What do you think of modern movies?
Jeroen
Not all those who wander are lostNetherlands Veteran
I was watching some clips of the new 2025 Superman movie, and he seems much more emotionally literate. Sort of a Gen Z Superman, if such a thing is to be believed. It really makes the whole film much more, hmm light-hearted than previous efforts? Not really surprising as James Gunn’s previous super hero films, Guardians of the Galaxy, were also emotionally literate and fun loving outings. But surprising, compared to Henry Cavill or the guy from Smallville. And Superman has a dog?
Then I tried to watch some clips from K-Pop Demon Hunters, which made a big splash on Netflix, to try and get a feel for why that movie was suddenly popular. I thought it was pretty awful, from the clips and music videos. It has these fast little asides in the film where they show exaggerated cartoon-like reactions? Dreadful.
I’ve heard some good things about A Real Pain, and I want to try and watch the Best Picture Oscar winner Anora. But it doesn’t seem like modern movies are relying on good, old fashioned storytelling anymore. It’s like a game of “spot the gimmick.”
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I've bought subscriptions to all the major movie-providers but rarely seem to be able to find anything to watch among the modern movies. I'm not quite sure what it's about but they somehow just don't grab my attention or peek my interest. So, I often revert to rewatching old favourites. Sounding like a Boomer, at 39!
I've heard something about how streaming has changed the nature of movies. While there are still some being made that have a high quality, when people watch streaming movies at home often they do it while doing other things too, like laundry or cooking or something so movies that you don't have to follow so closely.
Also, regarding the new Superman, yeah I really like this Superman's sweetness. I guess in some of the comics Superman has a dog, but I didn't really care for it in the movie, it had a sort of Jar Jar from Phantom Menace vibe.
This is what Ridley Scott had to say about modern Hollywood movies…
https://deadline.com/2025/10/ridley-scott-hollywood-drowning-in-mediocrity-1236570875/
Wait until you turn 40 and the kids start playing on you lawn ALL the time!
So, if you’re now 39, that would mean you were born in 1986, and are a Millennial? Somehow I thought you might be a little older.
But if you like good movies, try ‘1917’, directed by Sam Mendes, which came out in 2019. Incredible feat of cinematography in making it look like the whole film was shot in one giant, over-the-shoulder take. It really places you in the middle of the First World War. It was the most recent movie which made me say ‘wow’.
I shall take that as a compliment! 😁
Thank you, I've added it to my watchlist.
Even though I discontinued that too because I could not find anything else to watch, I found Disney+ to be the best for me. I enjoy the exploration/sport/endurance movies and documentaries since I do sport and there are many mindset/philosophical/spiritual aspects to them. There is a cheap Australian provider for just those, so I might give it another chance.
If y'all will allow me another Boomer rant: what's up with the terrible search/filter functions of these services? I think: they want to push their own productions, for visibility and not to have to give out royalties.
This is a video by The Critical Drinker, a movie critic on YouTube talking about this issue.
And why do so many movies revolve around fighting, in one form or another?
This is kind of the question of do you make things that people want or make the things that would be better for them?
Do people want to watch fighting? Obviously because it seems to sell. But I’m genuinely puzzled because violence and bloodshed don’t seem desirable. Is it just “let me see what happens so I can avoid it” kind of curiosity?
Hate to break it to you, but we're the odd ones. I like martial arts movies because I resonate with the physical movement and mastery.
My take as to why is that humans have some kind of evolutionarily hard wired desire for conflict, men especially with the physical variety.
Horror movies are similar for me. People seem to like them, but I stay away from almost all of them. There is research on what people find appealing about horror, maybe it applies to fighting too?
https://www.the-scientist.com/why-do-some-people-enjoy-horror-movies-72181
I don't like violence happening to unwilling people in a movie. Like a horror movie or a traumatic scene in a movie. But a friend asked me to watch a movie in the John Wicks franchise and I liked it. All of the violence was between professional assassins and it was a sort of guilty pleasure to watch.
I don’t know if that is true, I think it is more like a very gradual course of being brain washed. Children’s programming used to be very much more gentle, but it slowly leads you into more serious matters.
The thing is, the violence and the things people supposedly reach with it are all fake! The movies tell us lies, glamorising money, crime, guns, fighting and death as a way of solving problems. I don’t like being lied to.
Happiness, peace of mind, contentment lie elsewhere.
