>>3692529This. It is actually a gimmick and the film is not compelling outside of said trick.
I work in the film industry and have shot on 16mm and 35mm projects, as well as worked on larger ones as crew. Technically and aesthetically, no, they have not yet figured out how to make digital look like film. A guy named Steve Yedlin now has a pretty insane software, but he has not released it to anyone. A lot of problems exist in replicating grain, artifacts like halation, and complex color relationships. Additionally, 35/70mm photochemical prints you might be able to see from a Nolan or Tarantino film will have a very different look and quality compared to a digital projection. If you can, sometime in your life try to see Technicolor print of a classic film. The beautiful color quality will blow you away. It is hard to believe that such an aesthetic experience was abandoned to save some money.
Older directors and any young director who can push for shooting on film does so, because the process is entirely different in a way which gives power back to the director and DP. On a digital shoot there are no stakes to rolling the camera, and there are 10-25 people looking at a monitor commenting on how the shot looks etc. All this builds up to a process which is really soulless and has considerably less intensity.
Regarding cost, for a major film production there is now cost difference to shooting film. Shooting RAW on high end cameras requires a very highly paid DIT and his equipment, plus hundreds or thousands of terabytes of hard drives. On an independent project, yes digital is much cheaper.
I have thousands of feet of 35mm I am sitting on to do a music video with in the near future. I shoot a lot of projects on 16mm and own a 16mm camera. I love the process. I love the look straight out of the box. I love the limitation, scarcity, and added difficulty of pulling off shots on film and having to know for sure you got it when doing another take is not an option.
