Are we in the weakest period for worldwide fictional film making?

By whose criterion are we going by, whose deciding this "highest quality" thing?

To me South Korea's been in the groove, with directors like Lee Chang-dong, Bong Joon-Ho, Park Chan-wook, Kim Jee-woon and others.

Germany has the Berlin School Film Movement, led by Christian Petzold

You have new talents emerging all the time - Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani has impressed - Bhutan's making some noise with directors like Pawo Choyning Dorji - there's Alice Rohrwacher out of Italy - Chilean Felipe Gálvez shows promise - as does Saim Sadiq - Hlynur Pálmason out of Iceland's more than proved himself as one to watch.

English director Andrew Haigh with All of Us Strangers, 45 and Lean on Pete - there's Jonathan Glazer's challenging pieces - Yorgos Lanthimos, Robert Eggers.

And that's scratching the surface - there's a lot of 'high quality' out there in the world.

How do you find it? Every year Criterion releases an article on forthcoming films, that goes a lot deeper than what you see on similar lists from Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes - I always build a new watchlist based on that list, I find a lot of gems that way. And MUBI always seems to deliver these things I'd never heard of before, but really enjoyed, a couple with really long titles, lol (What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? and Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time)

Like everyone, I have my preferences in both film and music, and certain decades speak to me more clearly than others. But this notion that somehow certain generations or decades are creatively bankrupt, and that suddenly all artistry has dried up, is and always will be nonsense.


Sometimes there are certain decades where successful or era defining films are pretty mediocre. And this very well may be one of those times. But if you look outside of the mainstream you will find stuff.


And if your complaining that you have to spend time trying to find them, boo hoo. Having to watch some less than great films to get to good ones isn't some purgatory if you actually appreciate the medium. And it all you're looking for is masterpieces, you are missing out on the learning curve that all those othrr less good movies gives you. If you can't find good things in most movies, even mostly shitty ones, you aren't trying very hard.

Great post. I always do the same with my watchlist. Loads of World Cinema out there to discover. So much that I never get round to it all.

Robert Eggers is American though.

For me, what cinema has already accomplished is sufficient.

Fair point!

Happy to 2nd that.

You used the gauge of "how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?" didn't you?

Caught in the act.

__________________
I destroyed the dastardly dairy dame! I made mad milk maid mulch!

I hate insomnia. Oh yeah. Last year I had four cases of it, and each time it lasted three months.

You didn't rub another man's rhubarb, did you, Rules?

I find nothing wrong with the current state of cinema.

Cinema is there to entertain, if it does its purpose, then it's done what it's meant to do.

If you are looking for more, you may never find it.

Don't get me wrong, there are some that are far better than others and some far worse.

I'm hit or miss with certain decades, genres or styles but I'm willing to give a film a chance.

If you are searching for the greatest, you will be searching for a long time, because you will always be looking for more.

Cinema is the same it's always been. It's the exposure that's different. In 1953 I couldn't log onto the Internet to check out twenty reviews of Shane. Now I can. The movie hasn't changed, so near as I'm aware. Its accessibility and exposure have though.

It's also easier to make films so there are more fish in the pond. The pond is the same size. It's just more crowded, so finding the good fish is still hard.

And this always happens with the advancement of technology. It's not going to change.

I believe that is true, ma'am. Things change and stay the same all at the same time.