I don’t know when it was that I lost interest in movies. I used to watch nearly every film that came out in the theater. Literally. I spent thousands of dollars on movies. But nowadays, I don’t seem to have any interest in them. I don’t even know what is coming out, which is crazy for someone who used to watch movie previews online just for fun. When I do watch a movie, I can barely sit through it and tend to turn it off half way through.

I think it may be because every movie I can remember looking forward to this year has disappointed me. Most recent example: Into the Wild. I love that book, but the movie was a let down. For one thing, I don’t think Sean Penn, who directed it, understood Christopher McCandless–the character was a lot stupider and darker than McCandless seemed to be. And all the philosophy behind what McCandless did got completely lost in the movie, or worse, boiled down to cliches like kid hates his father/American consumerism makes people numb. Boring! McCandless was anything but boring.

For another thing, the pacing of that movie is awful. There are oodles of voice-overs and loooooooooong montages. And that’s made even worse by the fact that large chunks of action from the book were cut out of the movie, like when McCandless almost died in Mexico. Why? Action is interesting! Montages are not.

The thing is, I love movies, movie theaters, going to the movies, eating popcorn, etc. But they so rarely suck me up and carry me along in them anymore. So I would rather watch an episode of The Office or read a book than watch most movies. And that makes me a little sad. Is it the overall quality of movies these days, or is it just me?