Your Golden Age... Retrospective And Nostalgia

Just been speaking of this with @Sexy Celebrity in the Sci-Fi Countdown...


For me, my Golden Age was around 1984 to around 1997. I was born in 1982.
The days of VHS rentals and libraries... the days of Blockbuster Video... the days of real epic adventure... not CGI laden cartoons and green screen.


So...
What's your Golden Age?
Specifically, what's your fondest memories from years gone by?


Name the years, the movies, what they meant to you...


I'm gonna work on mine and refine the years and the movies and a little write-up... and post a little later... I got a date with a doctor in a couple hours and need to get ready


Carry on...

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I consider the golden age of movies to be approx 1932-1967. The days when star power was something mythical and grand and films were generally more character-driven with less emphasis on spectacle and special effects and greater emphasis on dialogue and the actors. It was also before the rise of cynicism in filmmaking, which while born in the fifties almost seemed to take over in the late sixties and seventies. Films from this period are magical in a way that later (or earlier) features can never compete with.

Now if you're asking me which period I am personally the most nostalgic for, that would the nineties. The first film that pops into my head is Hackers (1995), I remember buying it on VHS in the late 90s and watching it over and over and over again. To this day I'm still obsessed with that movie and I feel like I quote it on an almost daily basis.

It seems to take place in an alternate universe where being a hacker is like being a sorcerer, and you're either born with it or not. I used to fantasize constantly about being like Zero Cool, causing chaos on my parents' computer and creating funny viruses based on my favorite cartoons. Also as someone who had few friends growing up, I loved imagining that I was hanging out at the Cyberdelia club with my hip group of hackers, rollerblading around and playing arcade games. I'm incapable of being objective about Hackers, I'm just too close to it. I can't watch it without a big dumb smile on my face from beginning to end.

My golden age is the 1930s. When people, (not just kids) went weekly to grand theaters rich in decant design to see their favorite actors on the big screen...And I mean big screen, not these puny multiplex screens that pass for a theater today. I'm talking grand theaters with balconies, and ushers, when going to the movies was an event that people dressed up for.

I'm talking star power with actors and actresses that were larger than life and treated like royalty and were idolized by millions. I'm talking a time when films had a certain style that has long since been forgotten. Class.

i suppose my personal golden age was the 1960s-1970s, when i was young and having fun. The first new film I can remember making a real impression on me was A Hard Day's Night, it is still one of my favourite films. I have always loved old films as well though, my parents used to take me to see old films at the national film Theatre, and the academy in Oxford street. I remember seeing s Night At The Opera when I was about six or seven I suppose.

For better or worse, my favorite era of film watching was when I was younger in the mid to late 80's. Films hitting video like Remote Control, Visitants, A Company of Wolves. Not great films, just a few landmarks I remember. I responded to Beverly Hills Cop and Ghostbusters. From there I went back in time and stayed glued to films permanently. The Goodbye Girl was my first theatrical and Blade Runner back to back with Sharky's Machine at the drive-in. Hollywood Shuffle on VHS...so many great memories. Killer Klowns, Amazon Women on the Moon. That was my era.

The first thing I think when I see or hear the words Golden Age is the golden age of hollywood.

My personal golden age - I dont really know.

The 90's! When the 'alternative movies' wasn't just b-movies. It was a nice year for alternative cinema lovers in general. Today it's all about mainstream!
“It’s a very depressing picture. With alternative cinema – any sort of cinema that isn’t mainstream – you’re fresh out of luck in terms of getting theatre space and having people come to see it. Even if I had a big idea, the world is different now.” [...] David Lynch (Saturday 22 June 2013,https://goo.gl/PVoqT6).
This 'era' ended in 2002, alternative movies after this was a completely failure (of public) unfortunately.
---Lost Highway (1997), Donnie Darko (2001) etc...---

The 60's and 70's because of the 'chanbara', 'jidaigeki', 'spaghetti western' genres and the birth of the 'Yakuza' genre! Such a beautiful years for films.
Directors like Hideo Gosha, Masaki Kobayashi, Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, Kinji Fukasaku... Oh man!

