Is my desire for movies fading?

Is my desire for movies fading? Lately, after rather a full fall season of seeing some of the most talked-about films, am I losing my desire to go to the local cinema (there’s Windsor’s new Landmark though it’s playing the same films as our other two cineplexes, Criterion Channel or Netflix, not to mention hometown Windsor film festival’s monthly series)? Perhaps it’s because I was disappointed if not put off by some of the biggest titles. I loathed Anora (Sean Baker), which could end up sweeping the Oscars, about a Russian expatriate drug dealer and a Brooklyn hooker who go on a wild drug-fueled ride through the neverlands of New York. Why glorify this depravity? I was looking forward to Conclave (Edward Berger & Peter Straughan), the politicized maneuvers of electing a new pope, which admittedly had sound acting and stunning visuals but cardboard liberal and conservative stereotypes and a damp squid of an ending. Or The Substance (Coralie Fargeat) with Demi Moore as a washed-up TV host paranoid about her declining looks and her transmogrification into a younger double with enough sticky entrails on the floor to last me a lifetime. Bird (Andrea Arnold) was a sickening claustrophobic story about an off the rails father-daughter relationship; I’m surprised I lasted through it. Maria (Pablo Larraín) was okay but just, with Angelina Jolie reprising the famed Maria Callas in her melancholy sunset years. I did enjoy – okay, Joy (Ben Taylor), a Brit film about the scientific team pioneering IVF - and the equally English We Live in Time (John Crowley), a slow burn romantic drama with subtle above par acting. Other notables were Speak No Evil (James Watkins), a gripping real life type horror story and Nightbitch (Marielle Heller), a horror story about marriage starring Amy Adams. But I avoided both Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard) and Queer (Luca Guadagnino) because these seemed gratuitously sexual flavors of the month. I loved A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg) (see review below), A Different Man (Arnold Schimberg) and The Apprentice (Ali Abbasi), the latter two starring the extraordinary and (literally) pliable Sebastian Stan, the first because of its utter black comedy, the second because of its tour de force, even though I like Trump. But on the whole movies lately seem kind of a downer, listless and trying too hard with few compelling stories. For goodness sake, after discarding a myriad Netflix films this month I ended up watching Queen Bees (Michael Lembeck, 2021). At least it held my attention, kind of.