It seems that the Oscar Awards happened last weekend. Was there any reason to watch four solid hours of entertainment industry self-congratulation, aside from seeing if any aspiring starlet would parade in a completely transparent dress without any undergarments to speak of. On the day following, just about all the stories about the Oscars on my guilty pleasure of a mainstream newspaper, the English Daily Mail, concerned the fashions – or the bad taste displayed thereof – on the red carpet. There was only a single story or two about the movies and the awards garnered. Although the National Establishment Media organs try to sound chipper and upbeat about the broadcast and streaming audience for the Oscars … general interest in the event seemed pretty restrained.
None of the movies up for consideration this year seemed to have made much of a splash in general release. No long lines at the theaters, no splashy cover stories in national magazines, no repeat customers telling their friends ‘you must go and see this movie!’, no packed theater showings for weeks and weeks and weeks. It seems as if whatever movie-going audience is left these days has a serious case of the “mehs.” As a commenter on another thread about the Oscars said, not only had they not seen a single one of the nominated movies – they hadn’t even heard of most of them. They appeared briefly on the multiplex marquee and then went to streaming video. A few weeks ago, the theater roof collapsed during a showing of the Captain America movie. Well, it was at an 8 PM showing on a weeknight, but there were only two people in the place for a first-run movie, which may be a sad reflection on how ‘meh’ recent releases have become. One of the most savage comments that I saw was that the movie was so bad that the theater itself decided to commit suicide.
I’ve begun to wonder if the whole Hollywood movie and entertainment industry has been committing slow-motion suicide itself, over the last ten or fifteen years. The insistence on expensive blockbusters, the lack of originality, reliance on established comic books and well-established franchises, a tendency to let inexperience take the helm of such highly-visible and expensive projects, the insistence on preaching (assume Critical Drinker voice) “the message” – indeed, beating the audience over the head with “the message”, until the audience stays away in droves, fleeing to their archive of classic (and often much more entertaining) movies and series, foreign imports, or to gaming … repeated sexual-abuse and harassment scandals, the fact that many of the creative (or at least, well-established) Hollywood personalities are really awful, horrible, abusive people. That so many of them came out for Harris/Walz was just the sour cherry on top of the whole rancid package.
So – how much longer can the downward spiral last, while mainstream audiences flee? Will there be more independent productions, or will a kind of renewal take place? Place your bets … and have you seen anything good on screen lately?
There aren’t any good bad movies anymore. Or rather, there aren’t any movies made where the obvious marketing plan is a cynical “We know what you people like.”
Think of “Just One of the Guys,” where Joyce Hyser masquerades as a teenage boy and plays on the football team. Or “Hardbodies,” essentially a beach flick with horny dudes pursuing girls in bikinis. Or “Red Dawn.” Russians and Cubans beaten back by high school kids. Or the ultimate, “Roadhouse,” about bouncers, bar fights, and hot chicks.
Also, I go see my mother for Sunday dinner. Last week we watched an old one with Bette Davis and Spencer Tracy. He leaves prison on a furlough, goes to see his sick girlfriend, the mob shows up, she shoots the button man, but Tracy catches the frame and goes on the run, before returning to prison to face the music. Thirty minutes into this movie with two titans of the screen, I turn to my mother and say, “This is terrible.” “Yes, let’s watch the Timberwolves,” she said.
But still, the writing in that movie, while poor, was somewhat real and organic. The characters were archetypes, you knew there was a plot that was going to get paid off. It just didn’t come together, even knowing Tracy and Davis were two of the greats. Also, the older movies are now artifacts of an America that we recognize, but one we know is gone and we’re living in a better one. Same thing with the earlier ones I mentioned. Forgettable, but with certain attractions and payoffs. Worth a four dollar ticket and two hours of your time.
I think what I’m dancing around saying is that as American society has atomized, as there’s no real mass culture anymore, all movies are niche movies. There could be niche movies before, because they could be cheap and good at the same time, but now niche movies can make or break a studio because they cost $300 million. The last real movie that broke through to everyone was Top Gun Maverick, a sequel almost 40 years in the making. It made Americans feel like Americans, like we were one people.
