I don't think it's possible to cite a single movie as "the last classic Hollywood type movie" where its focus was entertainment and had movie magic feel to it, but I do think you could make a general list.
Some I'd throw out there for me are Mask of Zorro (1998), the Transporter (2002), the first two Harry Potter films.
What about you guy's. What's your personal list of movies that were sort of the last of that era where movies felt like movies and had something special to them?
Lord of the Rings original extended trilogy (2001)
Gladiator (2003)
101 Dalmations (1961)
I'd have to say that Hollywood quit making real films in 2007 with "There Will Be Blood" and "No Country for Old Men."
Then came the Obama occupation and all the woke propaganda it brought with it. Nobody every wants to say it out loud. All this bullshit started with the Obama occupation. That's when the levee broke and we got flooded with interracial, anti-White, pro-LGBTQWERTY propaganda.
Maybe that’s when the levee broke, sure, but the flood had been building for decades before that moment. In an alternate timeline where we don’t get Obama, the timing is possibly different, but we do still get woke stuff, I’m almost sure of it.
Don’t worry, documentaries like Supersize Me & Jesusland were being made before 2007.
I can narrow it to an era rather than any specific movie, because half of everything that released in 1999 was great.
Then 2000 had even better films, some of the best ever made. Gladiator, Patriot, The Boondock Saints, some really enjoyable ones like Pitch Black and Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, but much of the rest were forgettable.
The peak film for me was the LoTR movies. As easily as I can critique every last detail that was off from the books, they are still epic and as close to the book in tone, style and content as any book conversion ever has been. And pedowood has produced nothing of equivalence since, and there is still absolutely nothing else like marathoning them on a big screen
After that, there were still good movies, but there was a steady decrease in both peak quality and overall quantity of "good" films each year.
While I did like the early superhero resurgence, purely for entertainment value, they certainly weren't on the same par as "good movies" and the best of them were actually released quite far apart. GOTG still sits in my personal top ten list, but purely because it's fun and visually entertaining, not because it's any Shakespearian contender.
I agree. I feel like LotR movies were the last movies with quotable quotes. You dont see that anymore, movie quotes entering into common usage and everyone knowing what they are even if they've never seen the movie.
I've tried many times to get into the LOTR movies. I go "surely THIS time I'll see what everyone else sees in them".
I just don't get it.
I like Fantasy movies, same as any genre if it's good, but LOTR's appeal alludes me.
Not trying to twist your arm to get you to like LotR, but I'm curious what fantasy movies do you like if not LotR? The genre was practically dead for years until LotR came along and jolted it awake. You like darker stuff like Excalibur? Or Jim Hensoney stuff like Labyrinth/Dark Crystal?
Neverending Story, Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Conan the Barbarian, Baron Munchausen, Time Bandits, Krull, some of the Harry Potter movies.
LotR, the dialogue and acting just is so off for me. It almost feels like the Star Wars prequels to me. Overly melodramatic, overly serious yet somehow corny performances with dialogue and writing that doesn't grab me.
It just isn't my thing.
While I am biased in terms of preferring weird fantasy over high fantasy, there are high fantasy (orcs, elves, wizards) that I enjoy such as Harry Potter (first two in particular) and others that I've forgotten about. I kind of put Conan the Barbarian in the high fantasy category as it's much more dungeons and dragon-y and more traditional in terms of fantasy and it's one of my favorite movies.
But there's something about LotR where I can't connect with it. There's a stuffiness to it and it presents itself as incredibly epic, but I don't resonate with the "epic grand scale" of it as much as I can tell the movie wants me to.
It's hard to explain. It's like trying to explain an intangible. I like all sorts of movies. I'm pretty wide in terms of my tastes and all that, but as much as I dislike all the Marvel MCU crap, I at least get it and see what the audience sees more than the LotR trilogy.
Sort of like the millennials love for the Star wars prequels. I'll never understand why those movies are still talked about and most video games Star wars mods for games anymore are of the prequel movies and not the originals for some reason.
It's a fundamental difference in taste.
See I'm the opposite, I don't like most fantasy, I find it corny, but LOTR speaks to me kn a different level. I believe this is because where most fantasy set out to copy or expand upon Tolkiens work, Tolkien never set out to write fantasy. He was a linguist, specifically in Anglo-Saxon Old English, and he lamented that the Norman's essentially eradicated Saxon mythology and that so little survived. So LOTR is his attempt to rectify that. It's not fantasy it's an English fairytale. In an early draft of the Silmarillion, am Anglo-Saxon warrior sales to Valinor to speak to the last elves who recount to him the stories written in his books. So Middle-earth isn't just another fantasy world but OUR world through the eyes of our ancestors. But I fully understand why people don't get into it.
