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No More Movies

• imbnwa 5y ago
  I feel like this will happen if you watch 74 movies a year that you've never seen before. Even when I had time to engross myself in international cinema in the mid 00s with none of today's level of distraction I wasn't hitting 74 a year and that was with Netflix DVDs and a membership with a few private BT trackers and DC++ on top (of course one had to wait hours to days to pull things down). I think that the real ceiling for quality content, film or no, is the writing and there's no way to generate more high-quality writers on demand. Editing? You can walk down a street in Brooklyn and find an editor no problem. Cinematography? Art schools produce tons of people who are good at taking pretty pictures. But there's only one Charlie Kaufman. There's only one Aaron Sorkin. There's only one Quintin Tarantino. There's just the Coen Brothers. No amount of art school or trial and error can make you a compelling writer. So we're at a point where there's an abundance of people who can help you make a movie technically, an abundance of people who will finance a movie, an abundance of people who will act in your movie (everyone I remember from the 90s is still available as an actor on top of everyone else trying to be one) but just not an abundance of good writers and that'll probably always be true.
  • jldugger 5y ago
    > I think that the real ceiling for quality content, film or no, is the writing and there's no way to generate more high-quality writers on demand. Pretty sure there's a decent number of writers out there in the world beyond the handful you mentioned, and plenty more trying to break in. For example, somehow you failed to mention any women writers.
  • hashhar 5y ago
    What makes the writers more special than cinematographers, audio engineers, set designers, editors. Each of these skills can be learned and each of these also have some level of personal creativity and discovery that can't be learned and is intrinsic to a person.
    • socialist_coder 5y ago
      If you have a bad writer, no amount of good other stuff can salvage your movie. Not true for the other roles.
      • tkgally 5y ago
        I basically stopped watching movies a long time ago—I was never much of a cinephile to begin with—but last week, out of either boredom or curiosity, I streamed a Hollywood blockbuster from the 2000s that I had read about somewhere. What struck me most was how the action scenes, editing, costuming, sets, casting, and acting all seemed—to my nonexpert eye—to have been carefully and professionally done, while the storytelling was horrible: implausible, unnatural, and full of obvious holes. The story didn’t need to be great literature, but it should not have been hard to make the pieces fit together in a way that made sense. I don't know whether to blame the writers, the director, or the commercial motivation for making the film. This particular movie was obviously intended to lead to spinoffs in video games and other forms of merchandising, and that may have influenced the editing in a way that garbled the story.
        • underwater 5y ago
          There has been huge trend from the audience towards overanalysing plots and story details. Specifically, to analyse them independently from the emotional and storytelling aspects. Jump onto reddit and you see everyone ripping apart the details of Star Wars, the Marvel Universe, Chris Nolan films, etc. I think that this is a mistake. The point of the plot is to support the story. It doesn't matter if it's logical if it makes you feel something powerful. The plot needs to be strong enough to hold up during the running of the film when the viewer immersed in the story.
      • bryanrasmussen 5y ago
        >If you have a bad writer, no amount of good other stuff can salvage your movie. no, if you have good actors they can make your bad writing in some ways standable. There is the whole "so bad it's good movie" which is generally because the actors manage to make the badness bearable. Con Air and The Rock were not written by a writer as good as the ones you mentioned but they did have the right actors to make those movies really enjoyable for a lot of people. I would submit the actors salvaged those movies.
  • tsimionescu 5y ago
    I don't think writing is special compared to other arts. Sure, there are many editors and cinematographers, but there are very few who can actually make an interesting edit, or interesting cinematography. Similarly, there are many writers in the world, but only a handful of really great ones, even fewer great writers who know how to write for film (being a great novelist doesn't mean you'll automatically be great, or even good, at writing a great screenplay).
    • imbnwa 5y ago
      > Similarly, there are many writers in the world, but only a handful of really great ones, even fewer great writers who know how to write for film There's cool editing and shooting on reddit filmmaking subs not to mention the super competitive music video market for cinematographers and editors > Similarly, there are many writers in the world, but only a handful of really great ones, even fewer great writers who know how to write for film I feel like this is what I indicated as well.
      • tsimionescu 5y ago
        > There's cool editing and shooting on reddit filmmaking subs not to mention the super competitive music video market for cinematographers and editors There's cool writing on reddit writing subs as well. Nice snippets do not a great whole movie make, in any part of the art form.
  • FourthProtocol 5y ago
    Almost anything can be learnt, including writing well. Unfortunately, today’s incentive for anything is money, and Hollywood is no exception. And so we've fed a diet of trite, banal, and contrived writing because it fits the now-established recipe for box office returns.
  • 1980phipsi 5y ago
    Agree 100%. There are only so many good writers out there. Notice who the writers are on your favorite TV shows and then what happens to the quality of said TV show when the writers switch to other projects.
  • TheCoelacanth 5y ago
    I think the bottleneck you're describing isn't "writing" but creators who will be trusted with a $X0 million budget without excessive oversight. Sorkin or Tarantino get the leeway to create something without executives second-guessing every little decision, most people, even very talented people won't. There are tons of talented writers producing things, but in a less expensive medium. The cost to produce a novel is literally 0.1% of a Hollywood movie. There is a lot more freedom to work there than when you're spending tens of millions of dollars.
• ardit33 5y ago
  Movies in the 90s and early 2000's were much better than the garbage we get today. From T2, to Jurassic Park, to the Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Pulp Fiction, Eyes Wide Shut, Fight Club, Cruel Intentions, Mean Girls, 5th Element, Independence Day, etc.. etc.. Something happened after 2007-2008, perhaps it was the shift to digital, where filmmakers started relying more and more on special effects, and less on good acting and storytelling. The first Iron Man and Avengers were great, but then the formula got very repetitive. None of the DC movies were good, Fast and the Furious are the same story on repeat, both comedies and romantic movies became dumber/more simplistic etc.. etc.. Movies became more like a circus show of forgettable digital effects and less about a good story that teaches something or leaves an impression. I think streaming might be part of the problem (just lots of churn of a large quantity of low quality movies), but also the box industry started revolving too much around few large franchises, and everything else became a low budget niche. I think there were still few good movies (Interstellar, Gone Girl, Midsommar, and Parasite), but still much fewer than the previous generation (91-2007), which I think it was a golden time for the movies.
  • JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Hmmm.... I guess it is when you grew up? I thought the 70's were king for U.S. filmmakers. And 70's sci-fi was some of the best. Until "Star Wars" came along and killed it. I loved "Star Wars" when it came out, was blown away. But in hindsight I am sad to see it was marked the end of 70's sci-fi. And then "Raiders of the Lost Ark", which I loved, was more or less the modern blueprint for all the crap that has come out since. It represents a storyboard approach to the screenplay/film: basically action sequences tied together with a thin thread of plot. The various "Pirates of the Caribbean" are classic examples of the rot that followed as are every superhero film, every "Fast and Furious" film, "Transformers", etc. I don't have the cycles to spend on all the "streamed content" that HBO, Netflix, etc. are cranking out now so I can't comment on whether "TV" is better these days.
    • tsimionescu 5y ago
      You're focusing on a very specific niche. Sci-fi and adventure were rarely the interest of good film makers, so few sci-fi or adventure films were made. But that does not reflect on the larger film industry of the 80s and 90s, which was producing many more incredible movies which stood the test of time. 1999 alone gave us Fight Club, The Talented Mr Ripley, Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, The Iron Giant, Eyes Wide Shut, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, The Green Mile. There has always been a lot of schlock cinema being produced, but right now it is dominating much more than in the last few decades.
• clydethefrog 5y ago
  Reading between the lines it seems the writer has mainly watched American movies that are easily accessible. I recommend instead of scrolling through the Amazon catalogue like he described, he might want to see if there is a local film festival that screens world cinema. Cinema from other parts of the world for me often leads to great new perspectives and insights. Outside of Hollywood there is plenty of auteurs and refreshing cinema happening. Or take a deep dive into the best of the best without the American lens with lists like the TSPDT. https://www.theyshootpictures.com/ https://www.theyshootpictures.com/
  • samastur 5y ago
    That was exactly my reading. I watched 75 films so far this year, most of them obscure at least in a sense that I had to make an effort to get them and while not all of them were great, a lot of them were interesting and that's after four decades of watching movies and seeing surely more thousands of them. I am sure I would feel similar to the article's author if I limited my choice only to what streaming services offer.
    • ehnto 5y ago
      I think interesting and competent is what you might strive for after you've consumed enough of a type of media. You see it in music and video games too. Eventually the big hits and blockbuster games are all pretty boring, if you're an engaged consumer of the medium, you'll start looking for more novel ways to be interested, and start appreciating competency more than you used to.
  • drenvuk 5y ago
    Maybe? I'm willing to bet that after 810+ movies he'll have seen all of the tropes and techniques trotted out by those outside of Hollywood. How many ways can you really tell a compelling story or possibly show an artistic experience?
    • kijin 5y ago
      As long as you're not overly obsessed with identifying every variation of a cliche, there's plenty to enjoy. The stories will have different backdrops, and they can proceed in ways that foreigners might find quite unexpected. Different cultures have different assumptions about how to make a love story truly romantic, what's funny or weird, or what counts as a faux pas that eventually dooms the protagonist. Even the same trope can be executed very differently because of these factors. The cinematography will be different. The music will be different -- Bollywood BGM feels very different from K-Pop. The fact that you'll be reading subtitles all the time will certainly make for a fresh experience, especially when you're listening to something like Japanese where the sentence structure makes it difficult to translate the timing of the punchline into English. Action sequences will emphasize different things, often because of budget or location constraints, but sometimes simply because there was a local fad for something. There will be references to local traditions, literature, and historic events that make really interesting rabbit holes to follow.
• Sebguer 5y ago
  The self-censorship point is completely ridiculous, and borders on complaining about "cancel culture'. It literally mentions Superbad as an example of a film that can't be made today, entirely ignoring that it got a spiritual successor two years ago in Booksmart, which was amazingly funny without punching down.
  • JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Agree. Something like "Borat" could totally be made today. I'm not sure what they are on about.
    • TylerGlaiel 5y ago
      yeah, they literally made a borat sequel last year. Eric Andre also released a very borat-inspired movie recently that was also great. its a dumb point
      • OhSoHumble 5y ago
        I'm neither for or against the author's argument. However, he addresses the fact that a Borat sequel was made by saying that it succeeded because the director is already successful and it's a sequel to an already successful comedy. I don't think the author's argument is that comedies can't be made but more that we're seeing less of them because there is more cultural friction today and that prevents aspiring directors from branching out.
        • sellyme 5y ago
          > I don't think the author's argument is that comedies can't be made They literally say "Borat could not be made today". Trying to justify that in a footnote has the same energy as advertising "Our product cures cancer*" and then having "*no it doesn't" on the back of the box. It's just an egregiously false statement. Maybe that wasn't their argument - they do emphasise the importance of being an established director, and that's a fair thing to assess. But when someone finds themselves having to add a footnote saying "When I said this couldn't be made today, I was ignoring that it was", that should probably be a hint that the argument actually being presented is pretty poor.
• tehnub 5y ago
  Roger Ebert wrote an essay [0] in 1992 reflecting on his career as a critic. He writes >In the past 25 years I have probably seen 10,000 movies and reviewed 6,000 of them. I have forgotten most of those films, I hope, but I remember those worth remembering, and they are all on the same shelf in my mind. Overall, he seems never to have lost the joy of watching movies. A relevant quote: >When you go to the movies every day, it sometimes seems as if the movies are more mediocre than ever, more craven and cowardly, more skillfully manufactured to pander to the lowest tastes, instead of educating them. Then you see something absolutely miraculous. Something like "Wings of Desire," or "Do the Right Thing," or "Drugstore Cowboy," or "Gates of Heaven," or "Beauty and the Beast," or "Life Is Sweet," and on your way home through the White Hen Pantry you look distracted, as if you had just experienced some kind of a vision. [0]: https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/reflections-after-25-years-at-the-movies https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/reflections-after-25-...
  • slewis 5y ago
    Love this quote from Roger Ebert. Thanks for posting it. He was a great reviewer because he loved what he did. His passion came through in everything he wrote.
  • AtNightWeCode 5y ago
    Drugstore Cowboy. Good tip for op. Go watch some Gus Van Sant movies. Elephant is my favorite I think even if DC was the first I saw that got me.
    • tehnub 5y ago
      Ebert has a great review for Elephant too: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/elephant-2003 https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/elephant-2003
      • AtNightWeCode 5y ago
        Wow, that was really an excellent review. It is pretty spot on.
• dharmab 5y ago
  There is an alternate theory for why movies were more varied, creative and experimental from the late 80s until the 00s: The rise of Megaplexes, particularly AMC, which greatly increased the number of screens and showings available and made smaller, non-mainstream films economically viable. However, by the early 00s a sort of "movie screen bubble" had formed and weird movies declined again in favor of blockbusters. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-megaplex/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-megaplex/
• shubhamjain 5y ago
  I echo the sentiment. It has become harder and harder to find movies you truly like. When I was in late teens, I had made the goal to watch every good movie out there. So I quickly ran through hundreds of 8+ rated movies on IMDb and I liked most of them. Now, there are pretty good movies in 7+ rated class too, but they are often hit or miss. But it's not impossible to find them. There are hundreds of classic I still have to go through, but having watched the 8+ my expectations are high, and it's pretty difficult to match them. But still, I find myself appreciating little things in movies. For eg, Fantastic Planet (1973) doesn't have a smart plot per se, but I like how it reflects surrealism of the 70s and it's not the kind of movie that will ever be made again. The hardest thing is it's impossible to find recommendations that truly match my taste. Memories of Murder (2003) is rated 8+ on IMDb but I absolutely hated it. It's slow and pathetic. Misery (1990) on the other hand was A+ movie for me, but I almost found it accidentally.
