Film Movements & Styles

Film noir is the cycle of 1940s–50s American crime films — named by French critics — defined by fatalistic plots, morally compromised heroes, femmes fatales and low-key black-and-white lighting full of hard shadows.

German Expressionism is the 1920s Weimar cinema movement that externalized inner states through distorted painted sets, slanted lines, stark chiaroscuro and stylized acting — The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, Metropolis.

A liminal space is a transitional place — hallway, empty mall, pool, stairwell, parking lot — shown deserted and out of its normal time, so it feels nostalgic, familiar and quietly eerie at once.

Italian Neorealism is the post-WWII movement — Rossellini's Rome, Open City, De Sica's Bicycle Thieves — that took cameras into ruined streets with non-professional actors to tell stories of poverty and ordinary people.

The French New Wave (late 1950s–60s) was launched by Cahiers du cinéma critics turned directors — Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer — who shot cheaply on the streets with handheld cameras, jump cuts and a personal, playful voice (The 400 Blows, Breathless).

Surrealism in film, born in 1920s Paris (Un Chien Andalou by Buñuel and Dalí), follows dream logic and the unconscious: irrational juxtapositions, impossible images and shocking cuts — a line that runs through Buñuel to David Lynch.

Avant-garde film rejects commercial narrative to experiment with form itself — rhythm, abstraction, collage, dream logic — from 1920s European movements (Un Chien Andalou) to American experimental cinema like Meshes of the Afternoon.

Bayhem is the nickname for Michael Bay's maximalist action style: low-angle hero shots with a circling camera, golden-hour skies, lens flares, massive practical explosions and rapid cutting that keeps every shot in motion.

Cinéma vérité is a 1960s documentary approach, born with Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin's Chronicle of a Summer, in which lightweight sync-sound cameras record real life and the filmmaker openly provokes and takes part in it.

Dogme 95 is the Danish movement launched by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg with a 'Vow of Chastity': handheld camera, real locations, no added lighting or non-diegetic music, no genre tricks — Festen and The Idiots are its first films.

Dreamcore is an internet-born surreal aesthetic that imitates the feel of dreams: pastel skies, empty playgrounds and hallways, soft glow, eyes and clouds in odd places — nostalgic and slightly unsettling.

Mumblecore is the 2000s American micro-budget indie movement — Andrew Bujalski, the Duplass brothers, Joe Swanberg — built on improvised, naturalistic dialogue among twentysomethings, cheap digital video and domestic locations.

Naturalism in film aims for an illusion of unmediated life — unstylized acting, available light, real locations and hidden technique — often showing characters shaped by environment and circumstance.

New Hollywood (c. 1967–1980) was the era when young auteurs — Coppola, Scorsese, Altman, Friedkin — took control from a collapsing studio system and made darker, personal, formally freer films, from Bonnie and Clyde to Taxi Driver.

Realism in film is the broad tradition — theorized by André Bazin — of showing the world as it is: long takes, deep focus, real places and restrained style that let reality speak rather than montage or spectacle.

The video game aesthetic borrows the look and logic of games — first-person gun POV, third-person follow camera, HUD graphics, respawning and level-like spaces — to make film feel playable.

Weirdcore is an internet aesthetic of unsettling amateur imagery — low-res photos, flash glare, clumsy text overlays, eyes and cryptic phrases — that feels like a half-remembered, slightly wrong reality.

Postmodern film mixes genres and high and low culture, quotes and remixes other films, breaks linear time and plays self-consciously with its own artifice — Pulp Fiction, Blade Runner, The Truman Show.