I’ve often joked that every film released between 1994 and 2002 is the most beautiful film ever made. Just go watch any random two minutes from The Fast and the Furious (2001) and compare that to the best looking scene of any movie released in the past twenty years (including Fury Road). It’s like night and day.
Modern movies shot digitally are (generally) flat, grey and boring. I don’t know why this is and I don’t care to learn. All I know is that when I watch Witness (released in 1985) I get sad because it reminds me that technology improvements have made things objectively worse.
Dolores Claiborne (1995) was (of course) shot on film and it uses a very simple technique to visually indicate which parts of the story take place in the present (1995) and which are from the past (1975). The recent scenes are grey and drab while the parts from the past vibrant and colourful.
These choices are deliberate. The past is represented as how people often remember it – better than it actually was (while truly being hopeful.) The present is where the characters are dealing with the aftermath of past trauma and the grey, somber colour pallet reflects that.
It’s beautifully shot and the cinematographic choices by the filmmakers are born from helping the storytelling and not from something outside the artistry (like the production budget).
Die Hard Three 
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