I have a fundamental conviction that film this century is basically worthless - change my mind!
I think a lot of it is that I feel mainstream tastes have gone to absolute shit and the film industry has become a sausage machine, so I don't trust reviews or success metrics..
..so I basically only ever watch films from 20th century, usually which I have seen before.
I love film - please give me hope that cinema is not dead by posting examples of great cinema from this century.
Thanks in advance!
I'm quite sympathetic to this lol. There's quite a few people who think this and I think you could quite happily just go through lots of great stuff from the 20th century. So I don't feel like I might be the best person to dissuade you.
I wonder if this has always been the case, albeit to a much worse degree now maybe? Like yes you have Bergman, tarkovsky, Antonioni, felini etc etc but were these 'mainstream tastes' of their time? Maybe we just sieve the past of more crap and over time the gold has staying power?
I would give The Banshees of Inisherin a try. It felt a bit like a Bergman-ish film. That might be up your street. (No idea of you like Bergman tho lol)
i have a fundamental conviction that nostr:npub1jhpnh7aedv85v09cpahjug5aa460xm5kjnntqn0v2yjwfmmtmenqllfgps is full of shit.
my position is that quality of film doubles every 20 years. when i watch Kubrick i am simultaneously amazed by how good it is for when it was made and also by how bad it is compared to modern films.
same for music.
https://dissidentsound.discoursehosting.net/t/how-i-develop-taste-in-music/837
the oldest movies that i can actually recommend to anybody are Dr Stragelove ( 1964 ), Apocalypse Now ( 1979 ), Full Metal Jacket ( 1987 ) ...
to be honest i haven't really bothered watching anything older than that ...
there is just a really sharp dropoff in quality with time that makes older movies not worth my time ...
some of the more recent movies i enjoyed
Raw ( 2016 ), Aniara ( 2018 ), Hereditary ( 2018 ), Midsommar ( 2019 ), Possessor Uncut ( 2020 )
any of these is better than anything made prior to Kubrick.
Ah man.. ..i envy you if you haven't watched hitchcock
Vertigo (1958), Marnie (1964) and Psycho (1960) are incredible, give them a try.
You are not "recommending" Godfather? Deer Hunter?
i'm not into movies like Godfather or The Departed or any of the Italian Mafia stuff. somehow not really interested in the Hitchcock stuff either. i may have seen some Hitchcock on TV as a child in Soviet Union.
like i said i dislike everything old. if anybody likes something old it is in 90% of cases either nostalgia or snobbery. it is almost never merit. but there are exceptions.
I am convinced you're mostly right and the sausage machine is set to autopilot most of the time. I mean just look at all those Hallmark romance films and their knock-offs on other networks... You can find like 4 new ones a day nowadays, just change the job title and actors, poof, whole new movie with little to no re-writes.
But there are still good filmmakers out there with original ideas, just once in a blue moon. Even in major properties like the Star Wars franchise there are rare gems to be found... Those Sequels were trash but did you see 2016's Rogue One? I literally judge that to be the best movie of the entire franchise, even over Episodes 4, 5, & 3! It had the most real drama by far.
Some say Chris Nolan makes great movies this century but I think he's a bit overrated... Still got a nice style, however.
I'm actually quite surprised how good a few movies are that a B-list actress named Samara Weaving keeps finding herself in. Go check out "Ready or Not" from 2019 to see what I mean. Just wow. Mahem and Guns Akimbo were also brilliant. She was also Bill & Ted's daughter in B&T3... She's really great a picking roles and practically any movie she's in should be a cult classic.
One things for sure; the better the movie, the less the mainstream seems to talk about it. This is the root of your problem.
Enjoy!