• sadness3 5y ago
  I have been noticing in myself a sense of eroding novelty in all fiction, where every device of comedy and tragedy is becoming a familiarity. I think this is a kind of maturity, where continued fulfillment necessitates meaningful participation in the eternal drama of real Life.
• gwilikers 5y ago
  There is so much more to film than story, but story seems to be the author's focus (especially with point #3 and the Lynch footnote.) At a movie every 5 days for 11 years, though, I can't blame the author for burning out.
• mrdrozdov 5y ago
  I don’t know. I watch a similar amount of movies each year, and I still enjoy it. If anyone is looking for some more obscure recommendations, can check out The Dreamers, and Stilyagi. EDIT: I have to add that I reference movies a lot in conversation. Often, I’ll watch a movie then immediately call a family or friend to discuss some finer point. This happens frequently, sometimes for a fairly mundane movie detail. EDIT2: Now I really want to make a list of movies just from this year, since my number has definitely gone up since COVID. I think I’d easily break 100 in 2021 alone. EDIT3: Here’s a list from my Netflix history since June 1. Mix of TV and movies. I added Justice League Extended Edition and Replica even though they’re HBO because I watched them recently (within the last week). This isn’t really a representative list of my watching, plus I tend to watch a bunch of similar movies/shows, then switch to a new cluster. This group is particularly action heavy because I was playing a lot in the background recently while doing other work. All of these were fun! Even if I don’t think they are the best ever :)) Movies 2021 June-July Zack Snyder’s Justice League Replica The Take Darc American Assassin S.W.A.T. Sniper Legacy The Interpreter Redemption Extraction Spenser Confidential TV Biohackers Shooter Quantico Sweet Tooth Record of Ragnorak Bodyguard Hollywood
  • jasonladuke0311 5y ago
    I absolutely love SWAT. It feels like a movie they had fun making, and doesn't take itself very seriously.
  • mrdrozdov 5y ago
    Adding a few more from HBO and Amazon... Greenland The Little Things The Conjuring Killerman Ghost in the Shell (live action) Redline Sputnik
• jasonkester 5y ago
  One of the cool things about having kids is that you get to go through all the movies again from the start. I got to get all excited about Star Wars again. And Indiana Jones. And Back to the Future. One day soon they’ll be old enough for The Matrix. How cool will that be? I’m gonna get to watch Terminator with these guys for the first time one day. You also get all the old TV. We’re 4 seasons into The A-Team, and have watched every episode of The original Battlestar Galactica and a bunch of other series from the time when television was suitable for children. There’s tons of stuff out there. It’s cool too get a fresh start on it all.
  • mixmastamyk 5y ago
    I love it when a plan comes together. ;-)
  • pjerem 5y ago
    Same for video games ! And that’s the reason I’m all in for remakes : if we fail to create new interesting games (although we are not yet where the movie industry is), at least we can make the old marvels of some decades ago bearable again for the new kids. Well crafted remakes like the Spyro’s one are a breeze to share with nowadays kids and I truly hope we get more of them alongside new games.
  • bongoman37 5y ago
    Agree, I even started putting off movies at some point because I thought they would be cool to see with the kid so why waste the time now.
• noema 5y ago
  The author clearly has not tapped the goldmine of world cinema (or American film history for that matter) if Superbad is their paradigmatic case of a challenging film.
  • xxs 5y ago
    The essay is focused on the "American film".
• alichapman 5y ago
  For anyone who finds themselves getting bored scrolling through the film options on Netflix, or utterly disinterested in watching Marvel film #593 then I'd recommend Mubi [0]. It mainly shows independent films from around the world and it cycles through them relatively quickly - they add a new movie every day so there's always something you haven't considered watching yet. 0: https://mubi.com/showing https://mubi.com/showing
  • mattowen_uk 5y ago
    Netflix does an impressive job of hiding from you 90%+ of what it has available if it's algorithm decides you are not interested in those genres. However, there are plenty of sites out there that have compiled links to the thousands of genres that Netflix have categorised everything into. For example: https://www.finder.com/uk/netflix-around-the-world/genre-list https://www.finder.com/uk/netflix-around-the-world/genre-lis... I just wish Netflix would open up these lists to be browsable in their own UI.
    • brabel 5y ago
      I just search for random words sometimes and find really interesting movies that way :D sounds crazy but really works as you're really right: the algorithm, like YouTube, tends to show you all the same things you've already watched and probably got tired of already.
    • ant6n 5y ago
      I wonder what percentage of „movies and tv suck nowadays“ is just the poor discoverability on Netflix, Amazon, etc. Does Netflix license content with a pay per view model, so that they will get the content for those who are seeking it, but wont offer unless requested?
      • dragonwriter 5y ago
        > I wonder what percentage of „movies and tv suck nowadays“ is just the poor discoverability on Netflix, Amazon, etc. I wonder what percentage of it is people having both higher expectations of them (in part becaise of competing entertainment) and exhausting the supply of what they do like faster (binging, etc.)
• ChrisArchitect 5y ago
  Interesting piece that made me reflect on experiencing some similar feelings in my own life. The thing about Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad stuck out too. Reminded me (and I know this will go against many HNers and tech ppl) of anyone who watches YouTube. (Subscribes to channels/watches video games being played/watches personalities talk about stuff or them experiencing something etc). YouTube is horribly passive and alot seems like a cesspool of low bar content if you can even call it that with negative societal and cultural ramifications. I mostly steer clear of any long format/regularly posting YouTube content for that very reason. It irks me that guys who review gear or whatever have a million subscribers and while they might be ok ppl it's the subscribers that really are somewhat concerning spending that much time consuming consuming consuming drawn out passive content. Ugggh. Suppose this applies to 'Twitch streamers' very much so also. Anyways could go on but that element of the post garnered a thought anyways.
  • probably_wrong 5y ago
    I'd like to offer a different angle on this. You describe subscribers as "consuming consuming consuming drawn out passive content". But I think your analysis leaves aside those who go on to participate in related forums, create new content ranging from memes and comics to their own channels, discuss the ideas on Twitter, and so on. If anything, I believe the current generation is creating more than the previous one - not everyone has the energy to publish a book, but everyone can make a reaction comic. I'm personally not a fan of Twitch streams, but I do watch once in a while when I'm eating alone and want something to fill the silence. And I don't think it is any worse than what we had before - my nieces are learning that buying toys is fun, while at their age I was learning that war is a good solution to social problems and that it also leads to fun toys.
• gcanyon 5y ago
  Of course as you watch more and more movies (regardless of the time frame) there are going to be fewer and fewer that surprise you. That's just the birthday problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem translated into film concepts. It's on you, the viewer, to remain comfortable with familiarity, or to seek out the novel, like a person who is bored with fast food taking up Thai food -- maybe when they started out flavors that unusual would have seemed awful, but after your fortieth Big Mac, pad Thai seems interesting. Likewise after seeing many films, maybe The Lobster seems interesting.
• venamresm__ 5y ago
  I'm also going down that rabbit hole and I think the experience is mostly about getting out of a single mainstream cultural narrative and to increase cognitive diversity. This can be achieved by either watching movies from multiple different cultures or from completely different era. I've opted for both, and I've started writing reviews on my gopher[1] about the (mostly B&W and silent) movies I've been watching. I can clearly say, some of these are so impressive that they make contemporary movies (particularly Hollywood) look like slapstick jokes with a single plot. [1] gopher://g.nixers.net/0/~vnm/classic_movies Also available on proxies such as: https://proxy.vulpes.one/gopher/g.nixers.net/0/~vnm/classic_movies https://proxy.vulpes.one/gopher/g.nixers.net/0/~vnm/classic_...
  • arpa 5y ago
    Wow, thanks for the list!
• keiferski 5y ago
  His criticisms of contemporary American cinema are apt. But on an individual level, he just needs to watch more old movies and more foreign cinema. In my experience, many people can’t name more than one or two movies from Eastern Europe, USSR/Russia, Japan, Yugoslavia, Mexico, etc. Especially older movies from these places, which developed almost independently from Hollywood. Something like Solaris (Tarkovsky version) doesn’t quite have an equivalent Western sci-fi analogue. A couple sites I recommend are EasternEuropeanMovies.com and CriterionChannel.com. Tons of excellent old films.
  • yellow_lead 5y ago
    One of my favorite movies[1] is Chinese and I loved some of Tarkovsky's movies so I wholeheartedly agree. We are fortunate to have so much media available today. It's hard to believe someone can't find anymore good content. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Day%27s_Journey_into_Night_(2018_film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Day%27s_Journey_into_Ni... Has a 59 minute long cut at the end if anyone's into that kind of thing.
    • shannifin 5y ago
      And in 3D! A dying fad, but I enjoyed seeing how filmmakers utilized it. I thought it worked great for the long take.
  • mrob 5y ago
    Agreed. One of the best movies I've seen is "Tokyo Story" (1953, Yasujirō Ozu). I'd never seen anything else with cinematography like it (almost entirely static cameras, with actors looking directly at them), and the storytelling fits the Kishōtenketsu structure rather than the standard Western three-act structure. It's slow paced, with no action, but the novelty was enough to hold my attention until I engaged with the story, and then I wasn't bored at all. Film critics rate it very highly, and I can see why.
  • mabub24 5y ago
    I agree, it sounds like this person either 1) hasn't looked very hard and is relying on streaming services to feed him a selection of movies, or 2) has no interest or experience with "world" cinema. Stuff like Aleksei German's Hard to be A God, Edward Yang's A Better Summer's Day, Maren Ade's Toni Erdman, or Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love, are recent movies that are incredible and very different from Hollywood style movies. They're long, not in English, and situate the viewer in a different cultural context that requires some effort for understanding, but the payoff is immense. They are movies you can get lost in. Also Toni Erdman is the last comedy movie I watched where I truly came close to pissing myself from laughing so hard.
• sudeepj 5y ago
  The rate of consumption is way greater than rate at which new/creative/interesting content can be created. With improvement in tech (e.g internet speeds) and new accessibility nodes (like streaming services) the rate of consumption has increased even more. After few years the same thing will happen to TV-series as well (e.g. [1]) [1] Game Of Thrones explored and doubled down on grey characters. Now, a lot of others will do it and it will become a trope.
• ArmandGrillet 5y ago
  > Every couple of days I curl up on the couch at 10pm, scroll through Amazon Prime video, and pick something to see. Here is the main problem. After having seen most of the classics, the best you can do is just take a break and wait for the next big release that will make your eyes sparkle. Drowning your soul into the endless pit that is Amazon Prime Video or Netflix is a fantastic way to waste time and lose faith in the industry. The article also doesn't speak much about direction and acting. I appreciate some actors and directors and would see movies for them, and even if it doesn't blow my mind it will often be like seeing an old friend telling me a new story in a way that I enjoy. Of course, being amazed watching movies like Werk ohne Autor or Ex Machina happens once a year at best now, but people (not algorithms) on the Internet can help anyone spotting such gems easily without wasting too much time on average content.
  • darkteflon 5y ago
    > Werk ohne Autor [Never Look Away (2018)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5311542/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5311542/) Looks good, thanks for the rec.
• runarberg 5y ago
  > Over the past decade, we’ve become touchy about what’s okay to say or laugh at. Borat could not be made today Lindsay Ellis had a pretty good refute to when people say this about Mel Brooks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE
  • jhgb 5y ago
    No TL;DW for a 40 minute video?
    • runarberg 5y ago
      If you are unfamiliar with Lindsey Ellis, she is a popular media/cultural critic. Probably most famous for her breakdown of the Hobbit movies as well as Disney animations. Her reviews are often more positive then what you would expect from a more traditional film critic, but do point out troublesome aspects of media as well as the culture around it. I’m not a media critic my self and will do a terrible job summarizing her point in a paragraph, a point which took her weeks to formulate, film and edit to a 40 minute video essay. My gist is that people reacted just as badly to Mel Brooks back in his days to his movies as the supposed ‘twitter mob’ does today. Mel Brooks even set him self some boundaries about which lines he shouldn’t cross, what not to make fun of etc. Mel Brooks even criticized other film makers for stepping over their boundaries in a subject matter that was too sensitive. That is, if you couldn’t make a Mel Brooks movie today, then you couldn’t make a Mel Brooks movie back then either.
• wellthisisgreat 5y ago
  I remember reading once about Bunuel having a small room with couch and a giant Miro painting in his apartment. Bunuel would take a drink and sit on that couch and look at that Miro for a couple hours, his mind doing the work. It is common to read in XIXth century literature (Dostoevsky comes to mind) how even characters portrayed as somewhat shallow would spend an hour or two in front of some famous (as in 'in vogue') Old Master's painting, constructing the internal dialogue with the creator. The piece in this text about passive consumption of media being bad for the... soul(?) reads like something from a person who failed to perform the mental work necessary to perceive "passive consumption" as something active, inspiring and enriching. After seeing Superbad or Deadpool (that in the context of cinema possess the cultural significance of screensavers) used as a reference with a mention of Eyes Wide Shut as a peak viewership effort, it is really upsetting to see piece this get traction on Hackernews. Coming across this text after a randomly encountered masterpiece that is "Riders of Justice" is hilarious and a bit sad.
