Movies are all "eye-candy", with much more motion on-screen for today's ADD generation, and most of them have a stupid or non-existent plot.

When gorgeous on-screen eye candy isn't technologically possible, you're forced to tell a good story. Well, today people can be lazy, because you can generate all kinds of things with computers to make people go "wow" so you don't have to appeal to their higher nature anymore.

Also, people don't read anymore. In the 50's, 60's, or 70's, people still did a lot of reading. But as time went on, Hollywood decided to stop competing with books as far as "substance" or "content", and just did their own thing.

This has happened to other industries lately as well, such as video games.

There was a time when games involved lots of imagination and thought, and were generally "fun". Now, everything is eye candy and multiplayer.

I've seen several remakes of old movies, and the new ones ALWAYS have the same flavor that's hard to explain. I never like the remake, of course. But there are certain patterns there that a smart person could draw out and enumerate, if he wanted to.

Older movies made you think. Newer ones almost never do.

Anything with Jimmy Stewart. Just rewatched Liberty Valance- one of my favorites.

For those with interest or developed tastes, the two medieval films by Ingmar Bergman are a thoughtful watch: The Seventh Seal and The Virgin Spring.

I like Akira Kurasawa's Seven Samurai.

What are some the classic family oriented movies you can recommend?

Regarding "Yours, Mine and Ours" a review from Netflix said:

WARNING* We were really surprised to see how suggestive this movie was, especially considering when it was made. That was disappointing. We definitely wouldn't show it to our kids (a lot of drinking and sɛҳuąƖ references). "

Did you notice anything like this?

We were disappointed with "With Six You Get Eggroll" (Doris Day).

But "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" (Jimmy Stewart) is good.

Also (many old and some newer):

"The Fighting Sullivans"

"The Thrill of it All" (Doris Day and James Garner)

"The Fighting 69th" (Jimmy Cagney, Pat O'Brien)

"Stalag 17" (William Holden)

"Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (Jimmy Stewart)

"You Can't Take it With You" (Jimmy Stewart)

"It's a Wonderful Life" (Jimmy Stewart)

"The Bells of St. Mary's" (Bing Crosby)

"Going My Way" (Bing Crosby)

"Mary Poppins" (Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke)

"Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (Dick Van Dyke - pro-homeschooling!)

"The Sound of Music"

"Pollyanna" (Haley Mills)

"That Darn Cat" (Haley Mills)

"Thomasina"

"Heaven Knows, Mr Allison" (Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum"

"The Singing Nun" (Debbie Reynolds)

I think the wife in Mary Poppins is shown going against her husband and being involved in the women's movement and the father portrayed in a bad light. I'm not 100% on that.

Movies are all "eye-candy", with much more motion on-screen for today's ADD generation, and most of them have a stupid or non-existent plot.

When gorgeous on-screen eye candy isn't technologically possible, you're forced to tell a good story. Well, today people can be lazy, because you can generate all kinds of things with computers to make people go "wow" so you don't have to appeal to their higher nature anymore.

Also, people don't read anymore. In the 50's, 60's, or 70's, people still did a lot of reading. But as time went on, Hollywood decided to stop competing with books as far as "substance" or "content", and just did their own thing.

This has happened to other industries lately as well, such as video games.

There was a time when games involved lots of imagination and thought, and were generally "fun". Now, everything is eye candy and multiplayer.

I've seen several remakes of old movies, and the new ones ALWAYS have the same flavor that's hard to explain. I never like the remake, of course. But there are certain patterns there that a smart person could draw out and enumerate, if he wanted to.

Older movies made you think. Newer ones almost never do.

I'm a huge cinephile and, aside from the constant underpinning of sɛҳuąƖity that pervades film today, the thing that bothers me most is the terrible noise.  It used to be, even in action films, that the channels were discrete and unobtrusive, balanced relative to one another.  These days it seems that filmmakers, believing we need to be bludgeoned to gain our attention, subscribe to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound: persistent, panoramic, teeth-jarring bedlam.  Nor is that attitude limited to the sound effects; I can remember when a film's score was yet another voice, unhobbled by the confines of language, that could tell its part of the story in 30 seconds more beautifully and concisely than 30 minutes of expositional dialogue.  In some cases, the score was the very best part of the narrative, Thomas Newman's score for The Shawshank Redemption as an example.  Now, scores are limited to canned string overtures punctuated by screeching dubstep compositions and choirs of vuvuzelas.

Mary Poppins is not portrayed as participating in witchcraft ... although obviously she appears as if by "magic" and has abilities which no normal person would have.  In my opinon, however, there is nothing about this film which promotes the occult.  It's a fun, imaginative story about a nanny who comes and puts the family back together and shows the parents how to love and play with their children again.

The mother is involved in the suffragette movement in the beginning.  That's why the household is in disarray and she cannot keep a good nanny for her children, as they keep running off and getting into various troubles.  The movie pokes fun at the suffragettes and the mother is portrayed as a ridiculous character spouting women's rights' platitudes while neglecting her husband and children.

The father is a workaholic who spends most of his time at the bank where he is employed.  He ignores his children and his wife and is obsessed with hyper efficiency in running his household and his work at the bank.  He's also obsessed with money and status.

So Mary Poppins comes into the home and gives the children the attention they need and encourages both mother and father to come home and be a family again.  

It's a very positive message.

I disagree totally.  Not that Mary Poppins is overtly occultic, but that such a "fun, imaginative story" is acceptable for children.  The parents in this society don't give their children enough credit for their intelligence or properly cultivate their credulity.  Instead they foist half-baked moralistic platitudes smeared with an icing of utter fantasy and try to pass it off as good, clean fun, not recognizing it for what it is: the first step on the road to the kind of emotional and logical lameness that explains why chemical dependency on mood elevators is the most pervasive addiction in this country.  Practically from birth it seems, children are indoctrinated with the lies that anything is possible if you want it badly enough; that the good are always prosperous and beautiful; the evil are always punished and physically twisted; that the world will respect the effort that you put forward even if you don't succeed.  And then they grow up, live by those rules that are taught to them in childhood, all the while languishing in a menial, infantile job, barely able to afford the necessities of life because taxes ferry them to the edge of poverty, and inflation, caused by the welfare state supporting all of those worthless individuals that can't be bothered to play by "the rules", push shove them violently over the edge.  And then we wonder why people guzzle Prozac and energy drinks until they snap and murder a busload of people.  All because of good, clean fun.