Counter arguments:

While there are a ton of lost movies, we also live in a world in which services like Criterion Channel, Mubi, and Shudder make more film available than ever. The other week, I got curious and watched a movie from Ulrike Ottinger, loved it, and when I get around to it I can watch any of a dozen more of her movies.

Likewise, I just bought a boxed set of folk horror movies from Severin Films. I miss good video rental stores, but even pre-Netflix there weren’t more than a dozen US cities with video stores where you could rent stuff like that.

The top grossing lists are mostly dominated by blockbusters, it’s true, but let’s look at (say) 1978. Grease, Animal House, Close Encounters, Every Which Way But Loose, and Heaven Can Wait (a remake!) are the top five. It’s been a blockbuster-driven market for 40+ years, with the occasional breakthrough art house film and, more frequently, a big non-franchise genre film (The Martian, Us, etc.) None of this has prevented great directors like the Coen Brothers, Soderbergh, or del Toro from making very good movies.

There’s a market for super-hero movies. There’s also a market for “real” film. These two things are sometimes in tension, but I think at the moment they’re both viable.

What we need are more films in the $30m-$70m region; art-house blockbusters. Superhero fatigue is real - what audiences really want is someone like Michael Mann in the 90s.

Recently:

- Everything Everywhere All at Once - The Black Phone - The Northman - House of Gucci - Knives Out - Little Women - A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood - The Shape of Water

The blockbusters are such a huge part of the cultural landscape so that it’s easy to miss all the other film out there. But there’s really a lot of it!

For me, it's Michael Mann's 1981 Thief. Heat was good, but I feel like Thief had more soul.

Don't forget Manhunter, it's a bit slow-going for a modern definition of thriller but you can't get more 80s vibe than that.

Maybe overworked and tired population needs spandex instead of Tarkovsky’s movies. After 1,5 hours commuting and 9,5 hours in the office I prefer Netflix’ Red Notice over Stalker. And I guess I am not the only one.

On the other hand as non native Polish speaker I will enjoy some evening with some great movie recommended in this thread.

An overworked population is precisely the one that needs thought-provoking cinema.

Exactly. The last thing the overworked need is more cultural anesthesia.

> After 1,5 hours commuting and 9,5 hours in the office I prefer Netflix’ ...

I can appreciate that point of view. It's really a matter of what you're receptive to at any given moment.

Keep in mind, however, that Tarkovsky and other innovative filmmakers from the Iron Curtain era literally risked their career every time they made a film. They had something to say and took great pains to do it. It just goes to show that there's really no excuse for the film industry to release so much slop when they got unimaginable resources at their disposal.

I agree, but I wonder if viewers who have been brought up on the superhero genre where something is blowing up every minute or two could even watch a Tarkovsky film. Whenever I try to introduce people to Tarkovsky's films I warn them up front that they need to completely change their sense of time - they need to view these films as meditations, they need to slow way down. And even with these suggestions up front, it's still difficult for many modern viewers to make it through.

Not sure about the other filmmakers but Tarkovsky was pretty much the establishment, a token avant garde cinema in a sea of state propaganda movies. Yes "Andrei Rublyov" was shelved, but that's about it, really. Many others had some of their movies shelved for all kinds of reasons. Risking their lives? Well maybe, if you can consider mental breakdown, heart attack as risk. But I bet Hollywood directors/actors risked their lives more by being in the same hotel room with Harvey Weinstein and his exposed puny dongle.

Harvey Weinstein, if this is a joke it isn't funny. If we're talking about risking lives you can't beat Werner Herzog who worked with that lunatic Klaus Kinski that would shoot at tents with people in, and that was was probably the least crazy thing that dude were doing on set.

Try some movies by Andrzej Wajda, he's one of the most accessible directors (while still being great), so it might work well in the post-work time slot. For example "Man of Marble" (https://35mm.online/vod/fabula/czlowiek-z-marmuru). It's about creating myths of superhuman workers in the Stalinist times to get people to work more/harder.

Speak for yourself. Sometime one wants their thoughts "provoked," other times one wants to laugh, or relax, or be thrilled by something scary.

I continue to read the somewhat mediocre wheel of time series mostly because it's familiar and thereby comforting, and there's a lot of it. I listened to "parable of the sower" (a more high-brow fiction by Octavia Butler) audiobook recently and while it was more "thought provoking" it was also depressing, and I've got enough stressors in my life right now without spending my leisure time reading about made-up tragedies. So I instead opt for something less mentally challenging when I want to relax.

Most importantly, appreciating "real art" doesn't make you better than someone who likes to binge on MCU movies. It's condescending and superior to call someone "hypnotized" for liking something you don't, and comments like that tell us more about you than the person you're judging.