Quoting
transmogrifier (view post)
For me, it's not really the "depth" of a movie in terms of theme and subtext that I am talking about when I mean "soul" - I mean when a film that is actually written, shot, edited, and scored in a way where each piece of the cinematic puzzle comes together to generate the alchemy that a great film achieves - everything just fits together and for a spell you are transported by the film, rather than simply "noticing" stuff (wow, that room is red like Kurosawa's stuff, wow, Johnson really gave it to the fanboys, wow, Tom Hardy is like, drunk and having a stroke in this, cool!"). (PS that is royal "you", not you specifically.) That is why I actually I loved Hereditary because Aster shows a great understanding of how to pace a scene and build atmosphere, though he loses the thread of his story by the end. Even The Quiet Place has a 5-minute sequence cross-cutting between Jim outside and Mary Poppins in the bathtub where everything comes together perfectly. To me, that is a million times more valuable than some screenwriter getting Tom Hardy to call himself a pussy.
It's just my belief that in the last ten years, there has been a significant loss of interest in actual competent filmmaking among both general audiences and online critics in favor of "fun"/callbacks/continuity and social relevance/cinematic allusions, respectively.