The 70s, 80s and 90s, particularly the 80s. A magical, wildly creative, often completely unhinged, period for movies. I still find "new" movies from this period I've never heard of before, even sometimes when they've got some of my favourite actors in.
Little stirs my interest, let alone my passion, these days.

the 80's were specially ripe with great movies. Ghostbusters, Back to the Future...

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My golden age has to be around 1977 when I was 6 until 1989 when I was 18. After that came heavy boozing and getting into trouble. While I loved movies, I'd be outside constantly going on adventures and playing sports. Now that I think of it, I did get into trouble in my early teens, but there weren't any real consequences then. I was 14 when I moved from Chicago to Boston, so that was an exciting time.

Some honourable mentions before I start:
Superman II
Superman: The Movie
Alien
Poltergeist
Indiana Jones Trilogy
TRON
Jaws
Star Wars Trilogy


As I said... 1984-1997 (ish). I've picked 20 movies that made that 13 (ish) year period my Golden Age.
Cutting edge special effects, practical effects, grand adventure, actual writing of a plot...
Then, the CG era began around 1987-1993, and made things better, crisper, cleaner, showed me that movies were gonna get better in the future. Sadly they didn't... however, the dream of it and imagining the treats that were waiting for us all.


For me, the 1980s, mid-late especially, was the pinnacle of creativity in movies.
Before then, sure we had a few of those honourable mentions I posted which were the films that paved the way to the 1980s peak... but before this peak, what was there? Revenge films, westerns, WWII movies and the odd disaster film.
Good films in there own way, but nothing imaginative, or "out there" like Ghostbusters or Big Trouble in Little China.
For stuff like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids we had to stick to comic books, for something that was visually stunning like Starship Troopers, we had to watch Saturday morning cartoons.


The movies from my Golden Age, roughly early-mid 80s to mid-late 90s, had substance and buckets of style.


Most importantly, they were, and still are, fun to watch. You have a good time watching them.


But, as the phrase Golden Age means... this could all just be rose tinted glasses


A list of 20, though this doesn't mean these are the only ones... my Age has loooaddds of movies in it, but this is just an example.

Aliens
Back to the Future
Big Trouble in Little China
Ghostbusters
Gremlins
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
Independence Day
Jurassic Park
Predator
RoboCop
Starship Troopers
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
The Dark Crystal
The Goonies
The Karate Kid
The Lost Boys
The Thing
Total Recall
Tremors
Willow

The 40's
I recently had to distinguish between my favorite period of film and the period that I thought produced the best films. I believe I can distinguish between movies that are technically flawless, and those that I prefer the most. My favorite period was the seventies, but I think the best movies I have seen were produced in the Forties. In this period the following directors were active: Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock,Frank Capra, John Ford, Ernst Lubitsch, and Howard Hawkes to name a few.



Orson Welles



Alfred Hitchcock



Frank Capra



Ernst Lubitsch



John Ford



John Huston

Films like Citizen Kane, It's a Wonderful Life, To Be or Not to Be, Casablanca, The Grapes of Wrath, The Maltese Falcon, and his Girl Friday to name a few..

thr golden age for me is action cinema or scifi , so it has to be the 80s to mid 90s until the matrix
although i find some great movies from the 50s (alfred hitchcock), dark passage and others

My absolute favorite 10-year-span is probably from 1975-1985, which is interesting because I was born in '75. Most of the movies I list below would be in my top 50 of all time, so clearly the movies and the era I was formed out of had an indelible impression. Movie making definitely changed from Jaws to Back to the Future, and its hard to say they are from the same era, but it was my era.

Jaws
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Carrie
King Kong
Marathon Man
Rocky
Taxi Driver
Close Encounters
Star Wars
Coma
Dawn of the Dead
Halloween
Superman
Alien
Apocalypse Now
Caddyshack
Friday the 13th
Empire Strikes Back
The Shining
Blow Out
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Blade Runner
E.T.
The Thing
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Return of the Jedi
Scarface
Ghostbusters
The Karate Kid
After Hours
Back to the Future
Fright Night

Time doesn't exist.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0