I can easily recognise 80s movies, 90s movies... and maybe 2000s movies. Now that 2010s movies are already a decade old, can you instantly recognise them when you stumble over one you have never seen before?
shareVery often I can easily recognize a movie, ummm within a 5 year range.
That is if I don't know the movie, if I know the movie there is a 90 percent chance I know the exact year of its release.
70s movies = soft, hazy light. 'Female leads are not dolled up and alluring like their counterparts from previous eras thus actresses like Jill Clayburgh, Mary Steenburgen, Sissy Spacek, Shelly Duvall, Dian Keaton, Mary Kay Place, and Meryl Streep are given more prominent face time.
80s movies = carries over late 70s hazy sunset but then adds sunrise tint ("It's morning in 'murica" a la Reagan). The VHS rental revolution creates a bigger income steam for Hollywood thus more blockbuster genres gain investment from revisionist post-Vietnam War stories, Science-Fiction, and horror movies, to space fantasy, middle-aged crisis dramas for Baby Boomers, and overly sexualized Gen X teen dramas/comedies (John Hughes pops his cherry)
90s movies = more color depth but also a blue hue. CGI is born and ready to play making color correction a bigger part of blockbuster movie coloring. Film scores are also all sounding the same with that Spielberg/Williams energy with exaggerated highs and lows.
2000s movies = Male leads aren't afraid to walk around with blond highlights in their hair and facial hair is well manicured. With the success of Harry Plotter and Sword of the Flings more youth-based cinema starts to gobble up the movie studio production schedules. All other movies pander to post-911 militant patriotism. Late 2000s movies kind of have their own era with the post-Great Recession changing America's mood. Films like There Will be Bloodclots and No Cowlick for Old Men reflect that.
2010s movies = it's too early to determine this era and/or if it has two parts to it (Obama then Trump) so it will take another 10 years looking back after the fallout from CV19 plays itself out (we're still in the midst of it).
When there's a (partial) 3D version and it doesn't look 70's, I'd put it into the 2010s