General Film Chat

[LedZep]

What do you think is the worst year for movies? I had an interesting discussion with a friend after watching a random YT video and it's much harder than picking the best years.

I guess the early cinema years could be the answer, due to less movies being produced in general (particularly 1929 is bad). Apart from that, it's hard to find a more recent year which I'd call truly terrible. Like there are either good blockbusters or good indie movies every single year. 2020 wasn't even that bad considering the situation - Soul, Minari, Sound of Metal, Father, Never Rarely, Wolfwalkers, Small Axe, Another Round, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Possessor... 2008 and 2009 were kinda mid (the consequences of the writers strike, felt especially in 2009), but there are still movies like Batman, In Bruges, Synecdoche, Still Walking, Ponyo, Waltz with Bashir, Hunger and Fantastic Mr. Fox, Inglourious Basterds, Mother, A Serious Man, Moon, The White Ribbon, Dogtooth, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo... 2005 is another often mentioned year, and that one probably takes the cake for me. But even there you have Cache, Grizzy Man, Brokeback Mountain, Walk the Line, V for Vendetta, Batman Begins, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Sin City, Munich... A solid top 5 if nothing else.
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Finally updated the overall chart

2020s
90s

[mickilennial]

I always hated monolithic statements of "bad years" or "bad decades", it always comes from a subjective bias and is pretty disingenuous.

[MadhattanJack]

It's 1978. You had a couple of decent post-Vietnam movies, namely Coming Home and The Deer Hunter... and there was Halloween, but the vast majority of movies made that year are pretty much skippable.

[LedZep]

[mickilennial]

[EyeKanFly]

I'll take a shot at this, it's an interesting topic which I don't think I've ever seen posed before. We often talk about what was the best year/decade in music, film, etc. but I've never considered the worst.

I've often considered 1994 the best year in film: Shawshank Redemption, The Lion King, Forrest Gump, and Pulp Fiction are all among my favorite films, and there are many other great films from that year.

I've been looking through my Letterboxd year lists and I think I can safely say that 2006 is the "worst" year. Of the few dozen films I've seen from that year, 2006 has my lowest average star rating. Pan's Labyrinth and Casino Royale are the only ones I'd consider good-to-great. The Prestige, Little Miss Sunshine, Borat, and The Devil wears Prada are all okay-to-good. There's one highly lauded film from that year which I dispise: The Departed. It's not even close to Scorsese's longest but holy shit it feels that way (except for maybe the Irishman, that shit is loooong), drags on and on, Mark Wahlberg is a crap actor, and the payoff(s) are hardly worth the wait. You know what else came out in 2006? Cars (Pixar's weakest effort to that point, the first "meh" Pixar movie), Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (not nearly as bad as later ones, but still ass), 300 (memes galore but not a good film), Talladega Nights (boring "comedy"), Idiocracy (weirdly offensive "comedy"), Click (Adam Sandler's worst... and that's saying something), The Architect (what the fuck was this movie even trying to be), X-Men 3 (superhero fatigue almost 2 decades early), and Eragon (by far the worst book-to-film adaptation I've ever seen).

So there's relatively few gems in 2006, and there's tons of duds. That's my vote. If you're nominating a "great" movie from 2006 to counter this, there's a good chance I haven't seen it. So I welcome any comment!
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51 Washington, D.C. albums!

[Mercury]

Because of my disposition and general disdain for modern films and my eye rolling annoyance with the artsy types (Directors) of my own millennial generation, I am inclined to say 2017 through 2022 could all be in contention.

But that is a period where I’ve watched few films and those I saw didn’t leave a mark on me.
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-Ryan

ONLY 4% of people can understand this chart! Come try!

My Fave Metal - you won't believe #5!!!

[Hayden]

[mickilennial]

[cestuneblague]

Yeah I think the difficult thing in assessing what the best "years" were for film releases is not only that it really just pertains to particular tastes and certain genres & movements may be strong one year that appeal to certain moviegoers but less so to others, but really also that the movie release schedule is tough to pin down- a movie can often be officially premiered one year but really not get wider release until the following calender years and thus make it's impact later than where it's offically designated on places like IMDB or Letterboxd. Also can really vary based on your country of origin when a film is released, though streaming has cut that difference quite a bit recently as now it's easier for a film to be widely, globally available. Again might be an interesting idea to go more in depth on particular years or decades rather than just a general "this year good/bad", but I donno