Why I Struggle with Modern Cinema

According to imdb and Letterboxd in the last 2 years I watched 263 films, yet only 23 of them were released during this period. That's not much, that's 9%. Granted, I was never one of those new-releases-only type of guy at the video rental store, but I used to watch a lot more current movies than I do now.

I've been thinking of the reason why. Why am I subconsciously gravitating less and less towards new movies? I'm sure there are a variety of reasons, but the easiest answer I can come up with at this moment is that in my world view modern films lack, for lack of a better word, charm. And with me charm goes a long way. 

A big thing that contributes to how charming a movie is to me, is how it looks and how it sounds. Nowadays there is a disproportionate amount of movies that purposely have a cold, detached atmosphere, ominous almost – lots of blues and greys. And that tends to go hand-in-hand with increasingly minimalistic dialogue. It's like they take the look of Paul Schrader's films from the 90s (like Light Sleeper) and make them look colder and then rip out half the dialogue as if trying to create a Takeshi Kitano picture.

It seems that, for reasons unbeknownst to me, directors or producers have decided that this is now what a "classy" realistic movie shall look like, or at least “serious” filmmaking. I don't know who started this fad but you've got so many directors going for it: David Fincher, Denis Villeneuve, Andrew Dominik, Lynne Ramsay, the list is endless.

Let's see how this style fits the storylines...

▪ Detectives investigate the zodiac killer.

▪ A raggedy, lonely hermit searches for his stolen pig.

▪ Scientists try to communicate with peaceful aliens who are visiting planet Earth.

▪ A coward assassinates Jesse James.

▪ Aliens fight over control of spice on the planet Arrakis.

▪ A man armed with a screwdriver impulsively wants to avenge his parents' death.

▪ The private election of a new Pope. 

---------------Hold your horses. It's not like there's a gloved killer running amok at the Vatican, so why does even the story of a new Pope require a cold, ominous atmosphere? Simply because otherwise the audience won't know that they're watching a "serious" film that is Oscar worthy. Basically the powers that be have decided this style fits everywhere and nearly every movie shall look and sound like this.

Okay, that’s it, I fold, I'm out. I shall continue headstrong watching mostly older movies until hopefully some punk rock directors will come along and disrupt this nonsense, as happened in the early 90s.