dialogue.
However, cutscenes can be taken the wrong way as well. One infamous example is Metroid: Other M, which had far too much focus on the story and its cutscenes. Another would be the Zelda CD-i games; those cutscenes were too distracting and cheesy to work.
In the end, I really enjoy watching well put together cutscenes, one particular favorite being Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I don't necessarily care for the ones that simply just use the game engine to animate the characters. I enjoy them better when they are CGI-made, which helps have the characters feel more real and alive.

I really enjoy the cutscenes from the Professor Layton series. They add so much to the games and make the characters feel so much more... alive. Super Smash Bros. Brawl was another game that has great cutscenes... it's great seeing how all the characters from all Nintendo's main series interact.

I don't care what genre the game is or how important or not important the cutscenes are, I ALWAYS watch them! I believe any form of video that is played during gameplay adds to the story even if only a little. Games seem to be short enough already so anything that adds time and content to the story I enjoy quite a lot.

Same here, i love watching cutscenes... It adds so much to the story imo.
I really love the cutscenes from StarCraft 2.. It looks like a movie, but its animated too.. So beautiful... and it gets you emotionally too sometimes.