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How do!

Yes it’s another movie thread, but a specific one, as I want you to tell me your favourite era or time period of movie making, and of course why.

The why needn’t be an essay or owt, but even a little description goes a long way.

For me? Probably 1975-1995, with a particular focus on the 80’s.

Across most genres, you typically saw lesser censorship, so movies could show more violence, more swearing, more naughty adult time and that. Now I’m not in favour of those things purely for titillation, though watched sparingly yes even then. But when the boundary is pushed further, you’ve ever more wiggle room to ramp it up without it necessarily being gratuitous. And so fight scenes can be more realistic, whether or not the injuries shown are realistic.

And that allowed film makers to use that freedom to make absolute classics. Consider Alien, Aliens, Die Hard and even Predator. With stricter censorship, a lot of the best of those films just couldn’t be shown. And for those of a certain undisclosed vintage, we saw this in edited for television, where swears were dubbed (melon farmers!), scenes of violence were stripped down (mother father!) or removed entirely (fdamn!). Such edits, when done craftily weren’t too bad, but a hatchet hand could ruin the movie.

Now of course, that’s not to say there was No Censorship. And I don’t really advocate for that. But, when a greater amount of detail is permissible overall, you can at least film the scene as you want it, and then edit from there, rather than “yeah there’s no point filming it, because the censors will never, ever pass it”.

And I guess censorship guidelines also created loopholes, such as what’s allowed being contextual. So horrific gory deaths done in a campy way were more acceptable than the torture prawn of the 2000’s. And for horror, I genuinely prefer a slightly campy atmosphere and frankly implausible deaths. I feel encourages creativity. After all, whilst Hostel could by then get away with very explicit and gut churning acts, it still barely competes with the Friday the 13th Movies, because plausible “hey, they could happen to me” just isn’t as fun as say, death by being folded up hastily into sofa bed.

This of course lead to raft of boundary pushing Firsts - and an awful, awful lot of imitators. Some good, more often cheap and dreadful. And it’s that novelty that has lasted.

Look at Die Hard (which I’m watching right now, hence the thread). At its core? It’s a pretty simple linear story. But like Predator, it’s also a reaction to lazy action movies where our bullet proof hero never runs out of ammo and the baddies like to gather in easily taken out groups of sheer incompetence. Instead, we get an Everyman Cop who uses his wit and guile to take out the baddies, getting increasingly messed up as he goes. He even starts with simple attempts to get the powers that be there, namely setting off the fire alarm. And the baddies’ plan is a bloody good one! It also helps it’s incredibly well made, with barely an ounce of fat on its bones.

Predator starts as your standard Arnie fare, with his squad absolutely obliterating the evil commies/rebels/what have you, through superior skill, tactics and arms, and not a little Plot Armour. Then we see that self same squad of hardened lads get picked apart, one by one, by the titular creature, before it devolves into man vs beast traps and fisticuffs.

Maybe it’s the same reason I love Punk and what came after. A ripping up of the rules where a lot of stuff was tried, not all of it good, but when it was good, it changed the face of its world.

We also saw, particularly Post Star Wars, a boom in special effects up to and including CGI. That of course blew the doors off what was possible to include in your film. Now like changes in censorship, such toys weren’t always used responsibly. But when they were, we got so many great movies out of it, and again, many were, by necessity, Firsts.

But that’s my favourite era and some waffle about why. How about you?

As a fan of scifi - While the decades from the late '60s certainly have to be acknowledged as laying a lot of the groundwork and producing some of the seminal material, I think the late '90s/early '00s were where a lot of my favourites were released. It was a time where practical special effects had reached the point of being more widely accessible for filmmakers thanks to experience and increased budgets, and CGI was still new, and largely being used to enhance rather than replace (with notable exceptions like the Star Wars Prequels which - for all of their faults and despite their CGI aging like, well, CGI - were visually stunning when they were released).

The trick with naming a 'greatest' era of movies is that every era has it's collection of gems and classics... mixed in with lots of dross that is forgotten weeks after release.

Modern movies keep themselves to PG-13 for the larger market. Back before that was a thing, movies were more then happy to just cut loose and embrace the R. And were better for it.

