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How do You Define a 'Proper' Film?

Started by Blumf, April 09, 2021, 11:08:28 AM

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Blumf

In ye olden days of two years ago, it was pretty simple, proper films came out in the cinemas, and then there was straight-to-video or TV-movies for the rest.

But now, with the dreaded lurgy forcing even big brand films straight onto streaming, that division isn't so clear. So how do you draw the line? Budget? Production company? Marketing?

Magnum Valentino

Aye, like The Irishman - made for and by Netflix, but released on home video by Criterion!

notjosh

It's not quite what you're asking but I don't consider something a 'proper' action film unless the actors/stunt people are in genuine physical peril at some point, and a load of stuff gets smashed up for real instead of a load of nerds just asking a computer to imagine what it would look like.

More broadly, I sort of feel like a movie should be someone presenting a record of something that actually happened in physical reality and going "look at this - we actually did this", so that it has the feel of being a real event. "Look at how many extras we've got! Look at this volcano we went to! Look at this building we destroyed! Look at these scary puppets! Roll up, roll up!" That's why it makes more sense to watch proper movies in a cinema, because it should be something that is presented to you rather than just some content you download into your brain on the toilet.

Too often I think the magic of the process is ignored and the images onscreen are seen as simply being a conduit for the story. I couldn't watch Sin City for this reason. To me it was just a moving graphic novel, without any resemblance to any kind of physical reality.

That's why I will go out of my way to see a Mission: Impossible film (a proper movie) in a cinema, whereas I will generally only watch an Avengers film (some content) when I'm on a plane or something.

Blumf

Quote from: Magnum Valentino on April 09, 2021, 11:32:23 AM
Aye, like The Irishman - made for and by Netflix, but released on home video by Criterion!

That's a good example, predating the lock down too. Wiki says a budget of around $200 million, compared with Joker (2019) which only had $60 mil, but having a proper cinema release.

I think most people consider The Irishman a 'proper' film. Question is, because of the director, the budget, or something else?

St_Eddie

On a related note; I've spoken at length on this forum before about the difference between a 'film' and a 'movie'.  I won't repeat myself because the last time I got called a pseud and a elitist for daring to suggest there's a fundamental difference between a FILM by David Lynch and a MOVIE by James Cameron, even though I wasn't even remotely suggesting that one experience was intrinsically superior to the other.

People get weirdly precious about this subject for some reason, but that's egocentrics for you, I guess.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I saw Stan and Ollie at the cinema and remarked afterwards that it felt like something that would best be seen on BBC1 on a Sunday evening.

Quote from: notjosh on April 09, 2021, 11:48:13 AM
It's not quite what you're asking but I don't consider something a 'proper' action film unless the actors/stunt people are in genuine physical peril at some point...
The story is the foundation for me. Without that, you may as well just go on Youtube and watch one of those videos in which the parkour lads do pullups on a scaffold crane.

As funny as it was to see Tom Cruise break his foot in the last Mission Impossible, I find it hard to get wrapped up in the stunts, because Ethan Hunt just isn't an engaging character.

Blumf

Quote from: notjosh on April 09, 2021, 11:48:13 AM
It's not quite what you're asking but I don't consider something a 'proper' action film unless the actors/stunt people are in genuine physical peril at some point, and a load of stuff gets smashed up for real instead of a load of nerds just asking a computer to imagine what it would look like.

I feel ya. The Transporter series of films highlight this I think. First one had some decent practical effects (CGI too, but in moderation), later ones went full on video game cutscene. I like my driving films to involve proper stunts, if they can.

Blumf

Quote from: St_Eddie on April 09, 2021, 12:24:19 PM
On a related note; I've spoken at length on this forum before about the difference between a 'film' and a 'movie'.  I won't repeat myself because the last time I got called a pseud and a elitist

Count your blessing Elon Musk doesn't post here.

I think that distinction is fair. some 'films' set out to tell a story, with depth and character, other 'movies' set out to dazzle and entertain. Neither is bad, just so long as they manage to hit the target right (harder to do with 'movies' than many people think)

St_Eddie

Quote from: Blumf on April 09, 2021, 12:37:45 PM
Count your blessing Elon Musk doesn't post here.

I think that distinction is fair. some 'films' set out to tell a story, with depth and character, other 'movies' set out to dazzle and entertain. Neither is bad, just so long as they manage to hit the target right (harder to do with 'movies' than many people think)

Exactly!  I'm glad someone here gets it.  Still annoys me to this day the state of that previous thread and the precious little bruised egos getting all offended by myself, for making a perfectly reasonable distinction between two different forms of cinema.

Quote from: Blumf on April 09, 2021, 12:29:09 PM
I feel ya. The Transporter series of films highlight this I think. First one had some decent practical effects (CGI too, but in moderation), later ones went full on video game cutscene. I like my driving films to involve proper stunts, if they can.

