No More Movies
jayriverlong.github.io
jayriverlong.github.io
The current Neo-Noir and Wong Kar-Wai collections are worth at least quadruple that price out of the gate.
What the author perhaps means is the decline of US action movies. They have become faster and dumber over the years and arguably are mostly unwatchable by now, at least in comparison to action movies from the 1970s. Why have they become so bad? I used to think it's just because they are cut too fast and 30 minutes of unnecessary action is added at the end, but now I believe the scripts have also become worse. It would be interesting to hear from an insider like a script writer what has changed.
I highly recommend Scandinavian crime drama's they are under rated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-OOpZitfd0
the work of Jurgen Haabermaster is also outstanding for all those who want to break out of the bland diet Hollywood serves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAlxNNvfvJs
on a serious note I found some fantastic serials that are not so well known and which I will remember for a long time (e.g. Indian "Sacred Games", Italian "Gomorrha" or "Suburra", British "Small Axe", USA "Snowfall", German "Dogs of Berlin" or "Dark", French "The Bureau"). In fact there wasn't a single show in the last 2 years where I felt I ended up wasting my time or were forced to bail out after S01E02 because it didn't resonate. The alternative to great serials is only a good book and from my pov a movie can never give the same depth as a good serial.
Bingo. I mostly gave up on those decades ago. Come on, I remember walking more than once into a Blockbuster video rental store (remember those?). I'd make a few rounds of the isles, come up empty-handed, then walk out the door.
I started mostly going to an outlet called called Tom's Video on Grandview Highway in Vancouver, Canada. You could rent lots of Asian cinema there. HK movies, Japanese movies, Korean movies, Chinese movies, and from other parts of the world as well.
The author of this blog has simply burned out on one kind of movie and lost perspective.
A movie doesn't have to be entirely original. Even if the stories are tropes, there are always different actors, different cinematography and so on.
Blues songs are more similar to each other than American movies, yet there is a point in coming back to the Blues. If you say, "what's the point of listening to the Blues; it's the same song structures and soloing cliches", you're missing the point.
I sometimes wonder if we will ever have the quality of films Hollywood made in the 60's, and 70's.
(On technical note, I'm waiting for the day dubbing is perfected. I will watch a good subtitled movie, but prefer not to.)
>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-...
This is basically what is referred to in the industry as "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...
this is what i've started calling the "it takes one to tango" fallacy, where an issue has two responsible parties but only one gets blame. hollywood's not forcing people to spend their money on mass-produced uninspired movies - worse! thats what people pay to go see!
If someone likes movies as recreation, even if they would prefer something different than the action blockbusters, their choices are "don't enjoy yourself to send a message to the studios" or "watch a movie you might enjoy less than something from another genre"... most people who enjoy watching movies are probably gonna chose the route that still lets them enjoy watching a movie.
The incentives don't line up. Its like buying McDonalds at an isolated highway rest stop - I don't particularly love McDonalds, but if my choices are a hot meal or whatever I can get from a vending machine or pack with me, I'll take the hot meal every time. Its not an enthusiastic endorsement of globalized fast food chains despite my paying for it.
Or who only go to see a movie that has 80% on Rotten Tomatoes (unless its a franchise movie).
The real problem is that TV killed the middle-rung movie. All that is left is blockbuster spectacle (which costs too much to take risks with) or art house stuff.
I want to make responsible choices, and want to reject bland movies, or disposable packaging, or privacy-invading ad trackers, or greenhouse gassy lifestyle choices, or any number of similar issues. And I do make personal sacrifices that reflect these preferences. But I fully expect that Hollywood will continue to churn out uninspired movies, that the 'local' Walmart and, shortly thereafter, the landfill will contain almost as much plastic as product, that websites will increasingly pack their pages with ever-more-invasive trackers, that people will still live in single-family housing with multiple internal-combustion vehicles and long commutes.
To be clear, I believe the blame actually lies with neither of the dancers, but with the system in which they operate. You can't expect the biggest studios like Universal/Paramount/Warner Bros/Disney/Columbia to make any decisions other than those which they're incentivized to make. They have no reason to do so, and if they did, they'd soon be replaced by a competitor who didn't. A corporation is not a moral entity, it's essentially an AI that attempts to maximize quarterly financial numbers, you can only expect it to act in the narrow context of incentives and consequences on which it operates. That cultural/social/political/economic context is the enemy, not any individual consumer and not any individual corporation.
For example, even if 100% of America went to see a film, that only represents approximately 1/3 of China's population. As a studio, ignoring that market would be seen as throwing away money. So you will see immense pressure to make your movie marketable in China as well as America.
