A good friend of mine said that years ago, before there was such a thing as “film school”, filmmaking was a “seat of your pants” art form…the great (and even “merely good”) directors drew from their own life experiences and vision. Now, filmmaking has become, like “fine art” (bleccchhh) “Art about art about art about art”…big on pretense, low on originality or personal vision. YAWN.

Thank you so much!

Speilberg the father of the blockbuster, his influence on cinema is undeniable in its destruction of good film making. Quite simply the popcorn movie mogul who begat the likes of Michael Bay and McG. what more can you say. No1.

The other three, fine, mix and match but there are worse culprits. George Lucas for example, but is he even a director? Its the insidious influence these people have that is the worse part. In the case of Lucas the toymaker its the marketing tie-ins. The Star Wars saga is nothing more than one huge commercial. Now every movie needs its tie-in.

Bring on Zack Synder or Guy Ritchie, pretenders to the to the emulation crown. Or even further back John Woo. But are Scorcese, Anderson and Tarantino that emulated, and their influence that far reaching? I not even sure that Tarantino has recieved that many accolades or that much industry respect for that matter.

In this digital age where you can shoot as much film as you like at a reduced cost. With hours and hours of footage directors become little more than editors. There is no vision here just cut and paste. Try just telling an engaging story, without all the bangs and whistles and gimicks, I am pretty sure the movie going audience isn’t all that dumb, that a cut needs to be made every other minute to stop them being distracted by .. oh I don’t know the piece of popcorn that that has fell from their slack drooling mouths.

In my opinion, it brought about some spotty character development (if any, depending on the character), and told a simple story using far, far too much time. I did gather a very solid sense of realism from the desolate landscapes, time setting, minimalist and appropriate dialog, costume, etc.. and the cinematography was certainly very well done.

Some stories, no matter how well told, or how well portrayed, are simply not worth hearing, no matter how perfectly executed. No matter how beautifully framed the scene, it may still only be a 3 out of 10.

I’m not sure it was worth watching, and I LOVE film, all genres, foreign, independent, subtitled, etc. Unless the basic story interests you, take your 2 1/2 hours and re-visit a classic like Forrest Gump or something that is simply packed full of everything this film lacks. Content.