The '90s obsession with making films set in the '60s and '70s

The Brady Bunch

54 (barely...I think it was 1999?)

"Dick"

The Ice Storm.

R1 '95? That's what IMDB has listed.

Why do so few film makers do this, anymore? Character retrospectives? If they do, it's often just for aesthetic reasons. For some reason, these kind of reflective films have gone out of style. I wonder why?

The Brady Bunch movies doesn't count as that kind of film but there are fewer films focused on meaningful looks back on individual stories from eras. There are big, sweeping films about social causes and battles of the past but taken with a general, impersonal look and focused almost exclusively on historical figures.

Fewer are based on the individual stories of regular people who lived during the times of those events. Our society seems to be needing that more than ever. We need that perspective.

The others don't really fall into that category but you get what I'm saying.

Jamie Lee Curtis, "My Girl"

Today we look back mostly at the 80's and 90's.

Last Days of Disco

R9 You'd think but the trend doesn't seem as powerful as it once was. I'm not saying that there are no great successes in this department -- "Stranger Things" manages to get the balance right, I liked the Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst season of "Fargo" (that took place in the 70's, though)-- but there doesn't seem to be as much of a filmmaker interest in it the way there seemed to be in the 90's.

Boogie Nights

Drugstore Cowboy...

The Virgin Suicides

Most of them were terrible and didn't capture the eras AT ALL.

Drugstore Cowboy was an exception on that it was good - but even that didn't really capture 1971 and was full of 60s music. In 1971 - people listened to the music of 1971.

Every mafia movie in the 90's... (but I'm really thinking of Casino)

r1 54 came out in 1998.

And then a few years ago, we were lucky enough to get the director's cut (or closest to the director's cut). It was like watching a new film. The film Miramax butchered and released in 1998 was a watered-down look at disco in the late '70s and the dawn of the '80s. So disappointing that the Weinsteins got scared and stripped the film of any sex appeal. Some say if they had released the version Mark Christopher originally submitted, Mike Myers might have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Phillippe's performance also benefits from the director's cut.

when they made 54 they should have called the guy who selected the music for Goodbar.

Probably had a lot to do with boomers in their prime thinking of their childhood.

I think r20 nailed it. I think a spate of these nostalgia films come out as soon as the people who grew up in that time are powerful enough to get their pet projects greenlit.

Although I think that trend has morphed into people who were grew up reading certain comic books have grown powerful enough to get a big budget CGI wreck produced.

Yes R20/R21 Freaks and Geeks on TV is the perfect example of this phenomenon.

Like all industries, the film industry is run by men in their 50s. They push films that remind them of their own childhoods, so in the 90s it meant the 60s and 70s. Nowadays, it means 70s and 80s.

It's the same reason that fashion and music is cyclic.

Bump because we need more filmmakers reflecting on their actual life experience and hazy nostalgia than we need more superhero demon movies.

Entertainment is lacking honesty these days. A couple of films stand out, "The Glass Castle" had some moving moments and came close to that honesty.

Everyone's so busy in Hollywood, focusing their creative energy chasing after mythological monsters and trying to be gods, when what they're really afraid, what they're really running from are themselves, their roots, their "uncool" cultural memories.