The Story of Film: A New Generation

An insight into how cinema across the world has changed in recent years and it's impact upon us.

Those who go to the pictures at their local multiplex once a week, may wish to look elsewhere for a documentary about the movies, as this is probably not it. Cousins takes cinema very very seriously and shares with us through probably over 100 clips precisely in his view what are the clever life changing pieces of cinema that the world should be impressed by and why. Ok, it's a point of view like any criticism and he clearly knows his stuff, but overall it's a hard slog unless you're a cineaste or a film critic reliving the films you've reviewed so carefully, that probably few others watching this on Netflix will have seen. Coupled with Cousins' slow, whispering Irish drawl that could easily send you to sleep, I suggest you avoid watching this late at night and have 'Carry on Up the Khyber' on standby.

I thoroughly enjoyed this documentary. It had a dream-like quality to it. Musing on films which have changed the way we look at movies. The presentation was beautifully executed and interspersed with some thougtful imagery. It has given me a long list of films to watch and reminded me of some to rewatch. I am a little puzzled by the other reviews of this as I really enjoyed the narration.

It's always nice seeing montages of film clips, if only to discover new treats. I watched a third of this on 1.5x speed, which made Cousins' monotonous, slow narration sound vaguely more normal. But then the clips were too fast. Cousins really is a pompous dousche. He describes the opening credits of Deadpool as if we need to be told that they're somehow edgy or different. He explains that they 'pushed the boundaries of comedy' or something. And on it goes. He seems to think he's some appointed superiority on the real poetry of cinema, here to hold your hand through stuff that never would have occured to you before. Even explaining how 'passion' drives cinema. Yet his own narration is so passionless, so pretentiously lofty in its delivery, he commits a huge sin in boring you rather than exciting you about cinema. I prefer Scorsese or Tarantino riffing on their observations anyday. Cousins should really be making hypnotherapy CDs.

The material presented in this marathon documentary is good enough, but it takes herculean effort and patience to endure narrator Cousin's astonishingly and consistently annoying manner of speaking, hour after hour.

Each sentence of narration is delivered the same monotonous way: lifelessly and sleepily, with every last syllable of every sentence ending with an identical upward inflection, giving a sense of questioning uncertainty like a helpless dying whimper.

A charming Irish lilt is one thing, but there is nothing charming about Cousins' style of narration. Any director with any sense at all would have chosen a different narrator to make this a far more compelling documentary.

Being new to Mark Cousins, I was a little thrown off by how thick his Irish accent is. It doesn't help that he kind of just meanders on in a stream of consciousness fashion while cycling through various film clips.

The nominal subject of this documentary is movies from the 21st century, but he spends ample - too much really - time trying to tie things back to previous films from long ago. This adds significantly to the run time which hits 2 hours and 40 minutes.

If the whole affair was more engaging, I could see it as a piece of film school curriculum or a means of motivating the young to go back and check out what's already been done - because a lot has been done that's fading from the collective memory as time goes on.

Unfortunately, and I am pretty forgiving with films, especially documentaries, the combination of the above put me off to this director and his style and therefore cannot highly recommend this film.

His 2011 Story of Film: An Odyssey was broken up into 15 1-hour episodes and I think a similar approach would have accomplished two things here: 1) Way more films could have been discussed and 2) Audience attention would be easier to maintain.

All in all, 5 out of 10.