Great years in movie history

In which anyone who'd like to can talk about years which were particularly good for movies!

Nominees:

1928— The Cameraman, The Circus, Speedy, The Crowd, The Last Command, Lonesome, October, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Show People, The Wind

1939— Dark Victory, Drums Along the Mohawk, Gone with the Wind, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Ninotchka, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, Young Mr. Lincoln

1940— The Bank Dick, Foreign Correspondent, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Dictator, His Girl Friday, The Letter, The Philadelphia Story, Rebecca, The Shop Around the Corner

1972— The Candidate, Deliverance, The Godfather, The Heartbreak Kid, The Last House on the Left, Last Tango in Paris, Solaris, Snoopy, Come Home—yes by God "Snoopy Come Home" is a great movie, dammit

More suggestions?

1982— Blade Runner, The Secret Of Nimh, The Thing, Poltergeist, Wrath of Khan, Ghandi, The Dark Crystal, E.T., First Blood, The Last Unicorn, Tron, Conan The Barbarian, An Officer And A Gentleman, Pink Floyds The Wall etc.

Truly a landmark year.

edited 15th Oct '15 6:24:47 AM by nervmeister

1999 - The Matrix, Fight Club, American Beauty, Eyes Wide Shut, The Sixth Sense, Magnolia, Toy Story 2, The Iron Giant, Three Kings, The Green Mile, Being John Malkovich.

Seriously, that was such an awesome year, plus it gave me my favorite film of all time (The Matrix).

edited 14th Oct '15 6:43:13 PM by LDragon2

I suspect this thread is gonna run out at some point, unless we go beyond merely saying the names of great movies within a year.

Anyway: 1979 - Alien, ...And Justice for All, Apocalypse Now, Caligula^note ok, ok..., The China Syndrome, Nosferatu The Vampyre (by Werner Herzog), Escape from Alcatraz, Kramer vs. Kramer, Mad Max, Manhattan, Monty Python's Life of Brian, Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Werner Herzog's adaptation of Woyzeck.

edited 14th Oct '15 7:08:06 PM by Quag15

2003 — Oldboy, A Tale Of Two Sisters, Finding Nemo, Pirates Of The Carribean, The Return Of The King, Monster, Lost in Translation, X-Men 2, Big Fish, Kill Bill, Bad Boys 2, and, well-......-sigh-...The Room.

edited 15th Oct '15 5:22:18 AM by nervmeister

1994 - The Lion King, Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Speed, Ed Wood, The Shawshank Redemption, Dumb and Dumber, Ace Ventura, Interview with the Vampire, True Lies...

edited 14th Oct '15 8:16:21 PM by shrikecatcher

I almost mentioned 1999. I remember at the time there was a real sense of excitement with what Hollywood was putting out that year.

Airplane! of course is the greatest but it was made in 1980 not 1982.

Watched Gandhi a while back and it was pretty good. I think it has been stigmatized as the film that stole the Oscar from E.T., but it's a good movie on its own terms.

For 2003, I would also include Seabiscuit and Secondhand Lions.

2008: Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Taken, Bolt, Wall E, Cloverfield, Eagle Eye, Fools Gold, Rambo reboot, Frost/Nixon, Gran Torino, In Bruges, Kung Fu Panda, Marley & Me, Other Boleyn Girl, Pineapple Express, Veggie Tales: The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, Tropic Thunder, Valkyrie, The Wrestler.

For 1939, Gunga Din also should not be forgotten-a well-made and touching film inspite of the problematic aspects.

edited 15th Oct '15 11:35:31 AM by odadune

"Airplane! of course is the greatest but it was made in 1980 not 1982."

