The new literalism plaguing today’s movies • Hacker News Board

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#371

Post by cal85 » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 10:39 PM UTC

snozolli wrote: post #167

There are a lot of things that bother me in recent movies. I feel like there's a "yay, we're making a movie!" attitude, where people are more concerned with proving that they're part of a culture rather than simply doing their job to the best of their ability. The most egregious example is the amount of Wilhelm Screams I've heard, absolutely crammed into media. It's a proclamation of, "I'm a sound editor, and I'm in…

> more concerned with proving that they're part of a culture

So true! This feeling is everywhere in movies now.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#372

Post by rpdillon » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 10:44 PM UTC

> Rather than aiming for the unique, which might pierce our haze of distraction, art has succumbed to marketable generalities: stock music on Spotify, soporific streams of Netflix content. Fashion capitalizes on a long tail of generic looks: we all wear Doc Martens but no one is actually goth. Image generators churn out ersatz versions of da Vinci and van Gogh. And, in every case, banal commentary is slowly occluding the art, seeping into it in boldface titles or explainers that speak over the sound or cover the image.

It's the degradation of our media, in the sense that it's factory-produced, which is in stark contrast to the media folks were consuming 40 years ago. I'm not dogmatic that it's fundamentally worse (despite my framing), but it does lack the depth of older media, IMO.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#373

Post by haunter » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 10:44 PM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #345

haunter wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It seems at least to me that they don't really make very good movies anymore There are plenty of good films out there. Ignore Hollyood, broaden your horizon

I'm open to suggestions...

So personally I like films that makes me feel something without that feeling being explicitly forced upon me. This is an incredible thing to achieve that only a select few directors can do. Not “baiting” the viewers into emotions but also not being cold at the same time. Just by showing and how do they show it. Like the case of “a picture is worth a thousand words”. It’s a razor thin line but that makes these films I enjoy special and sincere.

(I'll only mentions stuff from the 21st century because otherwise I'd sit here for days)

I love japanese cinema so I'm very biased towards films from there.

- The Taste of Tea (2004) from Katsuhito Ishii

- Nobody Knows (2004) from Hirokazu Kore-eda

- Tony Takitani (2004) from Jun Ichikawa

- Memories of Matsuko (2006) from Tetsuya Nakashima

- Departures (2008) from Yojiro Takita

- Still Walking (2008) from Hirokazu Kore-eda

- Tokyo Sonata (2008) from Kiyoshi Kurosawa

- One Million Yen Girl (2008) from Yuki Tanada

- Haru’s Journey (2010) from Masahiro Kobayashi

- Story of Yonosuke (2013) from Shuichi Okita

- Shoplifters (2018) from Hirokazu Kore-eda

- Drive My Car (2021) from Ryūsuke Hamaguchi

Two korean film I've really liked

- The Handmaiden (2016) from Park Chan-wook

- Pieta (2012) from Kim Ki-duk

A chinese film I've seen recently and it was pretty good

- Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014) from Diao Yi-nan

Iranian films are incredibly good and crazy what they could make despite the situation there

- A Separation (2011) from Asghar Farhadi

- Taxi (2015) from Jafar Panahi

- The Salesman (2016) from Asghar Farhadi

- There Is No Evil (2020) from Mohammad Rasoulof

- My Favourite Cake (2024) from Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha

Some european films I've enjoyed

- Enter the Void (2009) from Gaspar Noé

- Leviathan (2014) from Andrey Zvyagintsev

- Alcarràs (2022) from Carla Simón

- Fallen Leaves (2023) from Aki Kaurismäki

And last but not least some actual Hollywood films that I think are pretty good

- The Tree of Life (2011) from Terrence Malick

- Cloud Atlas (2012) from Lilly Wachowski and Lana Wachowski

- First Reformed (2017) from Paul Schrader

- Nickel Boys (2024) from RaMell Ross

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#374

Post by acjohnson55 » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 10:47 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #17

Fun fact: movie sales, in terms of tickets sold, peaked in 2002. [1] All the 'box office records' since then are the result of charging way more to a continually plummeting audience size. And this is highly relevant for things like this. People often argue that if movies were so bad then people would stop watching them, unaware that people actually have stopped watching them! Even for individual movies. For all the m…

There's a lot of debate in this thread about the merits of watching movies in the theater vs home, but my overall movie watching is way down, regardless of venue. I'm sure I watch less than one movie per month. I used to watch tons when I was younger.

Unrelated, I wish there were small screening theaters where small groups of people could watch films on-demand, drawing on a massive catalog.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#375

Post by neuroelectron » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 10:54 PM UTC

phyzome wrote: post #120

neuroelectron wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Keep your AI slop to yourself, please.

