Is it time for a new special genre: "realistic modern movies"?

silentridge3 said:That isn't quite right. Modern realistic films aren't limited to just being "dramas"; they also encompass:

- comedies
- political thrillers
- legal dramas
- crime procedurals
- "family movies"
- war movies
- erotic dramas
...

Even action flicks—provided there isn't a supernatural element involved—and those so-called "romantic comedies" (which aren't actually funny, yet don't qualify as pure dramas either) fall under the umbrella of what we consider modern and realistic today.

The issue is that someone actually has to write a script for all these genres. You can't just let a video game play itself out and present it as a movie.

That’s why it feels like watchable comedies hardly exist anymore. Do they even exist at all?

In a way, you've actually validated my point; you confirmed it in your second sentence by adding even more genres that can be classified as "realistic" films. So, I suppose I am at least partially correct.😁
However, if you take a moment to analyze the genres you listed, you'll see they can function within a realistic framework, but they can just as easily lean into "fantasy." When a film is labeled a drama, there is very little chance of it containing fantastical elements. The same goes for political films.
Personally, I don't mind a touch of fantasy; for instance, I find > to be one of the finest comedies ever made, even though we all know it relies on a "fantastic" premise.
But if you look closely, even the films categorized as "realistic" are essentially "fantastic" because they depict fictional events. The only true guarantee that a film is genuinely "realistic" is if it is based on an actual historical event.

silentridge3 said:How do you explain the fact that out of the 30 movies being discussed on this forum—the last 30 titles you guys have actually talked about—only maybe 6 or 7 are even remotely realistic? That means over 75% of the movies you’re watching, commenting on, or calling "popular" are total fantasy. We're talking superheroes, sci-fi, cartoons, people with superpowers, all that junk.

Am I the one who's "out of touch" if YOU are the ones talking about this stuff? Where are the discussions about those heavy-hitting "other" movies—the high-quality, grounded ones? How many legit comedies from 2017 have been brought up here? How many actually get their own thread?

two things:

First off, most threads here open up because of whatever's playing in theaters. It's overwhelmingly American productions, with a bit of European stuff tossed in here and there. Everyone agrees that American movie quality has been in a freefall since the seventies, so basically, American audiences are just being fed low-tier products. IMO, the most consistent and innovative cinema of the last twenty years has come out of South Korea, but almost none of that hits the regular distribution here in the States. So, someone stuck strictly to the local theater lineup isn't going to get a full picture of what's happening in global filmmaking.

Second—this dualistic mindset you've got, where there's some objective "real" reality that exists separately from film, and the whole point of a movie is to act as a mirror or a representation of that reality? That's ancient. You're basically putting film in an inferior position compared to reality, judging its value based on how well it reproduces the outside world. That was the theory 50 or 60 years ago, but both film theory and technical execution have taken massive leaps forward since then.

Nowadays, the consensus is that film is an inseparable part of the reality we live in, and the experience of watching a movie is tied directly to that reality. Therefore, superheroes, animation, and sci-fi fall squarely under what counts as "realistic film" today.