Also, the other niche movies that get made these days are the indies, which seem to be made exclusively by nihilists. They’re depressing and dark, auteur projects with ugly people. Except for Angel Studios’ movies like Sound of Freedom. I think the movie-going audience, such as it is, is telling movie makers what they want to see. It’s just that movie makers resolutely refuse to make those movies.
Considering they’re all uniformly leftist, and considering the way the Democrat Party is spiralling toward irrelevance by ignoring the American people, you have to wonder if they even want to make money anymore.
Mitchell Strand…”There could be niche movies before, because they could be cheap and good at the same time, but now niche movies can make or break a studio because they cost $300 million.” Do they really have to cost $300MM, though? How much of this is paying for star-power actors and spending on promotional expenses?
Tosca Musk (Elon’s sister) is in the movie-making business with an interesting business model: take romance novels, presumably ones that already have developed a substantial readership, and turn them into movies (for streaming, not for theater distribution) Here’s her site:
https://watch.passionflix.com/
and their X feed:
https://x.com/Passionflix
I hope she’s successful, and other genres take note. You can have a war movie without CGI, and all you need for a cowboy movie is a few miles of open country.
That actually makes sense, as romance fans are particularly dedicated – and a studio making movies to stream out of the most popular romance reads would be like providing catnip to cats. I hope that other movie producers can work up the niche-movie appeal in other genres, and do so for a relative pittance, compared to expensive disasters that the big studios are wasting money and time on.
Think of “Just One of the Guys,” where Joyce Hyser masquerades as a teenage boy and plays on the football team.
I think about it all the time. ;)
…you have to wonder if they even want to make money anymore.
Making money has been secondary to pushing anti-American narratives for decades. Michael Medved wrote a book entitled Hollywood vs. America on this topic, circa 1990. I recall one of the movies he mentioned in that book was about the American Revolution with the Americans portrayed as the villains. It did poorly. End result was that some studios went bankrupt and ended up being owned by companies like Coca-Cola and Sony.
I suppose sanity prevailed- or was imposed- for a long time as Hollywood was able to restrain the crazy long enough to make an enormous amount of money. But perhaps because so much money was made they seem to have concluded they no longer needed to restrain themselves.
Oops. I’m old enough to remember when the Oscars was an event that I’d either watch or hear about. I even went to an Oscar party once. This year I was only aware that they happened because the Critical Drinker mentioned them at some point and aside from that I’d never heard of any of the movies let alone seen them.
Hollywood is swirling the drain. We’re fast approaching the point where any talented storyteller can use AI to create a video product every bit as good as any Hollywood movie for almost no money and upload it to X or YouTube or wherever and make bank.
Pssst- Hollywood. Now is the time to start learning to code.
“Pssst- Hollywood. Now is the time to start learning to code.”
Hollywood needs to learn something, or rather relearn, but not how to code.
That something is story telling. Like every other realm of human endeavor, some of us are enough better at telling stories that others are willing to pay for them. This extends much further into the past than Homer and I’d bet isn’t near ending. Story telling progressed from the spoken word to the written word to cinema without the progressions supplanting what came before. The next big thing is supposed to be virtual reality, we’ll see, I suspect that they will find that the market for reading or hearing about almost drowning is larger than the market for the experience.
As the cost of making movies has exploded, all the producers are desperate for the sure thing. Every movie is an attempt to hit the ball out of the park, every director is hired with the belief that he or she has found the secret to making only blockbusters. As many observed about Babe Ruth, swinging for the fences produces a lot of strike outs. The Ruth era Yankees owed their success much more to mundane fundamentals than to grand slams, though the grand slams helped keep the bleachers full.
Hollywood needs to relearn that the story is the foundation, without that, everything else is sound and fury signifying nothing. The market for nothing is limited. They also need to relearn the difference between parable and polemic. Both aphrodisiacs and emetics produce strong reactions but people are only scouring the ends of the earth to find one of them.
I had actually started to watch Anora because of the good IMdB reviews, and walked out after about 40 minutes. It is only about the 3rd movie I walked out on. Not that I was “offended” but I considered it to be soft porn, where our main character is a “sex worker” and we see her humping her way through the movie.
It was boring.
As befitting my OF status see the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” to see how good writing handled that subject, with Holly Golightly a “party girl”.
As Megyn Kelly pointed out not even the biopic Reagan was nominated because by the new Academy rules it didn’t pass the woke criteria.