Being outliers isn't the same as being wrong. Being normal, common isn't the same as being right or good.
You might like this one.
Interesting, certainly. The whole argument that the background of common media against which we see the movies has shifted is totally valid. If you are spending five hours a day on social media on your phone, then suddenly a movie seems like long-form, crafted entertainment.
I came across some tv programs I used to watch when I was about 5 years old, so this would have been around 1977, and it struck me how much slower it was than what the kids watch today.
You can certainly see in the likes of K-pop Demon Hunters various attempts to pander to the shorter attention spans of the social media generation. But for me it just felt jarring.
I like my movies to tell an immersive story. Ones in which the hero breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to camera like Deadpool feels just wrong.
I was watching a clip showing Michael Caine’s favourite films, which were:
On the Waterfront (1954)
Charade (1963)
Casablanca (1942)
The Third Man (1949)
The Maltese Falcon (1931)
Mostly the early highlights of film in black and white, it shows you how far cinema has come. It’s also about the evolution of acting, and how a restrained performance can be very evocative.
I’m not saying my own taste in cinema goes that far back, but these films can still be interesting to watch, especially when you know a bit of the history of movies.
It inspired me to see what my own Top 5 movies might be like… something like:
The Dark Knight (2008)
Spirited Away (2001)
Unforgiven (1992)
Blade Runner (1982)
The Lord of the Rings (2001,2002,2003)
I've tried to come up with my own list over the years. I have a clear top 3, but then it gets pretty nebulous.
The Matrix (the original, the others are in the nebulous category)
Lord of the Rings trilogy
The Princess Bride
Actually, lets put The Martian and Pulp Fiction on the top 5 list
Yes, The Matrix is definitely in the mix. But I find I can construct a Top 5 of for example upbeat films which would look quite different. The mood I am in has a huge influence on things.
I’m wondering whether classics such as Amadeus (for the wonderful music), West Side Story (it’s a classic story) or 2001: A Space Odyssey (possibly the only true hard sci-fi movie) shouldn’t make the list, rather than all these adventures.
But I think you are right, The Matrix belongs in the Top 5, for the kung fu, the high concept, and just the overall style which was genre-busting at the time.
I just rewatched The Matrix, and while it is an excellent movie, there is a lot of screen time spent on violence, fighting and very dark themes. And the same arguments could be levelled against Blade Runner, Unforgiven, The Dark Knight and even The Lord of the Rings from my original Top 5. It’s all death and doom and gloom, which drives the story towards a conclusion where happiness prevails. And it isn’t even particularly real, in that these situations actually happen.
So I was thinking about a new Top 5, made of movies which are favourites of mine but which are actually uplifting, fun, insightful films, and which don’t rely so much on peril and strife to move the plot. I realise I’m cutting out large swathes of all the movies which have topped the box office in the last thirty years, but I wanted to see what this list would look like.
The Shawshank Redemption
Spirited Away
Amadeus
Soul
Austin Powers
I thought about including Arrival, The Martian, 2001, A Beautiful Mind, Howls Moving Castle, Finding Nemo, Erin Brockovich and a few others for the fifth entry in the list, but wanted to include some out-and-out laughs because hey, comedies can be great.
Oops wrong thread
If you look at the movies from an evolution of acting point of view, we seem to have reached another inflection point. First there were the silent stars (Chaplin and Keaton), then the suave leading men (Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant), then the era of realistic performers, and now we are getting the hyper-emotionals.
When we were kids, my cousins and I would frequently watch the original Top Gun movie. My guilty pleasure is watching Top Gun 2, which for a sequel is very good. I rewatched it yesterday. Great fun! I might see today if I've forgotten enough of the original to rewatch it too!
Top Gun 2 was a lot of fun, I really liked the sailing sequence where Jennifer Connelly takes Tom Cruise out for a trip to bring a J/125 sailboat to the yard… I know these movies are all about things going fast, but it’s nice for it to be a sailboat for a change and not a jet fighter plane.
But then I think Top Gun 2 is kind of a throwback to an earlier style of movie, it’s got a slightly older cast, but there is still romance. It could have been made in the eighties or nineties. Good to see that it did so well at the box office, too.
I was just watching this in the morning, and I think he has a point on the “girl bosses” thing. It’s just not realistic to see a woman engaging in sword battles with two or three male opponents a head or more taller and easily holding blows that would have shattered a normal woman’s wrists.
