Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Petr Navovy | Miscellaneous | October 11, 2023
With the always-present proviso that most binary arguments are often reductive and unhelpful—though sometimes useful too!—I’m afraid it’s that time again when we moan about the quality of filmmaking today compared to days of yore. Or, well, I want to call it something less than a moan each time I do it—maybe ‘critical appraisal’ would do—but I reckon I’d just be lying to myself. Truth of the matter is, it does just feel like a moan, more often than not. For that, I blame all the atrocious Netflix (and other streaming service) ‘films’ I’ve sat through in recent times.
Yes, of course, there are many, many excellent films being made today, but in general it seems like the stylistic shift in (at least American) cinema at large has been towards a slightness, and cheap imitation ‘kineticism’, at the expense of patience, craft, and deliberation—with even some otherwise impressive filmmakers falling prey to this tendency sometimes. I’m clearly not the only one who feels this way, as YouTube channel CinemaStix show here in their comparison of the staging and cinematography of the late, great Sidney Lumet’s 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express, and Kenneth Branagh’s more revved up 2017 version:
