How do we define a 'real movie' now?

WHENEVER A FRIEND OR COLLEAGUE sees a movie before I do, the first question I ask is no longer “Is it any good?” but “Does it feel like a real movie?”

- BY STEPHANIE ZACHAREK

Michael B. Jordan plays double duty as twin brothers in Sinners

Everyone knows exactly what the question means, even if none of us can quite articulate it. The rise of streaming has eroded not just the moviegoing experience but also the hard-to-define qualities that have traditionally made a movie a movie. I've stopped counting the number of times a friend or acquaintance has said to me, “There’s so much to stream these days—I’d rather just stay at home.”

But even if the theatrical experience sometimes appears to be dying, the movies are not. Young people and veteran filmmakers alike still want to make them. What is it that still draws them—and us—to the form? What makes some films feel real and others like sham products, worthy only of that derisive term content? This is all new territory. But it may help to look at some recent theatrical releases, as well as a few streaming-only products, to help discern what makes a film feel like a movie-movie today.

DOES A MOVIE have to feel totally fresh? James Hawes’ The Amateur, with Rami Malek as a low-key CIA employee intent on avenging his wife’s death, is based on a 1981 Robert Littell thriller that has been adapted before. But it has a satisfying aura that seems to belong on the big screen. The action takes place in splashy locales like London and Paris, and the direction has a confident muscularity. We used to get sophisticated action-thrillers like this eight or nine times a year in the 1990s; now, a movie like The Amateur, watched on the big screen, can awaken a sense of something we’ve lost. It feels like a forgotten luxury.