• probably_wrong 5y ago
  > Another argument you could advance is that TV and Film have generally been moving away from comedy as a genre I noticed this for movies and it makes me sad. I asked people around me what's the latest funny, full-on comedy they've seen, and I think the newest one would be "Tropic Thunder" which is 13 years old. There are still a couple around, but I can't think of an equivalent of "Airplane!" or "Blazing Saddles" for the current generation. The closest one is probably half of "Zoolander", and even that one is almost old enough to drink.
  • kenjackson 5y ago
    I really liked The Good Boys. It is probably considered low brow and sophomoric, but I laughed a lot.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • clydethefrog 5y ago
    21 Jump Street, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, Game Night, This Is the End are big mainstream comedies that pop up in my mind. If you go a bit broader, What We Do in the Shadows and The Death of Stalin [mockumentary] and The Nice Guys [buddy cop comedy].
  • thehappypm 5y ago
    Forgetting Sarah Marshall
• jcims 5y ago
  I’m trying to watch movies with my kids (18 and 22) just to have something to connect in and they have zero interest in sitting down to watch something that long. I don’t know what to pick from modern ones and the classics that i can hype are old and weird to them. I think I/we suffer a bit from analysis paralysis with the huge catalogs available, are there any good communities that pick a movie each week or whatever that we can use to break the logjam?
  • runawaybottle 5y ago
    Watch only 30 minutes of the movie (possibly even only 20 minutes). If it didn’t grip all of you, pick another one. Discuss why the first 30 minutes sucked and why it didn’t (concept good, pacing bad, concept terrible, acting good, etc). Don’t waste time. A lot of movies suck.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • jcims 5y ago
      I like it! Thanks!
• protontorpedo 5y ago
  > Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad Reading books is passive media consumption too. You could reframe this article (with substantial changes) to talk about books, wine, food, board games, music, or anything else you can appreciate as a hobby.
  • Talanes 5y ago
    Yeah, there's a fine argument to be had about passive media consumption, but it does not hinge on any specific medium. An engaged mind can actively consume any piece of media.
  • lmm 5y ago
    Books are fundamentally more active - reading inherently involves at least a certain amount of abstract reasoning to turn a meaningless pattern of symbols into something that you can enjoy.
    • mnky9800n 5y ago
      How is that different from television? Especially if you watch with subtitle?
      • TchoBeer 5y ago
        Written word is far, far more abstract than video.
  • TameAntelope 5y ago
    I wish someone would. I've had a feeling that the way I consume music is probably a net negative for me, and I'd love to hear someone smarter than me explore that idea. If passive media consumption is bad for the soul, my soul is probably in pretty rough shape, so I'd love to hear this complete argument so I can figure out whether or not this idea has merit.
    • blindmute 5y ago
      You'd like to passively consume someone's ideas about passive consumption? It's a matter of the soul, not that it makes you dumber or any objective worsening. No one is qualified to talk about it; everyone is just opining. Only you can decide for yourself whether a life of passive consumption is meaningful to you. Perhaps your instinctive desire to consume someone's ideas betrays the truth of the matter already? I think a healthy soul would look to itself and its own intrinsic virtue for guidance first, before anyone external.
• dools 5y ago
  I stopped reading at the “self censorship” complaint. The idea that Borat couldn’t be made today because everyone is too woke is ridiculous.
  • evilotto 5y ago
    I mostly agree, but I don't think Blazing Saddles could get made today; whether that would be because people are offended at the language or offended at how it mocks racist attitudes is up for debate.
    • dools 5y ago
      Yeah maybe so. I’m willing to let Blazing Saddles go though…
  • fundad 5y ago
    Yeah me too. If made today, Superbad! would be smeared on cable news as anti-cop propaganda. It's like "Calling someone gay isn't fashionable anymore so what's the use!?" boop
• Dhyazz 5y ago
  American writers have been mind fucked by the over abundance of content. And since the rest of the worlds writers use the American content factories as their lodestone, everything is converging to pure garbage. Add a mindlessly over optimizing corporate robot class supervising societies creativity and we get a firehose of sewage jacked into every brain. Whats the route out for creative people - disconnect. If you have some confidence in your own creativity and imagination nuture it. Overloading it with info is like over watering a plant. It will die.
• antognini 5y ago
  For anyone looking for recommendations for slightly more obscure, but high quality movies, I've found Jesse Walker's lists to be a fantastic source. At the end of every year he has a tradition of listing his top 10 movies, but not for the year that just ended. Instead he lists his top 10 movies from 10 years ago. His philosophy is that he hasn't seen most of the movies that just came out, let alone figured out if they've stood the test of time. So instead he reviews his top 10 movies from a decade earlier. And then another 10 years before that. And then 10 years before that and so on until he gets to the early 1920s or 1910s and there aren't any movies in existence. https://jessewalker.blogspot.com/ https://jessewalker.blogspot.com/
• arpa 5y ago
  I have been a cinephile for at least ten years, watching several movies per week. I agree with some of the sentiments expressed here, and I can say I have been in a similar place in my film-watching hobby. It used to feel that "I've seen all the good ones", but no, not really. You certainly go into more obscure teritorry, but reasons for obscurity differ: it can be a bad movie, or it could be produced in Mexico, or it could have been produced sometime in 1934, or only available on torrents in 240p, or all of the above. Another thing that helps is knowing how you watch the movie: you're not watching Tarantino and Tarkovsky the same way. That would explain the disappointment with Lost Highway which has been rather coherent (compared to post Mulholland dr. Lynch). With this attitude, the author is locking himself out of a class of directors that are not catering to you (like Marvel does, lol), but require active participation and adapting from the film watcher. You can not enjoy El Topo or The Mountain by passively consuming.
  • SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    > the disappointment with Lost Highway It's OK to not like David Lynch's work, it isn't for everyone, what with the "doing surrealism in a highly literal medium" and the logic of nightmares used. To state that Lynch is "obviously awful movies ... had no clue .. disaster ... incapable" as an objective truth is just a category error. it's like saying that a Mondrian is an obviously awful painting because it's not a good landscape composition, or that Jackson Pollock has no clue, because he paints trees in an unrealistic colour.
  • zupatol 5y ago
    The idea that you can start with the good ones doesn't make sense to me. It's the same with literature. There's no guarantee you'll enjoy the "classics". How many books you had to read at school did you really like ? Finding good works of art is a really hard problem, because what you'll like depends a lot on your personal taste and experience, and it evolves with time. Once you've seen a lot of films you can orient yourself by following directors you like, and if you're lucky you find a film critic you can trust.
• bscphil 5y ago
  I could not disagree more with the author. I think their argument should be debated on the merits, but it bears mentioning that the author is still in their twenties, and has only seen ~74 movies a year since 2010. That's ... not a lot of movies, by cinema snob standards (or even by prolific Netflix viewer standards). 1. One simply does not run out of great movies to watch after 700 movies, even if all 700 have been great. You have to be way, way more in to movies than that for that to happen. When your go-to examples of great movies are Eyes Wide Shut and Pulp Fiction (two great movies to be sure, but they have over 300k ratings each on IMDb), the problem is obvious: your selections are too mainstream. You can definitely run out of blockbusters that are also great movies very quickly. This author didn't name a single movie I haven't seen, and I'm nowhere close to having seen enough to join the cinema snob club. 2. "Every couple of days I curl up on the couch at 10pm, scroll through Amazon Prime video..." Yes. This is the problem. Their source for movies is an aggregator that makes money primarily through getting you to stay subscribed while reducing the cost of content acquisition as much as possible. Most of what's on Amazon prime is trash, low budget attempts at blockbusters, with a handful of rotating blockbuster films to grab your attention on the front page. Meanwhile, The Criterion Collection has released over a thousand films on DVD and Blu-ray. Get your media from better sources! Note that I'm not blaming the author for this specifically. The media landscape sucks right now. Everything is fragmented and if you only have access to one or two sources it's easy to see how you could get the idea that prestige TV is where all the serious work goes nowadays. 3. "Most Stories are the Same. Kurt Vonnegut once said that there are only six types of story." Doesn't this claim go precisely against the claim made earlier in the article that the books you read just get better and better as you read more? 4. I can't agree that David Lynch is a hack. I'd say this goes beyond a question of taste into a factually incorrect account of a director who is obviously very capable and knows what he's trying to do. Some movies are going to require more work to appreciate than others. Ironically, the essay itself complains about movies being too accessible! Likewise, Lost in Translation is not unrelatable simply because the main character is older than you are. 5. The idea that we can't make good comedies any more is laughable culture-war nonsense. The idea that adult comedy must utilize irreverence is silly, to begin with. The Favourite (2018), Druk (2020), Amélie, The Lobster, Turist (2014), etc etc are all good comedies that aren't unduly irreverent. It's also strange to see Superbad and The Hangover given as examples of comedy done right in an article about a supposed dearth of good movies. Even if you want out-and-out comedies (instead of my suggested serious movies with comedic tones), there were plenty of those last decade too. I liked The Nice Guys, I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Knives Out, Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, and so on. Several of these are rather irreverent, I'd say. I guess if you're looking for more Hangover, they made Part III in 2013, less than a decade ago, and Jackass 4 is coming out later this year! I don't see what there is to complain about. (In the vein of low-brow comedy, there are some movies like Psycho Goreman and Mandy that are much more interesting than a lot of mainstream fare.) 6. Burnout is a thing. Maybe trying to write a review for every single movie you see can lead to enjoying them less, if you're not the kind of person who's wired to do that.
• hardwaregeek 5y ago
  I couldn’t disagree with a post more. Where to start? For one, there’s so many amazing films. Instead of listing directors or films, I’ll list movements: French New Wave, Italian Neorealism, Parallel Cinema, Iranian New Wave, German New Wave, Taiwanese New Wave, New Queer Cinema, New Hollywood, Cinema Du Look. All of these have 10-20 films worth watching if not more. Then expand your search to masters like Kurosawa or Bergman who churned out films, yes some worse than others, but a lot of really amazing ones! Then look at all of the talented people making film today, both the established (Bong Joon Ho, Olivier Assayas, Lucrecia Martel) and the new. There’s an incredible wealth of great film out there. Honestly the author sounds like they’re in the false confidence part of the Dunning Kruger effect. Just because you know a few tropes and the standard plot archetypes doesn’t mean you’re above film. Lemme just point out that nowhere in this post did the author discuss the visual aspect of film. Or the editing, sound, really anything about film other than plot. If movies were Wikipedia plot summaries I’d agree that film is tired and repetitive. But what distinguishes a director is not the story beats but how they use camera, light, sound, editing and actors to make the narrative.
• MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
  Many years ago, a friend tried to convince me that the passive consumption of any media – film or television, maybe even music – was bad for the soul. To unthinkingly let a wave of content break over you is to inundate yourself with noise, to be filled with other people’s mediocre thoughts and games. I think the act of media consumption has an element of surrender to it - you let other people's willpower and their creative output consume some of your inner world. It makes your ego a bit smaller. To suspend disbelief means to raise the white flag.
• grfn 5y ago
  I feel like just his way of finding and watching movies is not optimal? If I would limit myself to Amazon Prime/Netflix offering and recommendation I would probably not enjoy them as well. The way to go is just to explore different artistic directions and rabbit holes that are interesting to you, regardless of country and time. You can dive into filipino arthouse movies, some cozy european cinema, korean thrillers, etc. They would all require different level of "engagement" in a sense of paying attention and thinking, and the story or plot of the movie is often hard to define or not it is not that important at all.
• snowwrestler 5y ago
  If you curl up on your own couch and pull something off a streaming service, IMO you are watching TV. Even if it’s a 120 minute movie. Seeing a movie in a full theater is just a different experience. And whether the author realizes it or not, that may be coloring his recollection of movies in the 90s. People saw big movies in the theater in the 90s. T2 in a packed theater full of people who don’t know what is going to happen next, is a different movie from T2 on TV in your living room. One way to rekindle a love of movies is to go see a bunch in the theater, with a lot of other people, spoiler free. Ideally, on opening night. Someone else in the thread mentioned Roger Ebert. Most of the movies he saw during his life, he saw in a theater.
• Tenoke 5y ago
  What a bad post. >1. TV and Film have switched spots. There's a lot more than Marvel going on today no matter what the author implies here. >2. Self-Censorship. Comedy was big in the early 2000s. Claiming that there have been no comedies since 2012 is just ridicilous and pointing at Deadpool as the only potential counter-example just shows how little the author has explored beyond blockbusters. > 3. Most Stories are the Same. > 4. You Learn the Tricks. This is mostly the same point and if the author didn't just watch the biggest blockbusters he'd have found how much pleasure you can get at that point by going for deconstructions, Meta, movies who play with, ignore or go against the tropes etc. >Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad. Fundamentally? He spent 2-3 hours on movies every 5 days, I doubt he doesnt spend as much time on something that he'd deem empty calories now, too. At any rate, you've hardly exhausted that much after 819 movies even after including those he'd seen before when he was watching less.
