Modern color treatment in film totally drives me crazy, independent of what it does to CGI.

It seems like every film coming out of Hollywood these days is processed exactly the same way:

* Crank down the low end so half the frame is solid inky black.

* Pick one or two key colors, and jack up their saturation.

* Desaturate everything else.

In other words, make the entire movie look like an over-dramatic poster for it. Throw any sense of naturalism or unique look out the door. Once you notice it, you see it everywhere. Here's the top live action movies of 2016:

Rogue One

Cyan and olive: http://www.ramascreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Rogue-O...

Captain America: Civil War

Yellow and red: http://cdn3-www.superherohype.com/assets/uploads/gallery/civ...

Why they felt the need to make Cap's lip rosy red is beyond me. Even better is this shot:

http://www.theglobaldispatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/...

This is a daylight shot. Look at how the characters are all squinting. Look at the big white fluffly clouds that should be diffusing the light and softening shadows. And yet, magically, all of the shadows are jet black and almost all of the color is gone.

The Jungle Book

Green and red (to draw attention to Mowgli):

https://www.moviedeskback.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/The...

Deadpool

Another daylight shot with nonsensical shading:

http://turntherightcorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Dea...

The light is clearly diffuse, if you look at the shadows on the ground, and yet there is this deep black everywhere. Deadpool took the look further by only picking one color (red, Deadpool's outfit color) for the entire film.

Lest you think this is just an issue with superhero movies, let's ignore those and look at the other top non-superhero movies of 2016:

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

More of the same:

http://harrypotterfanzone.com/wp-content/2016/09/fantastic-b...

It also suffers strongly from the "It's a period movie so we're going to sepia tone everything so hard it looks like you're watching the movie through an aquarium full of pee" effect.

Hidden Figures

https://www.themarysue.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/hidden...

More of the period movie sepia along with an improbably jacked up complementary cyan.

Star Trek Beyond

If the past is warm, the future must be cool:

http://www.ramascreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Star-Tr...

Blacks, grays and neon cyan, just like Rogue One. Look how unnatural his skin tone is! They wanted to jack up yellow to complement their primary blue so much that the poor dude has jaundice:

http://cdn.wegotthiscovered.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/s...

La La Land

I'll give this one some credit for varying it up a bit. Also, dramatic spotlit stage lighting is a logical part of the movie's look. But it's still prey to the same cliched look in places:

http://henrymollman.com/content/images/2017/01/Screenshot-fr...

Ghostbusters

Ectoplasm green and spooky violet were the key colors for the whole film. Secondary colors tend to come across as magical or eerie to viewers since they're different from the safe and familiary primary colors. Of course, jacking up magenta doesn't do flattering things to skin:

http://www.ramascreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Ghostbu...

Also, what color is Melissa McCarthy's coat? Is it actually black? Who fucking knows.

Central Intelligence

The traditional comedy look is brightly-lit and saturated, so Central Intelligence didn't fare quite as poorly as the above. Whenever they had a chance to dim the lights, though, they revert to the same cliched look as well:

https://i2.wp.com/doblu.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/centr...

The Legend of Tarzan

http://images3.static-bluray.com/reviews/14209_5.jpg

Jesus, we get it, colorist. They're in the wet jungle. We don't need to be physically assaulted with the colors blue and green to figure that out.

...You get the idea.

Go back and watch a movie from before 2000 and you'll quickly realize how much more pleasant to look at most of them where, and how much more variety there was in look. Compare Alien to The Graduate. But it seems like ever since the rise of digital coloring and superhero movies, Hollywood has decided every single fucking movie needs to look like a comic book page, whether it needs it or not.

One recent movie I really liked that bucked this trend was Her. It was heavily colorized, but in a way that stood out. In shots like these, even though there's a strong color cast and a lot of dark, there's still always some color and detail in the shadows:

https://i1.wp.com/turntherightcorner.com/wp-content/uploads/...

https://3kpnuxym9k04c8ilz2quku1czd-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/w...