Even if many American consumers choose to watch a film catering to them that studio would still be pressured to view that film as a commercial failure.
It doesn't seem to matter so much what the local consumers want since their demand is dwarfed by global demand.
The consumer does not have that much power. The individual consumer almost certainly doesn’t.
This opinion simply doesn't get expressed very often. People think it's elitism or something and react negatively to it.
To assume that the only power dynamic at play is consumers making individual choices as fully rational, considerate actors is a vast oversimplification. Your equation isn’t more even, you’ve just flipped the one side, assuming that consumers have all the power and Hollywood is just haplessly following demand.
Yes, lowest common denominator viewers are the biggest purchasing group, and that’s the money that Hollywood is chasing. But that was true before. What changed isn’t the same consumers demanding more Avengers and less art films, but Hollywood setting their sights on the global audience, thus increasing the market for generic movies a hundred fold. Now the incentives are so skewed towards that group that the individual American consumer has next to zero power in influencing Hollywood’s direction with their dollars.
You also ignore the power of advertising and limited choice. Marketing can and does create an audience of consumers that didn’t exist before. It’s not about “here are my products, now you choose the best” it’s “here are my products and I will subtly convince you that you need them.” Consumers are not rational actors in a classical sense of going to a market for a specific need and picking the best product from a wide selection. Marketing is sufficiently advanced that the owner of a supply can also create demand for it.
Finally, Hollywood also controls the selection of choices. So as others have pointed out, people who would prefer smarter films have to forego movies altogether if they really want to “vote with their dollars.” So they might still choose a sub par movie if they like the theater and their friends want to go.
PS: I’m not advocating for a solution, so much as I am pointing out that there’s more to market forces than a simplistic libertarian view of the market can offer. I think in this case it’s inevitable and Hollywood movies are just gonna be like that now. But there’s more at play than “oh well, consumers chose it!”
Edit: Well since I introduced the idea of a "root cause" I concede the truth is the root cause of all business decisions is, has been, and always will be market forces.
Love it.
I think the root cause of the ticket shift is technological: cheaper screens, higher resolutions, better bandwidth. People have lots of entertainment at home.
So what does that shift mean? Execs get risk-averse in flat/contracting markets, which alone would account for some of the perceived decline. Artists and execs who are excited for innovation/risk are going to move toward expanding market segments, meaning toward streaming.
Also important here is who is buying tickets. 20 years ago I would happily haul my ass out to an art-house theater to see something novel and interesting. Now it's almost all available from my couch; the hard problem is picking something. More educated audiences are more likely to have the money and technology to watch from home, making niche theater-distributed films even riskier.
What's still going to work in theaters? Things with mass appeal and audiences, especially ones that take advantage of the kind of sound/video that most people don't have at home. Things where audiences know what they're getting. Of the top 20 films from 2019, 18 were related to existing IP, and the other two were from famous directors: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2019/
Mexico tends to export to Latin America (southern cone) altho one could argue that while there are regional differences, in broad strokes mainstream latam culture jives with each other.
It's funny how many strange one off films and games are being made online through crowd funding now (not all are good but a few are decent) due to this global pleaser approach to film making.
A few highlights from the last decade — Booksmart is a very different take on the teenage buddy comedy. Jojo Rabbit and The Death of Stalin are some of the darkest black comedies I've ever watched, which would never have gotten made in the 90s. Birdman is completely surreal. The Grand Budapest Hotel is one of most joyous films to watch I know of, and The Artist is a comedic love letter to the silent era.
The notion that people can't be funny anymore just because they can no longer use particular groups as punchlines is just lazy. A great example is Get Out. It's a lot of things, but it can reasonably be called a comedy: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/11/jordan-peele-ge...
Or look at Sorry to Bother You: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorry_to_Bother_You
I thought both of these movies were hilarious, and they worked with extremely "challenging" social topics.
As an old, when people start talking about movies were only funny back in the day, I suspect they just imprinted on whatever was funny in their youth. Time moves on, and humor has to move with it.
In 2018 when I originally got AMC A-list subscription, I tried going to 3 movie a week at first, so I went to a lot more movies I was unsure about but they were very original and memorable, but they weren’t super popular (at least I was the only person I personally knew who had seen it).
Sorry to Bother You ($18 million)
Blackkklansman ($93 million)
Eighth Grade ($14 million)
Crazy Rich Asians ($238 million)
Those were great films, however, they were niche.
'Superbad' was a big, hollywood thing. A cultural touchstone that we remember, make jokes about, memes.
Very few people ever saw Booskmart or The Death of Stalin.
