Movies are so good!

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I don't know exactly why I'm making this post but I'm just feeling, like, generally very good and happy and excited about the state of like, filmmaking, in the world.

I saw 'Sorry to Bother You' yesterday and thought it was just brilliant and like nothing I had ever seen before and really appreciated it and they're have been a lot of movies like that for me this year, 'Hereditary' was like that for me and 'Won't You be My Neighbor?' and 'BPM (Beats Per Minute)' and 'Get Out' and 'A Ghost Story' last year and a bunch more and just, I dunno, I see people like to disparage contemporary filmmaking in comparison to the classics, and don't get me wrong I really love classic films too, because apparently films used to just 'be better' back then because we get a lot of not-so-great movies now that seems like obvious studio cash-ins and whatnot, and sure, but also 20 years from now we're just gonna remember the good and culturally impactful stuff not the crap (nobody will be talking about Rampage in like 3 months, let alone 30 years) so like, that not a fair comparison I don't think.

Contemporary filmmaking is great too. Like people at the end of each year people will talk about whether or not it was a good or bad year for movies and it's like, no, stop, there has literally never in ever been a bad year for filmmaking, every year really awesome and incredible artists work really hard to make really great works of art at every budget level all over the world.

Movies are just the best, y'know? Whether you have a preference for older stuff or newer stuff or foreign stuff of indie stuff or blockbusters or whatever, there's great stuff out there, and there will always be more great stuff coming. There's so many movies i'm excited about for the rest of this year from big budget stuff like 'Mission Impossible: Fallout' to indie stuff like 'The Miseducation of Cameron Post' to oscar stuff like 'Beautiful Boy' and 'If Beale Street Could Talk' and 'BlackkKlansman' and 'Widows' and and and I could go on forever.

I know we have a tendency to get like, cynical sometimes about the industry and movies and stuff, especially on this website (and I am by no means immune to this nor do I think all of it is wrong or unjustified), but I guess I thought it would be nice to take a step back and just like appreciate the fact that there are more incredible movies than one could watch in a lifetime and more are being made all the time. Hopefully one day I get to make one of my own and it will resonate with people and make them feel things the way movies make me feel.

tl;dr: Movies Good!



“I was cured, all right!”
Contemporary cinema, in general, is bad, and I say this with tears in my heart. Most directors do not have the ability or desire to use cinema as art, using it only as a mere vehicle to tell a story (even beautiful stories are poorly told), I'm not even including the 'popcorn cinema' that just wants financial feedback.

You mentioned only Hollywood movies, unfortunately, there the situation is even more critical. Philippines, Turkey, Romania, South Korea, Japan and many others are many years ahead of hollywwod these days... In Hollywood there aren't many masters working.

Get Out is not impressive if we take a look at "Guess Who Comes dinner (1967)", a very old film." If we take into account the genre comedy, the situation in Hollywood is even more critical and sad.



Contemporary cinema, in general, is bad, and I say this with tears in my heart. Most directors do not have the ability or desire to use cinema as art, using it only as a mere vehicle to tell a story (even beautiful stories are poorly told), I'm not even including the 'popcorn cinema' that just wants financial feedback.

You mentioned only Hollywood movies, unfortunately, there the situation is even more critical. Philippines, Turkey, Romania, South Korea, Japan and many others are many years ahead of hollywwod these days... In Hollywood there aren't many masters working.

Get Out is not impressive if we take a look at "Guess Who Comes dinner (1967)", a very old film." If we take into account the genre comedy, the situation in Hollywood is even more critical and sad.
This is literally the exact kind of mentality im pushing back against so thanks for sharing

Also 'BPM' is a french film so I didn't only mention hollywood fare, 'In The Mood for Love' is one of my favorite films and it's from Hong Kong, I love South Korean cinema as well ('The Handmaiden' is a favorite of mine), and yes I'm aware that there are other great horror films from many years ago (Alien is my favorite horror film) but I can still appreciate the artistry on display in Get Out to use genre and visual metaphor as a way of exploring a real sociological fear in society centered around race. I'm not saying that older or foreign work is bad (I actually love both of these things just as much as contemporary films if not more so, also many great foreign films are made every year, hence the 'around the world' aspect of it and my inclusion of BPM), just that there is still great stuff being made today, here, too.

