Day 148: Movies

Hi again everyone!

Today, I'll be talking about movies, as you could likely guess by the title of this post.

Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of movies. It's not that I don't enjoy watching them- honestly, it's pretty rare for me to have a bad experience watching a movie- but usually, there are other things I'd rather be doing. That said, I do enjoy movies as a social event- for the past 3 years, my cousin has been dragging me to the theatre to watch Star Wars movies as they come out.

My issue with movies, though, is quite similar to my issue with music- most of the movies I like didn't come out this century. Generally, my favourite movies are classics- things like Back to the Future, the Princess Bride, or various Monty Python films. I'm sure there are reasons for this- perhaps some sort of survivorship bias, where only the best movies from the past few decades are still regularly seen, and all the low quality ones are forgotten. It may also have to do with the type of humour that was popular then, or some other things (such as the abundance of cinematic shots and dramatic scenes that seem very popular in modern films). Unlike music though, I don't mind the recent stuff so much- I don't tend to enjoy it to the same extent as older movies, but I can happily sit through and enjoy them.

Strangely, I think a good example of how movies have changed over time is Macbeth. We watched 3 versions of this story in an English class I took, and I had drastically different opinions on them. The first one we watched was the 1971 version- very stereotypical 70s costumes, but honestly, I quite enjoyed it. Everything was fairly straightforward (at least, as much one can expect from Shakespeare). Next, we watched the 2010 film, adapted to a Soviet-style setting. It felt a bit more artistic- a bit more abstract, with more analogies and the like. It was still pretty enjoyable though. Lastly, we watched (part of) the 2015 version, but truth be told, we couldn't finish it. Everything was very bleak and dull, with dialogue scenes very quiet and action scenes excessively loud. It was hard to follow what was happening, and felt like it was focused too much on the dramatic atmosphere, and not enough on anything else.

Another thing about movies is there are a lot of different genres. Honestly, I'm only really a fan of comedies (with exceptions, obviously)- action movies seem to me more focused on special effects than plot; superhero movies aren't bad, but I don't feel I'm invested enough in the lore to fully appreciate them; sci-fi movies and fantasy movies can be really good (for instance, Star Wars, or the Lord of the Rings), but a lot of them either borrow a lot from older movies, or go too far out of their way to be original. It is dangerous to say I like comedies though- I have a very particular sense of humour, and recently, it seems that comedy movies have drifted away from what I enjoy a bit too much.

As I said though, movies are enjoyable in a social setting. I've been made to sit through everything from the new Star Wars films to various animated Disney films (such as Zootopia and Frozen), along with a good number of Avengers movies, and honestly, the worst part of any of those was the location we watched some in (namely, a lumpy couch in a room at about 28C). That aside, they were all pretty enjoyable- if at any point the movies got dull, there were people around to talk to and keep me getting bored.

Anyways, that's gonna be it for today- hopefully you enjoyed this post!