Meanwhile, in European and Asian countries where the domestic markets are smaller — and where there is, perhaps, a stronger tradition of serious art being directed at both adults and children — the economics allow for a greater variety in mainstream filmmaking.
Both of these are fascinating subjects that have largely eluded mainstream filmmaking.
As the audience for blaxploitation dwindled, it seemed as if "Car Wash" and "The Wiz" might be the last gasp of what had been a steadily expanding black presence in mainstream filmmaking.
Some of its artificiality can be chalked up to the usual mainstream filmmaking imperatives, like stars who are at once recognizably real and prettier, thinner and sleeker, with whiter teeth and glossier skin, like the operative for the Drug Enforcement Agency played here by Paula Patton.
Opening Friday, it stars Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon and Sam Shepard, as well as two teenage boys in lead roles, and represents his entree into mainstream filmmaking.
Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Game of Thrones et al give comfort to cineastes bemoaning the death knell of multi-layered adult storytelling in mainstream filmmaking.
Rather it's the directness of Mr. Malick's engagement with them that feels so surprising at this moment, and that goes against the mainstream filmmaking grain.
When movies were aimed at them, directors and writers were encouraged to take risks, and American mainstream filmmaking entered its most creative period.
That wasn't a compromise to mainstream filmmaking.
For decades we have been losing this tradition as more and more indies move closer and closer to mainstream filmmaking.
