I'm not sure I'd say "better". It's a whole matter for another discussion (and I'll certainly raise it in its own thread one of these days), but I feel that this evolving quality is a lot due to narrative and visual recipes that "function" but are ultimately quite soul-less. Hence the interest for some rough B-movies, or daring independent ones, or older ones, that make lack this polish, that may appeal to less people, but may be richer on several levels.
Okay, I'm being vague here. I'll soon try to explicit better my impression of stagnating quality under thicker and thicker layers of varnish.
That’s a perfectly reasonable take which I respect. But, having been brought up on the very cream of film classics - Hitchcock, Bergman, Malick, Fellini, Lelouch, etc, etc ad infinitum, I quite consciously think I prefer modern filmmaking. Not ‘modern’ as in ‘wokeness-gone-mad’, god forbid, but post 1970s.
You are right that it’s a topic for another thread, but to me, even if they are soulless (fair point), the narratives have become more nuanced, more complex, characters more grey. For everyone who says that’s a ‘huge generalisation’, perhaps so, but that’s how I feel.
So, polished look aside, modern plots are,
to me, for the most part, more engaging and the ideas more, I don’t know, outlandish, in a good way. Also, as I’ve said elsewhere, there are fewer constraints and taboos regarding the attitudes and feelings that can be explored. Hence we have mothers not loving their child (
We Need to Talk About Kevin +
Hereditary), incest (
The Dreamers,
Beautiful Kate), miscarriage (
Pieces of a Woman.) It is certainly not for the lack of watching/appreciating old classics, which I do. But the fact that controversial/‘hardcore’ topics can be explored head-on, rather than implicitly, now, really appeals to me.
Edit: good lord, what a horrible ****ing typo! Shame on you, Agri.