The 80s were kind of dry compared to the 70s and 90s but you still got....

Blade Runner, Aliens, Repo Man, Spinal Tap, Scarface, Full Metal Jacket, Robocop, Empire, They Live, Terminator, Thing, Raiders, Shining, Angel Heart, Blues Brothers, Die Hard, Predator, Re-Animator, Return of the Living Dead

What else have I missed?

I hate.to say it, and to each his own, but most of those listed didn't do a heck of a lot for me. I was thinking of more mainstream comedie/drama/comi g of age bullcrap though. I never watched the breakfast club and have no plans to. Having just seen the trailer for some movie with Demi Moore and Rob Lowe invoked an intense hatred for her in particular. I actually have watched Ferris Buehler's Day Off 3 - 4 times, but the last time, a few months ago left me feeling silly for wasting 2 hours of precioua tme.

The 80s sucked bro. Some of the music was exceptional though. Some was awfully awful.

Sounds like a 'chick flick'. Those are only fun if you have an actual chick on your arm.

Well head bangers weren't watching stuff like that, but all the preppirs, yuppies, whatever were. Those are iconic 80s movies. Which is why the 80s were vomit inducing.

My tastes are eclectic .

There are a lot of movies I like from 70s and 80s (and the 90s) . Some would qualify as works of art, some as entertaining time wasters or tear jerkers or even utter crap (due to script, acting, production values, etc ).

My favorite sub-genre is actually late 70s to mid 80s (mainly Italian) produced exploitation films (horror, sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, etc ), which would mostly qualify as well assumed guilty pleasures . I like Roger Corman and John Hugues movies too. I also appreciate more mainstream classics like Taxi Driver, Blade Runner, Tron, Dune, Driving Miss Daisy, Dead Poets Society, Evil Dead, Cinema Paradiso, Videodrome and lots of others, in no particular order (though Cinema Paradiso and star Trek II hold a special place in my heart).

I tend to find fewer newer films to be to my liking, but some are really good too. IMHO, this is generally a good thing as it reduces my need to buy more movies (I already have most of what I want).

Movies can be enjoyed on many levels, just like music . Captain Beefheart, Beethoven, the Beatles, Tangerine Dream, Iron Maiden, The Spice Girls and Tiny Tim, for example, can all be appreciated (or despised) by a given person for altogether different reasons .

Maybe there's even someone who likes the works of both Uwe Boll and Akira Kurosawa (OK, maybe that's a stretch)?

Just my two cents of an opinion .

What burns my butt more then anything is when a medium panders to an (especially young) demographic. The 80s exemplified this. I was also a somewhat non fan of extremely popular comic characters, like Spiderman, for although he wasn't a ****ing teenager as in the latest movies, he was college aged at his inception and it just seemed.off to me, as a pre-teen.

You know a lot of crap was made in those days too, we just tend to remember the good stuff.
I remember watching a lot of Hitchcock movies but honestly I found a lot of his earlier work stiff and wooden.
Gone with the winds? The rope? Citizen Kane? No thanks!
Sure there is good old movies but there are still good movies being made, you just need to look for them and not rely on mainstream studios to put out anything worthwhile.

And the eighties had Ghostbusters and Robocop! /thread

Citizen Kane w/Orson Wells? If that's the one that took place in divided up Germany just after the war, it had elements that were interesting. I may be thinking of a different movie. But you're right there was a lot of old crap, unecessarily held up as artwoek.

What's clear about those 80's movies is that nude boobies weren't a problem back then.

also D.A.R.Y.L.

edit: and The Black Hole, Logans Run, THX1138 ... i'll probably think of some more later

chris2021 wrote on 2022-04-03, 17:38:

If that's the one that took place in divided up Germany just after the war, it had elements that were interesting. I may be thinking of a different movie.

You are thinking of The Third Man with Wells as Harry Lime and Joseph Cotton as Holly Martins.

Yeah I'm just waking up. It's embarrassing I didn't remember that. Although the movie, as I recall, wasn't all that tremendous, it had a mystique to it. Even the title.

Edit: actually in the divided Berlin.

Although I like Bruce Willis,.a movie with a cult following that I think is a poc is Pulp Fiction. Parts of the ending were funny (when Honey Bunnie stammers "shut up"), but I've pooped better cinematic material.

I have to amend what I've said earlier now that I've thought about it. PF is a twisted poc. Which isn't at all in contradiction to what I've said.

I feel somewhat similar about recent movies. There are very few I enjoy from the last 10 or so years. Most of them are just 3hrs long CGI noise with fundamental writing issues. And not just the comic book movies. Also a lot of the now popular actors just lack charisma compared to stars from the stars of the 60s to 90s.

More then a few.of the recent Marvel movies are stinkers, but as far as action/sci-fi the movie to beat was Terminator 2. And Captain America the Winter Soldier matched or beat it. T2 is much earlier, so we can only imagine what a modern rendering would look like. It certainly was intense when it came out. But CA2 and CA3 (which was really Avengers 2.5) were craxy good.

T2 and Winter Soldier are a bad comparison. Those are fundamentally different movies. But Winter Soldier is indeed one of the better recent movies. 67 out of my 100 highest rated movies are made made before 2000 while only 6 from 2010+.

