You will not be disappointed. I don't like spoiling even the smallest, most insignificant thing about a movie (except for what I just said), so I will say no more.

Really? That sounds a bit far-fetched to me ... I mean, the Vietnam war as an important theme in US pop culture also having a certain influence on Star Wars, okay, but identifying the rebels with the Vietcong and the Empire with the US ...? Huh, I never knew George Lucas was a "commie". ;)

Not saying that Lucas was making any kind of political statement, he wasn't, but I'd bet good money that the way the war played out influenced Star Wars. Technologically advanced, secular worldpower getting its ass kicked by a much smaller nation influenced by eastern spirituality - Lucas realized that that's exactly the kind of underdog story that could be turned into a good fantasy epic, and it was.

That's true, I guess I just took issues with the direct comparison of the parties involved. :)

i know. which fits perfectly with Luca's quality of production.

You must be right as I'm battling to remember the opening sequence for "For Your Eyes Only".

If you're a fan of realism you must have enjoyed "The Living Daylights" which was also in the 80s. It was a good film but I prefer the more light-hearted Roger Moore Bond to the overly serious Timothy Dalton Bond.

And there was also a "View to a Kill", but I regard "Moonraker" (very nearly the 80s), "For Your Eyes Only" and "Octopussy" as the best of the Roger Moore era.

The opening was just "let's make it clear that we're done with the blofeld character, and get rid of him the cheapest most ridiculous way before the titles". It was useless on all levels (okay, except that it had great music, and also a separate plot-related sequence).

But I consider "realism" as a different thing from "seriousness". I don't like the living daylights at all, not just because I don't like the Dalton version of bond (I love Dalton in basically all his other roles), but because, like Octopussy and Moonraker, it made no sense : the plot was a disjointed series of sequences with very artificial ties, every character acting stupid, blatantly pretext events, etc. When I watch a movie, I like to follow its plot, it's logic, and I like things to flow naturally, like a well-oiled mechanism. In some bond movies, you have this. Films like diamonds are forever, goldfinger, for your eyes, goldeneye, the spy who (with some exceptions such as the stromberg invitation to his seabase : just rewatch that bit asking yourself why bond was invited, and to tell him what. It makes the dialogue hilarious). Look at the rifle practice sequence in Moonraker : Bond shoots a guy in a tree, makes a joke, nobody flinches, the party carries on. It is surrealist.

What I mean is that I like the spy investigation aspect, in bond movies. Because I like spy movies (like the Harry Palmer films with Michael Caine, or various cold war movies, etc). You can have a wacky comedy with a good coherent structure, and you can have brainless action movies with good coherent structures. Films where you understand why a sequence has to follow another, why something has to lead to some other thing. Movies like Robocop, Burn after reading, Jaws, Galaxy Quest, Midnight Run, Big trouble in little china, are flawless in that respect - and are not all serious. Taking oneself seriously is a bit independant from this aspect, because it's an aspect that is a bit independant from the genre. For me it's just good writing. And yes, you can have sketch-films that deliberately make no sense in their plots, but then you go for pure surrealism of nonsense comedy. In bond movies (especially the Dalton versions), it is accidental.

So. Yes, I like Moore much more than Dalton, as a Bond, and I like his era better. But rewatching some bond films has felt embarrassing, plot-wise, and it is not a bond-generated necessity, because half of bond movies -from all eras and tones- are very satisfying to me, in that regard. In short, you could have all the cheesy sequences of all the "bad" bond movies (I really don't mind crocodile submarines and venitian hovercrafts, I like them), but tied together by a better story, and not just "we need a chase here - okay, how will we justify it at that point - it's because they are baddies - right". That's the aspect that nags me.


As for the thread's topic (sorry for derailing it) :


1985 is the year of Silverado.
The 80s are awesome.

Another one of those high school/coming of age type movies the 80's were so famous for, that was a bit of a sleeper (kinda sneaked under the radar somehow back then), that I don't think anyone mentioned yet ,was Three O'clock High. Always brings a smile to my face everytime I watch it.
Won't argue with you there...the man did know how to make money though

Airplane!
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
The Shining
Excalibur
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Evil Dead
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
The Thing
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
This is Spinal Tap
Back to the Future
Blue Velvet
Cameron Fry's Day Off
Evil Dead II
Full Metal Jacket
Die Hard
Caddyshack
Cheech and Chong's Next Movie
Flash Gordon
The Fog
The Return of the King
Superman II
Caveman
Clash of the Titans
Dragonslayer
Escape from New York
The Great Muppet Caper
History of the World: Part 1
Stripes
The Beastmaster
Conan the Barbarian
The Dark Crystal
First Blood
The Secret of NIMH
Swamp Thing
Tron
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension
Beverly Hills Cop
Ghostbusters
Johnny Dangerously
The Last Starfighter
The Muppets Take Manhattan
Top Secret!
Clue
Commando
The Goonies
The Last Dragon
Real Genius
Spies Like Us
Young Sherlock Holmes
An American Tail
Big Trouble in Little China
Highlander
Labyrinth
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Transformers The Movie
Adventures in Babysitting
*batteries not included
Dragnet
Lethal Weapon
The Lost Boys
Masters of the Universe
The Monster Squad
Predator
The Princess Bride
The Running Man
Spaceballs
The Land Before Time
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
Scrooged
They Live!
Willow
Batman
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
The 'Burbs
Major League
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
UHF
Krull
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
A View to a Kill
Godzilla 1985

I think that's everything....