The first Transporter film was directed by Corey Yuen (Yuen Kwai), who was trained in a Peking Opera school along with Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao and Yuen Wah. Corey is definitely one of the greatest action directors of all time with incredible films like Ninja in the Dragon's Den, Yes Madam, Righting Wrongs, Dragons Forever, She Shoots Straight and Fong Sai-yuk to his credit. If there's any reason why the sequels are missing something essential, it's probably because his influence is absent from them.

I don't do 'film' and 'movie' distinctions because the best cinema often has a bit of both, like the Hong Kong wuxia films or the films of Paul Verhoeven. I understand the point of the different terms but it just seems somewhat arbitrary, a thinking exercise with no real purpose

greenman

Quote from: St_Eddie on April 09, 2021, 12:40:42 PM
Exactly!  I'm glad someone here gets it.  Still annoys me to this day the state of that previous thread and the precious little bruised egos getting all offended by myself, for making a perfectly reasonable distinction between two different forms of cinema.

I spose what it tends to come down to is how you view this divide, does it separate films value/credibility? does it mean you can definitely list them as one or the other? etc

I would say perhaps the clearest divide is in the starting point, you could say Terminator for example is a film that's dramatically interesting and fairly intelligent, much moreso than a great many "films" but the process of its creation did start from a point of being an entertainment movie. The way cinema is funded, the way directors build a career, etc is based pretty strongly on that kind of divide, not always definitely but it is pretty fundamental to the way most cinema has been made.

One thing I'm a bit disappointed by with streaming is that it really hasn't altered the fundamental nature of films/series, pretty much everything we see could still fit into the format of a cinema released film or a TV series from the pre streaming era. There does seem like theres potential to move away from that, a production isn't so clearly limited to a cinematic of tv episode length, we could have 7 hour films or 65 min films, we could have TV series made up of 2 hour long episodes, etc.



Chedney Honks

For me, it's all about the source material on which it's recorded. A film has to be made of film, but a movie can be anything else, video, digital, any others. That's the official definition. If you copy a movie onto film, it becomes a film.

purlieu

Quote from: greenman on April 09, 2021, 12:59:59 PM
One thing I'm a bit disappointed by with streaming is that it really hasn't altered the fundamental nature of films/series, pretty much everything we see could still fit into the format of a cinema released film or a TV series from the pre streaming era.
Some streaming programmes have different length episodes, don't they? I don't think it's happened quite as much as it could, but moving forward I'm sure it'll be more common.

In terms of film vs. movie, I think there's definitely something there, but the issue is that there are filmovies that could comfortably fit into both categories, so it's difficult to talk about in any hard and fast terms. And that it's the sort of argument that encourages snobbery and elitism - even if none is originally intended - much in the way the 'literature' and 'genre fiction' distinction brings out the worst in some people. That, and the terms are regularly used interchangeably, meaning that while many will understand your point (it's one I first came across years ago), there are more for whom the terms don't have any intrinsic difference, and thus the distinction is ineffective using that language.

Having thought about it, the reason I find the film/movie thing reflexively distasteful is that it's basically another way we allow the market to define the way that we think about the world around us and about art, and although as greenman points out, it's definitely part of the funding and creation of these films, I don't really see why I should be that concerned about the intended market of films when I personally approach them, and I also feel that rigidly defining films by their intended market leads to bad film criticism that is overly preoccupied with the function and utility of the mechanics of the film and less focus on textural aspects like mood, style, personality, i.e. things that stand a better chance of holding up and enduring even when the markets that initially produced the film have perhaps faded and the plot elements begin to seem more modish

St_Eddie

If people think that me describing Raiders of the Lost Ark as a movie is me being an elitist snob, then that's on them.  Not my problem.  They can fume about the perceived slight to themselves.  I'll leave them to it, as I'll be too busy thoroughly enjoying one of the greatest MOVIES ever made, popcorn in hand.

I don't think that is really anyone's objection to the terminology though, you haven't put your finger on it at all there.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Kermit the Frog on April 09, 2021, 01:21:10 PM
I don't think that is really anyone's objection to the terminology though, you haven't put your finger on it at all there.

Well, that was the objection in the previous thread where the topic was discussed.  Note that my comment wasn't directed at you or anyone else within this thread, hence why I didn't quote anyone's post.

Well, forget about that, it's in the past. No reason to relitigate it here.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Kermit the Frog on April 09, 2021, 01:24:53 PM
Well, forget about that, it's in the past.

I had forgotten about it but the topic of this thread reminded me of the previous discussion and the idiotic comments within.

greenman

Quote from: purlieu on April 09, 2021, 01:13:42 PM
Some streaming programmes have different length episodes, don't they? I don't think it's happened quite as much as it could, but moving forward I'm sure it'll be more common.

