"The Irishman" & genre snobbery

Last night my spouse and I went to go see The Irishman on the big screen at our local museum/arthouse cinema.

It's a mob movie. I knew that going in but I didn't do what I should have done, which is accept the genre of the film I was seeing. So my immediate reactions afterward were grumbling about what other stuff Scorsese could have done that would have been "more interesting," instead of (as I am doing now) reflecting on what was happening within the constraints of the genre.

I'm used to people doing that with genres I enjoy (such as romance and scifi); it was bracing to recognize that I'd just done it myself.