You realize that someone who turned 18 in 1950 will be 90 this year?
My grandparents were older but we didn't discuss movies that much. Especially my mom's father had other defining experiences in his youth.

My dad was born in 1938 and he used to mention "On the Waterfront" (1954) or "From Here to Eternity" (1953) as examples for "they don't make them like they used to any more".

I'd say many of the old ones had abysmal production value and wooden acting. But some had exceptional dialogue. I personally swear by "Casablanca" which isn't exactly an insider's tip.

But much of today's respect for the classics will be "survivor's bias" - I'm sure there was quite a bit redundant, mediocre crap made back then, we just don't remember it. Mind you, before TV, any movie was cinema, so imagine todays silly made-for-TV fare on the big screen, but with worse sound and lighting.

The 80's particular sin might be that American marketing discovered teenagers as a now fully solvent and relevant demographic for the first time. Not only would they tolerate a lot of uninspired fillers, they'd finance some of them on their own. And breakthroughs in special effect made it possible to fill a movie with them instead of a solid script.
So, while people like Stanley Kubrick made brilliant movies through the ages, there simply was a much larger market and free budget for a lot of generic shite in between. And, thanks to the media-advertising-complex, chances are, that was what we discussed in the school yard or watched on VHS...

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-04-03, 18:39:

T2 and Winter Soldier are a bad comparison. Those are fundamentally different movies. But Winter Soldier is indeed one of the better recent movies. 67 out of my 100 highest rated movies are made made before 2000 while only 6 from 2010+.

They roughly fall into the intense action/sci-fi genre. I can't see how they're so dissimilar. Comparing either to Star Trek TMP might be off, but not even so much. Either could be compared to Star Wars for instance the way I see it.

Not to say the original 3 SW weren't good, even great. I'm just a nit picker when it comes to the sci fi genre. SW was more of a deviant sci-fi/swords and sorcery hybrid anyway.

In it's own unique category, T2 was pretty close to perfect. The ending was a bit too touchy feely. CATWS was an extraordinary cinematic experience, unparalleled in it's own way. Was it perfect? Well the ending was ok, but left a bit to be desired. Again a bit too touchy feely. They just made the character a little to mainstream. They should have went all the way and had him wearing a Obama/Biden 2012 pin on his chainmail.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-03, 20:17:

You realize that someone who turned 18 in 1950 will be 90 this year? My grandparents were older but we didn't discuss movies tha […]
Show full quote

You realize that someone who turned 18 in 1950 will be 90 this year?
My grandparents were older but we didn't discuss movies that much. Especially my mom's father had other defining experiences in his youth.

My dad was born in 1938 and he used to mention "On the Waterfront" (1954) or "From Here to Eternity" (1953) as examples for "they don't make them like they used to any more".

I'd say many of the old ones had abysmal production value and wooden acting. But some had exceptional dialogue. I personally swear by "Casablanca" which isn't exactly an insider's tip.

But much of today's respect for the classics will be "survivor's bias" - I'm sure there was quite a bit redundant, mediocre crap made back then, we just don't remember it. Mind you, before TV, any movie was cinema, so imagine todays silly made-for-TV fare on the big screen, but with worse sound and lighting.

The 80's particular sin might be that American marketing discovered teenagers as a now fully solvent and relevant demographic for the first time. Not only would they tolerate a lot of uninspired fillers, they'd finance some of them on their own. And breakthroughs in special effect made it possible to fill a movie with them instead of a solid script.
So, while people like Stanley Kubrick made brilliant movies through the ages, there simply was a much larger market and free budget for a lot of generic shite in between. And, thanks to the media-advertising-complex, chances are, that was what we discussed in the school yard or watched on VHS...

There's a lot to take in here. I'll just leave it at stating 2 of my faves are Thin Man and TM2. I used to have the hots for Myrna Loy anyway, especially in later years she had sufficient stuffing in all tne right places. But I used to absofreakinglutely adore those 2 movies arounf Christmas time. The scene where the rich heiress.is watching him shoot the baloons with the bb gun she bought him for Christmas is beyond priceless!

chris2021 wrote on 2022-04-03, 04:10:

I hate.to say it, and to each his own, but most of those listed didn't do a heck of a lot for me. I was thinking of more mainstream comedie/drama/comi g of age bullcrap though. I never watched the breakfast club and have no plans to. Having just seen the trailer for some movie with Demi Moore and Rob Lowe invoked an intense hatred for her in particular. I actually have watched Ferris Buehler's Day Off 3 - 4 times, but the last time, a few months ago left me feeling silly for wasting 2 hours of precioua tme.

The 80s sucked bro. Some of the music was exceptional though. Some was awfully awful.

St. Elmo's Fire I believe is the movie you're referring to with Rob Lowe and company i.e. "the brat pack"

American films.. What did my grand grand father say? Hm. Oh yes! I remember! Something like this:
"I know American films! Some guys have tussles, some dude lands in the watering place and the hero gets the pretty girl, which always is around!"
He must have been thinking of the average western movies. That nails it. Pretty accurate, I think. 😂

Edit: And I'm not kidding. True story.
When I was little, my grandma told me about what her dad said when she was young, too.
So it fits perfectly into that time frame.
Her father was born ~1905 or so.