I think you could say the exact 22, 30, 44, minute etc limits did start to break down during the 00's but there is I think still a tendency to keep to the same kind of format. The idea say of a premium multi season series with a directly connected plot but episodes 90+ mins long doesn't seem to have been tried much.

You could argue The Irishman used streaming to push runtime more(for good or bad) than might have been the case with a cinema release I spose but maybe that shows you the difference? a lot of stuff that ends up on streaming wasn't produced specifically for it, it was made for potential cinema release as well and then ended up on streaming.

QuoteIn terms of film vs. movie, I think there's definitely something there, but the issue is that there are filmovies that could comfortably fit into both categories, so it's difficult to talk about in any hard and fast terms. And that it's the sort of argument that encourages snobbery and elitism - even if none is originally intended - much in the way the 'literature' and 'genre fiction' distinction brings out the worst in some people. That, and the terms are regularly used interchangeably, meaning that while many will understand your point (it's one I first came across years ago), there are more for whom the terms don't have any intrinsic difference, and thus the distinction is ineffective using that language.

Elitlism can be an issue but I don't think automatically so, I mean how many hundreds of posts have Eddie and me made treating Starwars as something of great importance?

That is part of why I was talking about the base of a films production, its not really a judge of sometimes quality/worth or even how much dramatic depth or intelligence it might have but does I think highlight a pretty big divide in how films are produced.

Quote from: St_Eddie on April 09, 2021, 01:25:25 PM
I had forgotten about it but the topic of this thread reminded me of the previous discussion and the idiotic comments within.

Okay, well, it's a bit odd to see someone publicly shadow boxing the spectre of an long-ago conversation, hence the confusion.

Chedney Honks

Martin Scorsese = film
Stephen Spielberg = movie
Peter Jackson = movie
Wong Kar Wai = movie
Eric Rohmer = film
John Ford = film
Powell & Pressburger = movie
Kurosawa = movie
Kobayashi = film
Godard = film
Truffaut = movie
Hou Hsiao-Hsien = movie
Edward Yang = film
King Hu = movie
Jackie Chan = movie
George Lucas = film
Tony Scott = movie
Ridley Scott = film
Kubrick = movie
Argento = movie
Farrelly = film

An amusingly provocative list, and one that highlights a key point that the intended film/movie distinction breaks down very quickly when we're no longer talking about US cinema.

Magnum Valentino

Not lukkin no rows but isn't what Blumf is asking how to distinguish a proper film/movie from a film/movie that isn't 'proper'?

The word we should be disgreeing over is 'proper', not film/movie, which are interchangeable words for a form of media that used to be shot almost exclusively on film (and isn't anymore) in order to capture moving pictures.

Correct me if I'm wrong Blumf (please do), but I took it more like what you're talking about is the perception that governs why we see Sharknado differently to Raging Bull, right?

To support my understanding of this using the useful genre of superhero films, Superman The Movie and The Dark Knight (just that one, not the other two) are probably 'proper films' in a way that Superman 3 and Batman Returns aren't. That's a gut feeling, I'd have to try and analyse why I felt like that.

It's almost like a 'proper' film is one my da could watch, even it was about an alien in a blue and red costume, because of the mode of handling the material and the fact that it's not targetted either at him or NOT at him.

El Unicornio, mang

Americans generally don't use the term film at all, I even have some friends there who think the term "film" is horribly pretentious.

To the OP question: I'd define a proper feature film as anything that's longer than about 75 mins and is self-contained. Not bothered if it was released in a cinema or direct to YouTube.

Yes, the 'proper' thing is interesting and that's one I do understand because it kind of denotes what is the difference between a 'classy' production and a lower rent one, like the difference between Steven Seagal's Warner Brothers films in the 90s which are chock full of location shooting and proper character actors and his Eastern European direct to DVD films after that. In that case it's not just the distribution that's different, the production value is clearly lower all round.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

Sebastian Cobb

It ceases to be a 'film' when it can be called a franchise.

Magnum Valentino

Another internal distinction for me is that the first Rocky and Rambo films are proper films, and the rest aren't. I don't consider a film that isn't a 'proper' film to be bad or anything though. Like Mortal Kombat is a silly affair, but I love everything about it.

Mind you, proper sets, proper score, proper distribution and promotional efforts and a tie in cartoon prequel... that adds properness. I'll have to take this away with me.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Magnum Valentino on April 09, 2021, 02:03:08 PM
Another internal distinction for me is that the first Rocky and Rambo films are proper films, and the rest aren't. I don't consider a film that isn't a 'proper' film to be bad or anything though. Like Mortal Kombat is a silly affair, but I love everything about it.

Mind you, proper sets, proper score, proper distribution and promotional efforts and a tie in cartoon prequel... that adds properness. I'll have to take this away with me.

Death Wish is the same, a man driven mad by the PTSD of what has gone.

Death Wish III is a cartoon but it's way more fun.