> "The movie business *as before* is finished and will never come back."
And I think that's correct. Superhero blockbusters taking over all box office receipts was one thing, but now those blockbusters are becoming deeply tied to streaming services like Disney+ that's bringing content into people's homes and away from movie theatres.
I won't mourn movie theatres (though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie), but I do worry about things like movie financing. It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films.
It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. So I watch a lot more limited series TV instead... and maybe that's just fine?
> I won't mourn movie theatres (though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie), but I do worry about things like movie financing. It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films.
I'm informed by my cinemaphile friend that exactly this phenomenon has been much remarked upon in the last 15-20 years. Mid-budget films, which used to be very common, are mostly dead, leaving a couple kinds of low-budget film (the startup-model where you put out a ton of cheap movies and hope one is the next Blair Witch—and yes, most of this is horror—and the "indie" film kind) and the mega-budget ones that are basically investment vehicles. So, two kinds of films that exist because those models are the best ROI, and then indie films, and that's about it.
Meanwhile, there are still tons of good films coming out, but most are (broadly) in the "indie" bucket. People who complain that nothing good is made anymore[0] must just be looking at what's advertised heavily, is all I can figure. Dozens of good-to-great movies come out every year, including a whole bunch from the US.
[0] Then there's "it's all remakes now"—but 1) it's not, and 2) Hollywood started churning out tons of remakes about as early in their history as they possibly could, and never stopped.
> People who complain that nothing good is made anymore must just be looking at what's advertised heavily
I can't speak for everyone but I think it's hard to find anything 'fun'. The indie films inevitably seem to be deadly serious, whether it's terrible crimes or failing relationships or the inevitably of death. If a viewer wants 'fun' then they're stuck with formulaic superhero blockbusters.
It feels different. Spielberg was fun, Lucas was fun, Hitchcock was fun. Perhaps they were the outliers even during their times, but it seems like all that sense of adventure has been sucked into the big franchises and mangled into these lowest-common-dementor films. The international market wants big explosions and 'clever' comebacks.
That's a broader cultural issue for all sorts of art today, not a movie specific thing.
The depressed/angry mood has been building for a couple decades or more, and getting more widespread. Even something intentionally over the top like Fast and Furious or Marvel has more "serious issue" stuff in many of the installments from the last 5 years than previously.
It's easier in the news to see all the bad stuff that used to get hidden behind the scenes, so until something happens about that or people just tired of seeing it both in the news and in art, I imagine it'll be here for a little longer.
It's a slowly escalating 45-minute rant, but I think that this quote from toward the end summarizes it fairly well: "I'm admittedly a little tired of seeing heroes always surrounded by worlds of gray, because, if they're there long enough, they start to feel kind of gray, too."
I haven't ever seen the Errol Flynn version of Robin Hood, but I suppose my equivalent is that, as far as I'm concerned, Batman peaked with the TV show in the 1960s. It wasn't just colorful, it was legitimately fun. To the point where even the bad episodes were good. The Tim Burton movies were also a bit like that. They were visually dark, sure, but that was Tim Burton's aesthetics, and it was a package deal that came together with at least a few glimmerings of that same twisted sense of humor that got him fired from Disney for making Frankenweenie.
Since then, though? It's a bunch of increasingly sad movies by apparently sad people whose creative drive seems to primarily come from the desire to demonstrate to themselves and everyone else that they are Grown Ups, and who are too busy Taking Their Jobs Seriously to have any fun at work. And so they're working so hard that, even though what they're producing is technically classified as entertainment, the end result is so joyless that watching it ends up feeling, at least to me, like work.
It was one of the few Marvel movies that seemed to remember its comic book origins. Quick pace--individual comic issues are short, snappy (not necessarily quippy) dialog--because there isn't space on a comic panel for walls of text, colorful and interesting character designs, and a good dose of humor sprinkled in.
It would probably get old if every Marvel movie were like that, but all in all I think the formula works. Guardians of the Galaxy also did pretty well in this regard, but making most of the characters assholes in one way or another undercut the theme somewhat.
I think the simple answer is that movies tend to reflect the world around them. Not to get too political on HN but I think no matter your political stripes we can agree that the general mood of the country has been not great since at least 2015 or so. You could argue that means we need more escapism, not less, but somehow that doesn't happen.
> The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
I think it goes both ways. The stories we tell reflect our thinking, and our thinking is shaped by the stories we tell.
The cynic in me thinks that another problem is that fun is bad for business. Fun makes people feel good, and people who feel good aren't as likely to engage in retail therapy, and modern movies make a whole lot of money off of merchandising.
I think there is something to what you are saying, and Americans are not feeling as well as the (average) GDP data should indicate compared to the Nordics, but in general data shows we feel fine.
I’ve felt tremendously better since Biden was elected and, as an introvert, the lockdown for the past year and a half has done wonders for my mental health. I’m happy now than I’ve ever been (at least for the past four decades).
>> They were visually dark, sure, but that was Tim Burton's aesthetics, and it was a package deal that came together with at least a few glimmerings of that same twisted sense of humor that got him fired from Disney for making Frankenweenie.
