Finding the Movie Feel: Paris Texas (1984):

I’m not sure when it happened. But, somewhere along the way, most movies stopped feeling like movies. This doesn’t mean I don’t find them occasionally, but it used to be something I didn’t actually have to look for. It was just there. That was the movies.  If something strayed from the movie feel, everyone knew it and talked about it. It was like a kazoo being played in a monastery.

I realize this could be totally insular. It might just be something I created in my own mind, recalling nostalgia from another era, but I’ve heard enough of my colleagues that work in film of all age ranges express a similar ennui when it comes to movies the last few years.  And, let me clarify that there have been some that have had a great impact on me. This year, Sinners (2025) was one of the most creative and original movies I’ve seen in a while and I definitely had the movie feel when I was watching it. Everything, Everywhere all at Once (2022) was another one I couldn’t stop thinking about and Parasite (2020) is still probably my favorite movies of the 2020’s. And I’m sure there are many more that I could Google and remember were great movies, but I’m trying to just use my memory and what left a lasting enough impression I don’t have to rely on a catalogue of choices to remind me. I find catalogue fatigue to be much more exhausting than superhero fatigue. It’s those staring at the streaming service moments where I am trying to find something “new” to watch and scrolling and scrolling and then changing streaming services and scrolling again, just to change to another streaming service and do the same thing. What I’ve been finding is that instead of scrolling for the newest film, I get much more out of going back to older films and finding something new to me.

Paris, Texas (1984)

Case in point is Paris, Texas (1984) starring Harry Dean Stanton. I watched it this last Wednesday and it felt like the movies I remember! The story follows an amnesiac named Travis Henderson as he pieces together his life. It was beautifully filmed, had an excellent pace, and I was completely bought into the characters and plot. Stanton’s performance was nuanced, difficult, and masterfully executed. Even at two hours and twenty minutes, I didn’t feel exhausted or bored. I was captivated by the filmic world Wim Wenders built, full of mystery, emotion, and movement. There was this scene towards the end of the film involving a two-way mirror that is one of the more beautifully filmed scenes I’ve seen in any film. I was immersed in the film during viewing and thought about it long after I turned my TV off.

Movies of 1984

So, was this movie an anomaly for 1984? One of my directing heroes Quentin Tarantino, who is in his own right an astute and articulate critic, has a sharp distaste for the films of the eighties, calling it one of the “worst” in the history of cinema. He compares it to what he considers as the low caliber of films from the fifties and the current movie industry slate. I looked up films from the 1984 expecting a long list of forgettable cinema only to find that Terminator, The Karate Kid, Sixteen Candles, Splash, Red Dawn, Amadeus, Starman, Blood Simple, Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, Romancing the Stone, Gremlins, Red Dawn, The Natural, Police Academy, Footloose, and The Neverending Story were all released that year. Several of these movies were so groundbreaking they became decades long franchises and Blood Simple was the Coen Brother’s first film! I don’t just like these movies, I love them. I find myself coming back to them over and over again and they span all kinds of different genres. So, I’d have to disagree with Mr. Tarantino, even just after examining the one yea. This doesn’t even include my top picks from the eighties like Blade Runner, The Shining, Back to the Future, Blue Velvet, Do the Right Thing, Scarface, The Empire Strikes Back, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Dead Poet’s Society, The Lost Boys, Top Gun, and Christmas Vacation to give a short list. But maybe I’m just romanticizing a time I lived in and grew up in.

Movies from 2014

What about, say, 2014? That’s just a little over ten years ago. Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Whiplash, American Sniper, Guardians of the Galaxy, Interstellar, Selma, Ex Machina, The Lego Movie, Boyhood, Edge of Tomorrow, Gone Girl, John Wick, The Equalizer, Snowpiercer, and Chef all came out in 2014. Again, that is a diverse year that has some fantastic and memorable films I find myself going back to again and again. But, if I take that same comparison to the last few years, I don’t have the same large slate of movies that are the kind of movies that not only feel like movies but are ones I’ll remember in ten or twenty years.

What's the issue?

I’ve heard my film community friends and colleagues call out the writers, the lighting techniques, the type of film or camera used, the sound or music choices, the studios, the colorists, the propensity for streaming series over films, the budgets, the superhero crazes, the lack of originality, the directors, the actors, and all other manner of finger pointing to try and make sense of why most movies don’t feel like movies in the last four or five years, but I’m not sure there’s a definitive answer. It could be me! I could be the culprit. I’ll admit it. Maybe it’s all in my head and there’s a giant slate of movies from the last four or five years that will surpass all the movies I’ve mentioned from the past few decades. I could be wrong and I’m not saying I’m right. I’m just saying how I feel. Now, I will point out that I have really enjoyed a couple of the tentpoles that came out this year. F1 was a great ride and although I believe it to be a complete plot retelling of Stallone’s Driven, the way it was filmed was a lot of fun. Jurassic World Rebirth was also a refreshing take on that particular franchise, adding some much-needed humor and some excellent editorial choices. I hear great things about James Gunn’s Superman, although I’ve yet to see it. But, I have yet to see or hear about anything outside of Sinners that’s making waves or really feels like a movie.

Where do we go from here?

What’s the answer? Make better films. But that’s easier said than done. To make a better film, we have to first define what a better film really is. For me, the films that matter most, the ones I return to again and again, aren’t always the flashiest or the most technically precise. They’re the ones that tap into something emotionally real. Something honest. They don’t always have a three-act structure that lands cleanly or a hero’s journey you can map out on a whiteboard. But they have truth. Not facts, truth. Emotional truth. They feel like someone opened up their soul and poured it into the screen. That’s what I mean when I say a movie feels like a movie. It connects. It lingers.

We tend to talk about movies in terms of categories: drama, comedy, thriller, horror, arthouse. But the ones that stay with me often blur those lines. Paris, Texas is part road movie, part character study, part slow-burn mystery. The best films don’t just entertain us. They unsettle us. They comfort us. They move us. They quietly haunt us long after the credits roll. That’s the kind of movie I want to keep making. That’s the kind of movie I’m looking for as an audience member.

In the meantime...

While we’re busy trying to make these kinds of films, films that say something, feel like something, are something, we can at least keep the conversation going. Share the films you love. Recommend the ones that stirred something in you. Tell me what I’ve missed. If there’s a masterpiece hiding in the last five years, I want to see it. Or if there’s a quiet little gem from 1973 or 2006 or any other forgotten corner of film history, send it my way. I’ll take your recommendation over the endless scroll any day.

And if you’re a filmmaker, emerging or seasoned, I hope you’ll make that movie. The one you haven’t seen yet, but always wanted to. The one you think might not sell, but can’t stop thinking about. The one that doesn’t fit cleanly into the algorithms but feels like truth. That’s the movie I want to see. That’s the movie I want to make.

And if you need a little reminder of what cinema can be, check out Paris, Texas. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Harry Dean Stanton in Paris Texas (1984)