 Nevelon wrote:
Modern movies keep themselves to PG-13 for the larger market. Back before that was a thing, movies were more then happy to just cut loose and embrace the R. And were better for it.

A quick check of the-numbers.com shows there were 144 PG-13 movies released in 2023, compared to 163 in 2013, 96 in 2003, and 49 in 1993.

Compared to 283 R rated movies in 2023, 372 in 2013, 197 in 2003, and 84 in 1993.

That's a pretty consistent ratio. So you might just be noticing more PG-13 movies because there are more movies being made in total, rather than because there are more of them being made instead of R rated movies...

Ratings are an interesting thing.

In the UK, we have….

Uc - suitable for all audiences, but particularly aimed at young children]

U - suitable for all audiences (mostly kids films, but can include documentaries) The original trilogy of Star Wars were rated U

PG - Parental Guidance. This is where more adult themes come in. Can contain violence, a couple of swear, sexual innuendo. Context is King to a PG Rating,

12a - Similar to PG13. Ages 12+ can watch it, but parents can make the call for younger kids. Applies only to cinema.

12 - Ages 12+ only. Applies only to home media

15 - Ages 15+ only

18 - Ages 15+ only

R18 - DIRTY BOY!

Now, being uncomfortably into my 40’s, I’ve not exactly kept tabs on what’s rated what these days. And honestly? Haven’t since I was 17.

But it’s worth noting the 12 rating came about in the late 80’s, as a middle ground between PG and 15. This allowed younger folk to legally see films with more mature themes. And I think it worked in terms of expanding what could and couldn’t be filmed.

Which I feel reflects my observation that the classics I love came at a time when ratings began to be more flexible, as well as censorship.

For instance, a relatively gore and violence free horror prior to a 12 rating would be a 15, or more likely, and 18. That middle ground added flexibility, and widened potential audience. If you wanted to go for a 12a certification over a 15? It could be as simple as changing out swears for not-swears, and nasty deaths for implied nasty deaths. Whereas there’s no way you could realistically trim a 15 down to a PG.

Indeed a bunch of films have been reclassified downward over the years, making the censorship more permissive. Notably, I was reading just the other day that Return of the Jedi has recently been reclassified PG, which is a step up. Still not gonna halt kids seeing it, but gives parents some, well, guidance on it.

Here in Oz, we have -

G - General
PG - Parental Guidance
M - Mature
MA 15+ - Mature Accompanied, 15 years and over
R 18+ - restricted to adults
X 18+ - restricted to adults, sexually explicit (not just porn, regular movies with explicit enough sex go in here as well)

There used to also be a 'C' class for stuff aimed specifically at young kids, but that seems to have been rolled into the G category somewhere along the line.

All of ours up to M are recommendations, while MA15+ and up are legally enforceable for cinemas and video game sellers. We don't have a PG-13 equivalent... those movies would either be rolled down into PG, or up into M here.

The thing about R rated movies, though, is that the vast majority of them are rubbish. They tend to be those movies that aim to shock rather than entertain. Flicking through a list of R rated releases for some random years through the '80s and '90s just now turned up a bare handful of titles that are actually worth watching.

Some of those handful are really, really good... but where R rated titles are concerned, they're definitely the exception, rather than the rule.

You’re just dismissing the entire oeuvres of Julie Strain, Shannon Tweed and Andy Sedaris out of hand. And that’s just not cool.

Not every film featuring a seductive sex therapist and her topless skateboarding partner going around blasting toilet snakes with rocket launchers is trash.

Oh those do have their place in my favoured era, because of lessened censorship.

Stalwarts of the video rental store. And in their start up days, Friday Night telly for Channels 4 and 5.

Cor, remember when Channel 4 was good, and adhered to its mission statement to air niche and minority interest stuff?

Before Friends, before T4 and its insufferably smug and multi-untalented, insincere cretins, before Big Brother.

 insaniak wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
Modern movies keep themselves to PG-13 for the larger market. Back before that was a thing, movies were more then happy to just cut loose and embrace the R. And were better for it.

