Where have all the good films gone? (Or am I just old now?)

Last night my wife and I did something we used to do all the time: we rented a movie.

This was once the highlight of a week. Popcorn. Wine. Possibly even leaving the house and sitting among strangers in the dark like civilised people.

Now it involves scrolling through Apple TV while sighing heavily.

But last night we were confident. Because the film in question — One Battle After Another — had just won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

I mean, that’s the gold standard, isn’t it?

If the people who hand out little golden statues say something is the best film in the world, surely it must be watchable by two reasonably intelligent adults with wine and an open mind.

We paid the $6.99.

First mistake.

Before pressing play we watched the trailer. It did not look promising. Lots of shouting. Some shooting. A general atmosphere of people who had never met a quiet afternoon in their lives.

My wife raised an eyebrow.

“It must be good,” I said with the confidence of a man who has no evidence but wishes to avoid choosing something else.

“It just won the Oscar.”

This, as it turns out, was the second mistake.

Fifteen minutes later we were sitting in silence.

On the screen, the cast were swearing like drunken sailors, firing guns at things that were not entirely clear, engaging in what might politely be described as unusual sexual activity, and then — quite suddenly — there was a baby.

All this in the first quarter of an hour.

My wife and I slowly turned to look at each other.

You know the look.

The look couples develop after decades together. A silent, marital telepathy that says: Are we the problem here? Or is this absolutely dreadful?

I paused the film.

We both exhaled.

Then we did what any sensible couple does when faced with modern cinema: we searched for something else to watch.

The tragedy, of course, is not the $6.99. Although I would quite like it back.

The tragedy is that I used to love films.

Going to the cinema was an event. You dressed for it. You debated it afterwards. You walked out quoting lines and arguing about the ending.

These days, when we do venture out, the cinema is often emptier than a suburban church on a wet Sunday.

Recently we went to see Song Sung Blue — largely because it stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson and seemed unlikely to feature an unexpected baby emerging from a gunfight.

There were perhaps eight people in the theatre.

Eight.

In a room designed for three hundred.

Meanwhile at home we are devouring television series with the enthusiasm of Victorian children discovering cake.

Hijack — gripping.

The Gentlemen — excellent.

The Diplomat — addictive.

These shows have characters, stories, humour, tension — all the things films once specialised in before apparently deciding that what audiences really want is existential chaos and someone shouting a lot.

Which leaves me with an uncomfortable question.

Where have all the good films gone?

Have they disappeared entirely? Have they been replaced by endless franchises and artistic experiments involving swearing and emotional confusion?

Or — and this is the possibility I dread most — am I simply no longer the target audience?

Perhaps somewhere out there millions of younger viewers are watching One Battle After Another and declaring it a masterpiece while I sit here like a baffled grandfather wondering why nobody makes films like they used to.

I am 64, after all.

It is entirely possible that the problem is not cinema.

It is me.

Still.

If the Academy could just award Best Picture to something with a plot, a bit of charm, and ideally fewer guns and babies in the first fifteen minutes … I would be deeply grateful.

And also $6.99 richer.