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PaperclipPerfector  7hr ago (text post)   400 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 1, 2026

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Finished watching Jaws on Netflix before it went off the air. I found it disappointing, which is surprising considering its reputation (the first summer blockbuster, recommended by both Roger Ebert and Critical Drinker, etc.)

I think the problem is that I couldn't connect to the characters. Chief is too much of a coward, both morally (fails to stand up to the Mayor) and physically (afraid of water). Quint has potential, but in the end he comes across more as a greedy asshole than as a truly passionate shark hunter. And the research dude is just there. I don't care what happens to these people; none of them are awesome enough to keep my interest. Combine that with the slow pacing (the shark is famously not shown until the final act to build suspense) and I was left looking at my watch wondering how much longer the movie would be.

It only really gets good in the last twenty minutes when they are directly battling the shark, and by then it is too late.

I found myself similarly disappointed. Although my impression was just that it was poorly made. In the same way that CGI or fight choreography from old films is just bad compared to modern films, Jaws felt sloppy and amateurish.

Honestly, I struggle to watch films made before the 1980-90s. Comedies tend not to age well for reasons of cultural change (with notable exceptions, e.g. the Python films or Airplane!) and dramas need to have a really compelling script to allow me to forgive the fact that filmmaking was just worse back then. Maybe part of it may be my ruined modern attention span, but I think filmmaking has genuinely improved. Compare the fight scenes in Enter the Dragon to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; or the battle scenes in Zulu to Saving Private Ryan. Incomparable.

Honestly, I struggle to watch films made before the 1980-90s. Comedies tend not to age well for reasons of cultural change (with notable exceptions, e.g. the Python films or Airplane!) and dramas need to have a really compelling script to allow me to forgive the fact that filmmaking was just worse back then. Maybe part of it may be my ruined modern attention span, but I think filmmaking has genuinely improved.

For me, I think this mostly just applies to movies made in the late 60s-70s. It's dated now, but I find that a lot of movies before that period don't have the same problem with filmmaking that the 1970s stuff did - for example Hitchcock's oeuvre for the most part feels like the work of an extremely competent and confident filmmaker with a large amount of control over the medium. Even as late as 1966, I find many films to be eminently watchable (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, for example).

It was when New Hollywood started really exploding in popularity that I truly find films start appearing very overly indulgent; apart from a select few movies that are classics, there's an almost intolerable amount of sloppy poorly-framed low-budget guerrilla cinematography passed off as grittiness, horrible audio mixing that renders the voices barely audible, bloated pacing that includes extraneous shots of lazy improvisation and oceans of irrelevant dialogue that are kept for "authenticity's sake", and other such elements that make them difficult to watch. Say what you want about the studio control of the Golden Age and how it Stifled Revolutionaries, I think that era reined in the worst impulses of auteurs and forced them to become a bit more economical and deliberate with their filmmaking.

That being said, nothing is worse than the overly-saturated, uniformly-lit, plastic CGI look that modern Hollywood specialises in.

As a confirmed Breaking Bad hater, I have read the AV Club's "The case against Breaking Bad" article many times, as it articulated almost everything that I disliked about the show, including its cinematography. Even fans of the show have acknowledged how silly the "Mexico is yellow" thing is, but this was the only source I've seen that criticised the overuse of jitter cam, something I found really annoying and distracting:

But even in the look of the show, clichés abound. In Breaking Bad, the sky over Mexico is always yellow. Much of the show, including its quietest moments, is afflicted with an unmotivated camera shudder that will date the show as badly as the excessive use of zooms dates many films from the early '70s.

Once this was pointed out to me it became hard to unsee. Last October I compiled a list of "classic" horror films I'd never got around to seeing, including Black Christmas. I did enjoy it (if for no other reason than my enormous crush on the young Olivia Hussey – my word, just look at her), but that specific thing where a character delivers a line of dialogue accompanied by an extremely slow zoom-in on their face is such a 70s trope, and almost always comes off as incredibly corny and immersion-breaking. You rarely see it in movies made before or after the 70s.

Don't get me started on the zoom-ins of the 70s, one of the corniest filmmaking devices employed in that era. Jittery handheld style is all over many films of that era as well, for what it's worth, especially those who wanted to emulate the new wave feel.

I liked Breaking Bad enough but the cinematography was not the strong point. Some of the filmography on Gilligan's new project Pluribus possibly surpasses the lows of Breaking Bad, this scene in particular where Carol is on the rooftop reminds me of The Room; the green screen is executed so sloppily that Carol outright does not have a shadow. Then there is this, which is somehow even worse. The per episode budget was $15 million.

Some of the filmography on Gilligan's new project Pluribus possibly surpasses the lows of Breaking Bad, this scene in particular where Carol is on the rooftop reminds me of The Room; the green screen is executed so sloppily that Carol outright does not have a shadow. Then there is this, which is somehow even worse.

Jesus Christ, you weren't kidding. I have seen AI slop which looked more convincing than the latter clip.

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