Anyone Else Find It Hard To Enjoy New Films?

[AJ Young]

Martin Scorsese once said in an interview that characters are the most important part of a movie. Once you've seen the movie, the plot no longer is a surprise. However, the characters and their dimensions are what we come back to the movie for. Dramatic irony is a powerful catharsis when coupled with phenomenal character.

If we're speaking from a monomyth standpoint, then numerous stories from the bible or greek mythology perfectly fit this mindset. Their parables, cautionary tales, or introspective we can learn from the characters who are doomed to relive and make the same decisions in these stories.

[Jon O'Brien]

A brilliantly-made film adaptation of Homer's Odyssey would, I think, make a great movie, shot on film of course would by my preference for such a project ?

It would need to be condensed to a screen version in my view. But wow, what a film it could be if made by a genius.

The Bible is full of timeless stories that have important truth embedded in them. For thousands of years those stories have been told.

[Jon O'Brien]

39 minutes ago, AJ Young said:

Martin Scorsese once said in an interview that characters are the most important part of a movie. Once you've seen the movie, the plot no longer is a surprise. However, the characters and their dimensions are what we come back to the movie for. Dramatic irony is a powerful catharsis when coupled with phenomenal character.

This is where a very good actor rises to such importance in the success of a film - because of the depiction of character. For instance, think of the unforgettable characters portrayed in very original movies by actors such as Gene Hackman, Gene Wilder (two Genes in a row!), Greer Garson and Julie Christie - just to name some amazing actors that come to my mind straight away. Put such people in a good location/sets, direction, art direction, story/script, cinematography .... just amazing success if all goes well But it's the characters that we remember most and people like this will make those characters come to life on the screen. Are such actors born or are they made by great directors?

Edited February 16, 2020 by Jon O'Brien

[Jon O'Brien]

One final comment (I'm posting too much).

A lot of highly-original movies have quite a quirky element to them, but it's an element that never extends into the disgusting or plain weird/stupid.

One of the highlights of cinema in my opinion is the scene in Superman (1978) when he first appears 'in public' as his true self - the helicopter scene when he saves Lois. That's a pretty quirky scene in some ways. He's sort of daggy (an Australian word meaning not very cool) but also really uber-cool, all at the same time, a point acknowledged by the streetwise gentleman who compliments him on his coolness factor. In other word, his unusual and interesting and stand-out character comes to the fore.

Dirty Harry, a politically-incorrect but original 70s film starring Clint Eastwood, had original, quirky scenes in it too that gave it real flavour. The scene of Harry walking past the spouting fire hydrants, his .44 hanging down in his hand, sauntering across the street while still chewing his lunch, momentarily looking at the buckshot wounds in his leg as he walks across - that speaks bucket-loads of unusual character. Which speaks of an audience whose attention has been caught.

[Christopher Santucci]

On 2/11/2020 at 10:28 AM, Max Field said:

For example in Uncut Gems there was a scene where the door buzzer was jammed which hesitated a big gem stone being returned and literally all I was thinking was what the screenwriter was thinking when they wrote that scene: "Yeah see the audience thought it'd be an easy return but NOPE we'll just put this problem in to raise the tension even higher!"   ...I almost called it "artificial drama" but literally all drama on the screen is artificial..

Does anyone else have this problem? What's a way for overcoming it?

There's too much reliance as of late on "suspension of disbelief." We know it's a movie, we know we have to allow for some suspension, but screenwriters could be a little smarter & less lazy imo. Especially in the case of science fiction which are universally the dumbest movies going. 

[Robin R Probyn]

whats the problem.. plenty of great new films .. and plenty of shite old films.. everything is derivative to some degree.. it cant be any other way ..  certainly I think the camera work / lighting of films in the last 20 years is alot better in general than it used to be.. 

[Tyler Purcell]

I mean there are plenty of non-popcorn fodder movies that are good these days. They're just hard to find at your local cineplex and if they make it at all, they're only around for a week. Ya gotta be in one of the major media cities to see anything that's any good in the theater. It's been that way for a while tho, over 20 years. As I get older, I just have less time to waste on shitty movies. When I was younger, there were plenty of shitty movies and we watched most of them because we had nothing else to do. I will admit, being able to do visual effects like they can do today, has changed everything because it's more about the whiz bang, rather than the story. That's really what bothers me in the long run, $250 million dollar budget movies which are simple revenge films that are all visual effects. I wish for every one of those $250M movies, the studio is forced to do a few sub $50M productions, like Joker.