
Meanwhile, Netflix’s feature film output over the past couple of years recalls nothing more than the mid-1960s when Hollywood, horribly out of sync with the contemporary cultural moment, tried to compensate by falling back on tried and tested names, safe family entertainments, literary adaptations and screen versions of Broadway hits. Instead, most of the interesting streaming action is still in episodic drama, which, even at its best, relies on more conventional narratives and more prosaic visuals. Hopes remain unfulfilled that the streaming revolution would spark a creative renaissance in film-making, particularly in mid-sized productions which have been squeezed out of the marketplace in the last couple of decades. What’s lacking in all of these isn’t budget or technical skill, it’s a sense of what a film can or should be. Even less self-consciously Oscar-oriented entertainment such as The Prom or Jingle Jangle share the same quality of having gone into production several drafts before they should have. True, you’ll see a few things you will enjoyĪll have one thing in common watching them, you wonder why anyone in Netflix didn’t have the good judgment to shout stop. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

The failed transition from stage to screen of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. The self-indulgent incoherence of David Fincher’s Mank. And as we draw to the end of awards-bait season, when studios traditionally release the prestige productions of which they’re most proud, what it does it have to show for it? The watching-paint-dry tedium of George Clooney’s The Midnight Sky. Last summer, the company did put out a number of perfectly acceptable mid-range entertainments in the form of fantasy actioner The Old Guard and the zippy, fun Enola Holmes.

In fact, to judge by this year’s awards season output, it seems to be getting worse at it.
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But it still doesn’t seem to have figured out how to make a half-decent feature.
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Why are Netflix’s films so mediocre? The streaming giant has turned the movie business upside down, transformed viewing patterns across the world and injected gazillions of dollars into production.
