The movies.

I've been giving a lot of thought as to what I want to write my second blog post about this week. I've decided that the topic will be the sad lack of good cinema these days.

It wasn't that long ago that we had fantastic movies coming out. "Crash", one of my all time favorite movies came out in 2004. "Crash" had a fantastic ensemble cast and a wonderful message about racism and how it can take many different forms. It was dramatic and funny, not to mention incredibly powerful. "Babel" was another movie with a great cast full of intertwining stories and characters that I thought about long after the movie was over. A few more years back, in the year 2001, my all time favorite movie (and cult classic) "Donnie Darko" was released in theatres. "Donnie Darko" is one of those movies that I catch something new every time I watch it. It's much better in the second, third or even fourth viewing. In the year 2000 we had the movie "Traffic", a fantastic and gritty film about drugs. Then, in 1999, perhaps one of the best movies in American cinema was released. This movie was "American Beauty." With fantastic performances by Kevin Spacey, Annette Benning and Chris Cooper, the Coen brothers gave us one of the most amazing pieces of cinematic achievement that we had seen in a long time, in my humble opinion.

It seems that we've been sadly lacking really good cinema since these films. Sure, there have been some decent movies to hit theatres. In 2006 we saw "Little Miss Sunshine", which showed us that Steve Carell is extremely capable of playing more than just the lovable buffoon, Michael Scott in the American version of "The Office." In 2007 we had a couple of films that stuck out, to me, as decent including "Dan in Real Life" and "Superbad." It just seems that American cinema has gone downhill steadily in the past few years.

We have awful "horror" films like the "Saw" series, which is really just capitalizing on the fact that today's teenagers like to see more gore than actual horror. In my opinion, a horror film should be disturbing like "The Shining" or, for a more recent example, "Pans Labyrinth" which was actually a Spanish film. These days, though, filmmakers are more concerned with how much blood and guts they can get away with. We seem to have lost the art of the subtle, off-camera scares. If you want to watch something that is very disturbing, although not classified as a horror film, "Little Children" will stick with you for a long time after you are finished viewing it.

I suppose I miss the days of "The Big Lebowski" and "Fargo." The films we are offered these days seem to cater more to a generation who does not know what "good" cinema is really all about. It isn't corn syrup blood dripping out of a bloody stump on some guy trying to escape from a hostel. Or sugary sweet rom-coms like "Valentine's Day." Good cinema is about a viewing experience which allows a viewer to connect with the characters. A good movie should tug on the heart strings. A good movie should make me smile, it should make me cry. Hell, it should cause some sort of emotional reaction. It should stimulate my mind, not my gag reflex. Let's hope someday soon American filmmakers will get it right.