I feel you, BUT when I see these "different" movies I'm almost always disappointed because I just don't feel it. They try to make something different by making something fucked up without any meaning.
yeah its like now they upped the stream of trash movies and hid the few gems harder there have definitely been some great movies for me in the last few years but i've said the same thing as OP more or less myself quite often
The Godfather shouldn't be included in that era, and Scarface in that category. As for the topic what can you do, the 100 years gave us a lot of amazing films, I am still watching new ones and some are great, just look into non American movies, you find a lot of fresh work when you leave Hollywood. If you have done that then just look around, there is always something you haven't heard of, or have but didn't look too much into it. I watch a lot of new movies every year, but only 2-4 on average are from the current year, and when I do find an interesting movie its hard as hell to see (Tree of Life).
Its actually when the writing had effort and originality, Robert DeNiro as well as others is still great at acting, but the writing and even directing has been downhill since Goodfellas, or Casino. His prime was also the prime of Scorsese who picked up great plots.
They don't come up with new ideas because new ideas are risky, they can totally bomb at the box office, so that's why the studios keep releasing the same shit. You'll see a lot of original thinking put into many independent films in the last decade, and indie films have probably broken more ground in the last decade as mainstream films as well.
When were there ever any new ideas? Every year there are new ideas and great films, and recent years are certainly better than many of the 80s and 90s and early 00s when it comes to film. In the last decade, we've had such original films as: The King's Speech Inception The Kids Are All Right (I didn't like it, but it was certainly not something you'd see in 1930!) Up The Hurt Locker Inglorious Basterds Wall-E In Brugges Milk Juno Ratatouille Michael Clayton Letters from Iwo Jima Pan's Labyrinth Good Night, and Good Luck Syriana Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Hotel Rwanda The Incredibles Lost in Translation Y tu mamá también Memento Amélie District 9 All are vastly different and none are based on previously published material. Tell me, where are all these original ideas from back in the day? Do you not realize that most movies at first were essentially copies of each other based on a specific formula? There were only a handful of genres and certain actors would play certain types of parts. The sugar-coating of the past is no more apparant than in film and Sports.
I'll defend him and say that Juno is a good movie. I can't really argue with the movies on his list. All the ones I've seen are good. No there are not a lot of original ideas lately. But all the movies I have seen lately except Fast Five have been good.
I dont know if the Americans out there will appreciate these but English directors are shit hot in the last ten years guy richie has made some crackers including 'lock stock and two smoking barrels' and 'snatch' Also more recently the series kidulthood, adulthood (done by same bloke cant remember his name too high =) ), and annuvahood by Adam Deacon. All savage films
I didn't say I liked all of those. I just was pointing out a list of some nominees for best original screenplay and a couple of others added in that should have been nominated. Are you telling me that Wall-E was even remotely close to something made in the 70s? What about Memento? There are plenty of original films being made, even within the Hollywood system. You're looking at the 70s and 80s with rose-colored glasses. Some of the amazing and original films released during that time: Revenge of the Nerds 2 Police Academy 2-6 The Bad News Bears Go To Japan Jaws 2, 3-D and Jaws: The Revenge A million Zombie sequels from George Romero Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold Beneath the Planet of the Apes Rocky 2-5 Do I really need to go on? We can go back in time to the era where there were actual B-Movies being released by Hollywood studios if you want. Or the time when Actors would release a new movie in the same genre every 2-3 months. There's far more original filmmaking now than before because we have the added bonus of technology that they couldn't even dream of back then. There were no movies about a pollution-cleaning robot on an intergalactic mission of love in the 1950s...there weren't films about HS Wrestling coaches finding inner peace, there weren't films about drug-taking and sexually active female teachers trying to find a sugar daddy (Bad Teacher sucked, but the concept was essentially new).
But it was based on a Novel (written by Cormac McCarthy), so it wasn't an original idea. Was an amazing film though. Daniel Day-Lewis is such an incredible actor.