Reply With Quote
let me guess. terminator, matrix and i'll take........ anic for $500, alex!
what?!?!?!
no Jacob's Ladder? that movie is way better than a handful of those listed. i hate saying it, but it's a very under rated movie. twelve monkeys? what a snorefest.
let me guess. terminator, matrix and i'll take........ anic for $500, alex!
Rarely does an actor or a movie live up to the hype when it gets tons of buzz, but Heath Ledger in Dark Knight was amazing. I saw it because it was Batman but I thought, "No way is Heath Ledger that good."
I'm glad to say I was wrong.
My personal fav on that whole list is Figth Club but all I have to say is this: Leon (aka The Professional), FTW.
Movie was ing awesome.
I can tell you one thing about the 90s, definitely the decade of Tom Hanks. I mean, Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and Saving Private Ryan. What a lineup.
Brad Pitt's jawline too strong?
It just sucked.
I chortled.Brad Pitt's jawline too strong?
This is one of the most ridiculous arguments I think I've ever seen here. Every single decade since the invention of motion pictures, every single one, has had both amazing and horrible movies.
Did Thom Yorke not enjoy it?
I guess not.
I did enjoy other mainstream movies, though. I didn't go in expecting to hate it, or love it. I just left extremely underwhelmed. Maybe I just have to watch it again,. Maybe it was 2deep4me. But the one time I watched it, I ing hated it.
I'm not a horror person, generally, but I've heard nothing but good about it.
This discussion has merit. I think it's possible to determine if a specific decade was better than another.
I think the 90s was clearly stronger for American Cinema, on both the Hollywood and Independent fronts, than the 00s.
Foreign Cinema is much harder to determine since there's so many, but my instincts are leaning toward the 00s being the stronger decade.
Possibly, but... to what end?
And we certainly can't do it here. To definitively determine which decade was better, it would require a specific list of criteria as well as that those of us debating had a working knowledge of every film released within each decade. But, we don't. So this topic can't be anything more than idle musings and arguing tastes.
using decades as markers for eras in film is re ed tbh.
French New Wave is one of the most influential eras of moviemaking, but you couldn't classify that as 50's or 60's cuz it bled into both decades.
I would agree with that. Would also suggest that decades are too broad for such a conversation. Dramas, thrillers, and comedies may have all had their strongest moments within different decades, for instance.
The public tend to be ignorant when it comes to judging really great cinema, so the IMDb Top 250 is invalid. The fact that Kick-Ass ranks higher than Ikiru proves this. If it entertains them, chances are it will be rated high.
I'm not trying to be a snob, I just simply don't believe in the concept that all opinions are created equal. Sure, you can't empirically prove that one work of art is better than another, so it would seem that someone's opinion is just as valid as the next person's, but I never bought that idea.
A film critic who's spent his career watching, studying, and writing about film will have a far more informed and intelligent opinion about cinema than a soccer mom who takes her kids to go see Toy Story 3, or a frat boy who thinks The Hangover, Superbad, and The Pineapple Express should be canonized as some kind of cinematic holy trilogy, so I don't understand why I should consider their opinion on the same level as an Ebert, Pauline Kael, or Dwight Macdonald.
Last edited by midnightpulp; 07-24-2010 at 08:45 PM.
Even though the French New Wave "officially" started in 1958, its best films came in the 60s, and many of the films had a distinct 60s/Hipster (the real hipsters, not the s we were talking about the other day) counterculture atmosphere to them.
I partially agree that trying to pigeonhole eras into decades is a useless endeavor, but setting parameters makes these discussions a bit easier to approach. After all, film critics do put out their best decade lists at the end of a decade.
I would guess only about 1000-2000 films (from Hollywood, Indie, B movies, and foreign) worth watching are released any given decade, so for someone who watches a lot of film, it's possible to have knowledge of the kind of films that were produced during a certain decade, maybe not complete knowledge, but enough to make an educated judgement.
Depends on what is being discussed.
A critic, film historian, or dedicated fan may have a deeper well to draw from in terms of reference or comparison. Or may be educated in concepts of film theory. Or perhaps even be educated in concepts of film technique and the technical aspects of composition and cinematography. All of which may lead to a deeper understanding of a film being definitively good or important. Sure.
But everyone is an expert of their own opinion and tastes. If someone tells you they enjoyed the out of Sahara, or that it was legitimately one of their favorite films, you'd have no basis to call them wrong. Crazy, maybe, but not wrong. That's what imdb rankings are all about. More than likely, people give something 10/10 stars because that's how much they enjoyed it, rather than as a suggestion that _________ is really one of the best films ever made. Dubious as an indication of quality, but impossible to argue as an indication of popularity (amongst those who saw the film and took the time to vote, of course).
But how would you be able to determine what was "worth watching" if you hadn't also sat through those that weren't?
This is where I value common sense and even IMDb ratings. It would be pointless to watch all the straight-to-video horror and erotic thriller releases from the 90s and the straight-to-DVD releases of the same genres from the 00s just for the sake of comparison. I don't think determining which decade was better or worse in the C-movie Horror/Erotic Thriller genres goes very far in "proving" if a certain decade had better cinema than another.
Of course I wouldn't. Stating something is their "favorite," which implies subjectivity, is much different than stating something is the "greatest of all-time," which implies objectivity, and if they stated the latter, I would be justified in calling them wrong.
Great.
But then that's not determining, definitively, which decade had better movies across the board, as you claimed to be possible. That's merely deciding which decade was more in line with your own personal tastes.
I would say that The Edge is an underrated movie from the 1990s. Anthony Hopkins saying "motha a" in the movie makes the movie a classic in my opinion. Equilibrium was an underrated movie from the 2000s. A bad thing about the 2000s is the decrease and decline of quality action movies. A lot of people think it's because of 9/11 and I think that has a lot to do with it. The 1990s had a ton of great action movies. Action movies weren't that abundant during the last decade.
It's possible. But it would be something that would take a large team of informed critics/moviegoers to accomplish.
That said, I still think a single person can make an educated decision by watching anywhere from 25% to 50% of the movies produced during any given decade, and reading about, researching the others.
I just don't see the point in comparing the bottom feeding, low-budget genre releases, which probably account for 50% of movies produced in the industry. They're pretty much all the same with similar artistic quality, and I've seen thousands of those movies. And if 90s camp fare and midnight movies are better than their 00s counterparts, I just don't see the end result having that big of sway toward a decision one way or the other.
It's kind of like trying to determine which city has the best dining. You're not going to waste your time sampling every Jack-N-The-Box, McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Del Taco, etc.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions