IT'S ALIVE, IT'S ALIVE! (WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT)

What, again?

There's been a lot of loose talk going around about the alleged death of movies. Not like this is anything new, since Roger Ebert was wailing the same sad tune ten years ago. Oh, Mark Harris, too, the very same year! As I stated in an earlier piece, 2018 was the highest grossing year for the industry ever. Consider the movies, then, to be one of the great comeback stories in the Bible (of Show Business), Variety.

The people who give these premature eulogies tend to be movie critics, a profession which was becoming obsolete around the same time Ebert and Harris were standing over film's grave. Not content to be caught outside the cemetery, New York Times' movie critic A.O Scott has come to bury, not praise, the movie industry. (Subscription required, but I was able to read it in a private window. I guess publisher "Pinch" Sulzberger hasn't heard about that trick yet.)

A.O. Scott looks like somebody who's
happy to see a Vin Diesel movie.

A.O. begins his dirge admitting that he was happy to have seen the ninth (ninth!) installment in the risible Fast and Furious series just because he was in a movie theater. With other critics. Meaning nobody yakking to each other or their cellphone or talking back to the screen, or sitting through 25 minutes of previews and commercials after paying 15 or more bucks for the privilege of going to the alleged palaces of dreams. 

These things and more are what drove me from the regular movie-going experience many, many years ago. In other words, A.O. and his brethren -- who get paid rather than spend good money to watch movies -- have no idea what it's like for everyone else. 

At age 55, A.O. is now officially licensed to use the phrase "I'm old enough to remember", which, speaking as someone 65, is an automatic turn-off. But in case you're interested, what he's talking about is a time "when most movies were hard, and in many cases, impossible to see." 

The restored Blu-Ray of Alfred Hitchcock's
first talkie for all to see? Heaven forbid!

Do you yearn for those times? I don't. But A.O. does! Because, he claims, "when everything is accessible [...] nothing is special." Remind me not to invite the Paper of Record's movie maven to my next evening of TCM. I love finally getting to see old movies, most restored to their beautiful original glory, that I never thought I'd see. And Blu-Rays? I'm only sorry these things weren't around 40 years ago. 

As with many people connected to The Industry, A.O. is wary of streaming services like Netflix, which allegedly kills the "shared experience" movies are supposed to be all about. 

You know what Netflix is for my wife and me? Finding an unknown (to us, anyway) 2019 British movie  entitled Hampstead starring Diane Keaton and Brendan Gleeson. 

The kids don't wanna see this kind of thing.

Since the stars' ages at the time were 73 and 64 respectively, Hampstead -- an engaging romantic comedy -- never got a proper theatrical release in the U.S. Four years ago we saw a made-for-Netflix release entitled Our Souls at Night, starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford -- 80 and 81 at the time.  

Get the picture? Neflix and other streaming services provide us geezers with movies that don't involve CGI car crashes, intergalactic wars, and comic book figures. Imagine!

I'm surprised A.O. didn't quote Barry Diller when describing made-for-streaming releases: “They ain't movies. They are some weird algorithmic process that has created things that last 100 minutes or so,“ Unlike, say, Fast and Furious 9, which is a weird algorithmic process lasting 145 minutes, which he apparently approves of since it was released theatrically. 

Alright already!

Too many streaming movies are killing the industry seems to be the cry of people who, again, haven't paid to see a movie in decades. At times like this, many of those gnashing their teeth point to 1939 as the greatest year in movie history. And yes, if you look at the list posted on imdb.com, it reads like a book entitled The Best Movies Ever Made.

Up to a point. Because in a year where almost 1,800 movies were released, for every Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, or The Rules of the Game, the are hundreds with titles like Blondie Takes a Vacation, Hotel for Women, Daredevils of the Red Circle, Scouts to the Rescue, Inspector Hornleigh, at least three Nancy Drew movies... Page after page of movies released merely to take up space on studio-owned theaters for two days before being replaced by another. Also known as product with algorithms before the word was even coined. 

As far as Edison was concerned, it was all downhill
after his masterpiece The Boxing Cats in 1894.

Thomas Edison and Charlie Chaplin complained about talkies destroying the "art" of movies in the late 1920s. Theater managers bitched about having to buy new equipment to run widescreen movies with stereo sound. 3-D has come and gone and returned and left again, never replacing flat movies as critics feared (although James Cameron is doing his best to do so with four unasked-for  Avatar sequels in the pipeline through 2028).

As scriptwriter William Goldman famously said about the movie industry, "Nobody knows anything." Movies, film, cinema, whatever you call it, are not dying. What was true once remains so: If you're lucky, a great movie comes your way. On occasion, there's something quite good. 

But by and large, mediocrity rules the day. And that's true of cinemas or streaming. I'm old enough to remember that.

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