To think there are no good films anymore?

[raynedeer]

I don't want to sound like a misery guts, but I love the cinema and it's been years since anything I wanted to see was on. Does anyone else think this is the case? It all seems like pointless guff...?

Films I’ve seen in the past 12-18 months that were worth watching…

Infinity Pool
A Good Person
Asteroid City
X
Happening/L'Événement
Barbarian
Men
Triangle of Sadness
Guardians of the Galaxy 3
Bros
To Leslie
Banshee of Inisherin
Bones and All
Aftersun

Well this has given me a list to watch! Berbie does sound fun, I am not adverse to a bit of silliness!

I just compare the silly movies of old with the silly movies of new and feel like they have just become completely crap!

Totally adding all these to watchlist as we type...

Agree 100% Succession was the best thing I've seen for ages.

Recently - Aftersun, Corsage, Belfast, Women Talking were all brilliant, even Barbie wasn't awful.

looking good in the near future - Scrapper, Theater Camp, Wonka.

There is a lot of dross out there - you couldn't pay me to watch a superhero movie or anything dominated by CGI or car chases but it's always been the case that for every eventual classic there have been dozens of dire potboilers.

If you want silly watch Barb and Star go to Vista del Mar. It's probably the silliest, funniest movie I have ever seen. And it doesn't hurt that the romantic interest is Jamie Dornan totally hamming it up and clearly loving every second of it - as was I.

Ah brilliant.

I felt like some of the light comedies lately were just awful

By lately, I mean the last 10 years because I have lost all perspective of time.

Scrapper was the last film I saw, thought it was rather lovely. I liked Rye Lane as well (seen it twice already!)

Enys Men was a bit odd, as was Men

But other films from the last year I've enjoyed:

• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - brilliant
• Aftersun, it's grown on me as I've thought more about it.
• Barbie - fab
• Everything, Everywhere All At Once - seen multiple times
• Triangle of Sadness
• Elvis

I really liked Get Out (although even that was about five years ago)

I love creepy films but decent ones are few and far between nowadays.

I also did like Barbie!

That Barbie film was dreadful. Boring load of rubbish. Also didn't like Mrs Harris goes to Paris. Which went on far too long. So I agree. Even the Elvis film was a bit disappointing.

Unfortunately the movie industry (& therefore theatrical releases) has been hit be several major obstacles:

1. spiralling costs/budgets - execs want/need to recoup costs & make profit; as everything gets more expensive, they are less inclined to green light anything remotely risky
2. related to 1) execs know that certain films/genres/actors will sell - at present that's superhero, sequels, etc Anything that doesn't fit that mold becomes a risk
3. Covid - that shut down production on so many projects; it continues to jeopardise production & thereby increase costs - we are now in the time when the films made in 2020-2022 would be being released, & obviously there are very few
4. writers strikes - again holds up production & reduced the flow & costs
5. streaming services - the cinema is expensive, why leave your house, when you can stay home, save money, watch any movie from the past in the comfort of your home? You can pause, get snacks, loo etc - it's more convenient & cheaper

It's sad - but good movies are being made & released, but now they're more likely to be on Apple or Netflix than at the cinema.
We thought the Beanie Bubble & Tetris on Apple were really good.

I get your point to an extent, but it's somewhat coloured by nostalgia. There does seem to be fewer quality new films. However, there was always dross alongside the really good films. There are still some good films too, just have to make an effort to find and go to see them. Independent cinema, film festivals, depending where you are the BFI is fantastic. The BFI has some great stuff coming up too. Older films for the most part, which might prove your point but I guess that you have not seen everything yet. What type of films do you want to watch? Past Lives has got brilliant reviews and am looking forward to it.

Books are a bit samey right now???

Good grief!

How many books are there in your local Waterstones/library/on Amazon?

How many have you read? How many haven't you read? Maybe read some of those?

What an odd post.

I just went to the cinema this afternoon for the first time in five years. Can highly recommend Oppenheimer. It was absolutely amazing!

You're just getting old

The last film I truly loved was The Martian, 2015.
Could watch it once a month. For ever 😀

I am not sure that you get how bookshops work. You could have chosen anything that you wanted!

To be honest I think they always were. It's just that we look back on a huge back catalogue of great films over decades and forget about all the terrible ones.

I think we all look back with rose colored spectacles.

I think streaming has changed things. TV shows are becoming much more prevalent and there are a lot of direct to streaming films.

There are some good ones. Tar was excellent. Deep, complicated and beautifully acted.

