Why I Don’t Go to the Movies (and Why Cinema Deserves to Die)
(Just my opinion.)
Same story as cassettes, vinyl, analog photography. If cinema is for everyone, it’s for no one.
The problem isn’t the democratization of cinema, mind you—it’s the unlimited access for every clueless oaf and the gradual saturation of the medium.
Like saying Måneskin saved rock because they got kids to pick up guitars, when all they did was forge a new generation of posers.
Why should I bother driving to the theater and wasting my time when I can watch the same crap on my giant TV at home?
"But the theater is a different experience!" the smug know-it-all "experts" will say. Oh, please. Go ahead and try to patch up the Titanic while it sinks, why don’t you?
Throw money at that sinking mastodon while the world happily sails on garbage barges (Disney+, Netflix, Prime Video, etc.).
Yes, I’m painting with a broad brush on purpose: I know not everything in theaters is trash, and not everything on streaming is either.
But if all we’re doing is filling cinema halls with people who don’t even give a damn about cinema, then we’re either staring at the finger pointing at the moon
or just too dense to grasp the real issue.
This is a quality problem—but not a technical one.
It’s a problem of soul. Of what we want to convey. Of that provocative charge that rock had when it was too young for a world of old farts (and now it’s dead, or close to it).
Today, watching a movie packed with sex, violence, perversion, promiscuity—obviously seasoned with hypocritical moralism and the usual mix of good feelings, cynicism, and nihilism—is child’s play.
Bold? Maybe in the ’50s. Now it’s literally teen slop.
Back in the ’60s and ’70s, we had poliziotteschi films—some so raw they’d be hard to stomach today. Italian cinema ruled the world and shaped the next Tarantinos.
Then came New Hollywood, then the ’90s and 2000s, when productions ran the gamut: arthouse, commercial, blockbusters, innovative, derivative but entertaining, indie, experimental, lighthearted, or just plain terrible but praised by inscrutable critics.
And stop saying Hollywood is the leading force in the industry.
For us in Europe is a culture matter, for them is an entertainment matter.
It’s totally different.
So what’s left of those times today? Nothing.
Or maybe just nostalgia, and the back catalog of every movie ever made. Even Federico Frusciante has passed.
And I ask myself: what the fuck am I supposed to go back to the theater for? To see what?
Why not just scroll through the titles at the local media library, or the handful of streaming services I pay for but never use (I only keep them so my wife can watch her cringe American pseudo-reality shows like Temptation Island)?
If the goal is to find cinema with a soul—with meaningful content, screenplays, cinematography, scores that actually matter—maybe we need to look backward.
In music, accepting the death of physical media, embracing streaming, and abandoning physical formats somehow brought vinyl back to life.
I want to watch films that don’t depress me—films that confirm my beliefs while still opening my mind to something new. But today’s cinema? It’s just too extreme for me.
If I were a "cinephile," I’d have to force myself to watch every Mia Goth film and pretend to love it. I can’t. I just can’t.
Maybe I’m from another era. Even though those directors are my age, I don’t get it.
Maybe every artist and spectator carries the influences of the decades that shaped them.
And I’m not a huge fan of Cronenberg Sr. and Jr.
But what the hell—why do you keep shoving it down my throat?
Fuck cinema.
Fuck Italian comedies that don’t even make you laugh.
Fuck the movies that shove civil rights down your throat and tell you how to think about complex ethical issues.
Fuck the ones that talk about current events and leave zero room for imagination.
I want to be amazed. I want fiction—the kind that opens new worlds, not another fucking chapter in a saga that was already dead for twenty years
and resurrected just to cash in (fucking Star Wars!).
I want movies that talk about real life by talking about bullshit.
I want movies that make you laugh at absurd situations.
I want movies that scare you without monsters or violence, because they don’t need them.
I want movies with women who make you dream but don’t even need to show a hint of tits, because to me a woman who knows how to conceal herself is more attractive than one flaunting her goods like a storefront.
And don’t call me conservative or reactionary, only because I don’t like my hormones to be activated every now and then by some random naked woman in some random dystopian sci-fi thriller movie.
Fuck off.
Cinema deserves to die.
To stop, look back, and realize where it went wrong.
Maybe it’ll rise again, maybe it’ll restart, and today’s cinema will fully surrender to the shitty streaming platforms,
while the real thing starts fresh from shorts and indie films.
It’d be great if Disney just cannibalized and digested itself.
