We love free movies
A. O. Scott announced his move to the NYTimes Review of Books a few weeks ago. No surprise to people who've kept up with his movie reviews, it seems the last decade of Hollywood blockbusters have finally did him in. And to no fault of his own -- Hollywood's stale pictures have been a stable since the early 2000s and it's something that people have come to expect now more than ever.
In his interview with The Daily he introspects on how he came to love movies and gives his thoughts on a sort of blandification of movies that are easy to watch. I think of them as junk food. Good for an hour, but leaves you with nothing in the long run. But his main point, I think, was that good movies challenge you. Not necessarily challenge your worldview or opinions, ....etc. But good movies (and art in general) challenge you to see a different perspective and think deeply about what you just experienced. And I couldn't agree more with A. O. Scott that today's modern blockbusters do no such thing.
And when listening through all that I couldn't help but think of all the amazing movies people are making and sharing for free online (via YouTube or Vimeo). True amateurs and independents making the movies they want to see or making the art they want to use to express themselves without the need to get funding or get shown in a theatre.
I built and launched welovefreemovies.com a few months back and I'm still working hard on making it better, but I wanted to link it here in case you wanted an accessible portal to this new world of filmmaking. But more importantly, scroll through Joel Haver's Oscars challenge from this ear and have a look at one or two.
I want to invite you to challenge yourself and watch a movie from one of these new independent filmmakers. Many aren't "good" in the way we traditionally think of what "good" means. But. They're art. They're are awkward. They're deeply personal. They're beautifully shot. They're all movies made by a person that deserve someone's attention.