The other thing is, having turned Star Wars and to a lesser extent Marvel into girl boss stomping grounds, they are now looking for original ip to attract young males? I find this somewhat laughable.
I have some sympathy for this point of view. Somewhat recently D&D changed the way they allocate ability scores by divorcing them from racial characteristics. So dwarves aren't heartier and elves aren't more nimble on average. The word that gets used is verisimilitude rather than realistic. Meaning in a world where people can fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes not everything has to be real to life, but some things should still make sense.
What I would have done is say that adventurers are outliers and its fine for the 3' tall halfling fighter to be as strong as the 8' tall goliath wizard, but the average goliath will be stronger than the everyday halfling.
I kind of think along those lines in terms of women vs men fights. If the woman is an alien or has superpowers like Gamora or Captain Marvel its fine, it doesn't break verisimilitude. If its Black Widow or Echo against some trained man twice their size, then it is immersion breaking. I mean any woman who's a professional fighter would kick my sorry ass around every day of the week. But a trained woman vs a trained man isn't close to a fair fight. I often imagine the woman fighting as being a man with the same size frame and it begins to seem fairly unrealistic.
I remember watching some comparison that showed a fight with Lara Croft Tombraider where she was well outmatched in the choreography but won because she got tricksy.
At the same time, I think representation is important. I remember when nerdy guys began to get the hero role (The Rock, Sneakers) and it was better than trying to imagine my self as Rambo. I think that its an important counter balance to the need for verisimilitude for women to be able to see themselves in the hero role. I wouldn't want D&D to go back to the time where female characters had strength penalties.
I guess my overall point is, sure some of the things in media aren't all that realistic. But there are other important things that matter to lots of people too that should be considered.
True and I agree with you that women need to be able to see themselves in the hero role, but I think modern movies are very unrealistic in the archetypes they choose to cast women hero’s in. To cast a woman hero in the same mold as a male hero, punching and kicking, just isn’t true to what most female hero’s are like.
It says that to be a hero you need to be a kick-ass fighter, that combat is the only measure of conflict or is the way to raise tension in a story. I think that that is lazy writing. If you look at most ancient mythology, female hero’s tend to be figures of gentle wisdom.
The Captain Marvel story was an example of a character given extraordinary powers within the Marvel Universe, only to prove massively unpopular with the fan base. The fans like their hero’s flawed and complex, like Iron Man or the Hulk.
While I agree that there are good feminine archetypes that could be used in a hero role, I think its important to not pigeon hole people. To say female heroes are like this and male are like that. Masculine and feminine aren't synonymous with gender.
Yeah, that has been something I've noticed too. Overcoming challenges and growing is important, its kind of why Superman has often been thought of as not as interesting as other superheroes.
No, that’s true, and there is value in a good story that describes any hero type. But what Hollywood seems to be intent on doing is forcing the girl boss archetype into many stories, and it is proving unpopular with a lot of audiences.
If you look at for example Spirited Away, that has a girl as protagonist, but no battles, yet tells an awesome story involving getting lost in the spirit world and finding a place in a bathhouse of the spirits. Throughout she is shown as a real person in extraordinary circumstances, and overcomes many challenges in a feminine way, no girl boss traits required.
That is also a way of telling a story, without using a toxic and unrealistic archetype.
I mean, I'm with you in the value of a story like Spirited Away, I just don't like telling people what they should like or value. If people like girls kicking ass, good for them.
A take on how the way movies are filmed affect our experience. I think you'll like this channel if you're not already aware.
Yes, I’d seen a few of that channel’s videos come past. I watched this one, and resonated more with the early part of the video, where he talks about older movies and film technology versus modern movies and digital technology. The latter part, where he talks about evoking a feeling of touch in the viewer, didn’t appeal so much.
I think the process of colour grading is very much responsible for the “glossy” look of most modern films, it’s a kind of digitally processed appearance. I think there is much to be said for the older technology and working with sets and lighting.
Better finish watching this joyous film...
https://missionjoy.org/
This piece of analysis felt to me somewhat connected…
It’s actually interesting, I’m not the only one to have made this distinction, or something like it. The YouTube channel Like Stories of Old made a video essay about the 50 most life changing films, which I devoted a solid three hours to watching in it’s entirety, in the hope of picking up on a few films that I hadn’t seen yet which would move the needle.
