The Story of Film: A New Generation

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.

This film is really an essay by Mark Cousins, on the films he has watched in the last 20 years and what he thinks about them. There is little in the way of actual insight. I found it useful to find new films which look interesting, films that either passed me by or I did not hear of. In that way I am grateful to be introduced to The Kidnappers, Cemetery of Splendour, Theorem, November, It Follows, Norte, An Elephant Sitting Still, About Leila and The Pearl Button.

For an analysis of 21st Century films released this essay was very wanting. There was no rhyme or rhythm to the structure. Many times it was a case of Cousins saying "look at this", "look at that", "isn't that smart". That kind of investigation can only go so far until you realise it is just a collage of film snippets that look great.

For a better analysis of film, I recommend the BritBox exclusive Reel Britannia which looks into British films by decade between the 1960s and 1990s. That is a clever concept as the stop gaps are the decade themselves and the TV show elaborately picks a subject or genre and discusses with more depth than this film.

A lot of people have criticised Cousins dry delivery in his narration. Personally, I did not mind it, although it does put into mind it is not so much what he says, which is actually not that interesting, but the way he says it. Some people may confuse slow delivery with deftness. I came away with the impression this film is limited by what Cousins saw and he has not seen.

It is really a love note to himself.

This is a documentary that taught me next to nothing.

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.

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.

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.