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Comment by clydethefrog | Hacker News Reader

Reading between the lines it seems the writer has mainly watched American movies that are easily accessible. I recommend instead of scrolling through the Amazon catalogue like he described, he might want to see if there is a local film festival that screens world cinema. Cinema from other parts of the world for me often leads to great new perspectives and insights. Outside of Hollywood there is plenty of auteurs and refreshing cinema happening. Or take a deep dive into the best of the best without the American lens with lists like the TSPDT.

https://www.theyshootpictures.com/

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Even easier: Criterion Channel. $10/month with the best movies from all over the world all the time.

The current Neo-Noir and Wong Kar-Wai collections are worth at least quadruple that price out of the gate.

https://www.criterionchannel.com/videos/neonoir-intro

https://www.criterionchannel.com/world-of-wong-kar-wai

Unfortunately still not legally accessible outside the US. [Although I managed to get trial access with a VPN, but then I did not work anyway with a laptop running linux connected to TV with HDMI due to a certain DRM protection]

I have been enjoying MUBI a lot, the European alternative to Criterion Channel. Especially since they added a fixed catalogue aside from their new movie a day model. They also usually highlight three great reviews as a companion reading to the movie plus the user base is delightfully snobby, with no low effort jokes like you will see on Letterboxd.

They also do great retrospectives, currently Kelly Reichardt and Christian Petzold.

I found Criterion to be quite easy to VPN actually compared to some other services. You have to use a VPN to signup, but watching the movies doesn’t require it which is nice. And they don’t have any issues accepting international payments either.

(For reference, this was about 6 months ago, and I live in Australia)

I think the Criterion Channel catalogue does differ somewhat by country; I needed to use my VPN to watch Y tu mamá también from Canada.

Criterion is available in Canada...

I don't understand why sites like Netflix or MUBI do not allow an easy search or easy browsing of their ENTIRE catalog by certain criteria (country, length, rating, budget, etc.) Pirates do an incredibly better job at it and it amazes me every time.

Netflix makes their user interface terrible to search. This is by design: when things get pulled due to licensing or whatever other arrangements are made with studios or their parent companies, users are all none the wiser.

The reason why P2P will reign supreme is because it cuts through the bullshit of backwards business restrictions and empowers people to watch content on whatever device they want, when they want, and how they want. Netflix has, what, 30,000 titles available? Compared to the 400,000 titles at your nearest P2P based source.

Netflix doesn’t want you to see how bare-bones their catalog actually is

There is a way to browse by genre which map to a generic URL but are much more direct than the default aimless auto-playing nightmare of their default interface.

https://www.finder.com/netflix/genre-list

http://ogres-crypt.com/public/NetFlix-Streaming-Genres2.html

Some don't resolve to any results, which I think is a result of their poor catalog.

http://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/68778 = Action & Adventure starring Tom Cruise

Back in '90 I acquired a laser disc player. The conventional wisdom of the moment was laser discs were on their way out, and people were selling and giving away laser disc collections for cheap. I bought the entire Criterion Collection, what it was at the time. Something like 5 crates of discs, all classic black and white films. I watched most of them, but many do not hold up and feel like experiments today. I don't know where they are now - in a box somewhere in long term storage.

Wow, I bet you could get some seriously good money for those if they are in decent shape. There is a massive retro video resurgence going on now, so folks paying big money for rare VHS tapes, I'm sure the Laserdisc market is just the same too.

I have a big pile of Laserdiscs too. I couldn't imagine going to the trouble of selling them individually though.

For your consideration, the LaserDisk DataBase:

https://www.lddb.com/

I can really recommend Wong Kar-Wai. I may have rewatched some of his movies four or five times.

Chungking Express is such a beautiful movie. You can also take a look there at a bit less developed and less modern Hong Kong.

I drunkenly and blindly bought the Criterion Blu-ray for just a little south of a Benjamin and it was totally worth it, and the price for the originals began climbing after the release of the revised version included in the box set. It's my favorite from WKW's oeuvre; it has the same feeling as Lost in Translation which is another one of my favorite films.

As I grow older, I realize that my interests have shifted from big explosion-a-minute blockbusters towards simple movies of people doing, essentially, nothing.

Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love is one of the most beautiful movies ever made and, rightly, considered one of the greatest movies made in the modern era.

Mubi is also excellent

+1 Almost every memorable movie I've watched in the last 2-3 years was on Mubi

Kanopy. Free with many library cards. Views are rate-limited per month, which limit I think may vary by library system, but still, you can watch at least a movie or two a week for free if you're part of a participating system. Some major, recent films, lots of mid-tier non-blockbusters and the kind of thing that plays the film festival circuit. Tons of (often political) documentaries, if you're into that. Damn good, for free, and you can ignore the documentaries and just focus on the movies and still have loads of content. Only weakness is that, oddly, it's awful for kids' content.