Sorry I'm not going to retype myself what has been common knowledge for decades.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#376

Post by ghaff » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 11:13 PM UTC

quickthrowman wrote: post #360

ghaff wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And probably add to the fact that streaming TV has become vastly more ubiquitous, popular, and high quality. When I was an undergrad ages ago, going to the on-campus movies were a non-trivial part of the weekend experience. My understanding is that they're mostly dead at this point.

> And probably add to the fact that streaming TV has become vastly more ubiquitous, popular, and high quality. The first two I agree with, the third one is a stretch. The quality of programming that HBO was putting out in the mid 90s and 00s is far higher than any streaming series that has ever been released.

I don't have an HBO sub at the moment. But I do find quite a few mostly serialized TV shows on streaming.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#377

Post by wonderwonder » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 11:18 PM UTC

haunter wrote: post #373

wonderwonder wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm open to suggestions...

So personally I like films that makes me feel something without that feeling being explicitly forced upon me. This is an incredible thing to achieve that only a select few directors can do. Not “baiting” the viewers into emotions but also not being cold at the same time. Just by showing and how do they show it. Like the case of “a picture is worth a thousand words”. It’s a razor thin line but that makes these films I…

Not sure Ive ever watched a foreign film. Ill take a look. Appreciate you taking the time to write this out

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#378

Post by gilbetron » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 11:34 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #342

gilbetron wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anime is the US is about a $2.5B industry, whereas just movies and just box office revenue in the US is about a three times that at around $7.5B. Anime is doing great here and growing fast, but I think you are in a bit of a bubble as far as anime. It tends to be a "bubbly" subculture, so not surprising.

Anime is going to explode. Just did some google fu and apparently 50% of millenials and gen z watch anime weekly. Boomers probably watch almost zero anime so once the demographics shift in 30-40 years, you might expect half of all americans to watch anime weekly by these trends. And this is just considering present rates not the fact that these rates have been increasing over time.

Yeah, the forecast I saw researching my comment is it is going to get to about $8b by 2033 - which will make it about as big as the movie box office sales industry.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#379

Post by shermantanktop » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 11:40 PM UTC

bnjms wrote: post #294

mejutoco wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At some point Netflix really focused on this, then like google throwing away search, they lost it. I believe Netflix had a big catalog when people signing their rights thought it was not going to work. Once the model was proven everyone created their platform and stopped licensing to Netflix. Then Netflix had to get closer to making their own shows, and their "discoverability" features centered around hiding how fe…

I’m sure this is the majority of it but it’s an incomplete analysis. Netflix is hampering discovery of even what they do have. I can go to a friends and they can pull up their Netflix with things I had no idea were currently on offer.

How many movie cards can they put on a screen at once...10, at most. How are they supposed to show you what is "on offer"? If their catalog were 10x smaller or 100x larger, they can only show so much.

I supposed they could email customers an excel document. But short of that, they have to make choices about what to do with the pixels on their page, and those choices represent filtering what they show you. How is "hampering discovery" different than what they are physically forced to do?

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#380

Post by thegrim33 » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 12:06 AM UTC

boogieknite wrote: post #244

dfxm12 wrote: post #95

I think some films, especially movies that aspire to win academy awards, are meant to be played to the world wide lowest common denominator. Movies are made for USA and Chinese audiences first, but they are also made to be easily sold in Europe. This isn't to say that Hollywood thinks everyone is dumb, but they recognize that all these different people who grew up in different places aren't going to understand the sa…

Anora, Oppenheimer, and Everything Everywhere All at Once are not lowest common denominator movies. the academy has many issues but i dont think its catering to mass appeal and dumbing down Serpell's interpretation of Anora is dismissive and shallow. the point is Disney infects the American mind and Baker's made that point across half his movies and in some cases incredibly blatantly. its implied and Serpell categori…

What was complicated at all about Oppenheimer?

Would a "common denominator" person really watch that movie and afterwards be confused about anything that happened? What aspect would they remotely be confused about? What aspect would be "deep" to them?

From what I saw, it was nothing but the most basic character drama combined with some "suspenseful" races against time thrown in here and there. For the second half it turns into just one of those movies where the political/social message is effectively just beaten into your face, there's no subtlety at all.

They took no risk that the viewer wouldn't get their message, they make it plainly obvious. In my mind it's a perfect example of "the new literalism". It's almost up there with stuff like Don't Look Up, Snowpiercer, The Big Short, Parasite, etc. These movies mostly solely exist as a conduit through which a political/social message can be force fed to you, in the form of a movie, rather than existing as an actual movie.