A quick check of the-numbers.com shows there were 144 PG-13 movies released in 2023, compared to 163 in 2013, 96 in 2003, and 49 in 1993.

Compared to 283 R rated movies in 2023, 372 in 2013, 197 in 2003, and 84 in 1993.

That's a pretty consistent ratio. So you might just be noticing more PG-13 movies because there are more movies being made in total, rather than because there are more of them being made instead of R rated movies...

I’m running on gut checks and vibes, not hard numbers. Interesting to see them.

I think it might be that while studios might still be making R films, they don’t push them like they do the PG13. You don’t get the marvel media bliz. I might be also biased by the movies I watch. Action adventure used to be R. You had people getting shot, was not PG. Now that genre seems to be mostly in the PG13 range. Same with Fantasy.

PG13 you might have a brief flash of nudity, and only one F-Bomb per film. I find that this restricts how people talk, or you get contrived situations where they imply boobs, but never show anything due the camera angles and random objects. In a way that’s jarring to how reality works. People swear. Bodies exist. So when that pops up on screen, I feel the hand of the ratings board (or the director catering to them) break immersion. (I get that there are also other factors in play)

So old movies that just didn’t care could be more true to the story and world.

IMHO. Maybe I just like a nudity in my movies (gratuitous or not) without wanting to watch either horror movies (which are R anyway) or soft porn (which I feel sleazy watching, so don’t).

I think PG and other lower brackets also get "more marketing" because you are likely exposed to a lot more of it because it can happen in common places and hours. So it can fee like its everywhere and all that's being made because it really is being heavily bombarded at you.

And that fits; they can market during regular hours and on most formats so they do.

R rated films might not have much marketing until after watershed times on TV and online might be more restricted again. So you don't see as much of it unless you go looking for it or you're in groups that focus on those topics.




As for swearing and such yeah people swear; but lets face it most TV and even book talking and interacting is already different to how people converse in reality. All the ums and ahs and pauses are often missing. The rambling for 20mins about something entirely "off topic" doesn't happen unless they are making a point about the character being insanely absent minded.

Also worth noting a lot of R and 18 equivalent rating films are horror films. Famed for typically low if not outright shoestring budgets.

Advertising costs money, which adds to the overall budget. So there’ll come a point where the production budget is small enough that a media blitz just makes no sense.

If it’s good (good good, or good bad), Gorehounds will spread the word. And even if that means your big bucks come on home media and rentals? Even a relatively modest, limited release box office can see you in profit right off the bat.

Guess it’s all about targetting. Movie Studios will have the raw data to know which particular areas do good box office horror (to stick with my example). Let’s say, Lafayette usually accounts for a disproportionate amount of ticket sales for horror, and is home to a number of known and respected/infamous YouTubers and that. There? I’d target my ad budget in such an area, and let the audience do the rest, pushing to streaming ASAP.

60s, 70s, wide set, camera on a track' (moving), good musicals (man of la mancha for one), no chaos or overstimulating of senses.
Stories were generally aimed at teaching you something about nature or character in socialization, life skills, virtues such as modesty etc.
Even in epics the focus was on perseverence in the face of disaster and not some kind of invulnerable superhero like you see a lot in 80s and 90s.

Yeah, I can thankfully still find these movies, here's a few good ones;

the man who would be king
falstaff
lolita
the holy mountain and El topo (jodorowski, almost made a better first 'Dune' aswell, biggest shame that never happened ever)
the aforementioned 'man of la mancha' with Peter O'toole in his best role he ever did.

I have to say I can't really think of a greatest-age of cinema because each generation or period has its own ups and downs.

I will say that I feel like modern films have lost some of the cinematography. They can create amazing scenes with and without CGI; but I feel like the number of films that dominate your attention and make you watch is less.
A good example are the Bay Transformer films. There is insane CGI work going on with the transformers and in the battle scenes and explosions and such. So much going on its almost "sickeningly" too much to focus on at once. But you don't get anywhere near that same sense of awe and "cinema" as you might get in a Sergio Leone film where you might just be panning through a desert landscape with nothing happening.

