« Hobby Thread - October 3, 2026 [TRex] | Main

Saturday Evening Movie Thread - 10/03/26

Old Movies vs. New Movies

What is it about old movies that appeals to me so much? I almost watch exclusively old films, you know? Movies from decades before I was born, sometimes decades before my parents were born. It's my main focus. I absorb these movies in very chronological and systemic ways. I pick a director and watch them from beginning to end. More recently, I picked a studio and started watching it from beginning to end. And this excites me. It excites me in a way that new movies don't.

I'll be honest: I've tried to have this discussion before, and every time I did, I found myself constantly trying to intellectualize what I was feeling. I would try to come up with some grand theory about why old movies were better, or why I was somehow more interested in movies from the past than movies being made today. But that isn't really what I think. It's not that I think old movies are inherently better than new movies. There are plenty of films from the last twenty years that I genuinely love and that I think hold up. Moneyball is a great movie. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a great movie. There are great films being made recently. The difference is somewhere else.

When I look out into the future and see what is coming, I don't feel that much. When I look backwards and think about what I'm going to discover, I feel a lot more. That's the strange thing I've been trying to figure out. The prospect of discovering something that already exists is much more exciting to me than anticipating something that doesn't exist yet.

I've done some pretty big experiments with this. I watched all of the Best Picture winners. I watched all of John Ford. I watched all of Alfred Hitchcock. Right now, I'm watching all of Hammer Films-not just Hammer horror, but everything Hammer made. That's roughly 170 movies. And no, all of Hammer Films is not great. Most of it is mediocre. A lot of it is perfectly passable content. It's cheap, it's quick, and most of it isn't very good. There is definitely good stuff in there, and there are movies that I've really enjoyed, but there is also a tremendous amount of stuff that is simply bad. And that doesn't bother me.

The Journey

That's probably the most important part of this. I was never daunted by a bad Hammer movie because the point was never the individual films. The point was the overall journey. If I watch one terrible movie, that's not a failure. I simply move on to the next movie. Maybe that one is better. Maybe it's worse. Maybe I discover something completely unexpected. The individual movie matters, obviously, because I'm watching the movie and evaluating it, but it exists within a much larger experience.

That is really just a jumping-off point for why I tend to prefer older movies. It isn't necessarily that the movies themselves are better. It's the experience of discovering older movies. I see this journey through Hammer as a way to discover even more cinema. One movie leads to another. One actor leads to another. One director leads somewhere else. One studio leads to a completely different period of filmmaking. The further I go, the more there is to discover.

And how did I find all of this? It was just through exploration. Nobody told me what I was supposed to watch. There wasn't necessarily some algorithm deciding what I should see next. Ultimately, it came from myself, from this desire to go looking. I wanted to know what was there. I wanted to see the whole thing. That experience is fundamentally different from looking forward to a new movie.

If I decide that I'm going to discover Hammer Films, Hammer is not the dominant conversation. I can expose myself to as much or as little material beforehand as I want. I can read about the movie, or I can know absolutely nothing about it. I can see a poster and recognize an actor, or I can stumble into something completely blind. I have control over the experience. More importantly, there is an enormous amount of material waiting for me that I have never seen.

Anticipation

Compare that with something like Dune: Part Three. I'm looking forward to Dune: Part Three. I like Denis Villeneuve's Dune movies, and I want to see the next one. But the overall experience of looking forward to it doesn't produce a huge amount of excitement for me. Part of that is because of what happens around a major upcoming movie now.

If I spend my time looking forward to Dune: Part Three online, I'm going to encounter trailer breakdowns, behind-the-scenes information, casting speculation, interviews, theories, rumors, and people picking apart creative choices before anyone has actually seen the movie. As I'm writing this, in early August 2026, no one has seen the movie. The movie isn't finished. Everyone is arguing about a hypothetical. And that conversation doesn't interest me. I want to see the movie. Then I want to discuss the movie.

There is something strange about the way we talk about movies now, particularly the biggest movies. Cinema is so much bigger than opening weekend, but so much of the conversation around movies is built around opening weekend. How much did it make? How much did it make compared to the previous movie? Was it a success? Was it a disappointment? What does this mean for the franchise? What does this mean for the studio? What does this mean for Hollywood?

