Blast from the past

It would immensely annoy me when my grandfather would tell me how much better the movies he grew up watching were.

And my dad did the same.

I never thought I would follow suit.

But I did.

I enjoyed the weird stuff that didn’t really hit the theaters, or you’d find on a DVD at Tic Tac or in a shady place called Golden Video, where Michel Gondry would feature alongside Gerard Damiano (he made Deep Throat).

Even if it showed up in theatres, you would have to go to Studio 5 in Sathyam on a Wednesday afternoon to watch it.

It hasn’t been a fallow decade. Far from it.

Taylor Sheridan’s less indulgent work, such as Wind River and Hell or High Water, came out in the last decade. You felt like you were watching real stories. Told well.

Even the surreal stuff has been nice. I enjoyed Nicolas Cage in Pig very, very much. It was strangely moving to see a man trying to find his kidnapped pig by verbally deconstructing opponents, or offering himself as a punching bag, and cooking a hearty, nostalgic meal for his nemesis. The Menu was equally absurd but it lacked the warmth of Pig.

The machismo of Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was hard to ignore. And there’s going to be a spin-off about Cliff Booth, written by Tarantino and directed by Fincher, that looks like a load of fun.

So there have been some nice and interesting movies in the last decade.

But it does not seem to have the sheer density of the late ’90s or early aughts.

Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges and John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard (wild ride) are both wildly moving and whimsical. They baffle neat classification. Dark humor and an absurd plot but loads of fun.

Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind always makes me cry. The idea that true love has loathing, self-loathing, a degree of fatigue, and that it moves in cycles really is a life lesson.

Ricky Gervais’s strange but funny The Invention of Lying. I am no saint and I do lie occasionally. But I can’t help thinking it’s a better world if we spoke more directly to each other.

I enjoyed Waititi’s 2014 What We Do in the Shadows. It felt like the right amount of on-the-nose camp before Hollywood amplified Waititi’s worst excesses.

I sometimes have to pinch myself to remind myself that even the wildly demented satire(?) Nightcrawler came out in 2014. The entire looksmaxxing and influencer generation feels like watching a million Lous. Gyllenhaal really nailed that persona of a self-assured but insecure, unhinged-on-a-whim person that typifies so many of the online celeb types.

In the Loop and Idiocracy are reminders that artists warned us all of this was coming. Even straight talk can be spin.

Charlie Wilson’s War was a neat portrait of a flawed politician. I’m not sure if it was too kind on him, though.

I sometimes watch Goon to remind myself that even sports movies saw the manufactured spectacle coming. It did foreshadow how the IPL and the Kohlis would pan out.

And even the strange, tragic romance of Out of Sight, with its great score, was moving and funny. Clooney, J.Lo and Soderbergh really knocked it out of the park with that one.

Even screwball comedies. Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell and Steve Carell were on fire in the early 2000s. Every year there would be a couple of wildly absurd and funny movies. There were films like Superbad from Seth Rogen. Meet the Parents and Tropic Thunder from Ben Stiller were just the best.

Those comedies were absurd and made great points about not taking ourselves too seriously, without being too on the nose or preachy.

Even Woody Allen had a neat run with the tragic Match Point, a beautifully moving Midnight in Paris, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and, of course, the underrated Scoop. Every one of them remarkably different in theme. But all distinctly Woody Allen.

Children of Men is probably a glimpse of the near future. I think about Michael Caine’s stoic Jasper often. His vigilante turn in Harry Browne is a great examination of what happens when a man breaks.

Even tales of obsession were told well, through Closer and The Prestige (sci-fi meets period drama).

But the shows have been a better medium lately. Mr Inbetween from Australia is hands down my favourite bit of art from the last decade. You can’t find it on streaming anymore. It used to be on Hotstar.

I enjoyed the slow burn of Shogun and Chernobyl very much. They felt like tasteful distortions. BoJack Horseman’s “Free Churro” and “BoJack Hates the Troops” make the series GOATED. And Louie by Louis C.K. remains the funniest show ever.

And lately I’ve enjoyed The Pitt way more than any film.

It really feels like I grew up watching better movies. Or rather, that the great movies I enjoyed came out with much greater frequency than they do now. But then I think to myself: with changing incentives and streaming, maybe shows are the way to get my fix. But they’re way too time-consuming. And so much work to mine through.

So, following in the proud tradition of my dad and grandad, I walk into my forties proclaiming art was much better when I was growing up, as I do the cranky-old-man thing of rewatching the stuff I grew up enjoying.