A good movie

Does "The Last Man on Earth" qualify as a film as defined by the genre? How are plot, characters, setting, point of view and theme, the elements of fiction, transported to the screen with enough interest to hold an audience’s attention and make them care about a resolution? Oh please! As technicolor, wide-screen, stereo sound, surround sound, 3-D, special effects, computer generation and space-age techniques took over the art of film making, the quality of the art plummeted. Yet the price of movie-going increased. What a director could do technically replaced what he should do artistically. Artistic productions over time, however, fared no better than popular, money making films. A ticket price today pays for advertising, mindless diversion and the salaries of stars. Oh please! "Gremlins" ended my days of ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ at the movies. Years before, however, the black and white Oscar-winning film "Marty" starring Ernest Borgnine highlighted the golden days of film craft as I knew it. A plot moved smoothly from introduction to denouement, characters fully developed, held the viewer’s attention, the setting was realistically portrayed, the audience was allowed into the mind set of the protagonist and the theme proved uplifting in spite of faithfulness to the logical evolution of the story. A dollar paid for two hours of worthwhile time. Oh please! Bring on the free video rentals at the public libraries from the heyday of films.