Heh. Like in Batman Returns were the Penguin yells at Batman: "You're jealous, because I'm a genuine freak and you have to wear a mask!". I loved that bit :)
Danny DeVito, man. A comedian playing a deformed super-villain. That was cinema, once. That was even superhero movies, once.
It’s really difficult to make a successful movie nowadays when you need to appeal to multiple different cultures at the same time. The depressed/angry mood is simply easier on the artist because it’s universal by default.
It sticks around until people get bored of it and studios move on for a while. Only to circle back in a few year and try again.
That's an interesting point. Certainly the zeitgeist among the millennials seems to be that things are bad and they are only going to get worse. Maybe Star Wars seems hopelessly optimistic since civilizations will implode well before they invent hyperdrives.
The depressed/angry mood has been building for a couple decades or more, and getting more widespread.
You can see this a lot in comedy. Comedy used to be mostly about humor, with occasional social commentary. Now it's largely about anger and shock value. "Comedians" are targeting the same brain patterns as social media.
I think that's a reason that people like Jim Gaffigan find such a strong following. There's a good number of people who are just burned out on the outrage industry treadmill.
> I can't speak for everyone but I think it's hard to find anything 'fun'. The indie films inevitably seem to be deadly serious, whether it's terrible crimes or failing relationships or the inevitably of death. If a viewer wants 'fun' then they're stuck with formulaic superhero blockbusters.
Yeah, good point. Fun films from the more indie side exist, but they aren't the norm, that's true.
Psycho Goreman is a great example of a mid-budget movie that’s 100% about the fun. The issue really appears to be about movie investors being unwilling to take risks like they used to, which makes sense given investor sentiments as a whole across the past several decades leaning more and more conservative as wealth loss protection is a requirement, which removes a lot of creative room for new IPs.
Go back and watch films from the early 70s - the comedies are farcically stupid and the serious films are violent and paranoid, because between Vietnam, Watergate, and other political issues, its was a tough time and people were angry, disillusioned, and pessimistic. Spielberg's first commercial film Duel is a very fine piece of cinema but it's far from being 'fun.' Likewise Lucas' early work like THX1138 or American Graffiti is shot through with anxiety about the future and lost innocence. Hitchcock could do great screwball comedies but he alternated them with nightmarish vortexes on taboo subjects.
What you want are optimistic films where people get into trouble but keep their sense of humor and eventually bounce back. That requires a social and cultural environment, and a showbusiness industry, in which people can do the same. Have you heard many stories lately where a talented director goes way over budget or even bombs but makes a great comeback because people are forgiving and want to support a real artist? You have not, because the arts are heavily professionalized these days and computers have made accountants very powerful.
There was a thread[1] earlier in the week lamenting how tough it is to make modern comedies. Between the Twitter mobs scrutinizing anything for insensitivity and the need to appeal to international markets, it's really hard to come up with a universally funny and PC-acceptable comedy anymore. You can't do slapstick or silliness. You can't (even gently) poke fun at "groups" anymore. Best you can do is a cynical "dark comedy" that provides awkward discomfort and doesn't actually make you laugh.
Comedies are supposed to be mid-low budget affairs. They are supposed to be able to ignore the international market because they can make a profit on just the domestic audience.
This sort of ties in with what a previous poster was saying about the mid-budget movies disappearing because the money flows to the top and the bottom end is full of recently graduated art students trying to out-serious one another.
If you cater to the international market (“make everyone happy”). The you’ll inevitably end up with cookie cutter inoffensive garbage like we’re spewing out now. Get a few reliable IPs and milk them for all they’re worth.
If I think about some indie blockbuster comedies none of them really did anything that would get the Twitter crowd going crazy. Napoleon Dynamite and Super Troopers for example I could see being hits today
Like the other said, Sunny is long running. Curb, South Park are around too. I’m sure there’s more. This is off top of my head fav shows that aren’t abiding by what you’re saying are the rules now.
Community, IASIP, and 30 rock had shows that were removed by their rights holders from streaming or digital purchasing options last year, and still remain unavailable.
The fact that almost every IASIP is up is much more of an indicator than a few eps not being up. Same with South Park. Community snd 30 Rock aren’t controversial shows so they shouldn’t be grouped with the first two.
And if you are familiar with the show, they are not prejudiced at all. But whoever chose to remove them is doing the "cover your ass" move, so I can certainly see some merit in what ryandrake is saying.
Thanks for that, I've been watching through the whole lot while indoor cycling (I started to see what the fuss was about, so I have to finish now, but it's not really my sort of thing so I watch it when I can't pay full attention to whatever I watch) on Netflix and noticed some gaps compared to my tracker app. One of them was that 'takes out the trash' episode, so must be the same (link is about Hulu).
I really don't like this trend. Honestly, satire or not. Rate it appropriately, and let me decide what I'm comfortable viewing? It just seems petty and mollycoddling to prevent me watching something because at some point within it something that may or may not be offensive to me or others happens.
I actually don't even understand the reasoning? Do the producers request it to protect the reputation of the programme, perceiving it as a risk?
The last good American indie film I've watched was Hereditary (2018) [1] and before that 'Blue Ruin' (2013) [2].
They weren't exceptional but when you're awash in 'swords & sandals', 'comic book' crap and Adam Sandler formula-thons, even middling fare seem great.
