Worst decade for movies?

That's no secret though. Anderson openly cites both of those as massive inspirations, and I think everyone's aware of this and those films he 'mimicked', so it's not like he's 'stealing' anything unfairly. It's also not like his post 90s output is any different too, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood and Inherent Vice all have obvious influences from all sorts of directors, mainly Kubrick and Altman again, so I'm not sure how he's found his own style.

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Obviously his post-PDL films have influences from other movies. Like Treasure of the Sierra Madre was for TWBB. It's just that the influences are much less apparent and in my opinion he seems to have developed more of a personal style and aesthetic. I love Boogie Nights but it is just a repackaged Goodfellas. The same applies for Magnolia which is just a repackaged Short Cuts.

And yet he is worshiped like some kind of god around these parts.

Yeah he has quite the devoted fanbase. I won't say he doesn't deserve it, because he's certainly made some great films. But i've seen people compare him to Scorsese and Kubrick and unfortunately he doesn't and will never even come close. He will never be as good as the guys that he takes inspiration from.

It seems to be quiet a cliché and at least to me irritating saying when people assume that because a director is inspired and references/pays homage to others regularly, they will always be inferior to them. I think in principle its untrue and too many people are over eager to dismiss more 'obvious' and 'enjoyable' films as lesser art than those 'serious' filmmakers.

I've seen Altman's Nashville and Short Cuts, as well as ten other films, and Anderson's whole filmography. I've seen Goodfellas and most of Scorsese film's too. The influences and parallels are evident, but there is so much, and I mean so much unique and great stuff that I think words like 'repackaging' and 'mimicking' are quite insulting. The films are so inventive and personal, yet people make them sound so easy and lazy.

Also controversial opinion of the day: The more films I watch, the more I think Scorsese and Kubrick are slightly overrated, I mean I think both are great and deserve praise, but there seems to be some kind of pedestal in which MoFos have placed them on, and everyone worships them unquestionably.

I think you're contradicting yourself here

Neither am I.

One more reason I love and approve of Rotten Tomatoes.

So, critics and "normal" people have drawn the same conclusion that more crap films have been released over the last 20 years than any other time in film history and it's indicative of nothing?

Come on now, you might as well deny climate change.

The reviews of critics and film fans are literally the only thing approaching "evidence" in a debate like this. It's great to have a personal opinion that differs from the data, but that doesn't make you any more right than anyone else, but it does still make you a minority on this subject.

Are you a fan of Christopher Nolan films? What about Zach Snyder?

If so, I suggest you go back and watch some of their films again. The Dark Knight, for example, is almost wall-to-wall score. There's almost no point in that film without a score. Sometimes it's subtle and sometimes its big and bombastic, but it's almost always there. The same can be said for most of his films and can also be said of Man of Steel.

Score is a trick that's been used since the beginning of the art form and pretty much been used in the same way. You should pay closer attention to modern film scores.

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I disagree with that last bit you said. There's no reason that he can't become better than his inspirations. We'd all be living in the shadow of Griffith if that's the case (arguable that we are tho). PTA could definitely make a film as good as either of these guys, he already has made a couple that are better than some of their films (I think I prefer most things to A Clockwork Orange though).

I don't really get the Scorsese comparison though for him, it seems way off base. Scorsese in his early years was a chronicler of the Italian-American Catholic in New York. By contrast, PTA's movies are essentially godless (even the miracle in Magnolia, a direct reference to the bible, doesn't strike me as religious) and chronicle the lives of people in The Valley. He most resembles Altman, and far more than he resembles Scorsese or Kubrick. One could cite several of his movies as essentially remakes of an Altman film. I think the comparison between Scorsese and Kubrick comes more from Altman's lack of exposure, and that people relate everything to what they know and like, rather than the actual filmic content.

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If these critics and "normal people" have the film watching background of someone like Mark f, then we have something to talk about. But the truth is that these websites are skewed in every way towards new movies and away from older ones. The reason there are more movies from 1995 and above is more likely due to that being a year when their user base remember watching movies rather than anything to do with the quality of the movies.