  • tarsinge 5y ago
    Yeah the the author circles around the root issue but ultimately misses it: it's not a quality problem, but a consumption behavior problem. Thinking that it's possible to be amazed by a new movie everyday is a consumerist myth, that's not how the brain works. When they say : > Those films of childhood were special – they’d fill me with wonder and ideas, inspiration for scenes to then recreate in The Sims or Lego It's not the film that were special, it was the fact that they watched few movies and had time to tinker about them. The wonder was not only in the passive watching experience, so the author will always be disappointed if their quest is to find the movie that could do that. Of course that's also applicable to video games or any other media when you feel the magic is lost.
    • YinglingLight 5y ago
      Content consumption "binges" are just that, they leave a feeling of regret if remembered at all.
    • travisjungroth 5y ago
      I really thought that he'd touch on the fact that one of the differences between movies when he was a child and movies when he is adult is his age. That he doesn't still play with Legos is probably not the fault of cinema.
• mattowen_uk 5y ago
  If I were to analyse what I watched over the past 12 months, it would probably breakdown into 80% TV and 20% movies. If the breakdown was 'hours-watched' the movies percentage would be WAY lower. For me, the reason for this is simple: You can't tell a good story in 90-ish minutes. The best time frame for a screen story, is as the author of the piece said, the 8-10 hour/part mini-series. It's the TV equivalent of a mid sized book, and has enough room to breathe without the pace being too slow, or the content too shallow. Movies on the other hand, rush through their 'stories' via 3 main set pieces, and offer little new that viewer hasn't already seen many times before, all lit against an amber and teal backdrop. World cinema is better than the typical Hollywood junk, and there really are some good gems out there (which is why I've not abandoned movies all together), but are still restricted in their story telling due to running time.
• MikeLumos 5y ago
  > Most Stories are the Same. Kurt Vonnegut once said that there are only six types of story. There are countless writers who have said that there are only X types of stories. Sometimes there are 3, 6, 12, or 50. They all claim that their categorization is the one that captures every story ever told, and they all manage to fit any story into one of their categories (it really helps that they're vague and people are willing to stretch and shoehorn things). All stories are the same in the way all songs or poetry are the same. They have a structure (well, a bunch of different structures) that audiences tend to enjoy, and that artists follow because it helps them to have a more structured process (or sometimes they break/ignore the rules, or just don't know them, and create awesome works of art anyway). But that doesn't make every story "the same" just like using the rules of perspective, construction, and anatomy doesn't make every painting the same.
• MikeLumos 5y ago
  > Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad. Sounds like the guy just overdid it. Like anything else, movies/books/games can be enjoyed in a healthy way, or can turn into an addiction. When I consume too much, it makes me feel pointless and hate myself. When I consume from time to time, in a limited and healthy amount (like a weekly episode of Rick and Morty or Dimension 20) - it makes me happy and adds to my life. When the consumption tunrs into an addiction, you keep seeking the joy you felt when you watched your first few great movies/episodes, and then you run out and start scraping the bottom of the barrel, naturally the quality of the available entertainment declines, so you end up feeling like the author does. Just take a break, watch fewer movies, new amazing ones come out all the time, now more than ever, just not as often as once per day. Find a healthy balance between consuming and creating, and you'll enjoy both again.
  • r_c_a_d 5y ago
    I agree. Also, I used to write movie reviews and found myself thinking about what I was going to write during each movie. Stop writing reviews of all the movies you watch. Just watch. Then, if you feel you really want to write a review, watch the movie again and compose your review. You will probably enjoy those first viewings a lot more; I did.
• hiisukun 5y ago
  I actually still have this tab open, for the rich HN discussion surrounding ways to find quality films to watch. The article listed is Akira Kurosawa's top 100 films: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26551604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26551604
• matthewh806 5y ago
  Why would you choose Borat as the kind of comedy which "isn't allowed to be made today" when you know you're going to have to contrive a reason for the existence of a sequel which was near enough made today in a footnote...? Most of the points express a disappointment with mainstream Hollywood movies, which if you don't broaden your horizons is eventually going to lead to disappointment for any cinephile. "The sitcom-and-laugh-track era appears to be over, thank heavens" I would agree about the laugh-track era being over - but thats hardly a new development. I've been watching the Larry Sanders show from the early 90s which was a landmark show without a laughter track. But to say the era of the sitcom is over is nonsense? There are so many great recent ones. The one thing I agree with is that scrolling through Amazon Prime / Netflix is a draining & dissatisfying experience Otherwise, I don't know... I've been watching movies at varying frequencies for decades and I certainly don't feel I've come close to even really tapping the surface, don't feel like I can guess immediately where the director will take me & don't feel really constrained by Vonnegut's theory about there only being six types of story.
  • postsantum 5y ago
    It's not hard to notice that the two Borat movies are very different in style Who is ridiculed in the subsequent moviefilm? Orange man, anti-abortion activists, libertarians, holocaust deniers - they are all safe to laught at. Just compare with who was the laughing stock at the original one - feminists, blacks, gays, jews. That wouldn't fly today
    • Tenoke 5y ago
      So the acceptable targets have just changed. I don't think the complaint was that you can't make fun of jews (or whoever) specifically but about whether comedies of that general type are being made. Sacha Baron Cohen has changed targets 6+ times in his carrer so there's nothing new there.
    • taneq 5y ago
      > Just compare with who was the laughing stock at the original one - feminists, blacks, gays, jews. If you think the first Borat movie was laughing at any of those groups then you have seriously misunderstood the movie.
• Otek 5y ago
  "Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad" This sounds like the worst empty slogan. Similar to those thrown around by all sorts of life coaches. The author gives no definition of 'passive' entertainment. Therefore, a few supporting questions: Is playing games passive or not? If I stomp my foot to music is it no longer passive? Is reading a book passive? Huge arrogance, by the way: "consumption of any media – film or television [...](means) to be filled with other people's mediocre thoughts and games". For me, movies, games, books or music are an extension of my mediocre thoughts. They give a glimpse of how other people feel or see similar situations. They show them from a different perspective. If the author thinks he has already seen all the perspectives of the world then I am purely sorry.
• dsego 5y ago
  I've seen some really fun or thought provoking movies recently: Parasite, El Hoyo (The Platform), Quo Vadis, Aida?, 200 Meters, Luzzu, El robo del siglo (The Heist of the Century). Just don't watch the mind-numbing crap that hollywood churns out every year. Truth be told, I've enjoyed some excellent american movies as well, like "Knives Out", "Us" or "Get Out".
• shannifin 5y ago
  I'm a movie lover, though I do find that the majority of films I see are forgettable and I never want to see them again. Still, I enjoy watching them anyway, and every now and then a movie will blow you away. But I think the human mind can only handle so much information, so it's almost impossible to avoid at least some level of generalizing large loads of films into mind's deserts of blandness. (And this goes for just about everything that humans can consume in large number; memories of days at the office, people's faces, etc.) We might blame a particular movie for not being special enough to stand out, but that also depends on our ability to compare it with large swaths of experience. > TV and Film have switched spots I don't think they've really switched. The advent of streaming has let many TV programs tell longer narratives across multiple episodes, which some filmmakers may prefer to the time limits of a film, but that extra expanse of time can be both a strength and a weakness. > You Learn the Tricks While this does make some films more predictable, learning the tricks has actually made me enjoy watching them more. I'm interested to see how they use common patterns and tricks, and I like finding patterns and tropes myself that change how I think of story structures. For example, midpoints tend to include a shift in location, or the "unnatural" character tends to sacrafice himself at movie's end (Groot, Baymax, ET). It's like learning a language. Yes, perhaps 95% of what people say with it will be boring and predictable, but there are seemingly infinite little variations, and the language becomes interesting in itself. You'll also notice how different directors, actors, composers, cinematographers, screenwriters, etc. have their own sorts of style, and how those styles develop over the years. Obvious examples would be Terrence Malick's wide-angle wandering, Christopher Nolan's cross-cutting tension crescendoes, Carol Reed's wet cobblestones and dutch angles, Sergio Leone's eye closeups, Scorsese's overhead "God's POV" shots, etc. > Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad ... Film is passive by definition, because it's best when you're fully immersed. So... film is best when it's fundamentally bad? Maybe don't consume it passively? I enjoy looking for patterns, I enjoy thinking of story possibilities, I enjoy laughing at how stupid a movie or its characters might be, I enjoy trying to understand why a film doesn't work for me and how I might fix it if I could, etc. Sometimes a movie sucks me in and I just enjoy the ride the whole way through, I guess that's being "fully immersed", but that's rare, and when it doesn't happen I don't try to force it. Of course you'll grow bored of movies if you try to force that all the time. > Thus comes the slow disappointment of watching movies. First you don’t understand them. Then you understand them, and they’re captivating. Then you understand them too well, and they’re boring. ... Perhaps worst of all is the realization that the movies you like are very rare, and as you dive deep into film, you’re on a quest for the one-in-a-hundred experience. I agree with this, and yet I want to watch more movies. Yes, most of them are boring by themselves (like all experiences), but there's still plenty to explore in their relations to other works, all the creative decisions that went into them, etc. And, yes, the movies that blow you away are exceedingly rare, but, for me at least, completely worth the treasure hunt.
• bborud 5y ago
  Streaming services have kind of ruined movies for me a bit. When using Netflix you get the impression that what they really want customers to do is to kind of "hang around in the lobby", scroll and experience the frustration of re-rejecting all the content you have already rejected a hundred times by scrolling past them. And Amazon...I can never quite figure out why they show me so much content that I can't access as part of my subscription or that requires some form of extra payment to watch. I guess it fits in with the overall Amazon theme of showing me merchandize that doesn't actually ship to where I live on their main site. Or that awful iPhone app that keeps asking me which amazon store I want to use, because after many years, Amazon still haven't figured out how to fix this. It is becoming ever more rare that me and the wife find something to watch. We scroll around for 10 minutes without finding anything, get bored, watch the news, turn off the TV and go do something else. The thing is: there is no UX innovation on streaming sites. They don't actually do anything intelligent about the knowledge they have about you. They keep showing you stuff you are not interested in and you have no way of telling them "look, I'm not into superhero movies" or "please don't show me anything Nick Cage is in". It would help if you could rapidly mark content as "I'm not interested", and remove it from sight so you don't have to scroll through screens of stuff you aren't going to watch again and again. Apple's movie thing is slightly better. You can actually navigate through a slightly better catalogue of movies, but the UX isn't great. And it makes no use of any knowledge about you to find content. Why has innovation on streaming service user experience stopped? Why are they so terrible?
  • psyc 5y ago
    Before culling a few, I was subscribed to 5 streaming services. Typically, it would take me about 3 weeks to find something worth watching, and then a week or two to binge it. That’s TV. I can barely ever find a movie I can sit through. Netflix was always like that as long as I can remember, and the others work the same way. A few gems sitting on a haystack of blah.
  • duncanawoods 5y ago
    > And Amazon...I can never quite figure out why they show me so much content that I can't access If you click the "Free to me" link at the top then it works pretty well for just what you can access. The filter carries forward if you then filter for genres.
• npteljes 5y ago
  >So what is one to do? Find another hobby! The world is so vast it makes ones head hurt.
• Gatsky 5y ago
  Sometimes I wonder if maybe there are enough movies. As in, we don't need to make anymore. This applies to music as well in some ways. Music in particular is relatively timeless, transmits well across history, and doesn't suffer technological obsolescence, which means that great music accretes over time. You can't listen to Beethoven and think "Not bad but it's woefully out of date." Old music is also remarkably accessible when you think about it, and one can ejoyably listen to the same music over and over again. Eventually there will be too much to listen to, if that is not the case already. At any rate, the proportion of music to which nobody listens is growing rapidly. Movies are a bit different, so reaching saturation point will take longer. They depict the world and the world changes. It certainly is possible to watch an old movie and find the not so contemporary context quite jarring. I doubt the next generation will enjoy 1990s American sex comedies very much. Improving movie-making technologies also means that new movies can have something unique, but this seems to have had relatively little impact in the last 50 years and tends to be anti-correlated with quality. Another point arguing against reaching the saturation point is that old movies do become inaccessible. I wanted to watch Au Hasard Balthazar [1] recently and could not find it anywhere. But the number of movies being made goes up all the time and the world isn't changing so fast anymore. Taxi Driver is nearly 50 years old now but the setting is almost completely familiar. It is in no way diminished by the fact that Travis Bickle doesn't have an iphone. Technology is also going to improve to the point of democratising movie making, where a small team or an individual can make (and even remake!) a feature length movie with relative ease, without leaving their bedroom. So perhaps we will reach the point where there is just too much to watch for people with average consumption rates. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_Hasard_Balthazar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_Hasard_Balthazar
• angarg12 5y ago
  I got into movies way back and I'm clocking over 1600 watched according to IMDB. I agree that movies get trite the more you watch. The secret is to watch less mainstream movies. I disagree with the article. Lately I've been watching less movies, but only because lack of time. In fact I've been wishing I spent a bit more watching movies and catching up with my endless TODO list. So yes, movies (or any for of media) can become less surprising the more you consume it, but I believe there is always venue for novelty. By the way if you feel like the author I recommend this list of weird movies [1]. I don't promise they will be good, but at least they will be different. [1] https://366weirdmovies.com/the-weird-movie-list/ https://366weirdmovies.com/the-weird-movie-list/
• AdrianB1 5y ago
  Hollywood and some streaming companies lately started creating a lot of politically correct or politically activist movies that have no other value than having the "right theme" with the right actor race, gender or sexual orientation. This decreases the quality of the movies a lot, republicans kind of boycott these movies, the pandemic makes the earnings a lot lower than usual so there are less money on the table for more movies. As an European I switched to watching more European movies in the past decade. It is harder to access (there is no European movie market), but I saw nice Norwegian movies, Italian or Russian on top of my favorite - French. Unfortunately UK got into the same direction as USA, so it is out of the list. Strange, I saw no German movies for a long time, I have no explanation for that. And there is also some international selection of Brazilian or (south) Korean, even Chinese. I would like to have access to good Japanese movies, but I don't. Unfortunately Bollywood movies are a dime a dozen, good Aussie movies are rare and the movies from the rest of the world are inaccessible to me. In regards to the big screen versus TV, I found TV was less affected by the woke movement and SciFi, while rare these days, is still available (The Expanse). There are movies hit really bad (The Witcher), but still there are a few options left.