On the TV front, True Detective Season 2 [3] is sorely underrated. Though fictional, it gives you a glimpse into the many possible dimensions of California graft and corruption that are all too close to real life developments surrounding the recent California High-Speed Rail mismanagement junket [4].
I agree with the sentiment expressed in this thread that well-financed, movies for adults with good casting and talented filmmakers have become very scarce.
I remember seeing indie comedies and horrors. I dont think indy implies serious, altrough there are also sad indie movies.
> . If a viewer wants 'fun' then they're stuck with formulaic superhero blockbusters.
I dont think this is true either. The industry producing formulaic is not because it is only way to have fun. If you look at series that came out lately (Money Heist, Westworld ... ) they are not formulaic and are fun.
For anyone looking for a fun and surprisingly heartwarming indie gem, I can highly recommend 2017's One Cut of the Dead [1]. Budget: $25,000. Worldwide box office: $31,200,000.
Take this with a grain of salt and bias on my part. But indie movies from my perspective seem to be stuck on the "weird". They have to be "weird" (or "different") otherwise they're not "indie" but rather low-budget "b-movies" that I think everyone despises to some degree. Unless of course they end up being a hit in which case they're cult-classics.
Interesting observation! I think it's the same with music. I love all kinds of music, from the very weird/experimental to big budget larger than life sounding mainstream productions. Being also a bedroom music producer with limited time, I would love to match these big budget productions, but I don't have the ability to get to that level. So instead of trying to make a weak imitation, it's more fun and rewarding to create something different or weird.
Agreed. 'Indie' = low budget and weird/niche/slightly pretentious/not for me but grudging respect for it; 'B' = low budget and I think it's bad; 'cult' = low budget and I think it's good.
It's not obvious that one would rather apply 'cult' than 'independent' to something one likes, but there we go, language!
Seems inevitable that streaming services would cannibalize some of that low-invest fun media. The format is just more relaxed and if I want to see something kinda silly and fun, I'd rather just pop on my TV.
Westworld tied itself in knots trying to "gotcha" the audience. At the end of the day I think a more straightforward storytelling method probably would have worked better.
Westworld was also more or less my serie fatigue point. I was not a big consumer of TV shows and certainly didn't ever binge but nonetheless it was a tipping point.
Men In Black, Shazam, Charlie's Angels, Jumanji, Murder Mystery, Big Time Adolescence, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, Good Boys, Weathering With You, Doom Annihilation...
That's probably the prime demonstration of the sillinr
ess of cancel culture complaints; yes, people have criticized Rowling's gender essentialist views, but she clearly has not been, in any meaningful sense, “cancelled”.
Harry Potter is my favorite book series in terms of personal enjoyment and memories, and one I re read every so often still. Is the author really cancelled if I’ve never heard about it?
I’m going to assume Rowling isn’t “cancelled”, but has a strong tiny population very upset at her. That’s usually how it goes for most “cancelled” people who aren’t already pretty old and retired instead of trying to continue in any limelight.
> Then there's "it's all remakes now"—but 1) it's not,
It really is, if by "remake" you mean all ways of leveraging existing IP. Here are the top ten box office films of 2020:
* Bad Boys for Life (sequel)
* Sonic the Hedgehog (videogame)
* Birds of Prey (comic book)
* Dolittle (book)
* The Invisible Man (book)
* The Call of the Wild (book)
* Onward (original)
* The Croods: A New Age (sequel)
* Tenet (original)
* Wonder Woman 1984 (sequal, comic book)
Two originals. Now go back 20 years:
* Mission: Impossible 2 (sequel)
* Gladiator (book)
* Cast Away (original)
* What Women Want (original)
* Dinosaur (original)
* How the Grinch Stole Christmas (book)
* Meet the Parents (remake)
* The Perfect Storm (book)
* X-Men (comic book)
* What Lies Beneath (original)
Four originals. Go back another 10 years:
* Ghost (original)
* Home Alone (original)
* Pretty Woman (original)
* Dances with Wolves (book)
* Total Recall (short story)
* Back to the Future Part III (sequel)
* Die Hard 2 (sequel)
* Presumed Innocent (book)
* Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (comic book)
* Kindergarten Cop (original)
Five originals. Another ten years to 1980:
* The Empire Strikes Back (sequel)
* 9 to 5 (original)
* Stir Crazy (original)
* Airplane! (original)
* Any Which Way You Can (sequel)
* Private Benjamin (original)
* Coal Miner's Daughter (original)
* Smokey and the Bandit II (sequel)
* The Blue Lagoon (book)
* The Blues Brothers (SNL sketch)
Five originals again. I'm going by top box-office gross here because I think that's a good proxy for what is successful. You can look at other years, but there is a very clear (but not overwhelming) trend towards movies based on familiar content. It's not clear whether studios are leading audiences or vice versa. Probably some iterative process of both.
There's also a clear trend away from dramas. I think that's because drama (and non-slapstick comedies) tend to rely heavily on specific cultural norms for their effect which makes them translate poorly. There is a very clear trend especially in the last decade or so of Hollywood focusing on movies that will also do well in China in particular.
Let's stop there, but don't assume for a second that all the remakes and sequels are top-loaded - they may dominate the top of the chart but they go pretty far down it too.