In one style you can almost switch off watching and know what's happening by the sounds; in the other you can't switch off. It demands your attention the whole time.
The final moments in gunslinging in For a Few Dollars More demands that you watch it to know what's happening. If you turn away all it is is some neat music; but you watch it and you get swept along with that moment.

My issue with the line of thought is that modern films use too much CGI.

I f done correctly, you'll never notice. Most people, myself included at the time, never realized that one example of a film prolific use if CGI, where every scene had at least some bit of digital wizardry was a a Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway movie. Le Mis...

Because the actors were doing their own singing and the crew wanted to avoid boom mics, they had the cast wearing monitors and lapel mics. All of which were digitally erased in posy.

So some films are digitally enhanced, and it makes for a more rewarding moviegoers experience.

Late 90's and early 2000's are an interesting mixed bag. There's plenty of garbage and as a criticism, the garbage tends to lack the soul that makes 80's trash so endearing, but it's also an era where there's just a ton of movies made out of a desperate desire to get a film on screen.

We had amazing blockbuster franchises like LotR and Harry Potter that still hold up because everything couldn't be CG yet, but more importantly the Sundance scene was filled with ambitious, heartfelt films made possible by the success of things like Clerks and not quite the home of big starts looking to get an Oscar. The Matrix mostly spawned inferior imitations, but it also saw a huge improvement in cinematography and fight choreography.

There is a clear cut-off in my mind of when the studio system ended, was replaced with the mono-culture of 4 networks, and then the death of the mono-culture with streaming.

Each of those periods had their moments, but I do sort of miss the time when a movie or show could become part of the Culture. Now, media is too dispersed for that to happen and our society is lacking a unified culture and the counter-cultures revolting against it.

Instead, the "culture" has been replaced with Politics in lieu of Culture. Politics is now entertainment instead of Culture.

Therefore, my favorite period is, of course; when I was young because nostalgia glasses over all! Everything was new, I didn't know all the formulas and tropes, and when things could still surprise and shock me on the screen in a positive way!

FWIW, most studios have always been under the ownship of the big 4. They mostly just existed for branding purposes.

I think there's danger of rose-tinted glasses with these kind of things. Like how people say the 60s was so great for music because we're far enough removed from it to only remember the absolute best groups and songs. Nobody remembers the forgettable rubbish. That said, I think the 80s and 90s produced some pretty great movies, many of which are the template for future "good" movies. Maybe it's just my naivety, but it does feel like many more modern movies are produced by committee, with a lot more corporate interference to cater to as wide an audience as possible rather than just commissioning movies based on good story ideas.

A lot of the best action movies had real depth to them, too. MDG has already mentioned the contrast between the protagonists in Die Hard or Predator compared to the invulnerable death machines from previous eras. You also had movies like Robocop and Total Recall that had layers to them even though on the surface they seem like pretty straight-forward action movies. Notably, those are two movies that had remakes fairly recently that were absolutely terrible precisely because they tried to make just another action movie and completely missed the point.

I have to toss my two cents in and say the 1960 and 1970s. It was a glorious time where you could watch films that were made solely for the purposes of laundering money.



For example... look up the reason for spaghetti westerns.

The problem with a lot of remakes is they try to tell a different story. Many of us never grew up in the Bronks or the world that the original RoboCop was created in. Yet it sold the story of that world and setting with characters and so forth.

We didn't have to be there, we could imagine it.


The remakes try to tell different stories and that jars with audiences who know its a remake. It doesn't help that they many times tell a simpler/less interesting story or just pace themsleves poorly and get messed up.

Eg Total Recall went from colonies on mars to something about working on the other side of the Earth and going through a tunnel in the middle of the Earth or something (I kind of lost interest and forgot the rest). Basically it wasn't Total Recall in anything but name

 Overread wrote:
The problem with a lot of remakes is they try to tell a different story. Many of us never grew up in the Bronks or the world that the original RoboCop was created in. Yet it sold the story of that world and setting with characters and so forth.

We didn't have to be there, we could imagine it.


The remakes try to tell different stories and that jars with audiences who know its a remake. It doesn't help that they many times tell a simpler/less interesting story or just pace themsleves poorly and get messed up.