• ggggtez 5y ago
  For someone who claims to know movies, these opinions are pretty bad. Borat couldn't be made today... Except a sequel was made... but only because he's already famous? Certainly he had to know that Says Baron Cohen already had a TV show before making borat? And scrolling through Amazon Prime to watch movies? Who in their right mind does this when they want to watch good movies? Streaming services rarely have good movies on them because their catalog is intended for the kind of people who want to binge watch The Office. These are not curated lists of the best films ever. In fact, even just scrolling through the IMDB top 250, I doubt you can even watch half of them on Prime/Netflix combined.
• Nonyblinks090 5y ago
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• runawaybottle 5y ago
  I’m going to tell you all the secret to enjoying any movie: Drink. I’ve had a blast watching anything drunk. Life is truly not that serious.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• lordgrenville 5y ago
  Strongly disagree with #2. There are more good films than ever being made now - including comedies - and changing social trends making some types of humour more or less viable hardly affects this. (Some of the best films ever were made under much stricter and more explicit rules about content!) But sure, all passive consumption of entertainment stales over time as you get used to the various tricks. A better response to this can be switching to active consumption. We see this already in the fine arts. No-one today comes into a museum just to be wowed by pretty images, since we're already saturated with prettier images all the time. Instead people come in from the outset to learn about the work as a representative of the social and technical conditions of its production, and as a statement in a centuries-long conversation among different artists. The pleasure of the experience comes from learning about and interpreting it, not passively admiring it.
  • o_m 5y ago
    Another type of "self censorship" is trying to make China happy by not talking about anything they think is controversial, because it such a huge market.
  • blfr 5y ago
    There are more good films than ever being made now - including comedies Could you give a few examples?
    • lordgrenville 5y ago
      Friends and Strangers (2021) Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021) Palm Springs (2020) Another Round (2020) Pixie (2020) The Art of Self-Defense (2019) The Souvenir (2019)
• Igelau 5y ago
  This is what the first half of 2021 feels like. The spread of I-can't-even into things that were once enjoyable. We are fatigued and disenchanted.
• sarabad2021 5y ago
  Familiarity breeds contempt
• nmz 5y ago
  The critics curse, the reason you enjoy movies when you are young is because you don't have critical thinking. the more of it you have, the less you enjoy. until you enjoy nothing. The solution is simple, turn it off and let yourself breathe.
• trynumber9 5y ago
  Really? I've given up on TV since too many shows keep getting renewed when they should have been concluded soundly. There are plenty of old movies I have not seen, so if I'm going to vegetate for two hours, then I'd prefer to take something off the backlog than start some show which will continue nebulously for far too long.
• kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  Given the sort of movies Amazon Prime shows at the top of its interface, I understand how you feel about movies now.
• yarky 5y ago
  Sounds like some old pal who misses old "good" American movies with "good" old American jokes. If you're serious about movies, try learning other languages and do not expect to find a good movie to watch every 5 days ... I agree that American humor isn't the same as 10 years ago, but I am not sure that's a bad thing.
  • xxs 5y ago
    > try learning other languages Subtitles are fine. Learning a language well enough to watch and enjoy a movie and get subtle jokes/plots is no easy feat.
• mberning 5y ago
  I can’t remember the last time I went to a theater. For me I got tired of rolling the dice and walking out feeling like I got ripped off.
  • eplanit 5y ago
    It has been over 10 years for me, with no regrets. I'm fine with Hollywood being a 20th century relic -- way past time to move on.
• petercooper 5y ago
  I'm not going to dispute the author's lived experience and their personal attitude to movie watching, but the arguments seem so alien to me. Being tired of an entire medium because there are patterns and tropes would, to me, be like being entirely bored of music because most of it uses similar scales and chord sequences, tired of nature because, well, you've seen a lot of trees before, or, heck, being bored of being alive due to all that boring breathing, eating (how many food groups are there, really?), and copulation (only so many positions..) you have to partake in. I watch a few hundred movies a year and continue to be blown away by the diversity of the experience, much as I do when reading, watching YouTube videos, meeting random strangers, or even reading Hacker News comment threads.
  • kajaktum 5y ago
    According to your logic, boredom is an impossible concept. Movies aren't consumed the same way trees are.
    • petercooper 5y ago
      As I said before, I can't dismiss the OP's personal opinion, but at the objective level I think boredom is an undefinable concept, proven by how what's boring to one person can be hugely invigorating to another (or even to the same person at a different time of their life). Boredom with an entire medium is what really caught me here. I can appreciate being bored by, say, "1950s Westerns", once you have exhausted the majority of the genre, but being bored of the entire premise of movies in general suggests a very restricted diet or a lack of imagination. But that's just my take. My favorite author absolutely detested music and almost listened to none in his entire lifetime. Different strokes and all that. But the idea of being wholly bored of one of the deepest, plentiful, and most creative media invented by man remains alien to me.
• SergeAx 5y ago
  > With literature, you grow as a reader and work your way up to the greatest works, many of which are quite difficult. Same principle is applicable to movies. > I’m nearly done with David Lynch’s oeuvre of work, and my disappointment is immeasurable. This is because author didn't worked up their way to the greatest work.
• masswerk 5y ago
  I guess, it's also a generational thing. I wrote a thesis in film theory and appeared regularly in a show as a critic and had about the same feelings in the 2000s. That said, Hollywood's safe bets, like superhero movies or bigger-than-life stories are exceptionally uninteresting to at least some non-Americans. (What get's a story going are not the wow-character traits, but the deficits of the heroins and heroes. Compare Jane Austen! :-) )
• Tycho 5y ago
  If you are content with the genre of normal drama, without special effects or stunts or expensive sets or glamorous stars, then there's a wealth of good stuff out there, often made for TV rather than cinema. For instance, all the Inspector Morse episodes are essentially standalone films, and all of them have exceptional acting and writing and stories (usually adapted from the novels). Many great 'mini-series' also (like 4-6 hours total). Look up an actor like Brian Dennehy and notice all the films he made for television. No matter how jaded you get with cinema, I don't think you tire of a good story. (Often in cinema they seem to want to make films that are brilliant despite an uninteresting story.) I wish there were better options for watching televised plays. Outside of Shakespeare, the options seem sadly limited.
• 8bitsrule 5y ago
  74 films a year is too many. No year had half that many films worth remembering. (Sturgeon's law.) IMO, most of these laments apply equally to pop music. (Or maybe I'm just getting old.)
• doublejay1999 5y ago
  a lightbulb moment for the author, in which he happens upon the idea that films made for mass appeal are somehow limited in artistic scope & ambition.
• tobyhinloopen 5y ago
  This post reads like the author has a midlife crisis. If you want something new and unique, I dare you to try Grave of the Fireflies.
• cirgue 5y ago
  “ Every couple of days I curl up on the couch at 10pm, scroll through Amazon Prime video, and pick something to see. It’s almost always a disappointment.” Had you done this two decades ago using the equivalent (blockbuster), you probably would have felt the same. What I do think is manifestly different now is that we don’t have nearly as accessible good film criticism. It still exists, but it’s mixed in with a bunch of internet dross. Filtering mechanisms have always been essential to life online and our current ones massively favor eyeballs over quality.
  • bingidingi 5y ago
    sometimes i’d just go to blockbuster and laugh at the garbage premises that made it to the shelves and the terrible box art
  • Darvokis 5y ago
    > “ Every couple of days I curl up on the couch at 10pm, scroll through Amazon Prime video, and pick something to see. It’s almost always a disappointment.” ... how can he use this the basis for his argument? Every day, I curl up in front of my PC, look through some Reddit threads about movies and find a handful of incredible movies that I'm thankful for that people pointed out. What should the title of my article be?
    • jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
      > Every day, I curl up in front of my PC, look through some Reddit threads about movies and find a handful of incredible movies that I'm thankful for that people pointed out. What should the title of my article be? Probably "hundreds of good movies are made every year, but if you don't move your ass and try to find them they won't magically land on your lap". The author has identified these problems himself (point 5) but looks like he just doesn't want to put in the effort.
    • Siira 5y ago
      Well, different people, different tastes. I myself almost never enjoy movies, even though I haven’t watched many of them. I have tried using reddit, IMDB, Metacritic, etc, to select movies, but it doesn’t make a difference. I still enjoy reading fiction though.
• vmception 5y ago
  Streaming services are the bottom of the barrel, they greenlight everything and every metric they use to suggest or reveal “whats good” is a lie that diverges from a century of what people expect. Well funded studios diverging from what established Hollywood was greenlighting is interesting but the potential has so far been squandered. Discovery is bad. This is a different topic than this blog. Almost everything the author wrote was not a strong truth or reason. “Shock Comedy” not being created has nothing to do with people’s sensitivities. It is just the same symptom you already noticed, movie theaters are for Marvel right now. So to make a separate standard for the lack of shock comedies is just latching on to unquantified assumptions that paranoid people are saying about cancel culture. I hope they find a way to branch out, I have been pleasantly surprised at film festivals.
  • watwut 5y ago
    > is a lie that diverges from a century of what people expect. Well funded studios diverging from what established Hollywood was greenlighting is interesting It was not so much as century of what people expect as increasing predictability ans repetitiveness of Hollywood movies.
  • Jeff_Brown 5y ago
    The post resonated a lot with me. You might be right that we're looking in the wrong place -- but confoundingly, at this point I don't even want to. It's hard to know what I'm giving up by not looking for good movies. My imagination tends to light on the many bad movies I've seen, not the few moments of awe or other positive emotions. But it's easy to know what I gain -- something like four hours a week! That's so much time!
    • vmception 5y ago
      I experience the same and my solutions are to follow the works of specific directors and actors, as well as look forward to attending film festivals again.
• swiley 5y ago
  I only watch movies when My girlfriend or someone else says they want to. When I'm by myself it's all NileRed, Adam Neely, and Applied Science.
• imcotton 5y ago
  I call them "scripting porn".
• anticodon 5y ago
  I have come to the same conclusion as an author. My two thoughts why this happened: 1. Writers and directors use all the accumulated information about what viewers like and not like, extract patterns, and churn out new movies according to the same small set of rules. E.g. first time the main hero is approached to save the world, he/she/it should refuse. Then something bad happens and the main hero agrees to save the world. This makes all movies and TV series pretty boring and predictable. Everything is written according to some meta-script. And I've read blogs of some writers so I know that such meta-scripts exist. 2. Storm of political correctness and other movements that took over USA, that look totally irrelevant and crazy outside of the USA. E.g. I won't be able to ever understand why historical persons in the movies should be black even if they couldn't be black in that position at that point of history. There're even more crazier examples. Same reason why I stopped reading american Sci Fi written in the last 15 years. There're passages that are weird and loathsome. Frankly, I'm happy that it happens. Movies, books, music is a powerful way to influence the people. USA used it successfully to spread its influence over the world. But if they continue pushing all their crazy beliefs down our throats, people start to avoid that. I have a feeling that it's already happening although I don't know how to prove it. Probably Netflix has the numbers but it would be grossly politically incorrect to publish them. I know that Disney already experience losses from pushing current US ideology in their movies. It's also interesting to watch what will win: ideology or greed.
  • sam_0123 5y ago
    Yes, Hero's Journey plot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey) is very well understood and yet continues to sell well and generally the idea of certain shapes to stories is beautifully explored here among other places: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOGru_4z1Vc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOGru_4z1Vc
  • paulryanrogers 5y ago
    Curious what examples you see of Disney or other producers losing money pushing ideology.
    • 5y ago
• InternetPerson 5y ago
  OK, we can figure this out. Are movies still good? Let's take a poll! If you like or don't like movies, leave a comment, and tell us why. This is gonna be so interesting to hear what everyone thinks about movies!!
• deleted 5y ago
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• TonyBagODonuts 5y ago
  We've stopped as a family watching any movie out of Hollywood. I don't think we're alone.
• FerretFred 5y ago
  My personal opinion... We've basically stopped watching Hollywood-fodder: it's largely formulaic, largely caters to the Politically Correct/Woke and seems intent on destroying the Good Stuff that came before. I'll give Mad Max, Alien and Jurassic Park as examples. Prequels? Sequels? How many sequels do you need? There's plenty of Good Stuff left though, and it needs a little research: look at what used to be called World Cinema and there are some real gems. You may need to get used to subtitles, but the works are inspiring and unlike the Hollywood Fast Food Burger movies will actually give you something to discuss afterwards.
