Old movies, why people don't like them

Night Must Fall (1964)

Because clones, drones, and automobiles are missing.

Everyone I know refuses to watch movies made before 2000. I've collected movies way back to the 40s. And I love them. You definitely can't watch them with a cell phone in front of your face. Don't get me wrong, I love new movies too. Many.

I'm not too fond of the repetitive scores of many new movies. Do they pay musicians by the note! And the endless fight and chase scenes, they're all the same, just in one movie the guy hits up, in another movie he hits down. Snore. I do look down at my cellphone during these sorts of time-wasters. CGI makes up for it.

If you look down at your cellphone while watching Albert Finney arrive at the mansion in Night Must Fall (1964) you'll miss the little over-excited jig he does at the gardner and all the increasing tell-tale signs of his intentions. And when would you see a post-2000 film where a young man so ominously wraps an old woman around his finger. The dialogue, the postures, the side-eyes. The good actors are always acting. In real life I watch for those micro-expressions, those micro-movements, and they are there in the old movies. I am always annoyed at the woodenness of modern acting. Occasionally you see something like Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky (2001) in the 2000s though.

When people watch old movies they don't have a clue who Albert Finney is. I get that. I don't like to watch movies with the endless parade of blondes completely indistinguishable from each other. Don't they see that it's the ones that are odd that stick? Meryl Streep and her nose. Nicole Kidman and her eyes. Kate Winslet and her breasts. Frances McDormand and her laugh lines. They stand out, and then you can really see their acting.

Seeing actors over and over in movies, interviews, news, activism makes them stick. In the olden days there was Photoplay, a corporate magazine that told the stories the studios 'wrote'.

My distaste for the tabloids is only offset by understanding that I do want to know if they are pedophiles, rapists, and sexual assaulters. I haven't seen a movie of Sean Connery since he defended beating his wife. I'm not going to be able to watch very many movies post-Weinstein.

You develop a relationship with actors. Nowadays one might look over and see them in a restaurant (I have twice), or spot them on TV being interviewed, or they might bring out a new movie... there's an on-going relationship. Where old movies there's no hope of that. The media largely ignores the olden-day actors except for a stereotypical side-mention of Audrey Hepburn in an article about anorexia.

I'm sure I've seen almost all of Albert Finney or Audrey Hepburn's films. I've seen almost all of many olden-day actors' films, so in their comparison I see the brilliant acting.

Can you honestly tell me that if I cut up all of Ryan Gosling's films and spliced them together higgledy-piggledy that you would even notice? I could make a while new movie.

[Love Lars and the Real Girl (2007), but my love is about the movie not Gosling, swop Edward Norton in and I wouldn't even notice.]