Where the hell did this "I don't dismiss films because they were made in Hollywood" stuff come from? I don't either. I'm simply stating the fact that the vast majority of modern (80's to the present) Hollywood films are pretty damn lousy. I'm not saying there isn't the occasional great one or, at the very least, an entertaining one. If it makes people feel any better, I would also say that Japanese cinema has gone to hell post-70's with the exception of Miyazaki and one last masterpiece from Kurosawa... France, Sweden, and some others have managed ok during this time. Sure some of their films still suck and very few of them are masterpieces, but the percentage of truly bad films doesn't seem as great as it does in Hollywood or the Japanese film industry.
This is all because of the loss of the real creative forces. One could say that France has suffered dearly from this as well, and it would be hard to argue. No more Jean Renoir, no more Robert Bresson, no more Francois Truffaut, no more Alain Resnais (at least not of the quality he set in the late 50's and early 60's), no more Carne & Prevert, no more Rene Claire, no more Clouzot, etc. I never said French cinema wasn't weaker today than it used to be, but at least some creative forces have risen in the attempt to take the place of those I mentioned.
No such luck in Hollywood. In the last 25 years, no one has come close to replacing Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock (who was actually British anyway), Sam Peckinpah, John Ford, Buster Keaton, Stanley Kubrick, Charles Chaplin (another Brit), Billy Wilder, William Wyler, Howard Hawks, etc. Even Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola aren't what they used to be, though the former did have Raging Bull in 1980 and Goodfellas in 1990 (each ranking among his best). Spielberg gave us Schindler's List in 1993, but he's always hit and miss. Hollywood has no creative consistency anymore. Nor can we give Hollywood any credit for some of their biggest recent successes. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a New Zealand creation, through and through. Anyway, I'm not saying I want the films as a whole to be as good or better than they used to be. I'm simply saying that I wish I could leave a mainstream American theater less disappointed, far more often.
I'm hoping Terrence Malick can provide this for me when The New World comes out. The man has only made three films since 1973 (four including The New World), and each has been wonderful. Malick...don't fail me now.
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