Reading jdd's answer to my October 2025 questions... 
I am chagrined to learn I do not enjoy many films anymore.

I listened to a WFMU show in which the DJ played film
soundtrack songs from his vinyl collection, listeners were 
to guess what song was from a film he had NOT seen, and I
 deduced I am not the film connoisseur I imagined myself to 
be. I wouldn't sit through half of the 1980s and 1990s films
the DJ did. But I don't watch films very often, and most 
films from after 2001 don't have the charm that the ones from
the infancy of motion pictures have. 

Or maybe I expect too much from films. My expectation is to be
entertained, so I don't choose dystopian, horror, war, tragedy.
My mind likes a frolic so many children's animations, romcoms,
 and slow-paced documentaries are out. I avoid films that are as
Christopher Morley wrote "degrading to the human soul" so many
comedies I don't watch; paradoxically, I like black comedies if
they are clever, and allow the audience to be "in on the joke",
and I also like slapstick, but not the racist/punching down type.
Action/adventure to me are tired (trite), and wired (fast, loud,
vehicular/automotive), mostly for product placement, in-jokes,
merchandise tie-ins, brand continuity, and CGI. These are popular 
and if I were nine to 14 years of age, I'd regard them as nifty.
Suspense and thrillers then remain, and they're good once, like
hardcover suspense and thriller novels. Same with musicals, 
which I don't watch because there's some character or actor I 
wish I could punch in the mouth, and the actors are really only
singers and dancers.  

Why, then, do I have early sound movies? Surely those are tired,
banal? Anyone watching in 2025 thinks they know what's going to 
happen in an old film, and will be bewildered by the slang: "So
is your old man." "Aw go into your dance." "And a hotcha-cha!"
How can black and white film, crackly sound, archaic camera setup,
and stereotypes possibly entertain a 2025 viewer? For musicals
I like the Busby Berkeley choreographed ones for Warner Brothers,
and the Astaire - Rogers films, especially with Eric Blore and
Edward Everett Horton as co-stars. Pre-Code movies were racy and
snappy, and touched upon difficult topics. People were poor, 
immigrants had accents and "old world" values, there wasn't all
this 'we better make the protagonist in a comfortable income 
bracket, unless the film's in Iran or India or Korea because
only conspicuous consumption is interesting' conceit from studios
in a country with an ever-widening income inequality index. Social 
commentary of the haves by the have-nots was accepted, welcome, 
and appreciated. 

I like strange and absurdist situations, as one enters a delusion
 and it only gets better or weirder from there. Recently I viewed
 "Asterix vs Caesar", a French colour film, made for children, 
 and I genuinely enjoyed its silliness and jokes. I also saw 
 "Filibus," a 1915 film, also from France, about a master cross-
 dressing jewel thief who travels via Zeppelin from heist to 
 heist, which was fascinating. "Une Langue Universelle" (Canada)
  is the film I saw most recently, by Matthew Rankin, in both 
 Persian and French, and that was fascinating for human interest. 
 The Persian-speakers were in families whose children took French
 immersion, and Persian was one of the two official languages 
 of Canada. 'Une Langue Universelle' is surreal, with cultural 
 displacement and disorientation a major theme. I like Quentin
 Tarantino films, some Coen Brothers, Studio Ghibli films. I like 
 story-telling with history, physical expression and pantomime; 
 strange and colourful sets. Another film I watched is "Visitors 
 from the Arkana Galaxy," a Czech film from the 1980s in which a 
 sci-fi author's characters make contact from outer space, and 
 wreak riotous and wacky carnage with their superpowers and 
 inability to comprehend or care about homo sapiens.