Maybe you should go back a few decades until you can find a time when the top 20 were mostly originals. Would have to be before the Star Wars/Jaws blockbuster era, probably.
There are a significant number of scenes in Airplane that are directly lifted from Zero Hour. I haven't checked recently, but I think it's almost a scene-for-scene remake in many respects.
On the other hand, would you want to watch another big-budget Harry Potter side story spin-off (Fantastic Beasts), an adaptation of bad or forgettable YA novel franchises (Twilight, Divergent, Percy Jackson), Fifty Shades of Grey, or the umpteenth adaptation of some Jane Austen novel?
Book adaptations themselves are a spectrum of originality and quality.
How do I find these movies? Amazon has some old, mostly low quality movies, but nothing good or recent. They got rid of the criterion collection years ago. Sincere question: How does one even find or acquire films today? I’d love to watch a movie, but literally don’t know how to go about it anymore. Netflix is not an answer as most of their content are not movies and basically spam to me.
justwatch.com lets you search and discover what services have what movies.
Alternatively, DIY. As streaming became more popular, optical media and hard drives became far more cheap. Over the last 10-15 years I've ended up with more than 500 movies, all of which I own legally and most of which cost me $5 or less. They get to all of my devices through Plex (I used to use Kodi, which is fine over a LAN if that's all you care about).
A significant number of them aren't available for streaming anywhere at the moment, and plenty more would require obscure services I don't feel a need to pay for. It was a gradual upfront cost, but not that extravagent compared to the cost of paying for a couple of streaming services over that time - to say nothing of the 6-10 I'd have to subscribe to to actually have access to all of it.
In addition to the criterion channel, already mentioned, try MUBI [1]. It’s a cinephile’s dream: a film discovery nearly everyday while also curating the great directors.
One can also find very interesting stuff on YouTube, depending on how good your search skills are, I know that at the start of the pandemic I had discovered a user who was uploading Italian western spaghetti movies in HD format. I think I might also have found something similar for Hong Kong wuxia movies from the 1960s and 1970s but I'm not sure.
My wife and I used to buy a DVD in the second-hand books/new dvd's shop round the corner every Friday for a Friday-night movie viewing. He knew our tastes -- it must be sweet, funny with a happy ending and no adultery or rape -- but the shop closed.
We regularly ask each other "Where's Roman Holiday but with a cute girl instead of Gregory Peck. Audrey Hepburn can stay."? Why all the drama in movies these days? We just wanna see two girls kiss and walk away in the twilight, hand-in-hand. But all we get is drama like Ammonite.
Why isn't there yet a Poser or Daz3D/Blender/MakeHuman/$GAME_ENGINE that combined makes it easy for people to tell tales as movies yet? It should be possible to put everything together in an interface that even a movie producer could understand, which would make it a doddle for ordinary people.
> Why isn't there yet a Poser or Daz3D/Blender/MakeHuman/$GAME_ENGINE that combined makes it easy for people to tell tales as movies yet? It should be possible to put everything together in an interface that even a movie producer could understand, which would make it a doddle for ordinary people.
Okay, seriously? That's a really good idea right there. I personally would lean towards Blender + Godot game engine for such a project, but I'm just hugely in favor of open source in general, so… The thing to make such a tool useful though would be an easily accessible library of actors (character models), animation/movement presets/prefab library, scenery and set dressing, and an interface to tie it all together in a way "which would make it a doddle for ordinary people" as you say. I could see something like that bein' a huge boon for "storyteller" types to get a good start in the media creation arena though.
Yes, right? We've got pretty much all the tech for that, it only needs to be joined up and made accessible. Of course, it would be simple at first, but improveed on later.
And of course, that library... That would be a source of _real_ money.
Amazon has tons of movies but many of them you have to buy/rent a la carte. At least in the US, there's Red Box for mostly recent films. You can also subscribe to Netflix' DVD service--although their back catalog isn't as good as it used to be.
Your local library probably has tons of DVD and Blu-Ray discs (and librarians who can provide recommendations), and maybe free access to an app like Hoopla with classic/highbrow movies.
Friendly plug for kanopy.com. Amazing, changing collection and likely free signup and streaming (monthly-refreshing limit) with your local library card (:
Also/or, your library may give you access to a similar service called Hoopla. I have access to both via my local library, and I find Kanopy’s selection (and picture quality) somewhat better, especially for foreign (non—USA) content.
The TCM channel does a good job of organizing films into categories. I've been watching their Film Noir picks every Saturday night. Lots of fun movies I never knew existed.
I never understood this complaint. There are dozens and dozens of recent, popular (good is subjective) movies on the front page of Amazon, Netflix and HBO Max right now.
Hollywood started churning out tons of remakes about as early in their history as they possibly could, and never stopped.
Very true. From the 1930's until now, the percentage of Hollywood films that aren't recreations of an earlier film, a book, or a play is vanishingly small.
To be sure, there is still a good number of original films, even big-name ones, but those are very few and far between.
Broadway celebrates revivals, but Hollywood is almost ashamed of remakes. There's a Tony award for best revival, but only a Raspberry for worst remake.