If you don't agree, I mean, that's fine, I am curious why some of the stuff being made doesn't resonate with you, but you're entitled to that position, but it seems kind of self-important to disregard any entire portion of cinema by say that it 'in general, is bad'. It's the same thing that non-film people will say about older, black-and-white films or foreign movies that they don't want to read subtitles for. It's not enlightened to believe that all the stuff made now is bad, it's just as pretentious as people who dislike old/foreign stuff are ignorant, In my opinion.

Sorry if this comes off as like, angry or whatever, I don't mean it to, it just seems like a popular mindset spend more time fighting against the types of movies we hate instead of advocating for the one's we love, and that's kinda sad to me.



I definitely know the feeling you're describing. It's rarer with each passing year, but sometimes you see a film that you don't just enjoy, but reminds you of what the art form is capable of. Something fresh and inventive that has you leaving the theater feeling buoyant. Sometimes it's not even something terribly original, but just something really crisply made. I love that feeling!



Sorry, Braeden, but this is the internet.
You gotta be the change you wish to see in the world, y'know? If I want more people to talk positively about film online, I just gotta do it!



I definitely know the feeling you're describing. It's rarer with each passing year, but sometimes you see a film that you don't just enjoy, but reminds you of what the art form is capable of. Something fresh and inventive that has you leaving the theater feeling buoyant. Sometimes it's not even something terribly original, but just something really crisply made. I love that feeling!
It's the best feeling and it's why I got into the art form to begin with. I feel like my whole career is gonna be chasing that feeling I've been getting my whole life and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Maybe it's just because I'm young still, but I haven't felt that feeling go away or become rarer each year or anything. I feel like every other movie I see this year is my new favorite for the year and gets me there, and there were a solid bunch of them last year and there are probably more on the horizon for the second half of the year. I've seen 11 movies in theaters this year so far, and I'd say 6 of them were really fantastic, and then there were probably 3 or 4 more that I thought were at least pretty good. I hope I don't lose this feeling as I get older and I don't get too jaded or anything and can just continue to enthusiastically and unashamedly love films.

Every year that I've seen at least a handful of movies, there's been something or a few things I loved. I'm working on a new favorite movie list to post here since I haven't done it in a while and I want to practice what I preach, so to speak, and talk about some (or 100) movies I love, and every time I see something new that I like I have to stop and re-evaluate the list because it's like 'well crap that was amazing where's that gonna go and how does that re-contextualize the way I feel about the other films here' and stuff. While the majority of it is more recent stuff and American stuff because I've seen more of that so far (working on expanding my horizons though for sure) there's still a decent mix of things and very different movies because one of my favorite things about the medium is how endless the possibilities are.



Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
Many great conemporary films out there, @Ultraviolence. Just filter out the crap!
__________________
Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.



Weird is relative.
A Quiet Place (personally rated 3.5/5 stars), Isle of Dogs (4/5 stars), and Annihilation (3.5/5 stars) were the most memorable films I've seen so far in the cinema this year. My local theatres don't tend to receive the limited release titles, though, so I may have missed some good ones.



I'm actually really hyped about the fact that there are films shot with (i)phone and at least one of them is getting big screen release. Also watched parts of Zak Snyder's phone shot short the other day and it looked visually just fine. I'm really hoping this means that production costs for technically adequate film making will soon plummet and we'd see stuff big studios won't touch with a ten feet pole.



Gangster Rap is Shakespeare for the Future
IPhones? Gimme a break.

Let's get back to film. Now that's legit!
Is Malick not in the mafia? I believe the opening to To the Wonder was shot on an iPhone. And Panahi's first movie after the ban.



Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
Is Malick not in the mafia? I believe the opening to To the Wonder was shot on an iPhone. And Panahi's first movie after the ban.
Pretentious hacks. Better watch some real men cinema!



Gangster Rap is Shakespeare for the Future
Is Malick not in the mafia? I believe the opening to To the Wonder was shot on an iPhone. And Panahi's first movie after the ban.
Pretentious hacks. Better watch some real men cinema!
Sure I'll get right on all those pinku films that keep you feeling masculine