Supreme Cinema

In my brief tenure as critic here, I’ve been pretty clearly pessimistic about the current state of the cinema. Discerning readers will note that the only film I’ve reviewed positively so far was released 50 years ago. They’ll note, too, that I’ve been entirely ambivalent about the overall quality of this past year’s cinematic output. I took the chance in my Superman review to air my exhaustion with the whole superhero genre (a sentiment that at least seems somewhat shared by the general moviegoing public — for now). On the back of Seth Rogen’s The Studio, I waved away any talk about 2025 being a banner year for the return of good cinema, opining that most of the highest-grossing movies every year continue to be films aimed at children. Then I wrote about finding Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein only fitfully interesting; I wrote about Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams, and why what passes for adult cinema in the world of small-sized and “independent” films — though far better than the average blockbuster — is still, on the whole, much duller than it ought be.