I hate to break it to you, but most of the movies produced in ANY era fit this description.
It only seems like the older movies are better because only the best of the old movies have withstood the test of time and are still watched today.
That’s actually an excellent point. On some of my Roku channels (the free ones) you can watch any number of absolutely crappy movies from the 40s and 50s that haven’t been seen since-- and there’s a reason for that! The ones we know (and love) are the survivors…and the percent of memorable movies from the pool of all movies made in any year is probably comparable to what it was 50 years ago.
Read post #54?
I forgot to mention the influence of international box office (and China in particular) in my previous post.
Movies like the new Mummy film and PotC5 are domestic box office bombs. But they will come out ahead due to overseas money.
So stupid, mindless, action-heavy, dialogue-light movies are a major thing. Chinese viewers don’t give a crap about RT ratings.
This trend has nothing to do with the viewer being old or young. The international market is growing rapidly and the studios cater to it.
I also mentioned earlier how streaming makes it easier to access good, smaller films. But there’s cause and effect. A lot of small films now just have a token 2 theater or so release, if that, and then straight to streaming. So you’re unlikely to find such movies playing at the few quality movie houses in your area.
Again, this is a trend that has nothing to do with viewers being young or old.
Yeah, charging the same to see any movie in the cineplex doesn’t make much sense when one took 100 times as much money to make than the other. But it’s too hard for them to enforce people going into different movies than the one they bought tickets for, so the lower budget story-and-character driven films don’t really get much attention at the box office because no one wants to spend the kind of money they need to charge because of the huge blockbusters that people might sneak in to.
I really just started watching/enjoying/judging old moves vs new movies in this past few decades
Old movies, new movies, they all have some crap.
Wish I could still get TCM, at times.
I dont think todays actors/movies can compare to the older movies/old actors
I dont like too many of the subtitled movies. A lot of the remakes are crap. There are remakes never to be seen again (I’d like to see Miracle on 44th st, the one with David Hartman, its my favorite Miracle on 44th st)
(Dont like the without dialog movies)
There are a few real old ones I like such as “It happened one night” and a few others I cant recall the name
Cary Grant and Gary Cooper had many good movies
Who could you compare the new actors with the past actors
As in John Wayne, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Gregory Peck, Lucille Ball, Ava Gardner, Gene Tierney the list goes on and on
These days is there only a handful of comparables…Harrison Ford, John Forsythe, Brian Keith, Sean Connery
Even newer, could you compare Don Johnson, Sandra Bullock, Kevin Costner, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone
Will the movies of the last few decades fare as well as the movies from 40’s 50’s60’s and 70’s?
(Now that I looked for them, there are a lot of comparables, probably depends on your age)
at this point all I can say is that children’s movies have come a long way in quantity and there are too many cartoon character movies for adults
Thank you.
Going just by superhero (which is what most people think about when you mention comic books) movies it’s even less than 10 or 12. We’re getting five this year: Wonder Woman and Justice League from D.C. and Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Thor: Ragnarok from Marvel. That’s five out of how many?
Am I in the minority by liking movies from all eras? 
I’m just as pumped for the new Thor movie as I am for the latest from Aki Kaurismaki.
I agree with the OP I am not crazy about the new movies today ,they relies on special effect way too much and the background noises made it really hard to hear what being said if there are no CC on TV . I use to be able to go the movies theaters
when I was younger and hear most of what being said but not anymore .
Battlefield Earth is probably the most infamous semi-recent example. Roger Ebert had this to say regarding the use of Dutch tilt in the movie:
Get Off of My Lawn!!!
I’ve been very disappointed in the quality of movies over the years. and it seems like a team effort to make them suck. The plots are weak and the actors are forced to play to imaginary CGI effects. And for reasons I don’t understand the sound dubbed in has to vary from zero to 40 on a scale of 10. I’m not going to sit here and declare older movies the end all of visual art but I will say they were made with a greater level of skill that is rapidly becoming a vanishing art form.
I would rather watch any of the TV series Star Trek Enterprise than the movie Star Trek Into Darkness. To me that movie sucked on so many different levels it was outright annoying. And that movie is leagues above many of the movies made in the last 10 years. Why the comparison? I think it shows you don’t need to spend a gazzilion dollars on CGI to make a good movie. Keep it visually simple.
