WCentever a friend or a colleague sees a film before me, the first question I ask is no longer “Is it good?” But “Does it look like a real film?”
Everyone knows exactly what the question means, even if none of us can quite articulate it. The rise of streaming has eroded not only the cinematographic experience, but also the qualities that are difficult to define which have traditionally made a film a film. I stopped counting the number of times a friend or an acquaintance said to me: “There is so much to broadcast these days – I prefer to stay at home.”
But even if the theatrical experience sometimes seems to die, the films are not. Young people and veterans filmmakers always want to do them. What attracts them again – and us – in form? Which means that some films feel real and others like simulated products, worthy of this derisory term content? This is a whole new territory. But it can be useful to examine certain recent theatrical outings, as well as some streaming products only, to help discern what makes the film feel like a movie film today.
Should a film feel completely fresh? James Hawes' The amateur, With Rami Malek as a discreet employee of the CIA, with the intention of avenge the death of his wife, is based on a thriller by Robert Littell of 1981 which was previously adapted. But it has a satisfactory aura which seems to belong to the big screen. The action takes place in spishy places like London and Paris, and management has a confident musculature. We used to obtain sophisticated action thrillers like this eight or nine times a year in the 1990s; Now a film like The amateur, Looked on the big screen, can awaken the feeling of something we have lost. It looks like a forgotten luxury.
But a work does not necessarily have to play on the big screen to look like a movie film. The conviction on the part of the filmmaker or the actors, or both, can be the decisive factor – it's a kind of thing “you know when you see it”. Netflix has funded great films over the years, Roma has Maestro. But the original Netflix The electrical state, A retro-futuristic fantasy directed by the Russo Brothers, released in mid-March via only streaming, reaches the dubious distinction of feeling both Slapdash and extravagant. Netflix spent some $ 300 million on him, but even with his special effects on the designed robot, he feels barely worthy of the smallest screen. But that does not mean that a direct entity in dissemination can never look like cinema. FX series Grief is an example of television that offers the type of visual splendor for which we must generally go to the cinema. Even for pure and hard films, film television can take place when films fall to work.
What about films that become surprise successes? Do they work because they are fun and well done, or is the mechanism more mysterious than that? Comedy by Bawdy Buddy of Lawrence Lamont One of the days– In which Keke Palmer and Sza play best friends who spend a crazy day trying to bring together $ 1,500 in rent – opened in January and stayed in theaters for more than two months before traveling to Netflix in early April. The public loved it. But the film also plays beautifully on the small screen – it's hilarious even when you look alone. According to the reverse engineers of this equation and consider the action-adventure of Patricia Riggen G20, Amazon MGM studios. Viola Davis embodies the President of the United States, a veteran of war who is forced to dust off his combat skills when cryptocurrency invades the G20 summit in South Africa. Although the film only obtained a streaming release, from April 10, Amazon played it for a small audience selected a few days earlier, this is how I saw it. I cannot imagine enjoying this image with enthusiasm but somewhat clumsy in my living room. But to watch Davis, a great actor who rarely has the chance to go wild, break a villain on the head with a pan? The public went crazy and I did it too. Sometimes the presence of other humans can transform a work into something larger than the sum of its parts.
Cinema films do not need to be extravagant or expensive. Earlier this year, Steven Soderbergh released Presence, A subtle but intensely effective supernatural thriller that cost around $ 2 million to do. Elegant and sophisticated spy capre from Soderbergh Black bag, Released a few months later, cost a little more (about 50 million dollars) and did not bring his money to the box office, but that does not reflect its quality. More than ever, the gods of the film can be cruel.
And yet, even if the year of cinema is still young, we have already seen an example of a perfectly Movielike film. Ryan Coogler's Sinners Ends all the promises of what a great public film can be, and several weeks after its release, it has the return to the box office to prove it. Sinners is magnificent to look at, and although it has entered serious ideas, race and community, it is not paralyzed by them. He presents both a big movie star, Michael B. Jordan, and an amazing newcomer, Miles Caton, as a blues prodigy who is invited to dance with the devil. And these are vampires – emerging, ruthless and charismatic vampires. There is music, there is hot sex, there is blood served in a way that is both clever and exhilarating. Sinners is the kind of movie that brings you home thinking, ok, I'm just saw something. You have seen what a filmmaker can do with a possibility, a camera, a distribution and a crew. But perhaps even more important, you have been part of the almost mystical link that a filmmaker can forge with an audience. In the cinema equation, you are ingredient X. No film is real without you.