• nmstoker 5y ago
  Interesting to read someone else's insights and to find so many of them resonate. One point that I don't think has been touched on is manipulating the plot for non-storytelling grounds, which usually happens as they are nearing the end of a season and/or they're leaving it open for a sequel (season or film). This creates a real lack of resolution now. In the era of serious films, they could occasionally leave unresolved turns at the end of a film on purpose ("life isn't neat") but it was usually done with the eloquence of an accomplished director. Now it's so mercenary that it is really starting to detract. Add to this that many series use guest directors who seem to wander off on a personal mission, and it's a recipe for the sort of mess we've seen in so many big budgets series. Whilst I liked aspects of the final season, Game of Thrones didn't tie up even a fraction of the main plots let alone the sub plots. In the UK there were similar split opinions on Line of Duty. You can only take so much of your audiences time and squander it before people lose trust. A clear ending shouldn't be that hard to write.
• watertom 5y ago
  I’ve found that almost all new content, TV (includes streaming), Movies and Music just aren’t worth the time. My two cents is that we’ve both removed the childish, subtle and controversial content and dumbed down the intellectual content. What we have is a PC correct watered down cliff notes version of everything. The good news for young people is that it’s not permanent, it takes time to find voices in a new paradigm, better content will resurface.
  • grasshopperpurp 5y ago
    I guess it depends. Older stuff that makes it through the years tends to be better quality than the stuff that doesn't make it, so you have less stuff to sort through. If time and effort are big concerns, then that approach makes some sense. But, people are always making great stuff if you care to look for it. Some of it is even popular and doesn't take much searching. From "My two cents" on, I disagree with everything you've said. I think it's all in your head.
• deleted 5y ago
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• blauditore 5y ago
  Regarding 4., I can recommend "The Other Guys"... :)
• deleted 5y ago
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• Finnucane 5y ago
  There's no question that Hollywood has increased their reliance on tie-in franchises and sequels and remakes for money-making--any chart of top-grossing films over the past few decades will make the trend clear. Good non-franchise movies are still getting made, you might just have to look a little harder to find them. Some of it is not coming from Hollywood, but elsewhere. The trend of higher-quality tv really began with HBO and shows like the Sopranos, when they realized they could get away with stuff you couldn't do on broadcast tv, and have bigger budgets for production and talent. I remember not even having a TV for much of the 1980s--network tv was so bad it was entirely missable. Streaming and cable channels have given a lot of opportunities for niche productions that wouldn't have survived in the old days, or made it past the censors. Sure, there's tropes and common story elements, that's not new, and it's a feature of every media. Film comedies are still cribbing from stuff invented by Chaplin and Keaton.
• SuperNinKenDo 5y ago
  While I understand some of what the author is expressing, they give a strong impression of American cultural homogeny and would do well to give themselves a dose of "World Cinema", that is, cinema outside their own narrow cultural sphere.
• fredsted 5y ago
  Having turned 30 and watched a lot of movies, I have a similar feeling. I still pay for Netflix (even if I only use it a couple times a month) and look forward to movies, like the upcoming Dune, and occasionally rewatch some of my favorites, like Blade Runner, but these days I'm much more into YouTube. There's so much good content out there, and a lot of time it's interesting, and I'll learn something useful. As the author says, TV shows have really gained foothold, but I don't have time to watch several hours of content only to find out whether I might enjoy it. It's too big a time commitment for me.
• fullshark 5y ago
  The root cause of this is basically Hollywood (i.e. who makes what gets shown in your local multiplex) has given up on making movies exclusively for American audiences. You need a global audience, and you need the potential to get a billion dollars + in revenue. E.G. as he points out comedies have died, that's because comedy is highly localized versus the kids movies + adventure plots which are more universal. End result is everything gets boiled down to its rawest, most accessible elements and everything feels samey.
  • addflip 5y ago
    > End result is everything gets boiled down to its rawest, most accessible elements and everything feels samey. This is basically what is referred to in the industry as "high concept." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_concept Bob Iger, Ex-CEO of Disney, was a big proponent of high concept movies. You can read more about it in the screenwriting book, Save the Cat. https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009 https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp...
  • einpoklum 5y ago
    ... and the root cause of that is the commercial nature of most popular film production. This might sound like a trivial statement, but as we are finding out - the profit motive can take us down a highly problematic and noticeable path. A challenge, though, is figuring out what paths, content-wise, this has already taken us down with us simply having internalized the choices as axiomatic.
    • zxzax 5y ago
      I view that as a positive. Like a lot of other things in the US, the film industry has a long and racist past starting with the infamous "Birth of a Nation," which was highly profitable at the time of its production, but you couldn't make a blatant racist propaganda film like that now, which I'd say is for the better. The article mentions "Borat" which is an interesting example because I'd imagine a lot of people just don't get the joke and would also view it as a racist and anti-semitic film.
• iNic 5y ago
  If you want good content go watch the following TV shows (if you haven't already): - Euphoria - Bojack Horseman - Atlanta - Fleabag
• bmitc 5y ago
  > Kurt Vonnegut once said that there are only six types of story. I see others quoting this here, but I'm not aware of Vonnegut actually saying this anywhere. This is the type of thing that needs a reference. If I infer using what I know of Vonnegut and his presentations on the shapes of stories, I'd wager that he simply thought many stories fit into certain shapes but that not all stories fit into these. That is, there are stories that don't have well defined or common shapes. Plus, as we all know, Vonnegut liked to have fun. I highly doubt Vonnegut ever thought there were only <x> amount of story shapes.
  • jb1991 5y ago
    I’ve seen a video of him giving a talk or a lecture where he discussed this, but the ideas were at an extraordinarily high-level and in part he was going for comedic affect with the audience.
    • bmitc 5y ago
      That's what I meant by presentations of his shapes of stories. There are a couple of lectures posted on YouTube. https://youtu.be/oP3c1h8v2ZQ https://youtu.be/oP3c1h8v2ZQ https://youtu.be/GOGru_4z1Vc https://youtu.be/GOGru_4z1Vc The thinking originated in his (rejected) master's thesis at the University of Chicago. Here are some photos of some of the graphs: https://capnmariam.tumblr.com/post/76564658108/kurt-vonnegut-library-adventures-newish-exhibits https://capnmariam.tumblr.com/post/76564658108/kurt-vonnegut... Even there, in an incomplete copy, there are seven unique story shapes. And there's a major difference between saying here are some shapes of some stories and here are the only story shapes.
• pyrrhotech 5y ago
  I came to the same conclusion about passive media in general. Spending time, yet gaining nothing but being filled with others' mediocre thoughts describes it well. I'd rather spend that time building things, advancing our society's technology and productivity and at the same time being rewarded for my efforts.
• ruipgil 5y ago
  > in film, you start with the best and make your way down to the worst only if you take imdb top films ranking... take a tour through Kurosawa or other Japanese masters, get deep into korean cinema, lose yourself in the Italian masterpieces, and jump into French movies as soon as you can. You'll get challenged, immersed, and amazed again! You'll see that you really start at the bottom and move upwards Criterion and similar alternative streaming platforms sound like where you should be spending your time, instead of amazon prime ;)
• jdhzzz 5y ago
  Why doesn't music fall victim to this? Is it that visual demands more complete attention? One can "half-listen" to music, but not "half-watch" a movie so repetition isn't as annoying as quickly, so it happens, but more slowly?
• abetusk 5y ago
  I think I've probably watched 1000+ movies. I've tapered off as I got older (I'm in my 40s now) but at least one movie every 5 days seems like a low bar I would regularly hit. What the author says is true, I tend to see common patterns and can often predict who's a secret villain by the first act or have a general idea of how the movie will end. At the same time, these clues are what make a movie compelling and provide subtle clues where the movie is going, so shouldn't be discounted as "tropes" or cheap. George RR Martin talks about ignoring fans who have correctly predicted what will later be revealed at the end, saying that instead of retconning or changing course, it's best to keep on and not be influenced by the (correct) predictions. The groundwork is laid and the foreshadowing gives active readers an excuse to engage with the material. I can also say that many movies overuse tropes (time travel in sci-fi for example) but often, even with movies that are mediocre or bad, there's a gem of an idea. Sometimes it's a premise, sometimes is a character interaction, what have you, but that's what, in my opinion, people who get into this state should be looking for. It's a version of "strongmaning" an argument, but instead applying it to the movie you're watching. Also, sometimes the pleasure is in seeing how the movie plays out, even if you know the ending beforehand. I've seen quite a few movies multiple times and often enjoy them more on subsequent viewings. I'm pretty skeptical of the author touching on "Godfather", "Eyes Wide Shut" and "The Hangover" as it sounds like their taste is pretty immature. They touch on this with the mention of "Lost in Translation" being unrelatable but delving deeper, it might be that they like those movies for other more superficial reasons that might not be so predominant later on in their life. I'm also pretty critical of "not being surprised anymore". This means that they're either so cynical and jaded or they're not looking hard enough for movies. It's rare but surprises do happen and the lack of surprise on the author's part points, in my opinion, to an unjustified superiority complex. A final point: The author touches on it but then abandons it. TV is the new media. TV has the ability to delve much deeper into plot arcs and character development. We're living in a golden age of television where there are some shows that rival and surpass the best movies out there in terms breadth, scope and depth. There will always be a place for movies but I think at this point it's the difference between a short story and a novel. There's only so much you can pack in a two hour limit (or 6 hours if you're part of a trilogy) whereas the 12-24+ hour limit for TV allows you the space to explore in more depth. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKnXmNHubfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKnXmNHubfs
• celeritascelery 5y ago
  > in film, you start with the best and make your way down to the worst. With literature, you grow as a reader and work your way up to the greatest works To me this is an endorsement of literature over film. There is so much more that can be done in a book that takes dozen of hours compared to film which is only a few. By comparison all film is essentially short stories.
• yesenadam 5y ago
  I started watching movies and series..deliberately about 10 years ago. I've kept a record of almost all of them[0]. (Before that I'd mostly just watch whatever good stuff happened to be shown on TV. Getting rid of the TV was one of the best things ever.) I've done a lot of research into what to watch, firstly best-of lists, then exploring various genres, directors, periods, countries. I don't watch anything without first reading a page or two of IMDb user reviews, which I've found the best way of almost never watching something bad/that I didn't like, and finding out what we're likely to really love. (Also a very few almost-always-reliable critics, like Roger Ebert and Louise Keller.) Watched them all with the SO, and although we have totally different interests and tastes, we seem to mostly love the same movies/series. No end in sight yet! It's been amazing. "Still" a lot of great movies and series being made, and documentaries, animations, etc. Still a lot more to explore. Whole countries yet to explore (e.g. China). [0] http://www.adamponting.com/movies/ http://www.adamponting.com/movies/
  • woile 5y ago
    Thanks, this is great, I've started watching some international movies recently, so this comes really in handy. Have you checked "La vita è bella" if it's worth watching? or do you have scheduled?
    • yesenadam 5y ago
      :-) I saw it when it came out, so long ago I hardly remember, but I vaguely recall loving it. Just look at the user reviews https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118799/reviews/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118799/reviews/ — rave reviews.
• pier25 5y ago
  That was me a couple of years ago. As someone who has been into writing, music, and photography professionally, it became very hard to watch a movie without analyzing all those aspects. I've then learned that to enjoy movies again, one has to try to quiet the analytical mind. That doesn't mean you will enjoy all movies, but at least your brain will be more focused on the experience itself. I don't accomplish this every time I watch a movie or tv show, but at least I try when I catch myself analyzing the lens used or lighting of a shot. I simply "tell" my brain to shut off and force myself to focus, for example, on the actors expressions. As my father used to put it "You're only riding a train when you can't see it".
• jmilloy 5y ago
  > Every couple of days I curl up on the couch at 10pm, scroll through Amazon Prime video, and pick something to see I think this is big part of the problem. If you rely exclusively on a mainstream subscription service, you're not really going to be satisfied, and it's been that way for a long time now. You will be more successful selecting movies another way and paying for them individually if you need to. Think about the incentives or the selective pressure. Paying for movies individually selects directly for great movies, whereas the movies available on a subscription service just need to be plentiful enough and bearable enough to keep enough people paying for the service. > To unthinkingly let a wave of content break over you This is amplified by letting a subscription service choose your content. You can be an active consumer, for example by thinking critically of the movie after you've watched it, and I think that starts with actively choosing your films (or festivals, etc). > In film, you start with the best and make your way down to the worst. I think this is an interesting point. But there are so many great films. 819 is not that many, right? And as you watch more, I think you can appreciate more, too. A deep dive into Ozu is likely to be a lot more rewarding for an experienced film enthusiast than for someone who watches a few blockbusters a year. "Learning the tricks" means you can see how the director is playing with them. I strongly recommend criticker for automatic recommendations. It is independent of a distributor. I've found it really quite accurate, and definitely good enough to skip the movies that will leave you feeling like you wasted your time and suggest movies you might not find otherwise.