Watched Wonder Woman the other day. Both my wife and I were bored. I recall her several years ago commenting that car chases - intended to excite you - bored her. And I remember watching the Transformers in a hotel room once, and I couldn’t figure out (or didn’t care to try hard enough to) what was happening. Then there is the apparent intentionally making dialogue hard to understand, either through mumbling, background music, or ambient noise.
Back to Wonder Woman - my thought was that I far prefer movies that are about people, rather than comic/fantasy. Well, that’s not necessarily true. Something like Cocoon, Contact, Alien, or Star Wars worked for me. But when EVERYTHING is ramped up to an incredible level like so many of today’s action/superhero films, I emotionally check out.
CGI can be very effective, but when excessive (in my assessment), I almost feel like I’m watching a cartoon (which is not my personal preference.)
So, to the extent I prefer older movies, it is because they seem to more believably present humans in more human scale situations.
Honestly, this is one of the (many) reasons I so loved “Moonlight” - it is brilliantly crafted cinema, really quite technically brilliant (it was robbed of the Oscar for cinematography, in my opinion; it’s one of the best-filmed movies I have ever seen) but DOESN’T do the things you describe. The use of color, camera movement, sound (or silence as needed) and mise-en-scene is original, clever and very particular, but it uses no whiz-bang nonsense to blow your eyes and ears out of your head. The director, Barry Jenkins, doesn’t report to CGI to distract you; he moves his camera, chooses his music and sounds, and takes all his shots in a way that MEAN something. It looks very modern but in a lot of ways it’s more reminiscent of the fine, cutting edge work of the 70s than most movies today. If you haven’t seen it, holy crap, see it.
The thing is, there are other movies like that out there. They just don’t have the advertising budgets the big, stupid Marvel movies have. You need to know where to look. Hell, use the Oscar lists as a guide - in addition to "Moonlight, “Hell or High Water” was a marvelous movie that few people have seen. It’s just a fabulous movie. “Hidden Figures” was not at that level but was pretty good, too. Both films are short on the whiz-bang and long on story, characterization, and the use of cinema as a vehicle for delivering ideas and emotions through images and sound, rather than overwhelming your senses. Those movies are out there.
Here’s to your nice bright colors
Gives us the greens of summer
Makes you think all the world is a sunny day, oh yeah
I’m a big fan of silent movies, black and white movies and film noir. I’ve heard most of these complaints before. Honestly I’ve never noticed any of these things.
As much as I like Metropolis or the original The Day the Earth Stood Still, I also enjoy watching the latest Star Trek or Star Wars movie.
I have to admit though that the recent surge of films that were designed to look as if they were filmed with handheld cameras is annoying.
I’m not a fan of these older movies, per se. But I am not a fan of all this camera movement, either. It’s intrusive, since I’m clearly sitting still, but things are apparently moving. It can be a useful technique, and the only way to convey certain things, but the default should be to not move the camera. I’d much rather see you cut, so that the movement is instantaneous.
Because of this, I find myself not actually watching movies much anymore. I get what I can out of the Internet. I don’t watch TV much, either. And not in a Netflix way. I mean, I’d rather watch Internet video. They don’t have the budget to do all this fancy shit that is so distracting.
I may not like the slowness of older stuff, but I would love a return to the cinematography of old.
As for CGI–just stop assuming it’s the only way to do things. Sure, there’s a lot of CGI none of us notice. So just use that CGI. The budget needed to try and render that stuff in CG is better spent on models and practical effects. Just add CG on top of that.
Mama don’t take my two strip technicolor away!
I like old movies AND new movies. Nothing wrong with that. Nor does CGI look bad. It’s getting very good. However, they do need to tone down the loud music. I often take ear plugs to movies as a result.
One of my favorite authors wrote a review of a science fiction movie, and her main complaint was how insanely loud the sound was.
It was Ursula Le Guin, reviewing Close Encounters of the Third Kind, written about 30 years ago.
Loud scores aren’t new.