And at that point, we're not really talking about the movie anymore. We're talking about everything surrounding the movie. We're trying to rush into a conversation about something before we've actually had the opportunity to experience it. The movie becomes an event, and the event becomes more important than the movie itself. I don't find that particularly interesting. It feels like a distraction. That's why I tend to recede into my own little journeys.

I like being able to say that I'm going to watch all of John Ford. I like being able to start at the beginning and work my way through his career. I like seeing the early movies, the good movies, the bad movies, the movies that reveal something about where he was going, and the movies that seem like dead ends. I like watching a filmmaker change. I like discovering the actors who keep appearing. I like seeing genres develop and disappear. I like finding connections that I could never have known existed before I started.

That's what excites me. It's the journey. I kind of want the complete picture. I want that journey to be complete. I want to know what the whole thing looks like. Agonizing over whatever new detail gets released about The Batman Part II or whatever the next major movie happens to be simply doesn't interest me very much. I don't want to spend months constructing an idea of a movie in my head before the movie exists. I want the movie. What I care about is the movie.

What's Really Important

That might be why I spend most of my viewing time watching old movies. It isn't because I think everything old is automatically better. It certainly isn't because I think everything new is bad. It's because when I look backwards, I find an enormous avenue for discovery. I can move through decades of filmmaking and find things I've never seen before. I can discover movies that nobody is talking about anymore. I can watch the great films, the mediocre films, the terrible films, and everything in between.

And there is something liberating about that. I don't have to participate in the conversation. I don't have to know what everybody else thinks. I don't have to worry about whether something is going to be a hit, whether the studio is happy with it, whether the franchise is going to continue, or whether the opening weekend represents some kind of cultural referendum. The movie already exists. The conversation about it can wait.

In fact, the conversation can wait forever. I can just watch the movie.

That's why I keep finding myself drawn to old movies. It's an avenue for discovery, and I get to find out so much more by going backwards than I ever do by looking forwards. The past is enormous. There are decades of movies sitting there waiting for me, and every time I finish one, there is another one waiting. That is what I find exciting. Not knowing what is coming next, but knowing that there is still so much that I haven't discovered yet.

A Short Film

By me. Enjoy.

Movies of Today

Opening in Theaters:

Digger

Verity

Movies I Saw This Fortnight:

The Woman in Black (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "I have my small issues with the film, but, really, this is just quality horror entertainment." [Kanopy]

The Resident (Rating 0.5/4) Full Review "This was bad. More importantly, it was boring." [Prime]

Let Me In (Rating 3/4) Full Review "It's very solid, extremely well made and acted, and handsome. Just kind of icky at the same time." [Kanopy]

To the Devil a Daughter (Rating 1/4) Full Review "The script is a mess. The director does what he can. The lead is...not my favorite. But we do have efforts at style and Lee doing his professional best." [Hoopla]

The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (Rating 2.5/4) Full Review "The script was in desperate need of a rewrite and those bookends needed to have never been filmed, but Baker did the absolute most with what he had. It's something that it's as entertaining as it is." [YouTube]

Shatter (Rating 1.5/4) Full Review "But, it does have some small entertainment here and there. It's not much, but it's something. I needed something." [YouTube]

Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (Rating 2/4) Full Review "Still, it's a disappointing end to the film, a lesser repeat of a superior original." [Kanopy]

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (Rating 2/4) Full Review "Eh...Hammer has made a whole lot worse. This has some mild entertainment, but it is very mild." [YouTube]

Please check out my videos from the last few weeks:

Jacques Tati: The Definitive Ranking
Jacques Tati: The Directors Series
Tony Scott: The Directors Series
Tony Scott: The Definitive Ranking/a>
Contact

Email any suggestions or questions to thejamesmadison.aos at symbol gmail dot com.
I've also archived all the old posts here, by request. I'll add new posts a week after they originally post at the HQ.
My next thread will be on 10/24, and it will be about Hammer Films.