Really? We were amazed by the amount and quality of kids content. It's a completely separate section, so it's not part of the main Kanopy app, but it has tons of movies and dramatized readings of children's books. But yeah, the first thing I thought when I read this was "Kanopy".

Kanopy gives you five movies a month for free with a library card and has a similar catalog.

I think so, too. Although I'm almost lost for cinema nowadays because of a lack of time (I write novels in most of my spare time), my girlfriend still goes to the cinemas very often and I know from her that I'm missing several outstanding movies every month. There are also good US productions every year.

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.

When I first witnessed Fury Road I thought George Miller had single handedly ushered in a new renaissance for action movies.

Unfortunately no other directors have carried baton forward, and now I'm just waiting for the sequel..

Interesting. I feel Fury Road is a shining example of zero storyline shite, and George Miller to be an over rated hack.

My best friend and I watch hundreds of movies per year (about 1 every day) and we thought Fury Road was horrid as well. By contrast, Thunderdome, was a very smart film, as far as hollywood movies go.

Are there any recent action movies that you thought were shining examples of the genre? If so, what about them did you like?

The recent "Nobody" is a good twist on action, as well as "Hardcore Henry" is interesting. When the storyline takes unexpected turns, or uses clichés as bait and does not follow through on the cliché can be fresh. In general, a feature length film is too short to do many literary works justice, and serialization does a far better job relating a quality story. For example, Netflix's "Ozark" would not be called "action" in the feature film sense, but the intellectual violence in that show is far and above stupid gun/car/fist violence. Films like "The Congress", "Terminator 2", and "Tropic Thunder" represent the best the Hollywood feature film system can produce.

fury road is a masterpiece. 0 exposition or intro, just drops you right in to non-stop madness. might be my favorite movie now

Watching fury road is like listening to a classical symphony. A masterpiece in composiing and weaving together sequences.

Maybe I'm just not enough of a film connoisseur but I just watched Fury Road last night and thought it was mediocre. Sure the action was okay and it was cool how you just started with the action but the storyline seemed superficial at best and I felt like the climax came way too late in the film.

A lot of what's good about the film's wrapped up in technical film-making appreciation. The remarkable quality of the action-storytelling, how "legible" the action is, the quality of both those things despite the by-modern-standards limited use of CG, how good the practical effects themselves are, the costuming and set-building and world-realization stuff, simple efficiency and competence at "set-up, pay-off" screenwriting (less common than it should be, especially in flashy action movies), that kind of thing.

[EDIT] Basically, I think there are three general viewer-categories for the film, here presented as their reactions:

1) "It had lots of action. Seemed like normal action in an action movie, I guess. Hated the story and characters. Movie sucked overall, don't get why people like it."

2) "The action was notably good. I can't explain why, but it was definitely good. Film overall was just OK. Liked it fine, some stuff about it was neat, but don't get why some people are raving about it."

3) "Oh my god I'm going to need several days and pages of notes to unpack everything that was great about the action and storytelling, and especially the two of those together, in that movie. There's so much to cover. I can't wait to be able to watch it at home so I can analyze the editing more closely, that's going to be great. A+."

Agreed 100%, perhaps the most impressive thing about the movie is how economical it is with storytelling and worldbuilding. Think about the fact that it is largely just fantastic action set pieces and incredible visuals. The consider how much you understand the world and characters within it. A lesser movie would have a 10-minute exposition dialog scene early on, telling you in excrutiating detail exactly what Immortan Joe is doing and why he is bad. Fury Road is the absolute pinnacle of "Show, don't tell" for me.

Then there's the niche category (cannot speak for Fury Road, but can speak for, among others, True Lies):

"Wow, putting a reel transition there is BRAVE." (yep, that's a multi-projector projectionist reaction, True Lies has a reel-to-reel transition in the middle of a conversation, and you have up to "seconds" of lost frames in a switch-over).

My family saw the Star Wars that came out in 2016 for Christmas. I was shocked to find myself bored out of my skull. I thought, "How can Star Wars be so popular among my friends if I hate it?" A year later I told the story to someone and they helped me realize that it's not Star Wars in particular, it's action movies in general that I hate.

They can be fun in 10-minute snippets, though. And pretty.

To be fair, the latest Star Wars trilogy shat out by Disney is crap compared to the masterpiece that was the original.

The original trilogy had a great cast of charismatic actors with chemistry and a great story that kept you invested in the characters, while the latest one hasn't got any of those and is just cashing in on the nostalgia of the original.

