I'm a bit of a film buff and I agree with you on the slow pace of older films being a problem. I'm not opposed to a slow film (Skinamarink has a glacial pace a

I'm a bit of a film buff and I agree with you on the slow pace of older films being a problem. I'm not opposed to a slow film (Skinamarink has a glacial pace and is amazing), but I many films from the 70's will simply waste my time. When a character hears a noise and is about to go outside, I don't need to watch him put on his shoes. I especially don't need to watch him do up his laces. Before anyone argues realism, the screenwriter could write the scene where the character was already wearing his shoes. I've spent far too much of my life watching people in shag haircuts tying their shoes. The further you go back in time, the worse it becomes. Watching films from the fifties, there's a recurring theme of 1) Protagonist decides he needs to speak to the president 2) Protagonist grabs his coat and goes outside 3) Protagonist drives to the airport 4) Protagonist boards a plane 5) Stock footage of an airplane taking off 6) Stock footage of an airplane in flight 7) Stock footage of an airplane landing 8) Protagonist disembarks 9) Protagonist hails a taxi 10) Protagonist enters taxi 11) Protagonist asks driver to take them to the President Today, steps two through eleven would be replaced with an establishing shot of the white house. Some better directors managed to squeeze a bit of character development into one of these scenes, but most of them were just a perfunctory explanation of how travel works. It's just padding out the film like a student who procrastinated on a term paper. Slow pans and long takes are important tools for a good director to heighten the mood and shouldn't be stricken from the cinematic vocabulary. The unfortunate truth is that most directors are merely average and when the mood is boredom, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging them to amplify it.