Both are a form of unoriginal profiteering, on at least a business level. Maybe it's the permanence of a film compared to the ephemerality of a live performance, but the vast difference in how they're received has always bugged me.
> People who complain that nothing good is made anymore[0] must just be looking at what's advertised heavily, is all I can figure.
That would be me. I am utterly uninterested in superheroes and found movies I seen last years somewhere between boring repetitive and annoying. Tho I liked parazite and some of other international splash making movies. At minimum they used different tropes.
I have no idea where those fun indie movies are nor how to find them. Like, where should I go to be able to find some I might like?
1) Try film festival schedules or lists-of-what-showed from previous years. Not just Sundance and Cannes and such (though lots of the films shown at those are, in fact, good, so don't not look at those)—if you have any special genre or topic interests, there may be some festivals for them, so look up a few big ones and start browsing. Why previous years? Because those films usually aren't widely available the same year they're in festivals, and you'll get the benefit of reviews, if you don't want to just start blindly watching anything that looks interesting.
2) There are niche streaming services that specialize in genres, or in indie + international, films, which are great for finding all kinds of wonderful things you'd never have known about otherwise. mubi.com, for instance, features those sorts of films from all years, including recent ones. Shudder is a streaming service for horror films (horror is downright rich these days—I can provide lots of strong, varied recommendations from the last few years, if you're into that kind of thing). Stuff like that. Really, just look up lists of video streaming services and take a glance at the catalogues of any you've not heard of.
Oh no, I was afraid someone would take me up on that! Hahaha.
No particular order. Since 2010ish. Not an exhaustive list of all good horror in that time frame.
- You're Next. It's a trad home-invasion/slasher kinda thing but... then changes genre. I'll leave it at that.
- Cabin in the Woods. Needs no introduction? Solid humor-horror.
- Evil Dead. The soft reboot. Pretty good for the kind of thing it is, which is an Evil Dead-type movie, of course.
- The Babadook. Great horror for people who like to be scared but don't want gore. Extremely efficient use of a tiny cast and very few locations.
- It Follows. A core concept that's creepy as hell, and some damn fine imagery that will stick with you. Lots of moody, slow-paced (but good!) scenes but... it does follow. Unsubtly very much about the harmful aspects of sex and sexual behavior.
- The Witch (or, The VVitch, as it's styled). If you like frontier-type stuff, with period-accurate dialog, plus horror, this will very likely be up your alley. Nb that here "frontier" means "New England, probably just a few miles in from the coast", not, like, the "Old West".
- Bone Tomahawk. Action-horror that is set in the Old West. Not exactly a piece of fine film-making but it pretty much does exactly what it sets out to do, and does it well, which makes it a success in my book.
- The Void. Carpenteresque creature work and Lovecraftian baddies. Excellent example of a throwback horror movie that aims to feel like it was made in another decade.
- The Girl with all the Gifts. Some people liked this a lot more than I did, so I'm including it. I thought it was just OK. Basically a zombie movie, kinda.
- Krampus. I'm not usually into Christmas-horror, which tends to be sub-b-grade garbage and otherwise just isn't to my taste, but watched this because I kept seeing it recommended, and... wow, it's actually good. Careful that you get the right film, there are a bunch with similar titles and I'd guess most of them are terrible. This is the 2015 one directed by Dougherty.
- Get Out. I'd call it just OK (I don't... think I was supposed to find as much if it laugh-out-loud funny in the final act, as I did?) but accept that I'm probably wrong about that, given the overwhelmingly-positive reaction.
- Train to Busan. Maybe my favorite zombie-hoards type of movie I've seen.
- Sorry to Bother You. If you like genre-bending and lots of absurdism in your horror, this one's for you.
- Happy Death Day. Slasher x Ground Hog Day, with that concept explored for just about all it's worth. Relatively light-hearted (it'd almost have to be) but not without tension. Sequel's less good—not awful, but a big step down. Same director made a similar film, "Freaky", that's another mash-up concept, and is quite good.
- It Comes at Night. Uh... if you really like movies that make you kinda wish you'd never watched them, not because of, say, realistic gore, but because they sorta make your soul hurt, this is a very good movie of that kind. But maybe don't, though?
- One Cut of the Dead. Brilliant concept, fun throughout. Not in any sense a traditional zombie movie, and I would 100% recommend it to people who usually don't like zombie movies. Don't spoil it, go in as cold as possible. It's one that is much better if you know almost nothing about it before you start.
- Game Night. Horror-adjacent, at least. Not amazing but another one that I watched after being repeatedly assured by many people that it was much better than it looked like it would be (it looked pretty bad), and it was.
- Hereditary. I hated this one but it's another where my opinion is way, way in the minority. Lots of people love it.
- Colour out of Space. If you can tolerate, or actually enjoy, Nic Cage, and like Lovecraftian horror, this is worth a watch. Good FX work.
- The Last Matinee. By-the-numbers slasher set in a Uruguayan movie theater, in the 90s. Great kills, the right kind of gross, good set-up/pay-off, good at making you care enough about almost everyone that you're sad when they get got. Requires tolerance for subtitles.
- Caveat. Tight little small-cast film (I think it was a during-the-pandemic production, maybe?). Very stupid-sounding premise that ends up making enough sense in the film itself, and a lot more by the time it's over.
