brightpilot6 said:Well, I was referring to the modern mainstream, though I assumed that was self-evident.
When I say something goes against the current mainstream, I mean that films falling into that category are often dismissed from the very jump just because of where they sit on the spectrum. We see this play out repeatedly here on the forums, seeing the specific biases people bring to these films and the slim chances they afford them before they've even seen a single frame.
We can certainly agree that there is more garbage being produced today than there used to be, simply because the technical barrier to entry has dropped, allowing anyone with a camera to make something and put it online. But does a decline in the overall quality of the pool really imply that the absolute best works are automatically subpar?
It’s a bit like saying that because you could only watch major league baseball in the past, but now you have access to every minor league game in existence, all of modern baseball must be trash.
Not for me, perhaps, but it certainly seems to be the case for those who compiled the list. As for what I mentioned regarding a "primacy" of quality—or rather, a shift in standards—it applies to the decline just as much as the rise. While talent can fluctuate wildly from year to year, when we look at broader windows of twenty or thirty years, it becomes difficult to argue there are any truly massive deviations.
The people actually making these lists aren't interested in tearing anyone down. Sure, you've got your idiots, but the real issue today is how everyone trashes older cinema. Most people won't even touch a black-and-white movie, let alone anything over 30 years old. Take *Citizen Kane*—it’s been called the greatest ever for decades, yet almost nobody actually watches it. Don't even get me started on foreign films; I could spend all day talking about how people react to a classic German noir.
movie. 99 out of 100 people won't even bother looking at this because of those three words before the link. It's a movie that comes around once a decade—honestly, that black-and-white silent French flick only got an Oscar nod because of top-tier marketing, nothing else.
Not even gonna go there. Hardly anyone actually knows how to watch a movie anymore—you know, appreciate direction, script, cinematography, acting... the stuff that actually matters. You can't even wrap your head around it unless you've seen the heavy hitters, the iconic directors, and different eras of film history. You have to view it as art, not just some mass-produced distraction for some guy to kill time on a lazy Sunday afternoon. But people today? They just watch every blockbuster from *The Matrix* onward and think their take on "all-time greatness" actually carries weight. It doesn't. If you haven't seen Hitchcock or Kubrick, if names like Kurosawa or Bergman don't ring a bell, or if you start getting defensive when someone mentions cinematography because "that's not important" or "I just want to relax," then shut it. You don't get a vote when we're talking about historical context and lasting quality. Look, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but this crowd's understanding of cinema is basically zero. It's like asking a dog for gardening advice. Just because they're around doesn't mean they know anything. And I'm not saying this because I think I'm an expert, but because you're out here defending the exact kind of mediocrity that's killing movies in the first place.
Yeah, true. Talent fluctuates, sure, but look at the reality. You could have someone like Paul Thomas Anderson—arguably the best director of our era—drop a masterpiece like *There Will Be Blood*, and five years later he’s struggling to find anyone to fund his next project for peanuts. Why? Because it's safer for investors to dump money into some mindless blockbuster that’ll get Peron banned from the IMDb forums two months before release, just so they can pocket $50 million from various backers in the opening week. That's the problem. This hyper-capitalist consumerism isn't just killing great movies; it's basically defining the culture now. We don't have "good" cinema like we used to because of it. Out of every ten films that actually get the green light and production support, eight of them are guaranteed flops based on the sheer volume of garbage churned out over the last 15 years. Studios, producers, and big-money interests—plus an uneducated mass of viewers—are basically tailoring films for people who lack any real vision. It crushes actual artists who could be making stuff worthy of a real legacy. It's gotten so bad it feels unprecedented. Look back at 2009. In the Best Foreign Language Film category alone, there were three movies arguably stronger than anything nominated for Best Picture that year. You had *The Hurt Locker* and *Pan's Labyrinth* fighting through the noise against something as mindless as *Avatar*, alongside stuff like *The Blind Side*, *An Education*, *Up in the Air*, and *Precious*. Just seeing those names together shows how far the industry has slid. Don't get me wrong, there are good films out there, but even Peron mocks the Oscars every single year. And it's not the Academy's fault. The Oscars aren't a joke because they hand out trophies to bad movies; they're a joke because the art form itself has become a glorified cash cow. They'd give an Oscar to a total dud if they could, but honestly? There just aren't enough decent movies left to reward.
The foundation isn't just garbage; it’s basically got cancer. It spreads upward and rots the top tier, which should be holding its own against any era, but it just doesn't. Even the heavy hitters at the top are making concessions for Hollywood now that they never had to before. Look, *Interstellar* is a great movie—I love it—but the actual filmmaking behind it is kind of a mess. You can see it in even a single frame of *Oppenheimer*. Nolan, along with the rest of the A-list, is seeing his quality dip because the industry doesn't demand better anymore. Once you have a name, they don't want you to grow; they want you to dilute your style just to move more tickets. That’s why for guys like Nolan, Fincher, the Coens, Eastwood, Tarantino, Cameron, or Ridley, the best stuff is almost always from their early years. Everything else lately feels like mass-produced sludge—like those overcrowded public pools where you can't even tell who's floating in the water. They aren't making cinema that lasts. Nolan’s *Oppenheimer* is just his version of *Interstellar*; it won't be on any "all-time" lists in fifty years because the directing, the script, the cinematography, and the concept just lack the depth to stand next to something like *2001: A Space Odyssey*. Pretty much the only director actually maturing artistically right now is Wes Anderson. He’s managed to stay true to himself by some miracle, instead of making movies the way the suits want them. But even then, filmmaking is a weird beast. Unlike writing a book, painting, or jamming in a garage with friends, you can't do this alone. You need an entire massive industry to greenlight the budget and handle the logistics. And if the industry is as broken as it is today, everything starts aiming for the same mediocre middle ground. Top or bottom, it all ends up looking the same.