Harry potter isn't really high fantasy...
Cool, thanks for elaborating. I like a lot of those movies too. You should watch Boorman's Excalibur if you haven't, although it's less 'fun' than any of those. Also has a lot of classic British and Irish actors before they went on to other things.
Funny enough some of your criticisms of LotR sound a bit like the way Tolkien himself sometimes gets criticised - overly stiff and stuffy, impersonal, more focused on the grand scale in a way that's a turnoff for some people... I seem to remember some modern author - can't remember which - saying 'Tolkien's landscapes have more character than his characters'. Which I don't agree with but I can see where the criticism originates, even while liking the books and movies. But it might be a mark of Jackson faithfully adapting the spirit of the books, if they evoke similar criticisms from those who don't click with it.
Yeah, Excalibur is one I intend to watch because I've only seen the trailer for it, but it looks like my sort of thing.
LotR in general suffers a bit from having defined a genre, if you've spent your whole life taking in what's been built upon it from every conceivable angle, when you finally get to what set the standard all the elements and plot points feel cliche and simplistic.
I saw them in theaters. I'm 32. I didn't really like them then and that never changed for me upon rewatches.
Well then, to each their own.
Try watching them stoned. A good A/V setup is required too. It just isn't the same from a small screen.
Saving Private Ryan. WWII movie where the focus isn't all about Jews, and where some of the Germans are pretty humanised.
Still had Adam Goldberg hanging around.
At least he had a good death.
The demarcation point isn't in action or drama films. You can really tell when the woke mind virus completely infected Hollywood because it was that which made them terrified to produce any actually funny comedies. After Get Him To The Greek and Horroble Bosses, which weren't hysterical but at least had their actually funny points, not a single real, funny comedy has been released by a single Hollywood studio. Not one. They're terrified of it.
Remember when action movies had huge dudes in them, and not 90 lbs girls throwing people around? And boobs used to be in movies.
Another great genre from 80s and 90s is the slasher
Tropic Thunder was the last funny Hollywood movie
Their "comedy" films were always just back door propaganda vehicles.
People forget Hollywood is a union town.
There isn't and never has been any real art there. If they do produce it it is by accident and often censored or cut in response. They will not let an honest picture exist.
LOTR Trilogy, Inception, or any blockbuster before the 2010s when you reallly started to get beat down about diversity and inclusion in entertainment
Inception and almost any other Nolan film is a good choice, outside of Tenet. Tenet is bad. I like Interstellar as well.
I enjoyed Tenet quite a bit, but I enjoy that kind of sci fi and thought the concept was neat.
The concept is interesting, I just couldn't get into it.
Interstellar was very good. Loved the fifth dimensional concept. Phillip K Dick had a book from the 60s called Ubik. While reading it I wondered if Nolan had received inspiration from it for inception
According to Google Nolan says he wasn't. But according to the internet he was.
basically every science fiction movie that isn't H.G. Wells is based on PKD or other people who copied him
Hollywood loves PKD stories that is for sure
Of course they love dick in hollywood
He sets em up, you knock em down!
Tenet was so good, I thought it was one of his best films up there with the Prestige and Dark Knight.
It's an exhausting film, I joke and called it Capers: the Movie. But when I was done I spent about a week playing it over and over in the back of my mind and was like, fuck that movie is like a .rar file and I'm still unzipping this bitch.
Tenet was an experience, I really haven't felt that way since I saw the first Matrix. Fun side story, I didn't know anything about the Matrix going in, watched it on opening day and was like wow people are really hyped about this film. Walked out thinking, fuck, these two brothers are going to make bangers after bangers from here on out.
It was all downhill after True Lies. It's the Ur-Whedon dialogue.
A personal favorite of mine that is criminally underrated is Reign of Fire from 2002. A movie about a bunch of non-cucked dudes literally fighting dragons and having to fight each other over competing adult philosophies.
Such as do we wait to harvest our crops so they have seeds to plant for next season or do we harvest now so we have any children left not starved to death for there to be a next season.
Or do we sit back and protect what we have with everything we got to survive into the future or do we go out and take a risk on ending this threat forever through sheer force against a superior foe.
Its not high class cinema in any way, but its one of the last times I remember seeing a movie that had basically no questionable elements in it. Just pure fun and enjoyment.
Great movie, I agree
The 80s were the last of Classic Hollywood. Obviously there were some great movies after, but the culture and messaging had changed by the mid-90s. That's not to say there were no great movies after that point, but they were no longer "Classic Hollywood."
