Monday, May 20, 2024

Not an age thing: it's a Hollywood thing?

I finally caught up with the 2020 science fiction movie on Amazon "The Vast of Night" on the weekend.   As it got good reviews, and I'm generally a sucker for a decent UFO movie (not that there are that many around), I had reasonably high hopes.

Unfortunately, they weren't exactly met.   Sure, the film looks good and is technically accomplished (with its long tracking shots, primarily) and is very atmospheric in its 1950's remote small town America at night setting; but there are a couple of choices by the writer/director that are very odd and just jarring:

a.  the whole framing devise as if we are watching a remade Twilight Zone style show.  Why??  This made no sense to me.  I had the feeling it was going to be explained by the end in some meta context, but no.

b.  the pace of dialogue - I'm not sure who can most be blamed amongst modern directors for thinking it makes a film realistic if you have the characters always talking at (and often over) each other at a furious rate, but this film certainly has it to excess.   It just did not feel authentic to the way people you would expect small town Americans in that era to interact.  

On a more depressing note, this film did make me realise - gee, it seems a good few years now since I felt really blown away by a film - or even just "pleasantly surprised that this is so much better than I was expecting."   I mean, I've seen films which were OK, or enjoyable enough, or interesting in their way, but I would have to search to find the last one I just really thought blew me away and that I had no issues with.    

And this also made me think - weren't my parents, in their 50's and early 60's, similarly dismissive of films coming out at that time?   Am I just suffering the age related "films/music/culture generally? was/ were so much better back when I was younger" effect.

Somehow, I don't think it's a case of age related disappointment - there seems to be enough general unhappiness with the state of Hollywood to soothe my concerns.

But gee, it's hard to feel certain...

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