In the late '60's, early '70's, Hollywood made so many good movies.

[raccoon]

The Graduate
Easy Rider
Little Big Man
The Godfather
Midnight Cowboy
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Catch 22


There were lots of others. Part of it might have been the age I was then (young adult), but I don't think that's all of it. IMO, the movie that's worth seeing that Hollywood produces now is a rarity.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

1. Just saw Bonnie and Clyde ('67) yesterday.

[driver8]

2. We just re-mastered Bonnie and Clyde at work.

I got to see it a few times -- what a great movie!!

[Starbucks Anarchist]

5. Really?

I'd like to see that. The copy I had looked pretty good, but a re-master wouldn't hurt.

Also, the movie wasn't in widescreen, which surprised me. Is the re-master done in widescreen?

[driver8]

25. The re-master is in wide screen. n/t

[Starbucks Anarchist]

26. Good.

Maybe they can also fix the scene where Bonnie and Clyde visit Bonnie's mother.

The scene looked way too "sepia," I guess, and I don't think that was the intent, because it was very jarring compared to the rest of the movie.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

3. It's okay, I'm sure they will remake all of them in the next 5 years.

Apparently, we've run out of ideas, so we just are left with remaking old good ideas.

[devilgrrl]

4. Chinatown

:-)

[Starbucks Anarchist]

6. One of my favorites.

:thumbsup:

[Starbucks Anarchist]

7. The Conversation ('74) is great, too.

[acmavm]

8. Harold and Maude, Mash

[NewJeffCT]

9. Movie quality goes in cycles - I could say the same thing about the 50s

If you were a fan of movies in the 50s, you could decry the lack of quality since that time...

All About Eve
Sunset Boulevard
A Streetcar Name Desire
A Place in the Sun
An American in Paris
From Here to Eternity
Shane
On the Waterfront
7 Brides for 7 Brothers
Marty
Around the World in 80 Days
Giant
Bridge on the River Kwai
12 Angry Men
Witness for the Prosecution
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Ben-Hur
Diary of Anne Frank

[LibDemAlways]

10. I was thinking about that yesterday while

looking through the movie ads in the Sunday paper where you get to chose between crap and worse crap.

I was a teenager in the late 60's when a night out at the movies meant The Graduate or Bonnie and Clyde. Today those would be strictly "art house" films given a limited release while the multi-plex screens are taken up with action sequels and inane "comedies" produced on the cheap.

Pathetic.

[cemaphonic]

11. Nah, it's not just you

Most film historians rank the 70s right up there with the 30s and 40s as a golden age of filmmaking.

no "Taxi Driver" yet?

[BurtWorm]

12. A review of the latest Indiana Jones movie

pointed out that the first one was made at a time when Hollywood was making few "roller coaster" movies designed purely to get the pulse racing and make you want to go back again and again for another ride.

Now that's pretty much all Hollywood makes. :boring:

[redqueen]

13. First thing I thought of were the westerns...

esp. the ones that featured Ennio Morricone's musics. :7

[kineneb]

16. the "squint with Clint" westerns

totally kitsch, but at the same time, so good.

[yellowdogintexas]

14. The Sting nt

[Oeditpus Rex]

15. 'Carnal Knowledge'

And a rather unsung masterpiece, Jules Feiffer's "Little Murders."

[vi5]

17. I agree and I was only born in 1970....

..So my knowledge of that era's films is purely retroactive. But It was most definitely one of the best times for American movies. I'm sure I could think of many, many others as well. I forget the specific years but I also think Clockwork Orange, Cool Hand Luke, Rosemary's Baby....

[taterguy]

18. Read the book Easy Riders and Raging Bulls.

It's all about that era.

The gist of it is that the Golden Age of movies was between Easy Rider and Jaws.

Easy Rider demonstrated the profitability of indie movies.

Jaws started the trend of blockbusters.

