The Story of Film: A New Generation

Prolific documentarian (film essayist, more accurately) Mark Cousins adds another chapter to his 15 hour The Story of Film series with this extended theatrical movie about movies in the 2010s. Through his usual style of ponderously commenting on film clips—often simply describing what we're seeing on screen—Cousins puts across his thesis that this most recent decade has been groundbreaking for cinema. Many of his conclusions are dubious, such as this proclamation about the age of streaming: "For most of movie history, they - the film suppliers - had power over us. For the last generation, we have power over them." This seems to me a stunningly naive statement. It was made all the more embarrassingly questionable by the time this movie hit American screens at a point when most streaming services were scrambling for lost revenue and dealing with viewer outrage at shows and movies "disappearing." Still, at their core, most of Cousins' observations are at least interesting.

Since the 2010s are the decade where I personally have seen the most movies, it was fun for me that 80% of the pictures Cousins features are films that I not only saw but liked. I was also happy to be hipped to some I'd not heard of, and to revisit a few based on their inclusion here. The Story of Film: A New Generation won't be to everyone's taste. I describe it like going birdwatching with someone who knows a little bit more about birds than you do, yet his constant whispering in your ear is mostly about things you already know and are, in fact, staring right at. Every once in a while, though, he points out a bird you never knew about or a detail about their plumage or lineage you never even considered. And, if you're into birdwatching, it's often fun to go with someone who likes it as much as you do.