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They're watching Shang-Chi: Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

Do Not Enter. I guess I am the only person here to see it. Ridley Scott's upcoming survival flick looks like it will be that, thanks to the trailer.

They’re judging the cinematography based on clips ripped from the trailer and shared on social media, watched on their phones, in brightly lit rooms.

People keep talking about TV settings when I think the most obvious answer is "in their head 'modern movies' is still 2010s marvel movies"

...because they're used to streaming on their TCL tv's in demo mode 😄

Maybe they all have motion smoothing on and don’t know why their brains are breaking.

Also, was Wicked part 2 released this year? Absolutely mind-boggilingly incomprehensible that they built these amazing, sumptuous sets, in a world literally defined by technicolour (and this story by colour very much designed around palletes), and then turned the saturation down by 80%.

But the biggest movies of the year, Project Hail Mary and Odyssey obviously had a real tactility to them that Marvel and such lost a few years ago. There was also regrettably a COVID issue with films like Spiderman No Way Home which I suppose couldn't be helped.

(A) algorithmic streaming slop (probably TV shows actually!) and, to be less strident (B) watching one or two obviously low-effort products stands out in people’s minds and becomes the exemplar, not the extreme

The few times I've engaged with randos about movies "looking bad", it almost always boils down to the fact that they watched them on a laptop... I know I'm an elder millennial who works in the industry, but that's insane to me.

because these youtubers get rewarded for shitting on everything. so they have to find something to complain about.

Probably on shit TVs that advertise HDR but can't do it

Most of what I see that looks bad comes from streaming platform originals.

Are they going to theaters or watching at home?

And what evidence do you have of this phenomenon?

there is a shot at the end of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 'Samurai and the Prisoner' that is genuinely stunning in how beautiful it is.

Yup. It's going away now but it was strong for a decade or more. priceonomics.com/why-every-mo...

not yet

I think the Moana shot looks great!

Lol

Everything released by Netflix or Marvel

Aha, but I bet you've run into people complaining about movies they didn't watch, right?

Because it was recent, I had two distinct conversations about how ugly and boring Odyssey looked when the trailers came out. I had seen the trailer on a PLF screen with Disclosure Day, and tried to tell these people, “no it looks great, did you watch the trailer in a theater or on tv?”

Maybe they got confused and thought 'Silo' was a movie.

Feel free to name and shame any theaters that have sub-standard projection quality.

I find this often true, and it’s a real bummer. I have a local indie cinema that’s great. The AMCs are generally mediocre at best - not as good as my TV at home.