• regus 5y ago
  I used to think that movie reviewers were out of touch with the common man. The fact that they would give movies like Transformers a low score but rave about obscure boring movies would always annoy me. But several years ago I worked on a side project where I reviewed a movie every week for two years, and when it was over I became much more sympathetic towards movie critics. I agree with this blog post when he says that movies are repetitive. The same gimmicks and tropes are used over and over. It really does become boring and annoying to see different shades of the same thing again and again. This is why critics rave about the obscure weird movies that you never heard of. They have to sit through thousands of hours of generic crap and anything that is different is like a breath of fresh air to them. Something really exasperates this problem of generic movie making that wasn’t touched on in the article is the soulless Hollywood factory system that is currently cranking out worthless junk that was designed by committee. Look no further than the recent Star Wars trilogy for evidence of this. Very rarely to we see movies that a result of a singular vision, directors are now just replaceable cogs that have to bend completely to the will of the studio or they will be replaced during production (like the Han Solo movie) Ok
• cestith 5y ago
  It's right that mainstream Hollywood movies chase an ever more mainstream blockbuster audience and narrow the types of movies made as a result. Much of the article seems emotionally challenged. If a friend came to me with this much talk of losing joy in a hobby, I'd recommend they see a doctor or therapist. I hear the words, but mixed with echoes of depression. The thought that there's nothing good from a century of cinema in the entire world left to see is a little hard to imagine, especially after only six movies a month for some years. If that's really true and not just the author being cynical, then there are lots of other hobbies. I think either the article reflects more on the author than on cinema or perhaps the author's selection process needs improvement.
• notjes 5y ago
  There are like 100.000 topics that the overlords are not allowing to be touched. Yet a big portion of them would be very popular to the audience. After all, cinema is just media and media is part of warfare.
• nixass 5y ago
  Disney and Superhero movies definitely lead the spiral to the bottom
• poisonborz 5y ago
  Author mentions backdraws of passive watching. I always watch movies with a remote to skip ahead/back/pause 3 seconds, which I do on long boring shots, expected plot, thin conversation etc. It allows for a more concentrated, reading-like experience.
• strulovich 5y ago
  About the comment about “only 6 plots”. Indeed almost all plots can be bucketed in a few categories, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. When a scene looks like it has been done before, it’s the small differences from the previous time that make it stand out. Much like Jazz can sound the same for many people, but for people who listened to a lot of it different sounds make it interesting. I’ll take a very obvious example: Frozen’s true love kiss. It works just because it is the same old shtick used in every princess story, without it, it’s uniqueness would not exist. It might be the same 6 plots, but it’s like complaining you’re eating beef again. The question is what is different about this red meat dish vs the others.
• gravypod 5y ago
  If you feel like this you may be interested in anime. If you're ok with reading subtitles, or watching a smaller subset of the entire corpus with good English voice overs, you'll find some pretty amazing stories and a very different story telling method from what is available in Hollywood. Great places to start: - Mob Psycho (good English voice overs): A show about a high schooler who has magical powers (telekinesis, etc). He works for a "Psychic" (con artist) to help people who encountered ghosts or spirits. This is a coming of age story about emotions and friendship. - One Punch Man: Super heros are common place and there's one guy who is determined to become the best. He starts a work out routine where he does 100 sit ups, 100 push ups, and 100 squats every day and, somehow, he becomes the strongest thing in the universe able to destroy anything with a single punch. - Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: A Japanese manga author's attempt at taking inspiration from 1800s western story telling and American culture. It's a story about how something happened which changed the destiny of the Joestar family. Something to expect is the motifs, character archetypes, and method of showing something are very different from the movies and TV I grew up on. Jojo has done some things that aren't a good look in western media. Also, a lot of really good anime is only really good because it is a masterful subversion of tropes which makes it hard to give people recommendations to some of the best shows out there. The recommendation would go "please watch these 15 garbage shows (~40hr of content) so you can watch this one 14 episode (~5 hr of content) show that's been cancelled. It's worth it, I swear."
  • mabub24 5y ago
    Another great recommendation would be Tatami Galaxy, though you really need to be good at reading subtitles. It features some truly mind bending animation.
• ulisesrmzroche 5y ago
  “ Many years ago, a friend tried to convince me that the passive consumption of any media – film or television, maybe even music – was bad for the soul.” This is so melodramatic. But no, it’s not going to poison your soul to Netflix binge. In fact, I guess no one ever wrote anything called uncle toms cabin and that novel certainly did nothing toward the abolishment of slavery in North America A modern parallel is Dharma and Greg and LGBTQ liberation in the 2000s There’s no such a thing as passive consumption of art. Its in its entirety a subsconscious thing.
• Fern_Blossom 5y ago
  My 2 cents on the same topic, except to literature and a potential "cure" to the issue. I'm trying to break into being a fiction writer. Once you learn the tools of the trade of storytelling, it doesn't really matter the medium, you know where the story is going. There's an editor that mentioned this in passing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP_SmnCQA_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP_SmnCQA_Y It's in the first 5 minutes of the video. But he explains about some little challenge of being able to predict the end of a novel based on a page or two. The editor slam dunked the literary scholars. When you see a story as a bunch of gears, chains and a motor or two (writers and editors) instead of some ethereal wisp of magic beyond mortal understanding (literary twats and "scholars"), there isn't much that surprises you. Sorry, storytelling isn't magic. It's more formula and structure, no matter how much chest beating "analysts" drum up. Like, when everyone was "surprised" by Knives Out's ending, I was more confused since I figured it out after about 15 minutes into the movie. I enjoyed the little thriller part that was thrown in. That was unexpected. Beyond that, it was a paint by numbers story. With a SJW writer/director and the basic setup of the family, you immediately know what's going to happen and how. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Christie, another one of those where every writer figures out who killed the guy once the body was found because it's stupid easy when you know the mechanics. Analysts, "What a surprising twist!" Also, like no "movie reviewing/analysis expert" has picked up that The Tomorrow War is an allegory to climate change (more important the sacrifice theme of a generation for a future generation) in the disguise of an alien/monster flick. Either none of them actually watched the movie, just watched the trailer or I'm some sort of genius. I'm the first to say I'm an idiot by the way. Anyways! I had a slog of a time with this when I started to realize this with every movie, show and book. "Alright, they got their milestone and in 3, 2, 1, kick in the balls to the protagonist (things get worser-er). And then in 3, 2, 1, Chekhov's [object/wisdom] helps them out of the problem..." Then I went to a friend's grill party during this woe-is-me phase. Basic American outdoor party. Hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, soda, beer, etc. Nothing surprising, yet, still enjoyable. Maybe this is more of a philosophical, Buddhist, enlightenment change in perception or just me over analyzing, but... who the fuck cares? No, seriously, who the fuck cares about things being completely different every single damn time? Sure, I like variety in food. Fish, salads, chilis, soups, pierogi, curries, sushi etc. But when you really think about it, there's a level of expectations even when you eat "variety". A level of, "not surprises" I and like 90+% of people out there demand in food. 10-20% surprise is okay, but I have to be in the mood for something completely different. Yes, that looks different to everyone. Everyone has different expectations. But you still expect certain things because you like it. This weird demand that everything is different, every time, is really weird. Beating to the punch: No, you are not Andrew Zimmern. There's a 99.9% chance you're in denial that you like eating a small subset of food on a regular basis. Nothing wrong with trying and appreciating new, I do it too. But new happens extremely rarely with 99.9% of the population. You don't eat new anywhere as often as you may imagine. My point is, don't pretend you don't enjoy eating the same foods you've enjoyed hundreds of times before. The same thing goes in stories. There are elements and methods those elements are brought together that I enjoy, just like food. Once I learned to enjoy the things that I actually enjoy in stories, I think my love of books and movies skyrocketed. Doesn't mean I think other genres/subgenres are bad. I just learned, "That's good, but it's not for me and that's okay". I like scifi settings more than fantasy. I used to think I had to like fantasy. Thus, I always chased the "new" to fantasy or I thought it was "derivative". Honestly, if someone ever says a story is derivative, it's code for, "I don't like this genre, setting or general intent of this story. Thus, I'm going to get on my high horse and speak down to this." There's a reason some people can watch all 20+ seasons of Law and Order, but others can't watch more than 1 episode. Or read all cozy mysteries and love them all while others read one and go, "Yea, you read one, you read them all". Which is true. You read 1, maybe 2 different cozy mysteries... they're all the same. But you can also say the same about scifi, fantasy, political thrillers, horror, etc. If you didn't like what it's generally about to begin with, you're probably not going to like it anyways. Other than breakout pieces, this is the truth to story telling. You gravitate to aspects of a story. Settings, character types, plot types, certain themes, etc. Learn what those are and enjoy those. Nothing wrong with hating "popular" or "classics" because they don't speak to you. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Oh well. Find your own pond and build your own cabin. Then enjoy it.
• ElViajero 5y ago
  I have stopped watching movies because I am getting old. I think that many movies nowadays are way better that what I used to like. It is just that I have seen it already, it is not new but re-shuffles of the same ideas that I have already been exposed to. Each generation has to criticize the previous one for not measuring to the experiences that they had as children. Why a movie in 2021 cannot move me like a movie when I was a kid? Surprise me? Scare me? Maybe movies are getting worse, that is possible, but probably the biggest change is inside yourself.
• oramit 5y ago
  I didn't really agree with the author's points but it did get me thinking about my own video consumption habits and I realized that this year I have only watched two movies in full. I've watched a lot of shows, but movies - no. As for why that is, my current theory is that streaming at home has largely eviscerated my ability to sit down and dedicate a block of time to watching one thing. There is a strange form of FOMO that I get when I sit down and scroll through netflix. I get stuck in the browsing mode and can't ever make a decision because of too many options. I find the entire streaming experience pushes me towards finding good series just to avoid having to make a decision. Finding a good film will alleviate me of the cognitive load of choosing for one night but finding a good series I'll be off the hook for months.
• deleted 5y ago
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• asciimov 5y ago
  Two thoughts: 1. There is a phenomena that happens to people that get immersed in an art form, they stop seeing the art as a whole, and only see the parts. For a musician listening to music, they will start picking out their instrument and maybe the percussion, effectively ignoring the rest of the song. After doing this for a while, it becomes automatic, and then becomes real work to be able to hear the work as a whole. I suspect this has happened to this writer with movies. 2. I want to see his list of movies. I want to know how far back his movie watching has gone. According to google there have been 579 Best Picture nominees over the 92 years the Academy Awards have been running. Has he seen all of those? I admit, Best Picture isn't a standard to rank good movies, but there are some real gems that didn't win. (Also, how many of the Hammer Films has he seen? There is 158, many are delightfully bad.) I grew up watching old movies (30's - 50's) One of my favorite movies is "It Happened One Night" from 1934. I think these old sliver screen movies are better due to writing. To be successful back then, you couldn't hide a bad script behind explosions and cgi, you had to tell a compelling story. Nowadays mass appeal relies not on telling a good story, but on how many big name actors can you get into cosplay suits, fly around the screen, and blow up buildings.
• spywaregorilla 5y ago
  > TV and Film have switched spots I think this is true. But like... ok? Longer form series are better for a lot of content. Characters and relationships are better developed. TV has taken on film-like quality in many cases I don't know that I really see the difference. > Most Stories are the Same & You Learn the Tricks Than the formulaic comedies and romantic films and action films churned out in the 90s and 2000s? Yeah right. This has always been true. I find inventive plots are much easier to find these days. Especially with more foreign film getting up to speed. It's difficult to break the mold in a single film, not to imply plenty of films don't do this frequently. But this is another advantages of TV series. There's a lot more room to explore different directions. Creative freedom has never been more alive. Even the superhero film franchise that must not be named does some creative stuff these days besides two beefy boys punching through explosions. > Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad This is my favorite kind of review on Steam. "I played this game for 200 hours. I would not recommend it. " by XXX. 400 hours played.
• lioeters 5y ago
  Some of the films recommended in this thread.. - The Nice Guys - I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore - Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - Don't Worry - He Won't Get Far on Foot - The Favourite (2018) - Druk (2020) - Amélie - The Lobster - Turist (2014) - Parasite - El Hoyo (The Platform) - Quo Vadis - Aida? - 200 Meters - Luzzu - El robo del siglo (The Heist of the Century) - Knives Out - Us - Get Out - "Tokyo Story" (1953, Yasujirō Ozu) - Aleksei German's Hard to be A God - Edward Yang's A Better Summer's Day - Maren Ade's Toni Erdman - Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love - Wings of Desire - Do the Right Thing - Drugstore Cowboy - Gates of Heaven - Beauty and the Beast - Life Is Sweet
• TrackerFF 5y ago
  I'm a huge movie buff, and have watched thousands of movies over the past 25 years - what I like about movies: 1. Many movies are acquired taste - so even though you don't like them the first views, they can turn out to be fantastic movies down the road. Some movies, I've had to watch as much as 4 times, over the span of many years, before I finally fell in love with them. 2. There's so much information. You have the music, visuals, storyline, the actors themselves, etc. I've watched some pretty terrible movies, which still had some redeeming values, deep down if I you just looked hard enough. 3. The market is HUGE! Like with music - if you can't find any good new music, you're likely not looking hard enough. Indie movies, foreign movies, art movies, they're all out there.
• Damogran6 5y ago
  Movies are a short profit item, Studios need to keep making them to stay relevant, Movies are 'profitable' that aren't good. How many zombie movies can you possibly make and still keep the quality up? (Have you looked at what's on page 5 of the Netflix Sci-Fi category? The Effects are convincing, the movies aren't good.)