- Vicious Fun. I probably like this one more than it deserves, but I do like it. Horror-comedy, heavy on very winking-at-the-camera references to other horror films and the genre itself. It gets a little bit of the bad kind of indie-feeling in some of the shot choices and acting, but the way it keeps delivering even when you think it's winding down or running out of tricks is outstanding. Did not go the direction I thought it would, judging just from a short description of the plot.
- My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To. Probably the art-housest film on this list, so keep that in mind before deciding to watch it—you're not in for a standard horror experience, though there is tons of tension and definitely some murderin'. Very good, though. Strongly recommend avoiding spoilers as discovering what the movie's about is a big part of the experience.
- The Haunting of Hill House. OK, so it's a self-contained season 1 of an anthology series, not a movie, but it's (like The Babadook) a really good watch for people who like horror but not a bunch of gore or a sky-high body count. Creators seem to both know what themes are and how to use them for horror, which wouldn't be impressive in an ideal world, but is in this one.
I use Letterboxd. Its pretty easy to get started, look up a bunch of movies you know you like, read some of the reviews, follow some people who seem like they know movies and would be into interesting stuff, and then see what comes your way.
Find someone who is more into movies than you are and talk to them regularly. :)
I got introduced to a bunch last year by making the acquaintance of a film grad student who ran a movie club that met via Discord every Saturday night to discuss a film of the week.
I think this could also probably be approximated by finding someone into film on social media, or watching entries accepted into well-regarded film festivals, or if you happen to have an active mom & pop video store in your area, talking with the clerks.
Can you recommend some good movies from last/this year? Have been digging into old movies to get my fix recently thinking there wasn't anything good out.
If you watched the film "Happy Death Day" (if not the lesser sequel) and enjoyed its exploration of a kind-of goofy mashup (Ground Hog Day x Teen Slasher), the same director made a film built on, roughly, a similar concept, just called "Freaky". If you already suspect you might like it, don't read anything and just watch, though you may be able to guess the mash-up from the one-word title. It's fun, and well-made.
I'm struggling to think of much else that I've personally seen, from last year, that wasn't a little too indie or "genre" for me to recommend it to someone whose tastes I don't know—I didn't get much new watched, and mostly caught up on some reputedly-great stuff I'd missed from the prior five years or so (I keep up with a mix of pop junk food films, which I do like, and the "good" stuff, but usually don't have time to watch anywhere near all of either) aside from some fairly taste-specific newer material I watched.
Some other titles I'm seeing, from people I know and trust, for 2020, include: First Cow; The Old Guard; Portrait of a Lady on Fire (technically a 2019 film, but widely available in 2020); Wolfwalkers (animated); Spontaneous; Bacurau; Blow the Man Down. There are lots more, that's just a varied sampling.
Happy Death Day was a great, and unique, idea I loved it. I even thought the second was not bad even if I don’t think they needed to try and explain what was happening scientifically. I forgot about Freaky and will have to watch that.
I actually think TV shows are where good film comes from these days, especially with them not being made for syndication so we now can get 6 episode seasons. Mare of East Town was a great mystery that just came out. It is true that the superhero genre has hijacked a lot of talent.
I highly recommend the In/Frame/Out YouTube channel for dissections of good indie and older classic movies. His year-end lists are always satisfying. The Scottish accent is the cherry on top.
The good news is that an indie film on zero budget from the 90s was much more technologically limited than it is today, so access to fancy cameras matters less than it did then, and it lets talent shine more.
Moreso than it's production cost (though that's a big part of it) a mid-budget is a hollywood-level (full production and cast) movie that does not attempt to be all things to all people. This could be something like a romantic comedy, a medium-scale character study or a high-concept scifi - something that costs say 40 million to make, returns 80 million and is never intended to be a blockbuster.
Lots of reasons why they are less common. One is absolutely that more and more, TV is able to serve as well or better in the mid-budget role, the quality of TV has vastly improved in the last 20 years. Studios are less interested in investing 40 million to double their money and would rather risk hundreds of millions on the chance to make billions.
It quotes a (clearly a bit exaggerated for effect, at the low end) range of $500,000-$80,000,000 as "mid budget", and gives examples of the category including Blue Velvet, The Godfather, and Hairspray.
It's not that no films are made in that range anymore, just that it's much harder to find financing for a project in that range for a film intended for wide release and any amount of promotion. The money guys want a nothing-budget movie that might become a hit (the startup model), or huge can't-lose projects with likely outcomes that don't include a loss, or not much of one (the formulaic international-friendly [by which I mean China-friendly] action blockbuster that everyone seems to hate, but that nonetheless consistently make piles of money)
It quotes a bunch of mid-budget directors complaining about this, some leaving filmmaking entirely because their options seem to be to go back to making shoestring-budget movies like they did when they were starting out, or start working on projects they don't like (huge-budget films), aside from self-financing. They seem to be concerned about how the next generations of directors will develop their careers, without stable financing for directors who've "made it" but don't want to make Marvel movies and such—IMO we're probably heading back to something resembling the studio system, largely, so the era of lots of Important Directors who Really Matter may be on its way out, anyway, at least for a while.