[kineneb]

19. mid-60s, plus

more from my memory...
(there were also a lot of good "costume dramas" between ~1965-75)

Lion in Winter
The Great Race
All the Pink Panther movies with Peter Sellers + A Shot in the Dark
Paint Your Wagon
Anne of a Thousand Days
Three/Four Musketeers (1973)

and while not a movie (BBC series): Elizabeth R, with Glenda Jackson

[fishwax]

20. the 70s were certainly a golden age, but I think there are plenty of great films being made now

The late 60s and early 70s were a great time because Hollywood's systems of self-censorship and production/distribution monopoly were breaking down, which fostered an explosion of creativity.

I think the "Hollywood has run out of ideas" refrain is overblown. It's not as though those great films you've listed were ideas original to Hollywood--every one of them was adapted from a novel, except for BCatSK. Adaptations and remakes have been a part of Hollywood since its earliest days, and there's no reason such a project can't be creative in its own right. To be sure, there are plenty of hack movies being made these days based on older movies or other texts, but there were plenty of hack movies made in decades past as well. :)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. Three Days of the Condor--a "tame" thriller by today's standards

Klute
Annie Hall
Don't Look Now
Badlands
The Haunting

What they had in common was that you couldn't predict what was going to happen. They were stories you hadn't seen before.

Someone upthread remarked that a lot of those movies were made from books. Very true. But how may studios today could make a movie from a book without ruining it or jazzing it up with unwarranted special effects?

Compare and contrast The Haunting, 1960s version and 1990s version, both based on a work by Shirley Jackson.

The first low budget, black and white, and creepy in a way that the Blair Witch Project couldn't even dream of.

The second high budget and full of cheesy special effects and quickly forgotten.

[ceile]

27. that was on a couple of days ago

great flick!

[fishwax]

28. lots of studios do

Someone upthread remarked that a lot of those movies were made from books. Very true. But how may studios today could make a movie from a book without ruining it or jazzing it up with unwarranted special effects?

That was me :) Lots of great movies are still made from books. Three examples from the last year include Into the Wild, There Will Be Blood, and No Country for Old Men--the last two were nominated for best picture, and the first one should have been, imo.

The 1960s version of The Haunting is certainly better than the 1990s version (though I confess to liking the 1990s version more than most people did, for personal reasons), but that hardly proves the superiority of the 1960s to the 1990s, any more than the later versions of Ocean's Eleven, The Thomas Crown Affair, Batman, The Thin Red Line, Casino Royale, or Cape Fear prove otherwise. (Some of these are good in both incarnations.) At any rate, plenty of bad movies have been made in both eras; fortunately, there is plenty of good stuff too :)

[Lautremont]

31. That movie was very unrealistic!

I mean, the American government starting a war in the middle east over oil? Who would believe such a premise!

[mitchum]

22. Jaws,Star Wars, and Rocky killed off the golden age of hollywood movies

Jaws = summer blockbuster
Star Wars = juvenile entertainment with lots of marketing tie-in potential
Rocky = return of the corny, wholesome hero after all of those complex anti-heroes of the late 60s and 70s

[NewJeffCT]

23. The 80s had a lot of great movies

Ordinary People
Raging Bull
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Chariots of Fire
On Golden Pond
ET
Gandhi
The Verdict
Tootsie
The Big Chill
Terms of Endearment
The Right Stuff
Tender Mercies
The Killing Fields
Dangerous Liaisons
Amadeus
A Passage to India
Out of Africa
Kiss of the Spider-Woman
Tender Mercies
Platoon
Hannah & Her Sisters
A Room with a View
The Last Emperor
Field of Dreams
My Left Foot
The Empire Strikes Back
Do the Right Thing

[CJCRANE]

24. George Clooney agrees with you.

He chose his 100 favorite movies as being between 1964 and 1976:

http://www.clooneyfiles.com/index.php?id=209

[fishwax]

29. The Last Picture Show, and a few others I don't think have been mentioned yet

The French Connection
Mean Streets
Serpico
Dog Day Afternoon
Blazing Saddles
In the Heat of the Night
The Wild Bunch

[mitchum]

30. Also, "The King of Marvin Gardens" and "The Last Detail"...back when Jack Nicholson...

still bothered to act