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Best decade for movies?


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I'm going to say the 80s. John Hughes, Spielberg at his best, Die Hard, Richard Donner bringing his best, the era of truly horrible but fun action stars, Stallone's fall from potentially great (Rocky, First Blood) to king of cheese. Which is another great thing about the 80s, there's a high level of enjoyable cheesiness that disappeared as the film industry moved on. Now bad films are really trying to be good, and it just makes them that much worse.

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I agree with both of you. However Id ponder just how much cheating it is to include the late 70s through mid 80s, with my initial instinct to say it isnt much at all. Im one to side with the idea that a cultural decade tends to be born in the lates of the previous numerical decade and then ends in the same way as a new cultural decade begins.

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'89 alone would make a good argument for the 80's:

 

Batman

Last Crusade

Dead Poets Society

When Harry Met Sally

Do the Right Thing

Little Mermaid

Say Anything

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Ghostbusters 2

Field of Dreams

Major Leage

Christmas Vaction

Glory

UHF

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A poll like this will almost always correlate to when the people voting were of a certain age.

I don't know about that. I was alive, but not very aware of cinema in the late 70s.

 

The late 80s are definitely strong, but the late 70s were a period when everything that had been standard with movies changed.

 

In 76 alone you have Carrie, Rocky, Taxi Driver, and Network, movies that changed how cinema worked. The shift really started to happen in the late 60s, when the studio paradigm was being challenged. That set the stage for all the auteurs and new wave of young rebels came in the 70s-- Coppola, Lucas, Scorsese, DePalma, Donner, Spielberg, etc.

 

Sure some of the best movies we as geeks love come from the late 80s, but the film buff in me has to recognize we wouldn't have got there had the late 70s films really paved the way.

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A poll like this will almost always correlate to when the people voting were of a certain age.

Not so much a poll as a thread for discussion, debate, and telling people they're stupid and have no taste.

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A poll like this will almost always correlate to when the people voting were of a certain age.

 

This is definitely true for music, but idk about movies. I mean, I came of age in the 90's, and I know full well that the Prequels, the Matrix, and a shit-ton of rom-coms for both teenage girls and adult women aren't exactly the most stellar examples of the craft.

 

Though, The Craft was an admittedly awesome movie.

 

I'd have to say The 80's, too. Not that I was old enough to watch the really good stuff in situ at the time, but it seems like that was the last time big studios wanted to do really risky stuff for art's sake.

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A poll like this will almost always correlate to when the people voting were of a certain age.

 

This is definitely true for music, but idk about movies. I mean, I came of age in the 90's, and I know full well that the Prequels, the Matrix, and a ****-ton of rom-coms for both teenage girls and adult women aren't exactly the most stellar examples of the craft.

 

Though, The Craft was an admittedly awesome movie.

 

I'd have to say The 80's, too. Not that I was old enough to watch the really good stuff in situ at the time, but it seems like that was the last time big studios wanted to do really risky stuff for art's sake.

 

I actually think the opposite, at least for me. I was born in 77 but all of my favorite musical artists are from the 60s. With movies though there are many from my childhood that I love which I know if a similar movie came out now I'd have zero interest in it.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Hard to say when you don't specify the genre, but for sci fi, fantasy, and horror, I have to say the 1980s overall, if you go by 19x0-19x9.

 

Seems to me that more often than not, the remake or re-imagining or revival films in the last decade and a half are usually based on movies from the 1980s. Something good must have happened in the 1980s for that to be true.

 

 

I'm going to cheat and say 76-86.

I couldn't argue much with that but Fozzie does make a case for 1989 alone, too. But at the same time, you had some great sci fi films come out of the 1960s and 1970s, too.

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Unless there's a Spider-Man movie I don't know about. In which case I want to know.

 

There was a Captain America movie in 1990. It was awful. Even as a kid I knew it was bad.

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I figured the only director with clout enough to get something like a Spider-Man film done would be Spielberg (historical note: Cameron tired in the 90s and couldnt) and then when it comes to a teen/college aged 1980s Peter Parker there was only one obvious star to call. Plus Zemeckis and Spielberg were close, so theres that connection.

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Two spring immediately to mind, but without much evidence to support it:

 

That renaissance/indie/new wave in Hollywood that began in the late 60's into the 70's.

 

The rise and resurgence of the smaller studios into the 90's, like those from Miramax.

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