Old Movie thread - Yes, you may have to be positive here.

Matthew216

Matthew216

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Oct 18, 2018
OK, I just felt a thread like this would be nice. Old movies, classics, black and whites, this is a thread to discuss them. With the horrible state of current Hollywood, I've been thinking more and more about older films, from the 80's comedies I've always had a soft spot for, to movies I loved like the Marx brothers films, and Errol Flynn's Adventures of Robin Hood (in GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR).

I have wondered lately whether theaters could make money by replaying those older movies? Probably a pipe dream really, but i'd like to see it. Anyway, what older films float your guys boat?
 
  • Like
  • Semper Fidelis
Reactions: Syaoran Li, wabbits, Crispy Chicken and 5 others
Pre-1950s Hollywood was the best. Trouble in Paradise, Double Indemnity, Citizen Kane, etc. The industry was never the same after United States v. Paramount Pictures in 1948. They didn't need fancy effects or extravagant sets to tell a good story. Going to the movies nowadays feels like a roulette wheel between remakes, sequels, and reboots.

Still waiting for a remastering of Milo and Otis. It may have been controversial and likely violated animal protection laws, but it's so nostalgic to me.

If you have cable, I recommend checking out TCM. It constantly airs older movies and gives interesting background information over them. Of course you can probably stream most of these movies if you find the right website, saving time and money in the process.
 
  • Agree
  • Informative
  • Like
Reactions: AnAspieWithAVengeance, Crispy Chicken, Clockwork_PurBle and 6 others
What exactly is the threshold for old here?

If 2000 is okay, Way of the Gun is one of my favorite movies. It features mostly realistic gun handling and a lot of things going on under the surface in any given scene. From 1974, Black Christmas is credited as helping start the slasher movie. The killer's deranged calls can be genuinely unsettling. The remake is fucking awful, stay away from it. The Dirty Dozen from 1967 feels like a pretty typical war movie at first, but I was surprised to see the disregard for human life during the operation the crew is trained for.

I actually don't know a lot of movies from before the 60s.
 
  • Feels
Reactions: J A N D E K
I enjoy a lot of silent horror films and the Universal classic monster movies. There's also something about 50s sci-fi that I enjoy a lot, Thing from another world (that got remade in the John Carpenter's The Thing), The day the Earth stood still, my personal favorite Mysterious Island. I don't know what it is about these movies that I find kind of relaxing, maybe it's because I watched so many of them late at night growing up on Monster Madness and fell asleep.
 
  • Like
  • Semper Fidelis
Reactions: Syaoran Li, MerriedxReldnahc and J A N D E K
I have wondered lately whether theaters could make money by replaying those older movies?
Click to expand...

A theater chain here plays older films every Tuesday night. They're mostly cult classics and fan favorites, but they do it. So yeah, it's not a bad idea for theaters to do.

For Pre-Code-era of films, my favorite's It Happened One Night, the first screwball comedy.
Saw it in a Cinema History class and I fell in love with it. I guess I was always a sucker for screwball comedies, but I wasn't completely aware of the genre until watching it.

For silent films, my favorite's a tie between 1925 Phantom of the Opera and Sunrise, the latter of which I also watched in the same class, the former in high school. Actually volunteered to show a horror film at a church gathering one Halloween so I rented it from the library for that night, and to prove the rumors are true, the girls shrieked at the famous unmasking scene. It was great.
 
  • Feels
Reactions: Syaoran Li and J A N D E K
A local theater where I grew up would screen a classic movie every month. TCM runs a program where they do the same thing at a lot of their theaters nowadays, but it's always a limited engagements of 1 or 2 showings a month. Casablanca is one of the few films I've seen in theaters on both sides of the country.
 
  • Like
Reactions: J A N D E K
The 1970s was a great era for film. You had thrillers like Three Days of the Condor, Marathon Man, The Conversation and so on, there was some good sci-fi: THX-1138, Silent Running, Star Wars. No talk about 70s film would be complete without The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. Some amazing war pictures, too: The Big Red One, Patton, Apocalypse Now. Clint Eastwood had a great run in the 1970s, too.

There were some great genre pictures in the 1980s as well...but after that there's a big push for bigger, louder, flashier and despite outlier films like say Unforgiven in '91 there's not much to say afterward.

The John Huston directed Moby Dick is IMO arguably one of the great pieces of American cinema.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Agree
  • Semper Fidelis
Reactions: Syaoran Li, Pokemonquistador2, GenderCop and 5 others
I see a lot of old movies, so if anyone here wants to start watching some good ol' black and white films but has no clue on where to begin, I recommend watching any movie made by Elia Kazan. On the Waterfront(1954), Viva Zapata!(1952), A Streetcar named Desire (1951) and my personal favorite America America(1963) can be good starter flicks for anyone hesitant on watching black and white films.

For some good military movies, The Battle of Algiers (1966) is a badass war movie focusing on the Franco Algerian war that depicted the French so bad that France actually had the film banned, The Longest Day (1962) focusing on Normandy Landings of WW2, To Hell and Back (1955) covering the real life rambo himself Audie Murphy and Sergeant York (1941) covering another badass motherfucker during the First World War, and also All Quiet on the Western Front (1930).
 
  • Winner
  • Like
  • Informative
Reactions: Syaoran Li, Tampon Head, J A N D E K and 1 other person
Matthew216 said:
I have wondered lately whether theaters could make money by replaying those older movies? Probably a pipe dream really, but i'd like to see it. Anyway, what older films float your guys boat?
Click to expand...

That probably depends on whether or not you live in or near to a town large enough to support an art house cinema, since many art house venues will schedule old movies if there's enough of a demand for it.

Sometimes colleges and universities and even large libraries with screening rooms will have public screenings of old movies.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: The Shadow
The 1930 version of All's Quiet on the Western Front is simply must-see cinema.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Rand /pol/
I'm a sucker for silent films. Especially ones that star this guy:

tumblr_mvw25h5Kew1suohvpo1_1280.jpg

Unfortunately they're impossible to find these days. That's the downside to silent films.
 
Baldur's Gait said:
A while back I rewatched Airplane and was amazed at how much of it remained funny nearly 40 years later.

I watched it with two black friends, and this sequence got the biggest laugh out of them out of the entire movie.
Click to expand...

Honestly, I think one of the Airplane’s biggest strengths is that it presents everything with a straight face. It’s not in-your-face with the jokes, nor does it constantly wink and nudge at the audience, it’s just really straightforward and serious with its joke delivery, which makes it funnier.
 
  • Agree
  • Disagree
Reactions: Duncan Hills Coffee, Nekromantik, vhstape and 1 other person
Check out Kino, they restore a lot of old movies for Blu ray, DVD, and theater release. The work they do is great.
 
  • Like
Reactions: A Owl
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back