What I noticed about 70s - 90s films is how profusely characters would appear sweaty and dirty

My biggest gripe these days is not the visuals of a movie...but the audio. I hate how loud movies are and how muffled the dialogue is.

I call it the "Well-fix-it-in-post" effect. Directors for the most part aren't putting the planning into shots, and the results are telling.

Older movies were more about showing you a scene, then letting your eyes wander between characters, objects, and events. Modern movies tend to shift your attention where the director wants it. To the character talking, to the important event. So your brain kinda shuts down. It passively lets the movie SHOW you the important points in every scene.

the reasons:
1. contrast
2. contrast
3.contrast
4. bad taste
5. Netflix messing with your production     (they actively ask you for the edit session and source files and they will decide how's gonna look) , that if you want to get the deal
6. lighting
7. contrast.

I find contemporary media exhausting because the camera is constantly moving and the sound envelope is over saturated.

I know this video is mostly about visuals, but there is also a similar thing going on in the audio of modern films. So many movies today contain dialogue that is impossible to hear. Back in 90's and early 2000's people didn't like to read subtitles, the only people who used them were people who actually had trouble hearing. But today most people turn on the subtitles by default for all movies and tv shows. You can barely understand what any one is saying!

A few years ago (I can't remember exactly when, but it was before Covid), I showed my brother (7 years my junior) Terminator 2. He remarked that he was so used to action films shot in the "chaos cinema" style (lots of jittery handheld cam, extremely rapid cuts, post-production blurring etc.), that it was a genuine novelty for him to watch an action film shot and edited in such a way that the viewer is easily able to discern what's going on and where the characters are positioned relative to one another in space.

I trained a young man where I worked who said that he didn’t like watching older movies because he didn’t like bad acting. I tried to explain to him that styles of acting change over time but he was convinced that nobody knew what they were doing until just a few years ago. Personally, I miss the days when the actors didn’t whisper and mumble and dialog wasn’t overpowered by music and sounds. I shouldn’t need to read subtitles to understand a language that I’m fluent in. He said that he always watches things with subtitles on as well.

Old movies are "glitchy" because they were shot on film, and each particular frame ever slightly shifts while rolling.

I think the main reason is that people these days are creating "2 hours of content" and not "movies". There's a huge difference between these two ideas.

I think what kids mean by old movies being "glitchy" is a lack of heavy stabilazation in every single movement of the camera

It's amazing how harsh lighting, crunched shadows, and using extreme dynamic range at each end looks better on a 1080p resolution screen than a movie shot and displayed in 8K.

The common ground between the reasons you're describing is that they all represent the removal of limitations. Something that was required in old filmmaking has become optional with modern technology. And naturally artists embrace that, because more choice feels great as a creative. No boundaries! Yay!

But ironically, structure and limitations are often helpful when it comes to making something special. It's easier to write a good limerick than a good piece of freeverse poetry. And often the most interesting and innovative creative choices happen while trying to work with a hard limit. A classic example being Jaws, where difficulties with the animatronic shark forced the filmmakers to use it very sparingly.

If you can do anything in the frame (with light, with camera placement/movement, with focus), you wind up doing... nothing particularly notable.

We live in the Age of UGLY. Ugly movies. Ugly buildings. Ugly fashion. Ugly plastic surgery. People have lost their sense of moderation and respect for craftsmanship. People have too short an attention span to pay attention to detail, and too little money to pay craftsmen.

So many B movies from half a century ago look way better than today's blockbusters. There's something seriously wrong with today's cinematography.

It can be depressing to watch a 1940s Technicolor film by Powell & Pressburger, or even a 1960s colour film by David Lean or Stanley Kubrick, and then to switch over to the grey visual porridge of movies today. Films have developed cataracts.

The big problem with the extreme camera movement is a person could never view a scene in that manner.  If used correctly it can feel like you are walking with or behind the actors, but these "floating" cameras are not the way a person could physically view the scene.  That kind of camera movement instantly breaks the Immersiveness of the movie for me.

The contrast is so bad in these movies it's been an issue since the mid 2010s.

Lighting is a big thing I've noticed as a product photographer. I was even talking to someone about it earlier today for an album artwork im designing. Trying to compare photography to classical art, old films did the same thing. It was all about contrast, using light and shapes to lead the viewer's eye. Bladerunner js always everyone's go-to for this, as its the most well-known neo-noir film, but its also a genuinely good example of using light and shadows to lock off parts of the frame, or create patterns across backgrounds.

When you do your lighting right you dont have to follow the ten second shot limit. You can leave the camera on one shot of two people talking for a full 30-60 seconds, and people wont get bored.