While I don’t entirely agree with LSOO’s film list, the fact that he split up his list into ten chapters each with a theme I could get behind. The inclusion of the 10-hour documentary Shoah and then leaving out Schindler’s List, or not including Saving Private Ryan on the war films, or including Kingdom of Heaven but not Gladiator on goodness and virtue, I found a little strange.
Anyway here is the whole list…
For me, films that really changed my life on a deep level included these:
Schindler’s List (1993): Spielberg’s film is told after a true story from the Second World War, and this includes both the measure of true evil in Ralph Fiennes’ portrayal of extermination camp commandant Goethe, and the measure of good that a man can do in Oscar Schindler’s saving of Jewish workers from the death camps. Deeply heart-wrenching, emotional film for me.
Spirited Away (2001): this animated film by Hayao Miyazaki includes a beautiful portrayal of a protected childhood, which suddenly opens up as Chihiro gets lost in the magical world of the spirits. It is about freedom, finding your place in the world, friendship. It rightly won the Oscar for best animated feature. Wonderful, wonderful film.
The Life of Brian (1979): Monty Python’s hilarious comedic film about Jewish boy Brian who gets mistaken for the messiah in Roman-controlled Palestine made me laugh so much. I still remember many of its jokes today. Besides being one of the funniest films ever made, it dares to poke fun at the Catholic faith, which has done so much harm around the world.
I may add more at a later date.
One thing I found interesting, which made me sit up and take notice was the inclusion of The Lord of the Rings in the list of life changing films. It was in the category “Goodness & virtue”, which for me is a beautiful way of looking at the trilogy. Many characters embody important areas of goodness in LotR, everybody from Frodo to Gandalf to Merry and Pippin take their turns. It bears examining in close detail, I think the list maker is quite insightful.
Also of note are the reviews of Rings of Power, which I’ve been catching up on. I had reasonably high hopes of this, but it seems I am to be disappointed. Not only that, but a romance between Galadriel and Sauron? It seems laughably bad writing, I can’t believe they put that into a billion dollar franchise. And there are other instances. The fans are incensed.
I'm particularly taken by the examples of Samwise, especially towards the end with his loyalty and bravery, and Faramir with his moral rectitude.
IMO Rings of Power isn't as good as the Lord of the Rings movies, but I liked it and haven't really resonated with the criticisms. To my ear it seems mostly a dislike of Galadriel as a soldier with far less patience and grace than she had 3,000 years later. Also, not really sure their relationship was a romance, there was some mutual respect and affection and she didn't know who he was at the time.
Oh no, our excellent long-standing relationship RUINED because of Rings of Power
A lot of the comments were saying things like, “compared to Rings of Power, the Hobbit trilogy was a masterpiece”. Now I actually liked The Hobbit and thought it was perhaps even better than the original Lord of the Rings films. I was quite surprised to find that so many of the fans disliked the Hobbit, because of the way it diverged from the book.
But I thought The Hobbit was well done and had some fun characterisation and nice lore around the Dwarves. But there is a lot around Rings of Power that I’m not fond of from what I’ve seen of the footage, like the racial diversity story, and the way they bring in Gandalf a thousand years early, and the way armies seem able to teleport around Middle Earth. They seem to play fast and loose with the world building which I think is at the heart of Tolkien’s stories.
I think Galadriel as a soldier doesn’t really fit with the character. If she was good with swords and armour why did she not fight in that way when the White Council confronted the Necromancer and the ring wraiths in The Hobbit? It doesn’t make sense. The people running the show seem to want to tell their own stories about inclusivity, female heroes, and so on.
I thought the commentary that I saw about Game of Thrones and how it worked with ethnically diverse actors was very sensible. Warmer countries produce darker skinned people, and from a world-building perspective it makes sense to use actors from desert countries for character roles that originate in those parts of the story’s world.
In Rings of Power you have things like dark-skinned elves and dark-skinned Numenoreans, just for the sake of including a racially diverse cast of actors. Tolkiens vision was grounded in Northern Europe, he used names from Scandinavian saga’s for his main characters. I just find it jarring to my sense of the story.
This is not a thread I’d normally comment on, because 1. I’m quite ADH and have a very hard time sitting through a movie ( I can’t even bring myself to watch the clips in the links); and
2. I’m culturally out of step with much of what most of the rest of the world considers entertainment .
I’ve watched movies that friends have said I’d enjoy, and usually they leave me flat.
