Golden Age?

[Coenskubrick]

I'll try to limit it to a 10 year span and say 1967-1977. New Wave. So much creativity.

The Graduate, Rosemary's Baby, The Jungle Book, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Once Upon a Time in the West, Midnight Cowboy, Walkabout, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Deliverance, Little Big Man, Wake in Fright, A Clockwork Orange, Solaris, Blazing Saddles, Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Holy Grail, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Taxi Driver, Eraserhead, etc.

Something about the stylistic imagination here has never quite been matched by future generations of filmmakers. Not everything tried worked, but a surprisingly large amount did.

I'm 23 by the way so it's not nostalgia.

[Jaymole]

As I mentioned in another thread, people wear rose tinted glasses when it comes to film, so subjectively, I can see many people picking the time when they were young as their Golden Age for film..

Looking at it objectively is very hard for some, even harder as many here are not fully aware of what Hollywood was putting out before the 80's.

Subjectively the Golden Age I would pick is the late 60's and 70's when Hollywood started breaking new ground with almost every genre of film. The studios were somewhat lost in knowing what the audience wanted so they gave a lot of leeway to directors and it produced a wealth of great films. It wasn't until films like Jaws and Star Wars came around that the studios changed gear and started to take away power from the directors and start looking at film in mostly a corporate mindset. The 80's were the transitional period until the rise of the independent scene in the late 80's which started the Hollywood we know today.

Objectively, that period would be probably be tied with 30's and 40's as those decades produced an amazing number of classic films in the Comedy, Horror, Film Noir and Crime genres.

[blurayfriend]

Whatever the era was or whenever it started, it ended in 2008. I can even tell you the movie that capped it off: No Country For Old Men. More like a funeral dirge signaling no country for good films!

In all seriousness I think The Dark Knight ended/started a new era of films simultaneously as the whole damn world changed circa 2008 with the economic crisis/rise of social media/Obama elected/3d CGI interconnected movie universe/music all becoming teeny bopper pop crap/everything becoming PC. You could tell people felt it, such as the battle for The King's Speech/Social Network fighting for Best Picture that one year with people seeing it as the dying old guard of a certain kind of film vs. the new.

[Coenskubrick]

Originally Posted by blurayfriend

Whatever the era was or whenever it started, it ended in 2008. I can even tell you the movie that capped it off: No Country For Old Men. More like a funeral dirge signaling no country for good films!

In all seriousness I think The Dark Knight ended/started a new era of films simultaneously as the whole damn world changed circa 2008 with the economic crisis/rise of social media/Obama elected/3d CGI interconnected movie universe/music all becoming teeny bopper pop crap/everything becoming PC. You could tell people felt it, such as the battle for The King's Speech/Social Network fighting for Best Picture that one year with people seeing it as the dying old guard of a certain kind of film vs. the new.

And then in 2009 was A Serious Man!

[segagamer12]

Originally Posted by blurayfriend

Whatever the era was or whenever it started, it ended in 2008. I can even tell you the movie that capped it off: No Country For Old Men. More like a funeral dirge signaling no country for good films!

In all seriousness I think The Dark Knight ended/started a new era of films simultaneously as the whole damn world changed circa 2008 with the economic crisis/rise of social media/Obama elected/3d CGI interconnected movie universe/music all becoming teeny bopper pop crap/everything becoming PC. You could tell people felt it, such as the battle for The King's Speech/Social Network fighting for Best Picture that one year with people seeing it as the dying old guard of a certain kind of film vs. the new.

Music has always been dominated by 'teeny bopper pop crap', you just don't realize it until you are no longer a teenager.

I think that post-9/11 films changed as a results of society changing and I also agree with things changing due to the financial crisis. But I think the rest of the stuff you complain about is just you getting older. We all do it. Once you get into your 30's especially and older the stuff the kinds are into becomes more annoying because it's more separated from your own youth.


I was sort of trying to be objective I guess, but honestly I make no secret my personal preferences range from the period of my youth mostly.
But I don't think the 90's was a good time for film at all, there were some good films but I remember at the time hating the movies of the 90's and being glad the decade was over. So I can look at it without nostalgia blinding me.

I look back now and get emotional for a simpler time in my life but good god I would be a fool to pretend the 90's was a simpler decade. Primitive by today's standards maybe but I remember all the turmoil and shit quite well. I remember the damn OJ case dominating television, Princess Dianna, that Ramsey murder/death investigation. The 90's were also the rise of reality TV, ugh I hate that crap.


I don't go with the 80's as a great decade because I was a kid during that time. I truly think as a society we were all about having fun, it was a lighter time. There was trouble in the world but we largely went about our lives becoming aware of causes but not going out of our way to change the world. I think, for me, I feel that the 80's was a time of prosperity for the most part and we as a nation just spent a lot of time partying and not worrying so much. We had our benefit concerts and hands across America and there was the irrational AIDS scare when we didn't know any better, but I think for the most part it was a decade of fun and the films released during that period reflect that.

I watch movies, tv, and play video games for entertainment for the fun. I never liked the serious artsy stuff unless it was really original or made me see something I hadn't before.


For me the best films of the 90's were piggybacking on the 80's or the few that were just not trying so hard to grow up like the rest of the world was doing. With Playstation video games became more serious and more realistic, a lot of the fun was just sucked out of them. I feel that music was also reflected in this. The alternative scene dominated radio waves while the young kids and those not ready to grow up migrated to the boy bands/pop princesses and/or the techno/house/electronic stuff.

I personally prefer the music from the 90's because of nostalgia, but objectively I think rock bands from the 70's and 80's were better, pop acts in the 60's were better, and that until New Kids on the Block, pop wasn't just an act.

But today it's all different. I think super hero movies and mega blockbusters are better than ever, but I think the comedies, the fun movies like Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Goonies, Police Academy, The Mask, the fun movies that were just fun for the sake of it, aren't as good anymore. That I attribute to, society changing and their standard of what is considered fun has changed, me getting older and not being amused by the same stuff I was earlier, and partly Political Correctness seeping into everything either forcing comedians to hold back or pushing them to the other extreme. There is no balance anymore and it seem to me that movies aren't even trying to be fun anymore it has to be epic it has to be an experience which to me takes away just the simple distraction films are supposed to be.

Which is why I also don't care for decades where "art" movies or serious movies dominate. I like movies to just be fun. I like Freddy Kruger and Chucky in my horror movies, not some dude in a mask talking all serious about overly complicated human motivations or whatever the hell it was. I want my comedies to be to just be a group of misfits having misadventures through life. I want my spoofs to be Spaceballs or Men in Tights not a Not Another movie.

But that is just me.