Also, you're not 12. My kids were enthralled by the recent movies (yes, even Solo) in a way that you and I can no longer be.

That is true. Also? The Star Wars universe at the time felt open & surprising, like anything could happen. By the end of the newest prequels, it felt like the movies were highly constrained by everyone’s expectations. They were Marvel-ified by Abrams, and then they handed over the franchise to a more controversial film maker who couldn’t quite pull it off either, and then you had an impossible situation that Abrams made the best he could of, but was ultimately a mess.

Whatever. Nowadays, I will watch scifi movies simply for the visual aspect, and there were some nice scenes in the new trilogy. But the surprise and novelty of the original trilogy could never really be satisfied, in part because I’m not 12. :)

I found Rogue One to be very interesting, but the newer episodes or Solo couldn't keep me interested.

I could live very well with a Star Wars universe consisting of the original trilogy plus Rogue One. The sequels had their moments but not enough of them.

I can only offer counter-anecdata, but whenever I see a kid wearing Star Wars merchandise, it is from the original trilogy. I think the last trilogy will have even less cultural impact than episodes 1-3.

The original trilogy had mediocre acting but had one-liners that were on par with Evil Dead. I think that's what made it a cult classic.

None of the other movies will be remembered for their one-liners, but from what I can tell that's not what Disney is trying to do anyway. They're selling characters, not movies.

Author here -- No, I have never been a particular fan of action movies. I find them pretty boring; they're perhaps the worst offenders in the "all movies are the same" category.

A lot of it comes down to legible editing and camerawork. If you have a big name actor who can’t do the action that well, you can use shakycam and fast cuts to obscure that. That specific trend is probably on its way out thanks to John Wick, though.

> the writer has mainly watched American movies that are easily accessible.

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.

I'm so happy to see a Mighty Boosh reference here, one of the best shows ever created!

That was exactly my reading. I watched 75 films so far this year, most of them obscure at least in a sense that I had to make an effort to get them and while not all of them were great, a lot of them were interesting and that's after four decades of watching movies and seeing surely more thousands of them. I am sure I would feel similar to the article's author if I limited my choice only to what streaming services offer.

I think interesting and competent is what you might strive for after you've consumed enough of a type of media. You see it in music and video games too. Eventually the big hits and blockbuster games are all pretty boring, if you're an engaged consumer of the medium, you'll start looking for more novel ways to be interested, and start appreciating competency more than you used to.

Maybe? I'm willing to bet that after 810+ movies he'll have seen all of the tropes and techniques trotted out by those outside of Hollywood. How many ways can you really tell a compelling story or possibly show an artistic experience?

As long as you're not overly obsessed with identifying every variation of a cliche, there's plenty to enjoy.

The stories will have different backdrops, and they can proceed in ways that foreigners might find quite unexpected. Different cultures have different assumptions about how to make a love story truly romantic, what's funny or weird, or what counts as a faux pas that eventually dooms the protagonist. Even the same trope can be executed very differently because of these factors.

The cinematography will be different. The music will be different -- Bollywood BGM feels very different from K-Pop. The fact that you'll be reading subtitles all the time will certainly make for a fresh experience, especially when you're listening to something like Japanese where the sentence structure makes it difficult to translate the timing of the punchline into English. Action sequences will emphasize different things, often because of budget or location constraints, but sometimes simply because there was a local fad for something. There will be references to local traditions, literature, and historic events that make really interesting rabbit holes to follow.

1770 films so far and as a European I'm more in awe with early Iranian cinema than ever. Definitely a world away from Hollywood, in the best possible sense.

Any film recommendations for someone new to the genre?

Abbas Kiarostami - Where Is the Friend's Home?

(Sorry, I must've turned off the notifications in HN, because I never know when someone replies to a comment I've made.)

Rather than recommending films, which can turn into a long list since I'd find it difficult to decide which deserves more attention, I've shorlisted a number of highly respected and influential directors that I've closely followed (not in a social media kind of way)

* Majid Majidi

* Abbas Kiarostami

* The Makhmalbaf family (https://www.makhmalbaf.com)

* Dariush Mehrjui

* Bahman Ghobadi

* Jafar Panahi

* Bahram Beizai

* Asghar Farhadi

Most of these managed to create amazing films despite being closely watched and heavily censored by the authorities.

>How many ways can you really tell a compelling story or possibly show an artistic experience?

Is this a joke? Do you actually think american film captures every single possible artistic experience?

If I'm wrong list some movies, please. I will watch them. I've seen enough foreign films to see many of the techniques used between films and between directors.

