1999: The Last Great Year in Movies

I don't buy this article's premise (that there is too much recycled, unoriginal content).

You could make this same argument for all forms of art (music, TV, theater). They can all be explained the same way: the barrier for entry has decreased.

Anyone can upload music to Soundcloud or a video to Youtube. Now there are whole albums/TV series/movies being produced on these content networks as a result of a kind of indie discovery that never existed before. This is wonderful!

The benefit of all of that discovery is the same drawback: that anyone (good or bad) can enter the market. That means in order to capture the "average" audience you have to water down and dilute what is popular to appease everyone. Most pop music is unmemorable. Most pop movies are unmemorable. BUT, they are good enough to capture a wide enough audience to convince them to pay for it.

That doesn't mean there isn't great film to be found. Or music. It just requires a bit more discovery than your local pop Top 40 radio station or whatever they're peddling in the box office.

There have been so many great films in the last 20 years with original stories. Here's a bunch that I just rattled off the top of my head without much thought:

Boyhood, Interstellar, Inception, Spirited Away, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, Wall-E, The Intouchables (now called The Upside), Pan's Labyrinth, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Amelie, Slumdog Millionaire