Seven Influential Developments in the Cinema

This has been an historic decade in the development of the cinema, a breathlessly wonderful time of captivation and transfixion brought forth from the glories of the moving picture. Those of you who hesitate must confess — have you ever heard such excitement? Such boundless enthusiasm for the principal art form of the quickly departing 20th century? Does not the bounty deposited at the neighborhood movie palace each weekend cause your pulse to race, your skin to tremble into gooseflesh?

Yeah, well, that’s to be expected. Verily.

It’s hard to get enthusiastic about going to the movies, and it shouldn’t be. The freedom to walk into a multiplex any time you can scrape together eight bucks and watch a movie ... it’s an amazing privilege. Few people flat out don’t like going to the movies, but a great many people are disinterested by the prospect simply because they’ve been let down so many times that they can’t rationalize the expense — it’s been so long for them since they’ve felt like bandits because what they got out of a movie was so much greater than the filthy lucre they surrended to experience it.

Seven theories as to why disappointment hangs over the heads of movie-goers follow, each an attempt to trace a trend that became prevalent in Hollywood movies over the course of the ’90s, and each refracted through a standard bearer for that trend. While a particular movement may dim or fade as we enter the next decade, its deep causes most likely won’t, waiting for their next chance to manifest. These may have been the problems of the’90s, but we can only hope the ’00s versions will be any better.

— Andy Stilp (andy.stilp at gmail dot com)