You oppose decades too radically (evolutions are linear, or at least don't jump every 10 years) and too systematically (different aspects of socioculture evolve at very different paces), plus you attach an idea of quality to them (even if cultural values evolve, this doesn't necessarily impact the quality of their mode of expression). I take specific exemples of french cinema genres, to show that in their cases the evolution in style and quality is far from being that spectacular, and from warranting a dismissive approach of whole decades or an idealisation of others. There happens to be something mostly intemporal in many aspects of many genres of french cinema : dialogue-driven comedies (with actors and authors that have crossed these decades faithfully) and dark crime stories (you seem to underestimate Tavernier, Verneuil, Melville, etc). I think your point is too abstract and too general. It gives me the impression that you should explore 70s and 80s french classic more, in various genres. Even if the post-68 atmosphere is very noticeable in comedies (they depict a different world, after all), there are many films which demand me to check their date, because I honestly can't tell from which era they were - the only hints being in the actor's wrinkles. Heck, watch a Melville. I dare you to tell me, 50 minutes afterwards, whether you've seen a colour or a black and white movie. Watch two Audiard-written crime movies, and tell me how many years separate them (or I took "100 mille dollars au soleil" and "les morfalous" as an exemple because there's something similar in the setting and the characters' relationships). And this is just taking the similarity angle - if you focus on differences, you have a wave of pessimistic paranoid social/political conspiracy thrillers in the 70s and 80s that didn't exist before as a genre, and that alone suffice to redeem the era. You seem to overlook the likes of "le secret", "i comme icare", "espion lève-toi", etc. And to underestimate how comedies such as "l'aile ou la cuisse", "la soupe aux choux", "la chèvre", "les compères", "les fugitifs", "le grand blond avec une chaussure noire", etc, are in line with older classics such as "le tatoué", "le corniaud", "la grande vadrouille", etc. I honestly can't tell exactly where you're coming from, and how many of these titles you are already familiar with. But I suspect you have a few good surprises ahead.

Also taking the wages of fear as an exemple is perfectly unfair because George Arnaud kicks ass on his own (you should grab his novels immediately).

Well, I was talking about the late 50s, early 60s as my favourite era of French cinema, not about a single decade. Of course, dividing the history of the cinema into decades is mostly (but not completely!) arbitrary, which is why in this case for example it makes more sense to compare the time before, during and after the New Wave, than the 50 and 60s.

That doesn't make much sense to me. The first point I fail to see the relevance of in this context, and the second... you're talking about quality in the sense of "goodness", not "characteristic", right? Of course this quality doesn't necessarily change, it just does so in many cases. Again, taking the New Wave as an example, the influence and examination of American cinema, especially Hitchcock and Film Noir, in the late 50s, combined with young film critics like Godard and Truffaut turning into directors (not to mention Cahiers du cinema itself, which was gathering speed in the 50s), brought a completely new dimension to French cinema and elevated it to a new level.

Have to disagree, in the vast majority of cases it's perfectly possible to correctly place a movie in a 10/15 year timeframe. Even if you look at something like Last Year in Marienbad, which would have normally stumped me, timelessness being its essence in every regard, there's a homage to Hitchcock's cameos, which tells the viewer what he needs to know. And if I had to nominate a French director for the special "hard to place in time" award, it would certainly be Robert Bresson, not Melville (who made his best movies from 1955-1967, by the way...).

I like the Pierre Richard and de Funès flicks, and honestly, those scream their era at you. Really can't see how that can be denied. Also, they to me simply do not compare to the majesty of Breathless, The 400 Blows and Marienbad. My favourite French movie of the 80s is Au revoir les enfants, by the way.

But, I will add those movies you've listed that I haven't seen yet to my ever growing list, thanks.

Conceded. The movie doesn't really belong to the era I was talking about, anyway. It's great though, and deserved to be mentioned.

The Breakfast Club, there were many other good/great movies, but this one had it all, set mostly in just one room, the acting and story were well above the norm for that period.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088847/

How about Flash Gordon - With the Queen Soundtrack

everybody know about batman?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3jfbAcsfX8&feature=g-vrec

Dont hit me if i am off with the Dates:
Die Hard
Rambo
Rocky
Indiana Jones
Robocop
Conan
Fist of the North Star