The Ever Changing Hue of Modern Cinema

The world of cinema is changing. We live in a time where a drama made by a great, like Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans, 2022) did not reach the box office performance as expected. Society has reached a shared understanding that not every movie must be seen on the big screen. If it’s not a heart pounding horror or a well scored big budget action movie, then it can probably wait until it can be streamed on our televisions at home. Theatrical views are now just a form of home entertainment. With this in mind, larger production companies like Disney are focused on low risk franchises like Marvel and StarWars to make ends meet.

To begin a conversation about modern cinema, one must talk about Martin Scorsese and his essay “Il Maestro”, a perspective on the film industry evolution. The industry has been taken over by corporate conglomerates, like Disney, who have no interest in the upkeep of the artform. Film has become material to fill a box in a racing effort to win the ‘content’ war, and production companies are more interested in the Marvel model than they are creating something new.

Film is about risk and creation, not safe bets.

Scorsese raves about a film producer and distributor, Dan Talbot who started New Yorker Films in 1965. He created the company to bring a foreign movie that he loved overseas for NYC to enjoy- a moment that was pivotal in the film world. Another name that Martin mentions often is Federico Fellini, a director and screenwriter who was on the frontier of Italian neorealism after the fall of Mussolini. His films were an inspiration and the building blocks for the next generations. Cinema needs risk takers like these legends.

A24, the big brained production company behind Ari Asters ‘Hereditary’ and the Safdie brothers’ ‘Uncut Gems’ is on the frontier of modern cinema. The independent company took huge risks with the award winning film ‘Everything, Everywhere, All At Once’ and paved the way for more foreign films to make their way into US theaters. During the WGA writers strike, they were the first production company to settle and create new standards for their writers. This was something that took other production companies many more months to achieve.

Despite the almost consistent drop of 30% profits in theaters like AMC, movies like ‘Everything, Everywhere, All At Once’ and ‘Dune’ prove that theater showings are not dead. The streaming era is not the end of cinema, just a new beginning. Film artists like Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan are calling on the next generation of filmmakers to make the change and keep the magic alive. As audience members, it is our job to continue to support independent films in theaters and understand the balance as streaming becomes larger in our society.