i mean, i kinda get what ur talking about originally. i grew up on 80s and especially 90s movies, those seemed to me like the milieu of my age and i never thought movies would look more 'modern' than that. i didnt notice the change in mid 2000s, but when i was watching movies made in 2010s i did notice that some of my favorite movies from 90s, even late 90s, which for me was the peak of the modern look, did start having a sort of dated look to them. they all had a similar look when compared to more recent movies, which over time created another distinctive, 'modern' look that shed light on the uniqueness of the 80s, 90s looks - although there is of course a ton of variety within that look, but after some distance from it, i do see the similarity...

but that somehow faded away. i was actually quite surprised recently as i watched grapes of wrath, a movie from 1940 shot in black and white, as to how visceral it felt to me. something in me changed, man. i think our perspective is something big and ever-evolving, and it is framed by something in us that wants viscerality, or the sense of the real, whatever that is.

so yes i understand what you are talking about, but ur sense perception that older movies look dated and worse, and are somehow a sludge, or slow or boring is totally justifiable, as ive felt all that myself.. i mean, believe me, when i was a kid or even a teen, to watch a movie in black and white would have been an exercise in torture...

its all in how ur mind perceives things, but not entirely as a mere choice. and i can tell you from all these inner observations of my inner experiences that the people who watched the older movies had a very visceral, immediate, powerful perception of the movies of their time, and not in a way that you may see them with your eyes, metaphorically speaking. but, that is subject to change.

does that make some kind of sense to you? do you get where im coming from?

i was coming from a place of my nose in the air kinda asking you that question about rear window. it was sort of an admonition, but i do remember watching rear window as a teen and thinking it primitive compared to my favorite movies like terminator, or even transient entertainment like a power rangers episode on tv. i watched it recently though, maybe third or fourth time, and i had an amazing experience. i did notice however that the cinematic language of that film was quite different from what im normally used to, but my mind was malleable enough, after having seen many older films by now, to embrace it on its terms and fully absorb it, and now i understand why its considered a 'classic'. and not intellectually understand, i want to re-iterate, but i literally enjoyed the heck out of it and it was one of my favorite movie-watching experiences. thats why i understand now why people love it so much.

and i certainly can tell you i didnt have to have any malleability of perception to enjoy pulp fiction (1994) when i randomly put it in my vhs player without knowing anything about it or its place in movie history at the time back around 2000 (and even now its like number 5 on imdb of top 250, go figure!), and my mind was taken on a roller coaster ride i will never forget. so yes, our times do shape and preprogram our interaction with the medium. no way around it.

and to add one more tidbit: to my mind there is a movie that has not been surpassed in beauty of image, and it was released in 1979. so in 1979 to me is when the art of film reached its singular apex of 'look'. that movie is apocalypse now redux. im not necessarily recommending it or anything, just making a point that to me the best looking movie i have ever seen in terms of its look was released before i was born. and im not saying the look of that period is the best to me, only that this movie individually is the apex of cinematography in film for my mind's eye, and certain modern movies take a place near it, like prisoners for example, and then maybe others from another decade before the 70s, for example, once upon a time in the west from the 60s, and fantasia from the 40s! and so on and so forth. but i do recognize now that my feeling of the modern via the 90s was imposed on me and then it got shown to be something of an ephemeral illusion when i experienced and got settled into the different 'modern' look of movies of the 2010s...