Recently I watched One cut of the dead. One of the few comedies that surprised me in the last ~10 years.

So I watched it yesterday, based on your comment.

I'm not sure if this movie is funny (it's very subjective) but, thank you.

That's one of the most original movie I've seen in a long time, it's so clever and unpredictable.

Really, thank you :-) !

> Reading between the lines it seems the writer has mainly watched American movies that are easily accessible.

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.

Yeah, that is my impression as well. Mass market film is extremely narrow by definition, and as Hollywood gets more globalized, the themes need to be even more narrow to be widely relatable. But video production costs have plummeted. You could make an incredible and quite experimental film with an iPhone and and a few freelance actors. I think the real problem is our discovery "algorithms" are winner takes all.

Author here. I've watched a lot of international films, probably between 250 and 300. These are pretty much the only films I watch nowadays -- you're right that the American lens on film gets tiresome. Nonetheless, I still have many of the same issues with international film, given by constraints of the medium.

When I see these kinds of takes on movie quality dropping I typically encounter the impact CGI has had over time. I was surprised that you did not similarly decry the impact of CGI on cinema and the over reliance on it.

This might just be my problem, but I really hate subtitles. It takes me out of the movie and in dialog heavy movies completely pushes out the visuals.

I’m the opposite, I can’t stand watching TV or movies without subtitles because I want to know exactly what is being said at all times, and don’t want to miss part of the story because I couldn’t hear a couple of words. But, I’m also originally from Europe, so am quite used to it.

its often not at all exactly as said... also you might miss a lot of the performance if you are not able to see how things are expressed...

I agree, I love subtitles, and prefer watching everything with (English) subtitles, even films/TV shows in English. Mainly because of the same reason as you, and just to add, I also watch a lot of stuff that has strong regional UK accents. Sometimes, it's not just the accent, but the regional usage of very specific slang that is simply just incomprehensible because I'm not familiar with the word's usage in that manner and can't infer from context, even if the words themselves are in my vocabulary. (A recent example that comes to mind is Derry Girls...)

But I also wonder if there's something related to how people read that factors into this aversion to subtitles?

For me, subtitles are almost invisible and I spend zero-to-negligible effort "actively reading" them -- they just sort of get absorbed by my brain while I'm watching what's on screen. So it doesn't really negatively affect my enjoyment or engagement with the show/film at all.

I think maybe the folks that struggle with or dislike subtitles view the act of "reading" subtitles as a mental context switch that interferes with the parallel act of watching and listening.

Watching English show with English subtitles is different, because I can just ignore the text (this is actually how I learned to watch movies since all movies in movie theaters here are subtitled so I just listened for the English words and watched the movie).

Sometimes I do watch some TV shows with subtitles on (English dub & sub) if they have very inconsistent audio equalization i.e. during some scenes music is super loud and then they dip into really quiet dialog so I don't miss the beginning part.

I have a lot of trouble with it too, though Parasite was very watchable (thankfully, as it is a fantastic movie).

I really hate dubbing and love hearing the actors talk in their native language even when I don't understand it. I'm extremely fast at reading subtitles too, so that's never a problem for me.

I never understood those countries, like Spain, which make dubbing some sort of national pride. No, Spaniards: dubbing sucks, you just don't know any better ;)

I don't like dubs either. Which is why I mostly watch American movies. I can just listen to the dialog. I have watched some Japanese and Korean content on Netflix. I tried to watch it with subs at first, but I gave up pretty fast since when I want to watch a movie/show I want to watch it not read it. I have backlog of books for reading, but even then I am mostly reading books in English.

Agreed, of course with English (which is a learned language for me) it's way easier since I don't need to read the subtitles.

But even with other foreign languages I enjoy watching with subtitles. For starters, you learn what other languages sound like. Plus, let's face it, most dubs are terrible quality. And finally, it's surprising but you start picking up the language! I've never studied Japanese but I started picking up words and inflections just from watching Japanese movies (and the same happens with Korean, Chinese, etc).

There are worse things than dubbing... In Polish TV all movie dialogs are read by a single person, typically male. I guess they came up with this horrible idea during communism, because dubbing was too expensive, and now we're stuck with it.

In cinemas however, movies typically have subtitles.

Terrible! I heard this single male voice also "explains" the jokes of comedies like the Simpsons, is it true?

No, I've never seen this. Except maybe in rare cases when the joke is really idiomatic and the translator screwed up the job by explaining joke rather than translating it.

I agree.

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.)

I agree. Even with Netflix I find myself looking for British, Australian or French productions I. Film and series as they seem fresh, less repetitive and deeper in character than recent American productions.

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