The Globalization of Hollywood - and increased cultural sensitivities have changed this.
Comedy doesn't cross borders as well as Thor.
Without going into details, cultural sensitivities and fear of Twitter mobs is a 'fundamental' issue. It's not a side issue it's a primary driver. Have a listen to the podcasts and talks by various comedy writers, you can see the evolution.
People with power have their knives out to destroy others - some of them obviously need to be cancelled, and some others raise some questions, but there are very, very few left with the power to make the jokes they want. Everyone else has to kowtow in fear. Comedy requires 'absolute safe spaces' in order to work, particularly writers rooms, which, if we could record what they say ... my god we'd all be offended.
I'm hoping that this will just be a 'phase' but I'm afraid it may not be as the issues overlay with ostensibly historical issues of social justice, and as soon as we broach that domain, everything becomes deadly serious and we all act like good corporate citizens.
It may very well take an established 'provider' like a different kind of Netflix with a different set of sensibilities.
Edit: listen to Tina Fey and Judd Apatow podcasts and less public interviews, they hint at the shift while being very polite about it.
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.
when i was writing a sibling comment i had this same realization. the fault of capitalism is that its an expression of populism, of the tyranny of the majority.
i think the american founders had this correct, at least in principle: there needs to be a system of checks and balances with populism meeting elitism.
i wonder how one would go about architecting such an economic system. free market capitalism only for small businesses, no larger than one state? stronger government intervention interstate?
The great American comedies are loved worldwide from the classics like the Three Stooges and Abbot and Costello to the "modern" dumb movies like the Hangover or Superbad. The pull to milquetoast, harmless comedies come from INSIDE the US by the usual suspects.
A comedy like Borat can be made because it makes fun of the "right" people, a FSU country, Islam, Roma people, American conservatives, rednecks, etc, so it is New-York-Times readership approved. Keep the same script but change the demographics and you will get pages upon pages of harsh criticism all over the media.
Young people need to understand that there is always an ideologically war going and the powerful people push their worldview unto us.
>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.
> 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.
> There's a lot more than Marvel going on today no matter what the author implies here.
I agree. It now costs a lot less to propel TV to have “good enough” special effects that nearly rival movies. Pair that with better plots and more time for telling stories, it’s not hard to see why TV is more enjoyable these days.
Deconstruction/Meta/Anti-trope -Jump Street movies (count for both this and comedy as do some of the others), The Lego Movie, Cabin in the Woods, Better Watch Out, I'm Thinking of Ending Things
'Film' instead of movie - Another Round, Thorougbreads, The Lighthouse, Ex Machina
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It always sound both funny and silly to me when people use these terms to describe the presence of equality ideas in movies/shows. I read a review of Brooklyn 99 where the reviewer complained that the episode was ”force-feeding” political discussions to them.
Really? That’s the analogy for it? What is remotely mandatory about including a political topic in a movie? I couldn’t think of anything less mandatory than an arbitrary American movie or show. There are literally thousands and thousands of them. And movie watching is not “required” in any sense or circumstances.
And when you compare one black actor performing a role that you have an opinion that should not be black inside a movie with how much white washing and under representation of black people happen in Hollywood movies, it becomes even sillier to say that you are entitled to have your allegedly white roles being performed by white actors.
How can someone seriously use analogies such as “down the throat” for this kind of message?
Please do not get your emotions up, I will try to explain. Your comment strongly implies a preference for movies from the past. Hollywood movies were/are notorious for “whitewashing” characters - i.e. using white characters / actors in roles where this would be very implausible according to the internal logic of the story (or history in cases where it applies). Objecting to one but not the other seems extremely hypocritical - there is a lack of consistency / fairness there. And then the question is why the preference for one vs the other?
The more interesting question IMO is whether that preference is something inherent, or the result of years of exposure / programming that has normalized the practice one way - such that you are still able to suspend disbelief - but not the other?
Ooh, I got a crazy example for you: https://slate.com/culture/2004/12/ursula-k-le-guin-on-the-tv...
A Whitewashed Earthsea
How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books.
By Ursula K. Le Guin
On Tuesday night, the Sci Fi Channel aired its final installment of Legend of Earthsea, the miniseries based—loosely, as it turns out—on my Earthsea books. The books, A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, which were published more than 30 years ago, are about two young people finding out what their power, their freedom, and their responsibilities are. I don’t know what the film is about. It’s full of scenes from the story, arranged differently, in an entirely different plot, so that they make no sense. My protagonist is Ged, a boy with red-brown skin. In the film, he’s a petulant white kid.