Fixed (my bad). On that note 1980 was a BEAST of a year for movies (The Blues Brothers, The Elephant Man,Caddyshack, Flash Gordon, Superman2, Kagemusha, Friday The Thirteenth, The Shining, Raging Bull, and The Empire Strikes Back, among others).

edited 15th Oct '15 6:25:27 AM by nervmeister

1980 was right at the end of that era of Hollywood creativity. Heaven's Gate came out that year as well and is widely credited for bringing that era to a screeching halt. But yeah, lots of great movies that year.

I watched Zero Hour on TV not long ago. Airplane! is a shockingly faithful remake.

Now, what I want to know is - what was the worst year in movie history?

"Now, what I want to know is - what was the worst year in movie history?"

Two possibilities:

Now, or the last few years before now, as we drown in sequels and reboots and comic book movies and movies about toys.

Or, mid '50s-mid '60s, after the studio system went down the tubes but before the 70s golden age.

1956— Around the World in 80 Days (usually on a "worst Best Picture" short list), The Conqueror (huge disaster), Forbidden Planet (good, I guess? never seen), Giant (ok), Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Jazz Singer (godawful), The Killing, The King and I, The Searchers (this one helps the batting average quite a bit), The Ten Commandments (crapfest)

Overall, pretty underwhelming.

edited 15th Oct '15 4:01:23 PM by gallium

Last few years before now. This year has actually been refreshingly good.

One could probably name almost any year of the 90s for this list. That decade as a whole was the last true golden age. Hoping this year starts a new one.

edited 15th Oct '15 4:07:28 PM by FFShinra

Point taken, with The Martian and Mad Max: Fury Road and whatnot, the box office hasn't been quite so depressing this year.

Re: 1956—Ed Wood made a movie that year too!

As for The Jazz Singer - and I know it ain't the Al Jolson or Neil Diamond version, but the Danny Thomas one - wasn't that 1952?

I'm going to have to go with the last few years, though. Cinema hasn't been particularly good since, say, the beginning of this century - we've had several good films, sure, but the last outright masterpiece of a film I can think of was Ghost World - but it's gotten particularly bad these last few years.

edited 15th Oct '15 4:55:03 PM by Aldo930

The first decade of the 2000s were too busy being Sequelitis (to varying degrees). The great news though is that the main pillars of that movement (LOTR, Matrix, HP) have finished their runs, while the rest are about to finish or are generally puttering/puttered out. This decade is a transition period. To what, who knows. Hopefully good things (and this year is merely the flex point).

I was going by this very wiki, which had it listed in 1956—changing now.

I would have to go with the double whammy of No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood for the last films that might contend for "masterpiece", that being in 2007.

But yes, it's been pretty grim for a while.

HP and LOTR franchise may have ended...but hello, Marvel Cinematic Universe, which will most likely to last longer than be larger than both of those series combined.

-sighs-

And that's a bad thing because......?

Don't be so sure. The MCU is a model that can't really be stretched much more than what has been planned, simply because the leads salaries are either already high or become high as a result of the movies. That and in the case of the likes of Captain America, the actor is retiring completely.

Which is why there has been a quiet, slow, but steady push to serialize everything on Netflix.

And they have that weird ownership issue.

So it'll be around for the rest of this decade, but beyond that...

2014, imo, has been one of the better years in the 2000's/2010's just because it had a lot of surprise hits and just kick ass movies in general.

Whiplash, Birdman, Frank, The Raid 2, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy (which imo made that year the best year for the MCU), X-Men: DOFP, Edge of Tomorrow, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Get On Up (which I thought was criminally underrated), Nightcrawler, Inherent Vice, St. Vincent, John Wick, Big Hero 6, Interstellar, A Most Violent Year, The Interview, etc...

2014 imo was the best year in the 2010s so far in terms of amazing actions films. Winter Soldier, The Raid 2, John Wick, and Edge Of Tomorrow all kicked a**.

I definitely think 2014 was a nice spark in creativity and freedom amongst directors in a time where that's definitely a problem, what with the constant franchising of everything. Shit like John Wick and Edge of Tomorrow are definitely going to be classics.