I'm watching Dante's Peak (1997), a volcano flick starring Pierce Brosnan.
The colours are just so wonderful -- it's like being outside in real nature.
Whereas with modern movies things seem really washed out. The filming is crisp, and the composition is usually good, but it feels like you're living in a claustrophobic world. Modern movies feel a lot like living in 1984.
Is this the difference between film/digital? Or are people choosing different colour palates?
The huge amount of people that praise the graphics in CoD and other AAA titles says that those things are often one and the same.
Reality is Unrealistic X Prefers the Illusion.
The farther away from nature/reality humans get, the more they think their impressions of How Things Should Be seem more real than reality itself.