If they are historical persons, they either were or weren't black. You are probably talking about fictional persons in more-or-less historical fiction. And both inclusion that minimizes the racism of the historical period and exclusion are potentially seen as problematic (from the Left; obviously, you’ve kind-of articulated the Right objection to inclusion.)
Of course, whitewashing by placing White characters where they make no historical sense, often simply inserting white characters into adaptations of existing stories from other cultures (especially in lead roles) is still (not only historically) more common than implausible inclusion of non-Whites, and remains a big complaint by (AFAICT) lots more foreigners to US media than occasionally including black people in improbable historical positions.
And this is not something purely happening in the US. It might just be perceived that way because they have such a large cultural influence around the world. There is racism, sexism and all the other stuff everywhere in the world, and the cultural reckoning is happening there too, just in very different ways.
It's simpler than that though and fits other points made - the new Borat was actually a lot more politically correct and followed the American ideology that has emerged recently, adding a woman character and going after Trump republicans.
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.
... 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?
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.
I still enjoy reading fiction though.
But we do have instantaneous access to good films from everywhere in the world, and good tools to discover them.
So the author is right - nobody wants to literally make the same movie today, because the same movie is already have been made! It's however a prime example of being right on technicality and completely wrong on substance - the point is not to make a copy of Blazing Saddles, the point is making that kind of irreverent and boundless satire, which is appropriate in all times and all societies - but I can't see how Woke Hollywood could ever make something like that.
Another argument is "but we don't submit to every woke demand and not everybody is getting cancelled" - of course not! If Hollywood tried to submit to every woke demand and avoid every complaint from twitter mob, no movie would be ever made at all. Of course, there's a lot of complaints that are ignored. That doesn't exclude the fact that there are clear boundaries where Woke Hollywood would never dare to tread. And irreverent no-holds-barred satire of the Blazing Saddles mold is out of these boundaries.
Next argument is "well, there are stand-up comics and they aren't thrown in jail". Yeah, sure, we're not there yet. But we also not where we were when Blazing Saddles was made. We're somewhere in between the one and the other. And we're moving away from the Blazing Saddles.
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.
But not (only) because they lack a good catalog. It's mainly because they don't (want you to) have the tools to find content you'd truly like. They're focused on promoting new and trending content. The proper approach is to have a list outside content providers and not use providers as discovery tools. (Edited a typo.)
As an aside, justwatch.com (and their mobile app) do a good job of filling this role. They have the same "promote the stuff that's already trending" problem, but will recommend things across services or that aren't available for streaming but you might want to track down anyway. (No affiliation beyond being a happy user)
The line "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?" would be a scandal today.
I feel like we're stuck in this absurd cycle where the outrage to the outrage becomes a force multiplier. A small number of very vocal people on the left express outrage about X. Not a view shared by the vast majority of the population, left and right included. Right wing media picks up on said outrage and makes vast, sweeping statements about what it means about "the left" and "America today". The whole thing snowballs, some folks on the left end up defending people they don't agree with just because of the outrage on the right... blah blah blah it all eventually dies down until we do the same dance a couple of months later.
It's all an absurd waste of everyone's time, except for the folks like Tucker Carlson that get record viewing figures and a huge pay day from it.
How do you even know it wouldn't be allowed? People love to spout this kind of stuff, but... have you even tried?
Edit: A very nice example I've come across is Ricky Gervais stating that the British Office couldn't be made today. I think he's being very disingenuous saying that because while out of context it could appear to have a lot of controversial jokes touching on taboo subjects, within the show it was always clear who the real target of the jokes was (same with Borat). Masterfully done and I believe (from what I've seen in terms of comedy recently) that kind of stuff would still fly at the BBC. There's even a documentary from a couple of decades back about the success of the office and a BBC producer admits even back then they had to reign in a few of the areas Gervais wanted to go in terms of race & disability (it was also mentioned that he is quite obsessed with these topics), so its all bullshit that people like him are shouting about "THESE DAYS...!".
In fact maybe he's right and the Office couldn't be made today. But that's primarily because Gervais isn't funny these days
Yes, the kind of comedy it has is very tied to the immediate social context for commercial viability, both as to the what it is lampooning (late-70s disaster films) and how.
The broader template of Airplane! (broad take-it-to-11 parody of recently popular film patterns) because it was itself the pattern for its own flood of films in the 2000s (Scary Movie, Date Movie, Superhero Movie, and several sequels to Scary Movie).
I mentioned this elsewhere, but I am not aware of any such theory by Vonnegut.
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
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-lis...
I just wish Netflix would open up these lists to be browsable in their own UI.
I don't know if it's in other countries, but in the UK you get a free cinema ticket with your subscription every week (Mubi GO) and I've seen so many great films I would never have even heard of because of that service.