• grae_QED 5y ago
  What a well written blog post. I couldn't agree more. I've almost entirely given up on movies as form of entertainment. Just like the author of the post notes, just about every new movie that comes out is predictable and boring. I've been trying to transition to reading more literature for entertainment just because the variety of stories are a lot more diverse and interesting.
  • jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
    > just about every new movie that comes out is predictable and boring. Complaining about the lack of good new "x" (be it movies, music, books, etc.) is more a reflection of the complainer than of reality. Assuming you live in the US, around 800 new movies are released every year in theaters alone. If we include movies that go directly to streaming, and international movies that don't release in the US due to distribution rights issues (or just lack of interest), we are well in the thousands. So, unless you did watch those 800 movies, you lack the authority and grasp on reality to claim "just about every new movie that comes out is predictable and boring". Again, the sentence is a reflection of your tastes and habits of media consumption (and of course of those of the general society in which you live), not of reality. No offense intended. The miniaturization and democratization of technology has made extremely affordable and easy the creation of new movies and music. There are lots of new garbage, of course, but just about anyone in a Western country can create a masterpiece. The prime example is Kevin Smith financing Clerks with his credit card.
• whobar 5y ago
  Having seen amazing movies on Prime, when I struggle to find anything decent to watch, I blame it on the fact that Prime is only listing a small fraction of movies that exist, not that movies are dead.
• kennywinker 5y ago
  Hi, @author. I just wanted to say that if something brought you joy and now no longer does, you might be depressed. I’ve been there. Therapy helps. Try a few if the first one doesn’t click.
• ericjang 5y ago
  This was an interesting, well-written post. I myself was an avid movie buff up until graduating college, after which point I became interested in other hobbies. My two cents: 1) I wonder to what extent the anhedonia is due to not the movie industry changing, but the author themselves changing, maturing, becoming more interested in other things in life. I used to consume copious amounts of anime / manga, now that stuff doesn't nearly interest me as much anymore, even though there is lots of fresh new content out there. 2) To the author: perhaps a new level of appreciation in films can be attained by trying to shoot a film, do a cel animation, write a storyboard of your own? The act of trying to create that which is so familiar can help you see things in an entirely new perspective.
• SeanFerree 5y ago
  Awesome article!
• robinjhuang 5y ago
  Could not agree more
• psychomugs 5y ago
  Like the author, I thought Lost in Translation was okay when I first watched it in my late teens. I watched it again when I was living in Japan and it brought me to tears, particularly that scene where she's calls up her relative from her hotel room. I think the original Neon Genesis Evangelion is a masterpiece and hits differently as an adult compared to when I first watched it when I was the same age as the teenage protagonists. Anything worth watching is worth watching again, and again, and again. I may be behind the times and have to silently take the back seat whenever discussions move towards the latest episode of Breaking Thrones 99, but I'd rather consume media when it's been divorced from the hype. "The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. . . . Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you." - The Catcher in the Rye.
• AlbertCory 5y ago
  Thanks, I read this expecting not to like it, but it resonated with me a lot. This past Oscars show, I'd seen only two of the Best Films nominees, and they were both streamed. I also tried Nomadland and I turned it off. TV has indeed taken over. The creativity of Breaking Bad or Succession or Yellowstone is what we used to watch movies for. Real creativity is always there and it'll go where it's appreciated. I don't want to make this tl;dr so just one more thing: I hosted A.O. Scott at Google [1] and I mentioned that I never look at Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic. I read him, and whoever's on the Roger Ebert site. An 80% "score" from a bunch of stupid people is still stupid. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kh3-DGU3l4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kh3-DGU3l4
• rednerrus 5y ago
  I'm going to echo the sentiment that world cinema is better than American cinema at the current moment.
• stnmtn 5y ago
  This is a very frustrating article because, and I'm making assumptions here, it seems like the author hasn't tried that much to go beyond canonical american cinema. If I'm wrong, then my mistake, but the only films mentioned here are hollywood productions and it seems like the movies they're dissapointed by browsing Amazon Prime are the latest big-budget Hollywood production that doesn't have much special going on Also, the #5 footnote says a lot. I'm a huge David Lynch fan, so understand I'm speaking with bias here, but to fully dismiss movies that are loved by many as "objectively bad" speaks to a small imagination of what films can be. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean the director is "shooting from the hip and doesn't know anything"... and so what if Lynch is? He finds beauty in the subconscious and dreams and connects things together that don't have an immediately obvious connection. To dismiss Twin Peaks (something which is awe-inspiring in the way it displays the raw power of human imagination) as "a disaster" to me means that the author has not really pushed themselves to expand their horizons. International cinema constantly amazes and inspires me. I've been logging 50+ movies a year for 7-8 years now and all the time am enjoying and finding more enrichment in it. That's not to say it's not valid for someone to not experience things the way I experience them, but this author speaks with an objectivity that really frustrates me.
  • psychomugs 5y ago
    I also concur on the bad take re: Lynch. He's definitely an acquired taste, but reading beyond the "text" (screen?) a bit into his creative process has helped me appreciate his works and inspires my own creativity.
  • lynchisok 5y ago
    >He finds beauty in the subconscious and dreams and connects things together that don't have an immediately obvious connection. Lynch has obsessions with domestic relationships that get predictable, and are immediately obvious. I still like twin peaks but its dumb to assume he "doesn't get it" just because he doesn't care for it. If he's watched 600+ movies he probably gets it. And the show WAS a disaster if only for the 100 loose ends it never tied up before being canceled.
  • riverlong 5y ago
• seph-reed 5y ago
  What amazing movies have come out in the passed 5 years? I'm looking for counter-examples.
• deleted 5y ago
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• Yaina 5y ago
  I feel like the TL;DR here is "I'm too smart for films now and also PC culture ruined comedy" The first part is clearly not true. There are film critics that have worked for decades and don't start to hate films suddenly. There is more than one critic because films are not something you consume objectively but that can move you personally. Also comedy films are not self-censored! Sensibilities have changed and the target audience has become larger, wich results in films that are gradually less sexist, racist, homophobe or have flat gross-out humor. Turns out you can be funny without using these as a comedic device!
• justshowpost 5y ago
  Borat 2.0 is basically an anti-Trump agitation based on rerun of Borat 1.0 (at a bit of The Dictator), that's all, they didn't even bother to elaborate «wear mask» from the cover. Lynch is severely overrated, watching his works is much more about flatulence than enjoying the fine art.
• illwrks 5y ago
  There are only so many ways to skin a cat and have something that a consumer wants to buy... On the netflix thing. I feel like the digital platforms are watering down choice and contributing to that feeling. Rental stores always had a broad selection of films across genres / distributors / producers that grew over time, digital platforms only have some content available for a certain time period and then it's gone.
• allemagne 5y ago
  "In film, you start with the best and make your way down to the worst" is just a restatement of the fact that everything enjoyable tends to give diminishing returns, heightened by survivorship bias. I don't actually think literature, or music, or video games, or porn, or walking through nature is any different. There are definitely things that are fundamentally wrong with movies today, but there have always been things that are fundamentally wrong with movies. I don't think things like self-censorship in film are new at all, it just used to be topics like the existence of homosexuality. Finally, if you distinctly smell shit everywhere you go, then maybe you should explore other possibilities than that your sense of smell has become too sophisticated, or the entire world just started smelling more like shit. I think the conclusion the author is searching for is that his own expectations and approach to "understanding" movies is what ruined his passion.
  • dharmab 5y ago
    > I don't think things like self-censorship in film are new at all, it just used to be topics like the existence of homosexuality. If anything, it's gotten better. The Catholic Church used to have a direct hand in industry censorship of movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXZGKhpv8eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXZGKhpv8eg
  • umvi 5y ago
    > is just a restatement of the fact that everything enjoyable tends to give diminishing returns. I don't actually think literature, or music, or video games, or porn, or walking through nature is any different. I disagree - maybe passive-type entertainment like movies have diminishing returns. But lots of genres of books certainly don't. Maybe reading fantasy has diminishing returns, but some genres of books aren't written purely to entertain, but to inform and educate. Reading biographies won't burn you out on biographies due to overused biographical tropes or other mechanisms that cause "diminishing returns" - because biographies aren't made to entertain, though entertainment is often a side effect. They are made to educate you on a person's life and accomplishments.
    • edanm 5y ago
      First, what makes a book any less of a "passive-type" entertainment option? It is basically the same as a movie or tv show in that regard - you're not creating anything, you're consuming content. Second, I'm not sure why you think that you get diminishing returns from fantasy, but not from reading biographies. The biggest problem with both is that you start by reading the best books, but eventually you can run out of those. After you've read the 10 best biographies or 10 best fantasy novels, if you continue, you're necessarily going to read 10 lesser books. [1] Third, it's absolutely true that after reading a bunch of biographies, you start getting used to certain standard tropes and ways of writing. Notes: [1] There is of course no real definitive list of best books, as it's highly individual, and it's hard to know ahead of time which books are the best for you so as you keep reading you can always find more gems. Still, as you read more of a genre, you'll tend to gradually work your way to works that have less chance of being good (though reading a new genre allows you to "restart" this process somewhat, and the more you read, the better you might get about finding good books... so there are ways to mitigate this effect.)
• bluSCALE4 5y ago
  I'm jealous of sooo many of you. I didn't like so many mainstream hits. Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, the Bourne and Bond series, all the Marvel / DC movies probably a lot more I've forgotten to mention.
  • stnmtn 5y ago
    I don't think most self-described film buffs who are keeping track and logging 50+ movies they watch a year would disagree with you. There's a lot more to film than just the canonical big-budget American hollywood productions
• arh68 5y ago
  819!? 819 is not a lot of movies. Some folks over on Criticker [1] have thousands of reviews. Think 15,000. I myself have reviewed 440, and I've never seen a lot of well-known movies. To say "no more" after 819 just seems odd. Perhaps one needs a break. I do agree that miniseries have grown as a genre, but I wouldn't be confident in saying it caused movies to decline. [1] https://www.criticker.com/ https://www.criticker.com/
• estevaovix 5y ago
  Feeling the same lately, so I've been using JustWatch to curate as much as I can and avoid waisting time with bad content.
• comeonseriously 5y ago
  #4 for sure. Generally, I agree with the author. And, honestly, I think it is the fact that we have access to media everywhere we go. Seeing a movie decades ago was an event. You anticipated going because you didn't have access [0] to so much media. Now, we just pull out our tablet or phone. Our lives are filled with instant gratification. So much so that very little every has any meaning anymore. Our mental reward system is broken. [0] Yes, HBO existed, but that was NOTHING compared to today.
• geon 5y ago
  > Adult comedy thrives on irreverence. Over the past decade, we’ve become touchy about what’s okay to say or laugh at. Borat could not be made today. What a load of bs. What isn't ok anymore is making fun at the expense of handicapped people, minorities and the like. But that was never funny. Not really.
• aj_nikhil 5y ago
  OP hasn't watched any real cinema (European/South East Asian), just few commercial movies which are mostly based on a set formula. OP needs to improve his taste.
• cherryturnover 5y ago
  I keep finding winners of movies. Burn After Reading has been jumped up to my top 10 list just because of how benign and absurd it all is. A cool tragedy I think most people should see is "Into the Fade" with Diane Krueger and the drug addict from Babylon Berlin (dont know his name off the top of my head). A lot of mainstream "marvel-the-good-guys-win" type of people won't like it but if you want cold blooded reality it does it well.
• OOPMan 5y ago
  I struggle to understand why some random individuals realisation he's not that into movies any more is worthy of any attention at all? Interests and tastes come and go with age. Truly we live in the most narcissistic of times that people even feel the need to discuss something like this as if it were of any interest to any besides to author.
• husamia 5y ago
  I think every now and then there is a film that I enjoy watching. The quality is still there but it's not as abundant.
• deleted 5y ago
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• LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Movie junkie getting down, short moment of thinking, frown. Tries tricks, still no more kicks, despair. Re-discovers fresh air. Rehab!
• hiptobecubic 5y ago
  "I became obsessive with my hobby and eventually grew bored of it." Cool story.
• wly_cdgr 5y ago
  "Whenever I watch a movie now it's almost always a disappointment...What happened?" Lol. What happened is that you look for good movies on Amazon Prime, dumbass "Passive media consumption is fundamentally bad" Lol. Talk about drawing a crap conclusion from a shit sample
• bobbydreamer 5y ago
  Teacher is totally right. I used to be a movie buff, I started with the best movies and drilled down like. If I like a movie, I will check director or hero/heroine and start watching their flims. This started in 2004 beginning of torrents. I almost all movies, I ever liked in a 2tb hard disk. Nowadays I just re-download for better print but even I am not sure why I am doing I do it. When it started to hitt downturn is, at a point I was watching movies just to understand what the director is trying to tell as someone has produced this movie. I slowly started to cut back like I don't watch movies if it's more than 130mins and started cutting down the time. If is say what's my best its mostly the ones between 1980 to 2005. Everything after that was too much CGI or it was like okay movie. Like comedies I liked were Encino man, son in law, first few parts of police academy, jury duty. Action movies Conair, lost in space, broken Arrow, specialist, assassins. Desperado.