If what you want to say is that most members on these websites think that movies from 1995 onwards are worse, that's an appropriate interpretation of the data. To say that based on that data, movies are worse from that period onward is a gross misinterpretation of the data in several ways.

He really isn't. You can think something/someone is great while still thinking they are somewhat overrated, right after he said they are "great and deserving of praise", he explained exactly why he still thinks they are overrated.

Still he is wrong about Scorcese

I don't think it's very easy to misinterpret Rotten Tomatoes ratings. I understand there's a greater number of reviews per film with newer films, but I don't think the difference between having 15 reviews for a film from the fifties or 50 reviews for a film from 2006 matters much when talking zero percent ratings.

I know, for a fact, that IMDB skews toward newer films, but Rotten Tomatoes is a whole different animal because it's not based entirely on people motivated enough to click a rating.

The question is the robustness of the selection, not the number of reviews per film. Rotten Tomatoes is a chronicling of journalism, yes? This makes RT even more skewed towards what's available to watch in a theater than the average person. Anybody can write about whatever film they want, a reviewer needs to justify what they're writing about to an editor, which either means it's playing nearby now or it will be. Journalists are more limited in the scope of what they can review even if they might be (though this varies widely) willing to see a broader range of movies.

This is all also based on the assumption that the worst decade is judged based on the worst movies it produced, which I think is a weak assumption and could use some justification, I can't find any

I think it's just as absurd to sit and only point out the good films of any given decade as a way to make a judgement. I think the best way to really make your vote is to take the good and the bad of any given time period and judge it that way. Everyone in this thread except maybe Teh Rodent has been throwing out lists of good films as if that somehow makes the 2000s or whatever decade somehow better, but I prefer to look at both sides of the equation.

Concerning RT, yes, they're are more films being made and distributed in the last 20 years than in the first 60 or so years that film was around so it can skew the numbers. But, if we say that the ratio of bad to good films has been a constant since the beginning (something I don't believe), then it would stand to reason that there are just more bad films being made today. It also means there are more good films. The problem is, I don't think the ratio has been constant and I think the really good films come out less frequently than all the other crap. All you have to do to track this is go to the new releases section and look at how many films were released that you've seen or heard of (Hunger Games and Foxcatcher) versus how many films, often starring a-listers, were released that you've never heard of or only heard bad things about (The Captive, The Humbling, Let's Kill Ward's Wife, Life Partners, you get the idea).

It's gotten cheaper and easier to make movies over the last 20 years, and I'm going to say maybe that's not always a good thing. Maybe the real film industry is becoming like YouTube. Sure, it's great that everyone has a voice, but maybe some of us should just shut up.

No what I mean is that a lot of people seem to consider them to be the 'be all and end all' of films, Gods that can not be surpassed, everyone gets compared to them and they are ultimately at the top of the cinema tree. What I'm saying is there are an awful lots of just as good or at least interesting filmmakers that equally deserve praise, and I'm not sure why other filmmakers shouldn't be capable of surpassing them in terms of quality.

PTA always references Altman... Nashville to Magnolia, McCabe and Mrs. Miller to There Will Be Blood, and The Long Goodbye to Inherent Vice (didn't like this film at all).

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the 2000s definitely

Just had a look at the biggest Box Office Bombs... the thread on Ant-Man talking about bombs got me curious... the Top 50 Box Office failures are made up of 41 movies dated 2000-2015, the rest are late 1990s (97, 98 and 99).


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_box_office_bombs

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I was thrown for a minute when I saw the title of this thread...I thought it said "Worst Movie This Decade."

Anyhow, I picked the 2000s for one reason and one reason only...the rise of Jonah Hill. Do not like him. I've seen movies that are good and he's in them, but I didn't like the film because of him. Jonah Hill. Not funny. Go away. That is all.

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