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?
The usual counter-point is "What will people do if they change their minds later?", which makes me tear my hair out.
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.
The only time I actually end up watching stuff on Amazon is those 1-2 times per year they have something bingeworthy that I've learned about somewhere else. And then it's always "aw crud, Amazon - wonder if I even have access to it at all".
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.
I'd also note that a passion for film has been culled out of the Hollywood management class almost entirely. They are running corporations, not film studios, unlike some older generations. Not to say that profit wasn't an important motivator ever since film began, but it was never the sole reason for funding movies across the industry like it is today.
It's also very sad that taste in movies will be fundamentally altered by this period. Taste for complex movies needs to be formed - in a world of Marvel movies, it's very hard to even understand what is good about a film like A Clockwork Orange or Birdman.
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.
But then I thought maybe I was just getting older, and maybe the kids all loved new 2000s music.
But then after 2010-ish, it was like music came back, and is now great again, and it turns out I wasn’t just getting older - music really did go through a creative wasteland in the 2000s.
Naturally, these are very broad strokes, and there are exceptions.
Also, if you go back and watch some (not all) of those 90s movies some are pretty meh. Independence Day really stands out as being really boring and if anything the template for all the action movies you dislike. It has a very similar, shallow feel to it.
Really? ID4 is fun in the manner of that a formulaic, paint-by-numbers, checklist action-adventure can be, but there's non shortage of equally well-done iterations of that model today. (And ID4 wasn’t a groundbreaking example others since arw copying, it was rote, predictable, and formulaic for its time.)
I think a lot of this is just the same kind of nostalgia you see in every generation.
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.
Could you give a few examples?
A couple sites I recommend are EasternEuropeanMovies.com and CriterionChannel.com. Tons of excellent old films.
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.
[1] 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Greenland
The Little Things
The Conjuring
Killerman
Ghost in the Shell (live action)
Redline
SputnikAlso, 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.
On David Lynch -- I like stuff that is weird and unusual. I LOVED the first three or four episodes of Twin Peaks. But after that, it was an unbelievable disappointment. You cannot seriously tell me that the latter half of Season Two was good. It was clear that Lynch had drafted the body of a Blue Velvet-style movie that lent itself well to a few hours of material, but once you got past the first three or four episodes, there was no material left. From there on, the attempts to keep the plot together became more and more abstruse.
With a guy like Lynch, these movies do not showcase the "raw power of the human imagination" -- what they showcase is a man who is deeply disorganized.
To the extent that his films are flawed, they are always flawed in the same way: execution of the latter half. Premise and first half is always fine. That pattern speaks volumes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[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_...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
[Never Look Away (2018)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5311542/)
Looks good, thanks for the rec.
Lindsay Ellis had a pretty good refute to when people say this about Mel Brooks.
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.
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!
It was not so much as century of what people expect as increasing predictability ans repetitiveness of Hollywood movies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's like "Calling someone gay isn't fashionable anymore so what's the use!?"
boop
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.
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.
I agree that American humor isn't the same as 10 years ago, but I am not sure that's a bad thing.
Subtitles are fine. Learning a language well enough to watch and enjoy a movie and get subtle jokes/plots is no easy feat.
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.
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.
I wish there were better options for watching televised plays. Outside of Shakespeare, the options seem sadly limited.
The article listed is Akira Kurosawa's top 100 films: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26551604
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
The solution is simple, turn it off and let yourself breathe.
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.
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.
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.
I do agree that miniseries have grown as a genre, but I wouldn't be confident in saying it caused movies to decline.
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 ;)
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.
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?
Don’t waste time. A lot of movies suck.
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.
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.
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
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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
Find another hobby! The world is so vast it makes ones head hurt.
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.
After all, cinema is just media and media is part of warfare.
IMO, most of these laments apply equally to pop music. (Or maybe I'm just getting old.)
- 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
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!
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! :-) )
Cool story.
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.
- Euphoria
- Bojack Horseman
- Atlanta
- Fleabag
short moment of thinking,
frown.
Tries tricks,
still no more kicks,
despair.
Re-discovers fresh air.
Rehab!
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.
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.
> 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.
As a viewer, the drawn out nature of TV shows is an insufferable time waste these days. I can only stand short productions which have a definite end, like Chernobyl.
Otherwise, I have to assume random time wasting tangents or filler scenes and cliff hangers due to trying to sell as much play time as possible.
Lynch is severely overrated, watching his works is much more about flatulence than enjoying the fine art.
Drink.
I’ve had a blast watching anything drunk. Life is truly not that serious.