I would say the last amazing film I saw was Everything Everywhere All at Once.
I enjoyed Barbie but felt Oppenheimer dragged & cba with arty films, I fall asleep.
Harold Fry was good but I’d read the book so not an ‘original’ screenplay.
I do go to the cinema quite a lot but not much is stand out

Oppenheimer was the best film I've seen in years

I enjoyed Asteroid City. It came out during all the Barbenheimer publicity was happening, so got a bit overlooked I think

Barbie at least got some excitement back into going to the cinema. I think it was spoilt by stopping the story to explain the point they were trying to make - suggests the story wasn't strong enough to make the point by itself. However, it was different and I liked the way they made the Barbies act like the dolls would (floating down rather than using stairs, for example)

I enjoyed Harold Fry. Very different to most films that are made at the moment

I'm looking forward to Wonka being released later this year. I'm hoping it will be a good one to watch with DS

I'm also interested in seeing Napoleon - Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix working together again could be great

Well, I personally loved the Barbie film! Suppose it depends what you’re into but lots of decent indie films are made every year, they just largely go unnoticed. The big blockbusters tend to be shite.

I agree, but then I'm a difficult-to-please git!

I like about one film a decade, and my list of dislikes is huge:

Feel-good movies: waste of my time - trite, unsatisyfing and they don't convince me.
Rom-coms: usually corny, cheesy, predictable, cliched and saccharine. (Esp Richard Curtis, but I make an exception for FWAAF because it was the first of its kind and I do have good memories of seeing it when it came out long ago.)

Thrillers: my favourite genre - but so hard to find good ones. I'm incredibly sqeuamish, so a lot of these are ruled out for me. Can't stand extreme violence, blood or guts. I remember The Sixth Sense - very good and I love a twist.

Epics: love an epic, but they rarely live up to the hype. I haven't seen Gladiator because of the violence, but I'm sure it's an amazing film and would love it in many other ways. Similarly, I couldn't watch Saving Private Ryan but I admire Spielberg enormously and salute him for showing what war is really like, even if I can't take it. I'm planning to see Oppenheimer, and bracing myself. Also, have never seen Schindler's List, but again I'm sure it's superb. My career involved me with work with Holocaust survivors and I find the subject almost unbearable.

Don't mind emotionally harrowing films if the message/story is worth it.

Childrens/family films: please, no more now my children are grown up (except for superb classics like The Railway Children).

I'm old, so these films which I consider fairly recent, will seem ancient to you, but these are the few films I've seen in recent decades which I think are excellent:

Howards End
The Magdalene Sisters
Empire of the Sun (I was an extra in that one!)
Master and Commander
The Godfather (but that really is old...sorry)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Misouri
The Others
The Sixth Sense
The Village

This! There's loads of great films, I go to the cinema a couple of times a week and watch movies at home most other nights. You've gotta embrace the whole of it though, world cinema as well as the obvious big new releases, and check out film festivals and recommendations via cineastes online.

As for this: am I wrong in thinking there is very little middle brow cinema?

No, you're not wrong - there was a shift some time ago where the territory that middlebrow cinema once covered was taken over by high end TV, so that's where the 'grown up' stories tend to be told now. Quiz Show would totally be a HBO series now, and strung out to at least 6 hours. There are still some of those movies from the indie sector and Europe, but the mainstream cinema has become tentpole franchise movies like Marvel/Star Wars/Mission Impossible, or family movies/animation, or horror/comedy movies that don't cost the earth to make and can play with international audiences, or more specialised auteur-style films with a specific audience (eg LGBTQ, grey pound ec). To get a theatrical release, it needs a way to cut through the 'noise' and get people off their sofas. Middlebrow by definition fits the sofa crowd well, and HETV (though it's having some issues now due to cutbacks and strikes) has done a great job with telling those stories on a wider canvas with stars, so there was less call for those stories to be shown on the big screen.

Some incredible looking films coming up soon - Killers of the Flower Moon, Zone of Interest, Poor Things, The Killer, to name a few! And go see Past Lives, which is out at cinemas now, an extremely beautiful and moving romance that couldn't have hit our screens until now (by a female Korean-Canadian writer-director). There are new and different stories being told now and that's a good thing.

So many films are just too long. I find it very difficult to sit still for 2 hours plus. I know it's probably just me but at home you have the option to pause and pick it up again another time.
I am looking forward to Past Lives and there's a new Almodovar film coming next week