Mid-80s is coincidentally when the last two studios, United Artists (Weintraub) and Disney (Eisner), were taken over by a certain tribe.
Although UA, the original non-tribe studio and main holdout, struggled against this for the next decade or so they eventually fell and are now under tribe-run MGM.
Again just a coincidence though...
Depends if you classify moody character dramas as 'classic Hollywood', but since I'm a Coens fan I do, so 2007 was a good year with No Country For Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James and There Will Be Blood. Can't think of much I've liked after that... maybe The Dark Knight in 2008? That qualifies as pretty classic Hollywood I think. Funny enough the iPhone was released around then so it was also the turning point where the internet died... lot of good things came to an end right around then.
I've enjoyed some directors like Eggers and S Craig Zahler in the years since, but they're pretty oddball, hard to call them classic Hollywood.
There are always some good movies released in a year, but analyzing the greater trends - and the top grossing or award winning movies - shows how dire it is. The signal to noise ratio is the worst it has ever been. Partly propagandists are to blame, but I think all forms of art have seen the same decline since digital made them accessible to the masses
Though now that I check my reviews, there are not many films at all from the last decade that I have rated well. Zahler and Brandon Cronenberg are the only high budget ones since Hacksaw Ridge.
Think the last time I thought that in a cinema and it wasn't simply nostalgia (like I had with Top Gun Maverick which was a good film but harkened to the past) was Birdman (2014) as I loved the way they made it seem one continous shot and the acting in was great.
I also enjoyed Birdman. Saw it in theaters.
I'd say Django Unchained was the last great and memorable cinema experience for me.
I saw it twice in theaters because I liked it so much.
Tarantinos best movie in my opinion.
Also saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in theaters and that was great too, but not as good as Django.
I didn't watch Django because I don't support blackwashing.
It has that, but it's also not politically correct. In the hands of any other director it would have been preachy.
But Tarantino actually goes comedic where no other directors would dare, such as the scene with Don Johnson's character whose a slave owner. That's a scene played for laughs where any other director would have used similar dialogue to show how "evil and bad you should feel".
It's more akin to pulpy grindhouse blaxploitation movie than it is to something like 12 years a slave or any of the other of the hundred white guilt movies out there.
Django Unchained is just a fun movie, that would be completely unwatchable in the hands of any other director.
I watched it on Netflix a few weeks ago while away.
The host had to leave the room because of all the n-bombs.
I thought it held up pretty well.
I absolutely loved Birdman but it's really like nothing else. With your topic it sounds like you're searching for movies that feel momentous and have some kind of universal appeal, and as much as Birdman's brilliant it's also kind of off the wall.
I'm voting Hateful Eight or Reservoir Dogs for Tarantino's best.
My friends absolutely despised The Hateful Eight.
Might have been the last film I saw in theaters.
I think it was because it was more like a play than a narrative Tarantino movie.
Kinda like Reservoir Dogs tbh.
I really dislike Hateful Eight. But I like Reservoir Dogs.
I’m going to agree with a lot of others and say the LOTR trilogy was when we peaked. Still lots of good movies since then, but it’s gotten gradually worse.
Admittedly, the Marvel movies were an epic ride. They were just fun to watch and should’ve been tied up with a nice bow at the end of Endgame. But they couldn’t resist the cash grab and just started sharting out the garbage.
The END of Hollywood was back when they put requirements for wokism in their Oscar qualifications. The steady decline of the film industry just went off a cliff after that.
I think 2004 is the year that big budget action & thriller movies noticeably became completely unwatchable, though it was trending that way as far back as 98/99.
Transporter is an ok example, but compare The Bourne Identity to the other movies in the series to see more clearly what I mean.
Black Hawk Down, Red Dragon, The Count of Monte Cristo (2002) are some other notable "end of an era" type movies
I put Transporter because it was like the Jean-Claude 90s films in a way, and was one of the last times you saw a movie that "simple" get a theatrical release. Action movies had to be like Bourne from then on out as you mentioned. And agreed about Bourne. The first one is the only one I kind of like, but I don't love it. The others are unwatchable to me.
The first one had some of that early 2000s style, complete with Moby in the soundtrack.
The rest were shaky cam, constant quick cuts even in dialogue scenes, and devoid of charm.
Gotcha. For that type of movie past the early 2000's you have to look low budget, e.g. Crank
Watched some of March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934) on TV the other night in Black & White.
Not even sure what to call it for a genre. Live action fairytale?
Blade Runner 2049. It was made with care and Luv.