[EDIT] Also, searching things like "the death of the mid-budget film" turns up tons of material like this.
TV shows have also gotten more prestigious, and so the people who would have been telling their stories as movies may be making TV shows instead. The article compares traditional movies to movies from streaming services, and I just think that’s avoiding the elephant in the room.
The change started happening slowly in the late 1990s, but at this point I’d say that the change has happened and we’re in a golden age of television. In the 1990s, TV was seen as a step down from movies in terms of cultural prestige, but nowadays we have A-list actors starring in TV shows with budgets over $10M per episode. The formats for TV shows have changed, too, and you’re much more likely to see TV shows written as six-episode or eight-episode seasons. They can be much more like a big, long movie, rather than a short TV show.
(Of course, the UK has produced six-episode TV series since forever.)
Still, I recently rewatched a few episodes of Siskel and Ebert, and it made me a bit sad to think about just how many movies were coming out every year during the 1990s, and remember being excited to go to the theater. Rewatching some 1990s movies, there are shots that just don’t have the right impact in typical home theaters.
I think Breaking Bad really set the stage for TV shows being good film. Whether you like the show or not it had a clear and defined story and ended after 5 seasons where most shows before would just run until their ratings dropped.
HBO had been doing it for a few years, with shows like The Wire and Deadwood. But Breaking Bad helped bring it to a wider audience, since AMC is basic cable rather than premium. (AMC had launched into that a year before with Mad Men, which was similarly TV as good film.)
I do think Sopranos was one of the first but specifically left it off due to it having lots of filler compared to breaking bad. It's a weird middle point where it did tell a movie like story but still lots of the unneeded drama of syndicated shows that came before it.
WW was still quite formulaic. ER, NYPD Blue, etc were all shows that maybe pushed for more consistent storylines but they were still boxed in by old school network expectations, and they got their starts in the mid-90s.
Sopranos was a very clear break in writing style. People like to slot in The Wire next to it, but The Wire was more episodic/restricted and honestly felt like an R-rated network tv show to me.
I'd add Rome as perhaps a closer model to the sort of high budget, prestige television we're afforded now. First season had a budget in excess of $100 million dollars, a major increase over anything comparable (compare this to The Wire that was filming contemporaneously).
I agree I think it's actually a much better show. It does take a couple seasons to really kick into high gear so I've had trouble turning other people onto it who were BB fans.
Roots in the 1970s (and The Thorn Birds afterwards) was notable for being a widely-viewed blockbuster miniseries, so the concept was there; without streaming, it was just hard to get an audience to watch every episode at the right time.
Also Winds of War and others. Yeah, the miniseries had its day but, especially pre-widespread VCR, depending on an audience to watch every episode at a scheduled time was a high bar. It obviously could work but it depended on having a sufficiently big "event" for people to schedule a week or nights on successive weeks around it--in a way few would do today.
There are more amazing high budget TV series out now than I have time to keep up with. Many of them are foreign also. It went into overdrive after The Sopranos, so has been going steady for 20+ years.
Anyone complaining "nothing good" anymore just either have terrible taste, or don't know how to do simple searching for new content. Same for movies IMO. There are good films everywhere on almost all the streaming platforms too if you just look for them.
> "These streaming services have been making something that they call 'movies,' " he said. "They ain't movies. They are some weird algorithmic process that has created things that last 100 minutes or so."
Funny. That would be my description of the block buster action films since "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
I soured on the superhero franchise business due to a combination of factors (the out of character Man of Steel, that first boilerplate Thor film, the ghastly Green Lantern, and finally reading Worm made everything else seem shallow by comparison) and have stepped back to look at it as an industry in a kind of spiral of intolerance to risk.
They want product, they want it on a pipeline, they want guaranteed returns and they do not want to gamble about it. This has been true for a long time but we're seeing a difference of degree here. Movie production is not merely evolving but speciating -- and I think the new species is going to look like a subscription streaming service (with tie-in product) that releases dopamine-tweaking algorithmic product on the kind of tick-tock schedule for which Intel longs.
> they want guaranteed returns and they do not want to gamble about it
This is how Hollywood is. It's the same as Silicon Valley. They don't want to gamble if they don't have to, they both just want as much money as possible.
> I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me.
I feel like I “missed” the beginning of all the super hero franchises and, even though I’m sure I’d enjoy them, I’m just not interested because getting caught up enough to understand what’s going on in the newer films feels like such a daunting undertaking.
At the start of the pandemic I thought maybe I’d finally watch them all only to find out there isn’t even really an agreed upon order they should be watched!
It’s an odd and (I think) new phenomenon: that someone can lack the prerequisites to watch a movie. Even worse: no one can quite agree on what exactly those prerequisites are.
> It’s an odd and (I think) new phenomenon: that someone can lack the prerequisites to watch a movie.
There’s nothing new about sequels and movie series. The only difference with Marvel movies might be that they are a lot of films and they tend to be some of the most popular films.
> Even worse: no one can quite agree on what exactly those prerequisites are.
Fans might enjoy discussing nuances of different viewing orders, but I think it’s pretty undeniable that you can’t go too wrong watching them in the order they were released.
> It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me.
They’ve also just become quite formulaic and as a result, boring.
