When do you think movies were the best?

[Soycast Guy]

1970’s-2000’s. Lord of the Rings, Terminator, Gladiator, Alien, Star Wars, and The Goonies. The good shit. Also just all the cheesy horror movies like Halloween and Scream.

 

[Open Window Maniac]

1980s. Peak of practical effects and movies like Empire Strike Back, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Aliens, The Thing, The Karate Kid, Raiders of The Lost Ark. E.T., Clash of The Titans, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc. That's all stuff I could think of off the top of my head.

 

[Red Hood]

The 12 years it took to make Boyhood.

 

[Apochrypha]

Late 90's-2000's. Maybe this is my nostalgia talking, but I loved all those campy high school drama movies like Mean Girls and 10 Things I Hate About You. Juno was great, too. Almost every movie Ellen Page has been in was great, then she trooned tf out and now she's getting like no casting calls lmao.

 

[Dom Cruise]

The 80s is the best decade for entertaining movies, the 70s is the best decade for arthouse movies.

The 90s era blockbusters were largely stupid at the time but have aged well due to at least being unpretentious and not Woke, the 2000s is a stealthily great decade for "Oscar bait" movies, lots of great and often underrated stuff like Gladiator, Gangs of New York, Road to Perdition, Cold Mountain, Lost In Translation, Master and Commander, The Aviator, Beyond The Sea, Children of Men, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, even if what usually won Best Picture was lame, the list of nominees or movies that didn't get nominated but were obviously trying to are usually solid movies to check out, they would tend to make "Oscar bait" still be very entertaining, not dry and dull and not absurdly preachy and Woke like today.

 

[Tom Myers]

I really like 80s-90s films. There are many dramas that are grounded in real life. More modern films seem like they're in an alternative timeline.

Examples: The Rainmaker, Casino, American History X, Fargo, and The Firm. Hell, even True Romance.

 

[The Last Stand]

1930s into 1960s, generally. Those women has CLASS and GRIT with beauty.

 

[lemme ASS you a question]

1970s was the decade before blockbusters and video rentals killed consumer tastes, and films were edgier and grittier than they ever were, it felt raw and the industry atleast seemed more genuine than just a money grab. the 1980s felt too manufactured and anything newer than that feels too impersonal and clean. Its almost like grain, natural lighting and handheld shots were a taboo in 2000s films, not to mention stylistically they were all garbage. Risk taking with shots, artier shots and non standardized set pieces/themes also seemed more realistic in terms of tone, instead of being told its realistic. The horror films also had that groundbreaking impact and legacy from these risks, and in general films were more terrifying. But im also a 1970s weeaboo so take my opinion or leave it

 

[kittyfucker]

the 1250's

 

[The Cunting Death]

New Hollywood era
Started in the mid to late 60s with Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, and Night of the Living Dead. (Producers were confused by the success of these films and the rising talent, gave the directors more control)

Slowly started to end around the time of Star Wars and Jaws. (The first real blockbusters.)

Ended completely when Heaven's Gate (the movie not the cult) and One From the Heart bombed in the early 80s. (Former ended up killing United Artists as an independent studio, now its a subsidiary of MGM and to a lesser extent, amazon. Latter drove Francis Ford Coppola to personal bankruptcy. Producers began taking control back from the directors this time out in order to jot repeat the same mistakes)

 

[MadStan]

1969-1981 thereabouts.

Check out and watch the Oscar winners and nominations. It is literally a buffet of the nest stories and screen writing ever done.

I started watching them in my 30's and was like "WTF have I been watching up until now".

 

[Dom Cruise]

1970s was the decade before blockbusters and video rentals killed consumer tastes, and films were edgier and grittier than they ever were, it felt raw and the industry atleast seemed more genuine than just a money grab. the 1980s felt too manufactured and anything newer than that feels too impersonal and clean. Its almost like grain, natural lighting and handheld shots were a taboo in 2000s films, not to mention stylistically they were all garbage. Risk taking with shots, artier shots and non standardized set pieces/themes also seemed more realistic in terms of tone, instead of being told its realistic. The horror films also had that groundbreaking impact and legacy from these risks, and in general films were more terrifying. But im also a 1970s weeaboo so take my opinion or leave it

80s movies are definitely slicker and more commercial than 70s movies, Coppola faltered in the 80s, anyone that did try to make a 70s style movie in the 80s fought a huge uphill battle like Sergio Leone with Once Upon a Time in America or Terry Gilliam with Brazil.

It is a shame we couldn't have had it both ways and the magic of the 70s couldn't have lived on, but who can deny the pure fun of 80s blockbusters like Raiders of The Lost Ark, Ghostbusters, Back to The Future, The Terminator, Big Trouble in Little China and Aliens? That wave of Spielberg, Lucas, Carpenter and Cameron and other similar movies are the most genuinely fun type of movies to simply watch.

We got one last wave of that in the early 90s with Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park, then we had the rise of Bay and Emmerich who ultimately ruined the summer blockbuster even if The Rock and ID4 were solid movies and there's other hidden gems of 90s blockbusters if you go looking or other movies that may be dumb, but are a lot more entertaining than what's being released today.

 

[Skitarii]

There's dumb movies and good ones each year, I do miss when movies didn't have to be narratively-braindead and intolerably nihilistic to be considered artsy though

 

[Andthensomeguy]

Whenever the times were when Hollywood at least tried to hide the fact that it was infested top to bottom with pedo's and trafficker's. Those times were pretty good.

 

[Comicsgeist]

Bar the last decade, in which entertainment has felt increasingly bland and superficial, most every decade has had it's own unique voices and trends. Which decade was the best? Who knows?
What I do know is that 1991 is probably one of the most entertaining years I ever had at the movies.
Action movies.
'91 was one hell of a thrill ride with 'Terminator 2' (I queued around the block to see that) but also 'Point Break' and the hugely under-rated 'The Last Boy Scout'. It introduced me to Jackie Chan with 'Armor of God 2' and started a long fascination with Asian martial arts movies. You also had great wholesome family fare from Joe Johnson with 'The Rocketeer'.

Thrillers/Horror
'JFK' was the talk of the town and 'Silence if the Lambs' and 'Cape Fear' gave us Hopkins and DeNiro hamming it up gloriously to give us some really entertaining villains and Wes Craven showed current years SJW's how to make a movie about class and race that was actually entertaining with 'The People Under the Stairs'

Comedy
Remember when it was a huge genre back before comedy died?
I laughed my ass of pretty consistently in 91 at the likes of 'Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey' , the under-rated Robin Williams funny and poignant Terry Gilliam film 'The Fisher King' as well as Alan Parker's 'The Commitments'.

Indie cinema
91 was probably the year I started broadening my cinematic horizons watching indie movies for the first time. It gave us Richard Linklaters debut 'Slacker', the movie that convince me that anybody could make a movie if they wanted to. Van Saint's 'My Own Private Idaho' was heartbreaking. In the local arthouse theater I also caught documentaries like 'Hearts of Darkness' about the making of Apocalypse Now and foreign films like 'Raise the Red Lantern'