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> Film has a lot of noise.

Film has grain, which is a type of non-chroma signal-dependent noise that is not unpleasant like chromatic signal-independent sensor noise or shot noise you get digitally in photography (not in movies, they have good lighting there).

In fact, grain is actually useful, as it's aesthetically pleasing in small amounts, can increase apparent sharpness. In fact it's so useful digital creations fake back in post-production a small amount of grain.

> The resolution is not as high as you are imagining.

The resolution of 4k projection is not as high as you are imagining either. It's just 4096x2160 lines (often less, depending on aspect ratio) or 8.8 megapixels.

In the best circumstances you can get 25Mpix of useful data from a 35mm frame shot on low grain stocks like 5203. In the worst circumstances you get 10Mpix. This is 35mm, The Hateful Eight was shot on 65mm stock, which has a camera frame surface are of 3.44 times the camera surface of 35mm film.

Either way, the resolution of 4k digital cinema is fine, I miss more the old contrast and gamut.

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Maybe you don't find grain to be unpleasant, but I certainly do. I tolerate it when the source had it and there is no choice, but I certainly don't like it.

And no, it's not aesthetically pleasing in any amount. Directors that add it back artificially should be criticized. It looks like there is a swarm of gnats flying across the screen, and unless there are a ton of bugs in the scene it doesn't belong.

> This is 35mm, The Hateful Eight was shot on 65mm stock, which has a camera frame surface are of 3.44 times the camera surface of 35mm film.

It won't stay that way by the time you watch it, it will have been copied multiple times, and it's on 35mm again. The effective resolution as seen in the actual theater does not beat 4k, and you have additional noise which lowers the resolution even more.

The main thing though is that noise is worse than lack of resolution. Depending on how far you are from the screen more resolution is meaningless - but noise (like film grain) is always a problem.

> I miss more the old contrast and gamut.

I suspect you are missing what never was. Digital is better on both.

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> It won't stay that way by the time you watch it, it will have been copied multiple times, and it's on 35mm again.

No, it's not on 35mm again. I've watched the 70mm projection of The Hateful Eight. At no intermediary point the film was on 35mm.

The intermediate film stocks and the print stock are very special low-sensitivity stocks (Kodak 2383 has ISO 1.6, Kodak 5302 has ISO 6) that have no discernible grain whatsoever. You can't see the Kodak 2383 grain with a grain focuser. All the grain comes from the original negative. You do lose some spatial resolution with multiple copies, but you don't add grain. I'll note that modern print film like Kodak 2383 can resolve 550 lines per mm, and contact printing has a minimal loss of quality due to imperfect optics. Granted, a showprint will always be better than a release print, but the copying process is much better than you give it credit for.

> noise (like film grain) is always a problem

Not really, dithering is essential for all video processing. Your very clean image is actually full of noise. Without dithering, videos (and movies) would look bad.

> I suspect you are missing what never was. Digital is better on both.

Absolutely nonsense. Kodak 2383 has a D-Max or 4, giving a contrast of 10000:1. Kodak Vision Premier Color has a D-Max of 5.5 giving a contrast of about 310000:1. Yes, not a typo, one-third of a million to one. There is no other technology that can achieve these deep blacks. Digital projection doesn't come any close, the best projectors today, (the ones that you won't find in any run-of-the-mill theatre) can barely do 2000:1.

DCI-P3, the color space used in digital cinema was modeled after print stock gamut, but because of technological limitations, it's not identical. Cyans and yellow has a higher chroma on film. Green on film has a higher chroma at the expense of luminosity. Other colors are pretty much the same.

The only way for digital projection to have a higher gamut is to switch to laser projection AND to retire DCI-P3. You need a green laser to produce more saturated greens.

Digital cameras are capable of recording a larger gamut than film, but unfortunately there is no technology to display these colors outside laser projection, and you need to switch the whole movie industry to a new color space.