Now that was a good movie and in years past would have at least been nominated.
What Xennady said – “Hollywood is swirling the drain. We’re fast approaching the point where any talented storyteller can use AI to create a video product every bit as good as any Hollywood movie for almost no money and upload it to X or YouTube or wherever and make bank.”
There are amateur-produced Youtube series available right now, which are every bit as high-quality and engaging as any mainstream-produced reality or documentary series. It is only a matter of a few more years before full-length movies appear. Such will be following the path established by musicians and writers, with various independently self-produced DVDs, videos, and books.
“Tosca Musk (Elon’s sister) is in the movie-making business with an interesting business model: take romance novels, presumably ones that already have developed a substantial readership, and turn them into movies (for streaming, not for theater distribution)”
There’s nominative determism at its finest!
Maybe there are some good recent movies out there, but, if so, I’d be the last one to know. I never watch anything released after 2010 because it’s mostly Woke propaganda with special effects. Occasionally I pick an actor from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s and binge watch their movies – Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, W. C. Fields, etc. Once in a while I discover a film I really like even though it was panned by the critics. Recent TV series I’ve found bearable are “Peaky Blinders,” “Justified,” “Stranger Things,” “Humans,” “Sons of Anarchy,” (they actually mention Emma Goldman) and “The Wire.”
To continue the thread at least one post longer, last night after Sunday dinner my mother and I watched “House of Numbers.” Jack Palance plays twin brothers (!). The good brother is attempting to break the bad one out of San Quentin with the help of the bad one’s wife (!!), by BREAKING INTO SAN QUENTIN AND IMPERSONATING THE BAD ONE, who is waiting in a shipping crate in the prison yard for nightfall so he can dig a hole to hide in…you know, never mind.
I think the movie is only stupid because it’s 65 years old and the tropes which were new then are pretty tired now. Also, it’s very involved in the process, but there are of course moments where prison guards are blind so the plot can happen, or too brilliant so suspense can happen.
But again, the viewer is treated with respect to a point. There’s no question these criminals belong in prison. There’s no meditation about letting them all out or anything. Society seems ordered.
It was a bad movie, but engagingly bad. Probably better than most movies made today.
If anyone’s interested, most of my big screen movie watching these days is the classics. Fathom Events has, at least in the past, offered classics about once a month at selected theaters nationwide. And we have a local independent, Tower Theater (which started in the same small complex as the late drug store begat Tower Records!) – but I have seen everything there from Casablanca (1942) to Metropolis (1927). The latter, incidentally, was a groundbreaker whose plot has been copied though the years (one of this was an episode of Star Trek TOS.
Out of boredom and missing anything worthwhile I went to see Mickey 17 and walked out after 40 minutes. That makes 4. IMdB had it at over a 7, which combined with their high rating of Anora, makes me discount their ratings. (which come from viewers).
Hollywood needs to learn something, or rather relearn, but not how to code. That something is story telling.
The problem is that Hollywood simply isn’t interested in all that. If they were, they wouldn’t have dug themselves into such a deep hole.
For example, there is a movie I haven’t seen entitled The Joker which made something like a billion dollars. But fans were enjoying it wrong, so they made a sequel with the plain intent of chasing away the fanbase. The sequel lost vast sums.
Another example- the 2003 reboot of the 70s TV show Battlestar Galactica. This was a huge hit, with several spinoff series in production and a dedicated fanbase. Then the guy in charge decided to completely change the direction of the show so he could make a statement against the Iraq War. That is, he re-arranged everything such that his sci-fi show set in space could somehow have episodes endorsing suicide bombing, set on a planet. Bad idea. It killed the franchise.
Yes, I’m still peeved. The bottom line is that Hollywood now cares a lot more about sending a message than storytelling. That’s why they’re swirling the drain.
There are amateur-produced Youtube series available right now, which are every bit as high-quality and engaging as any mainstream-produced reality or documentary series.
Not much to add here, except to note that this is both true and amazing. Obviously this does not incline me to pay for TV channels that ostensibly provide the same but infuse everything in leftist propaganda with a side helping of dogma.
BSG unlike the classic series had a deeply smoral core fundamentally the cylons were declared to have been provoked by their loss in the previous war some two generations before