Reputedly at least in part because of the increased importance of non-English speaking markets, even the better action movies are so dominated by long action sequences that they really detract for me.
And to the parent point, on top of that, I'm now expected to understand at least some of the intricacies of a complex movie/TV universe that I don't really care that deeply about.
> And I think that's correct. Superhero blockbusters taking over all box office receipts was one thing, but now those blockbusters are becoming deeply tied to streaming services like Disney+ that's bringing content into people's homes and away from movie theatres.
What's interesting is that the industry has repeatedly been broken up due to antitrust & anti-competition issues. It will be interesting to see how things stand in 10-15 years; will consolidation eventually bring government action or do we now accept 3-4 major players as being sufficient competition.
> ...though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie...
I have a suspicion that this is the direction surviving movie theatre chains will move toward.
Something that hasn't been remarked on too much but that I think might be significant is that a long-standing antitrust regulation that prevented movie studios (the "Paramount Decree") from owning their own theatre chains was sunsetted in August 2020, which means that starting in August 2022 studios can start running their own theatres again -- and I think that's very likely to happen. Disney won't just tie their blockbusters to Disney+, they'll tie them Disney-owned theatres that provide theme park like experiences. Other studios will join in on this.
> It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me.
Despite mostly really enjoying said superhero universe, I've been feeling that recently, too. I can't help but suspect this has a point of diminishing returns; next year we're going to be entering a "phase" of the MCU that's going to build not only on the past twenty-odd movies but now the past Disney+ streaming shows.
> It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. So I watch a lot more limited series TV instead... and maybe that's just fine?
To me, this is like complaining that you don't want to have to read the Fellowship of the Ring to fully enjoy the Return of the King.
Almost nobody expects their "cotton candy" entertainment to require that level of effort regularly. It's fine if a small handful of things based on prior art ("Return of the King") are around; healthy even. When that's all there is, though, that seems like a problem.
> Almost nobody expects their "cotton candy" entertainment to require that level of effort regularly.
Most people love continuations of prior art. The vast majority of people have no problem watching a few films per year, and consider it a luxury, not an effort. People love seeing their favorite characters reappear and have done so long before film.
> When that's all there is, though, that seems like a problem.
I won't. I am from Czechia and maybe the culture here was different, but it used to be that movie theaters were somewhat like a normal theater, where you are supposed to be mostly quiet, behave, and not eat and litter during the show.
But modern multiplexes have changed that etiquette, and it's hard for me to stand it. And the advertisements...
Historically in US movie theaters, there's so much popcorn grease and spilled soda on the floor that your shoes actually get stuck to it while you're watching the movie.
EDIT: Wow downvotes? It's true! Maybe they mop them now but back when Diller was in the movie business, your shoes actually did get stuck to the floor because of all the spilled snacks. I haven't been to a movie theater in many years, but the grime was an essential part of the experience. Someone should open a throwback 80s theater.
Indeed, I'd argue a good chunk of the experience came from the respect and reverence the audience had to the occasion. Not unlike in a church, or kind of like a primal gathering around the fire, except this time around the projections of the "magic lantern".
But the god of consumption got jealous and demanded we got things (snacks and movies alike) through our system as fast as possible while making him the maximum dime.
There’s a cinema in Malmö, Sweden called “Spegeln” (meaning: Mirror in Swedish) which exemplifies the cinema experience for me. I would hate to lose it.
> I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me.
I recently started watched Loki on Disney+, 3 episodes in, I still have no idea who Loki is, where he comes from, what his intentions are and what he is capable of...
Same problem with WandaVision. I agree, it's exhausting.
Those shows most definitely assume prior knowledge of the universe. That said, having avoided "superhero movies" for years (due to not being impressed with random one-offs that I watched), I finally bit the bullet and watched the whole set in order with my kids and it made a huge difference, with enormous payoff in Infinity War and Endgame. FWIW, I think both WandaVision and Loki are fantastic.
When was the last great comedy movie you've seen in the movie theatres? I posed this question to my buddies and we were genuinely stumped. For me it was probably early 2000s, but nothing in the last 15 years that's for sure.
When’s the last time your “list of great comedy movies” got a new entry, regardless of whether you saw the new entry in the cinema or even if it was a new film at the time you saw it?
Every couple of years? But I do think the frequency of straight up comedies being produced is dwindling, and aren't popular enough to go to a movie theatre for.
For me, comedies are so much a matter of personal taste that I’m generally not interested in seeing them in the theater unless it’s with a group of friends or I feel like I have reasonable expectations that I will like the movie a lot. They’re not really like superhero or action movies where I can be pretty good at guessing whether I’ll like the film.
Hollywood's biggest film have always been adaptations of existing material. Some of the most regarded films of all time, like the Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, the Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, and Chinatown, are themselves merely adaptations of books.
> "The movie business *as before* is finished and will never come back."
And I think that's correct. Superhero blockbusters taking over all box office receipts was one thing, but now those blockbusters are becoming deeply tied to streaming services like Disney+ that's bringing content into people's homes and away from movie theatres.
I won't mourn movie theatres (though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie), but I do worry about things like movie financing. It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films.
It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. So I watch a lot more limited series TV instead... and maybe that's just fine?