The last good Hollywood movie I saw was Juno (2007). It has been a long time.
The last good non-Hollywood movie was "U are the Universe" (2024). At least people outside of the US can film something decent. But it is also rare.
This situation lead me to a bit of self-reflection. What is it that makes a movie good for me? Why has Hollywood was so hollow in the last two decades?
It starts with the script (the screenplay). It has to be original. If it is based on a book - I can read the book. If it is a prequel, sequel, etc to a well known franchise - I can watch the original. Even if it is an adaptation of a classic Korean dorama - I can watch the original with the subtitles just fine. Plus, if it is truly classic, there are 20 versions of it already.
Of course, the script should be good. I read the Juno script ten years after watching it for the first time - and I cried. I've already seen the movie, and yet I still cried. That is what the words "good script" means to me.
Director is next. It has to be a separate person - not the one who wrote the script. Hollywood is plagued with productions where director is involved in writing the script and that literally kills the art in the film. When the writer and the director are different people - there is tension between them. They are the two key people who bring their conflicting visions into the movie. That tension, that fight, that drama - is the birth seed of the Art of filmmaking. You can produce a plastic Hallmark Christmas movie without that original spark, but you can not make art. The director being involved in the writing kills the movie before a single scene was shot.
Actors are next. Each one should be on the set because they want to make a good movie, not because their mother/father/aunt is in the industry. I do not care for the Writer and the Director in that regard, but the set should be free of nepo-babies. The actors who grew up in the film-industry families in the green-screen era just can not act. They only seen one kind of acting - the stoneface one, to prevent problems at post-production. The true actors grow up in tiny theatres, at a stand-up comedy clubs, on the radio, and in many other places where there is no post-production phase between the actor and the audience.
Finally, the most important person in the whole ordeal: the Film Editor. During the long cycle of movie production everybody from the writer, to actors, to the director, to the last assistant bond together into one defective vision of a movie. And than the Editor cuts their source material, throws away half of it - the half that was filmed and polished with sweat and tear, but was not moving the plot forward, was not engaging the viewer. The director is screaming, the actors are in tears, the assistant is ordering emergency donuts - but the Editor stays strong and does his job. The Editor brings the final breath of art into the movie to make it good. The final movie's run length is around 1 hour and 20 minutes, despite hours and hours of material being shot and enhanced in post-production. If the movie's length is closer to 2 hours than 1 (or if it is longer than two hours!), it means the Film Editor did not do the job. Either because they are bad at it, or the Director is a celebrity who got their way. Or, sadly more and more common, there was no Editor at all. There was a person to put a movie together, but that person was just a technical operator of the editing software - making sure transitions are timed right and the sound is properly synced. There should be a Film Editor with an artistic vision.
It helps if there are other people with an artistic vision involved. Amélie was a great movie in part because its colour correction was unusual - not the blue/orange pair that dominates most of the silver screen since before I was born.
And of course there are rare exceptions. I mentioned "U are the Universe" as a good movie, but it had the same person as both Writer and Director. But that person (Pavlo Ostrikov) grew up in small theatres and in stand-up comedy clubs. I love seeing him in the numerous YouTube comedy shows (he hosts one and is a regular guest in another). Sometimes a person has so much artistic talent, that it is enough for two crucial roles. But it is rare.
I still watch movies. I have not seen a good one in a long, long time. Luckily for me, it is easy to identify the bad movie. Just check its run time - most modern movies are way longer than 1h20m and it means they are all garbage that has skipped the crucial role of the Film Editor alltogether.
"U are the Universe" is 1h30m long. And the extra ten minutes in the end are there for the crying.