That said though, my wife is a big fan of the Wizard of Oz. We’ve been to the museum in Kansas, and our house has a collection of Oz memorabilia. And I certainly have my own very fond childhood memories of the movie. So of course we went to see Wicked when it came out, and now we’ve just seen Wicked2, which is less a “sequel” and more just a “continuation after the (yearlong) intermission.” These movies are, to me, an absolute masterpiece of storytelling. Refreshing perspectives, plot twists, a LOT of thought given to tying it all in to the well known story but still telling a very different story of its own. Really thoughtful exploration of human thoughts, emotions, and actions.
So, the movie industry is certainly CAPABLE of excellence in storytelling. The fact that so many movies are superficial and mediocre reflects not the industry but the audience they’re selling to.
Open a high quality fine dining restaurant and you’ll work unbelievably hard and could well go bankrupt. Open a McDonald’s franchise and you’ll likely be a millionaire.
I liked the new Superman movie. Two things about it: he's more than your average superhero, he's a symbol and maybe the thing he used to symbolize in previous iterations are not the same things the new generations "vibe with". Which is okay I think, I was satisfied with the portrayal, although Gunn always slips in some self-gratifying violence on the side, even if the character is all about being kind. The other thing I really liked about it was how it's actually a coming of age story: we have a hero who never really grew up because he kept idolizing his birth parents and is always trying to please everyone and ends up pleasing no one and with a headache. So then comes disillusionment and a need to take his own stand. That is a positive message.
I also really loved K-POP Demon Hunters, (but I like anime in general and this was supposed to be sort of a bridge between western and eastern animation for fans). It was a lot more entertaining than most animated films. Of course there's a lot of value in quiet films, like Flow, but sometimes I just want to have a great time.
I see your favorite movies were also very famous and successful ones, some are blockbusters. I always liked arthouse ones more. Streaming providers are not specialized in those, at least not where I live. I find most movies available via streaming to be mediocre or boring or cheap / flat in other ways. But sometimes an exception or two plays in the movie theaters.
I used to like arthouse cinema more in my student days. At the student union at my university they used to show two films a week, something arty on Wednesdays and something more mainstream on Sundays. But I kind of got out of the habit of going to the cinema in the years after uni, I spent time living in a rural town and the local cinema only showed the mainstream.
The last sort-of art house film I watched was Drive My Car, a Japanese film which won the prize for best scenario at Cannes a few years back. It was interesting and beautifully filmed but very slow paced, and at 3 hours not the shortest film.
From my uni days I remember watching Akira one day when it was on, which was a mind-blowing experience and I think still ranks as one of the greatest anime films ever made. I’m not a huge fan of anime but I’ve seen a few films and series. I am a big fan of Hayao Miyazaki’s work, which though animated would be considered mainstream in Japan.
I wouldn't say these criticisms are wrong, its more that they don't seem to bother me much.
I don't seem to have much of a critical mind around media. It's more that I simply like some things more than others. I'll just stop watching it and find something else if I don't like it.
I did care more about the last 2 seasons of Game of Thrones and how that played out poorly, especially with how good the first 6 were. So I kind of get people when they nerd out harder over LOTR lore than I do.
I’m not usually a huge stickler for lore, but I appreciate a well-built world which makes sense from such perspectives as the distances people have to travel, etcetera. It helps tell the viewer how big the world is, for one, and that helps you appreciate an epic story. Tolkien was without equal as a world builder.
I liked The Hobbit trilogy. Sure, it was far from perfect even by the standards of someone like me who never read LotR and is just generally not a fan of fantasy, but it entertained me. That something the LotR movies never really managed to do. I know people love those. I know they're extremely popular and in their own ways probably great movies as well, I just never really understood the appeal of a fantasy world that takes itself so seriously. In contrast The Hobbit was silly and filled with CGI and drawn out, sure, but all those adventures and the dragon and the character development made me feel like a child in a world that's filled with strange and exciting things. LotR is not the kind of fantasy that's supposed to bring out your inner child, it's the kind of fantasy I think that is meant to be a more immersive, unforgettable experience for those who make a sport out of escapism and also a gateway to such in case anyone is interested in exploring a detailed fictional world with the analytical mindset of an adult. That's how I see it, I might feel differently about it once I read the books, but long walks, big battles and heroic protagonists were never really my thing.