Favorite decade for movies?

I remember watching Rebel in one of my high school classes. We couldn’t figure out what was so cool about it. We were like, “oh, he’s yelling at his parents. Big whoop.”

 

Worked on my college paper with him. Good dude.

 

For comedies, it has to be the 80s:

Airplane
Caddyshack
Stripes
Ghostbusters
This is Spinal Tap
Vacation
Trading Places
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Sixteen Candles
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Raising Arizona
Naked Gun

 

I'd go with the 70s. The 90s were pretty solid, too.

 

The 70s were great for a few reasons - the Hayes Code was history, filmmakers had a free hand to explore issues that hadn't been seen in the movies before. Further - movies relied on storytelling rather than special effects and stunts were all very real - no CGI.

 

The 1970s changed how movies were made, how we watched them and who watched them. This was the era of the independent filmmaker working outside the studios and finding success. This is was the first black directors really got the opportunity to tell their stories about their experiences. This is when you saw the first Asian actors find movie exposure (ok, it was in “karate” flicks, but still it was a start.) It was when you started to see women in roles that weren’t just as damsels in distress, shrews or sex objects. Of course, millennial film critics rip this era for not being “woke” without realizing this was the era that helped push for “wokeness.”

 

70s

You can’t make a lot of those movies today.

 

Realized I've never seen All That Jazz - that will be corrected. And how did I miss the guy playing Roy Schieder/Joe Gideon in the All That Jazz scenes in Fosse/Verdon was Lin Manuel-Miranda?
Roy Schieder was so good, but he had the misfortune of appearing in films where other actors won Oscars.

 

Tootsie
Beverly Hills Cop
A Fish Called Wanda

 

The bad part about 1970s movies was a lot of those films are sloooowwww. They used their newfound creative freedom to master the art of 60-second establishing shots of a car pulling up to a house and somebody walking inside.

 

I actually watched Heaven's Gate (at least one version of it) and yeah, it had too many strands and scenes that were overly elaborate for what they contributed to the final product. But I also think '70s movies showed that you could have scenes with minimal dialogue that really worked.

 

80's movies kicked ass.