Eg Total Recall went from colonies on mars to something about working on the other side of the Earth and going through a tunnel in the middle of the Earth or something (I kind of lost interest and forgot the rest). Basically it wasn't Total Recall in anything but name

In back to the future the idea of a movie having sequels was still taken as a big joke, now its reality.
It's either sequels or remakes today, and when a new script is written you can tell on the lack of quality.

I know why that is though, scripts were once written out of experiences, but what experiences do modern writers have other than sitting in front of a laptop lol.

I'm going to be unpopular now but whilst I have great love for the movies I grew up with, the modern stuff is generally higher quality even in terms of script and not just in effects.

Like, I love Mad Max: Beyond The Thunderdome, but I think Fury Road was the objectively better film.

There are obviously outliers, like Starship troopers was incredible.

We've always produced absolutely garbage movies, since there's only realistically about 4 plots, but we've pretty much forgotten about the garbage movies from decades gone.



Edit: Remakes and sequels just to cash in on the name are almost always terrible.

It depends on the genre and how long you're willing to stretch out 'era.'

I think 1977-86 (10 year stretch) was just about the peak when it came to set design and physical special effects.

In that stretch you have Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Star Wars trilogy, Alien, Aliens, Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, The Wrath of Khan (and a couple other ST films),The Terminator, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom. Star Wars, Alien, Terminator, and Indiana Jones were all new IPs. Stretch it out to 1987 and you'd also fit in The Predator. Stretch it out to 1993 and you'd also add in Total Recall, Terminator 2, The Undiscovered Country, and Jurassic Park.

You also had great war films and epics during that time (77-93). Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, The Last Emperor, The Last of the Mohicans, Unforgiven, The Duelists. I think my personal 20-year peak would probably be something like 77-93 +/- 3 years in either direction (I'd have to dig to see which way would be ideal).

I'm seeing an ever so slight upwards trend recently.

Enough gakky CGI "blockbusters" crashed and burned that Hollywood is trialing lower budgets with good scripts again.

Slipspace wrote:
I think there's danger of rose-tinted glasses with these kind of things. Like how people say the 60s was so great for music because we're far enough removed from it to only remember the absolute best groups and songs. Nobody remembers the forgettable rubbish. That said, I think the 80s and 90s produced some pretty great movies, many of which are the template for future "good" movies. Maybe it's just my naivety, but it does feel like many more modern movies are produced by committee, with a lot more corporate interference to cater to as wide an audience as possible rather than just commissioning movies based on good story ideas.

A lot of the best action movies had real depth to them, too. MDG has already mentioned the contrast between the protagonists in Die Hard or Predator compared to the invulnerable death machines from previous eras. You also had movies like Robocop and Total Recall that had layers to them even though on the surface they seem like pretty straight-forward action movies. Notably, those are two movies that had remakes fairly recently that were absolutely terrible precisely because they tried to make just another action movie and completely missed the point.

To me it's not about the quality of movies but the technical aspect mainly, modern movies are too chaotic, with like 5 camera perspectives per second.
As I meandered before, the 60s-70s movies were generally filmed with a single camera on a rails and the set was static and thoughtfully arranged.

Today you even have drones flying around with cameras, and sets as we all know are adapted through CGI greenscreen, this is also a long standing gripe with acting when actors act to inanimate objects on sticks, compared to actual people or at worst entity props.

p.s. I did think movies like furiosa were better than the old mad max btw, sometimes its all done right despite the tech and chaos.

I have to say the whole "new camera angle every 5seconds" can be really annoying. You can see some youtubers even try to emulate it, the woman who did a bunch of GW videos around new editions and such would often have that "and now we randomly cut to a new angle where the focal point is her ear and then back to normal again" aspect to them.

It feels like it panders to the whole "people have short attention spans". Which to me today feels a lot like the whole "girls like pink boys like blue" marketing. Ergo a modest element got identified and then media hyper-fixated on it to such a degree that its all they do which thus makes it true and self reinforce because its all that they do/say

It’s very…..MTV, isn’t it?