rant: I hate new movies

I wrote something on netflix about that awful Keira Knightley vehicle, Atonement, several years ago.  Excuse the shoddy writing; I was 19 years old at the time, and halfway through an all-nighter.

Keira Knightley is pretty, but she can't act

The only thing going for this movie is its luscious visual style, but I even found the composition of the shots to be very boring even though clearly a lot of time was spent in devising them! I like James McAvoy, but I thought he was a little bland in this, while Keira Knightley was pretty horrible. The love story was dull and commonplace, as were most of the sentiments exposed let's face it, plenty of movies have been made about WWII and we've seen plenty of grunts bitching as they slog through the mud, comrades dying, complete destruction of towns, and all those other horrors of war which have been covered so well in the vast backcatalogue of films which touch upon these subjects much more directly and potently than Atonement. Please don't call this "visual poetry" or whatever, this movie is so overprocessed that it's hard to connect to what's going on on screen! What's happened to movies that are relevant to our times, movies that pack an emotional punch and make us think about the world we live in? This movie is nothing but fantasy. Why can't Hollywood make a movie that deals honestly with the present, not a highly political fear-mongering drama about Oil or Corruption or Iraq, but maybe something more personal, about how people really live their lives in the 21st century? Or is reality just so boring and dismal that all we want is escape? To me that seems cheap. I'm sick of these movies where everyone is rich and beautiful, where a sneer of stiff, plasticky lips passes for a symbol of some deep and complex emotion. I'm sick of characters so sensitive that we have to watch a twitch or their eyes or lips everytime an Event occurs. Screw it, I'm sick of actors who can't act. Who cares if you're good looking and anorexic? Go be a model, don't torture us all with your horrible screen presence and sour personality!!  Good things about Atonement: the typing music was really cool. Also, the ending was interesting.

That's pretty much how I feel about every single movie that's come out the past ten years or so.  Directors these days are too concerned with being 'artistes'; there's an earthiness to earlier films which I appreciated; airbrushing everything seems to be kind of missing the point.  2010's Black Swan, another movie which I hated, is case in point.

Also, what's up with those scenes where they switch cameras every five seconds?  I know you're trying to make the movie visually more interesting, and it looks cool, but it's also super-distracting (this is coming from someone who can hardly sit still through Ealing).  Sometimes I feel that all that fancy cinematography is nothing but a cover-up for all the shitty actresses they hire nowadays.  Keira Knightly, Natalie Portman -- case in point.

Jennifer Conelly is another mediocre actress

Don't get me wrong, I love escapism.  If escapism were a cult, I would be its high priest.  But the kind of escapism I like is from movies like this and this, and certainly not this, and definitely for sure not this.  (In case you were wondering those last two links are to two very overrated movies, and if you like them, you have no taste.  Yes, Requiem for a Dream is fantasy, and shut up naysayers, if you want to watch a good movie about drug addiction see Trainspotting or Panic in Needle Park).  But I don't like shitty escapism.  Good escapism makes me feel happy and warm and good inside, has a lot of musical numbers, and a certain ineffable organic quality.  Good escapist movies didn't need a large budget.  Good escapist movies might have been shot in black-and-white, have awful production values, or absurd plots (CASE IN POINT), but they were interesting, clean and fun, and that's why I watch them.

When I find a new movie on youtube which doesn't suck, I'll let you know.  But, I'm guessing I won't have to eat my words for quite some time.