[JKCalhoun]

I don;t think so — it's just that if you have 100-ish years to choose from, this doesn't seem like a very even spread. To be sure, I would feather off anything too early — the silent era seems only interesting to film historians that want to see where the modern ideas of film began (example: "Battleship Potemkin" (1925)).

But at the same time, Hollywood does seem to have fallen into the trap of mediocrity for some time now — probably since the 1980's to be honest (having only gotten worse over the ensuing decades). "La La Land" was popular in large part because it was something of a throwback to 1930's Hollywood. Tarantino's success seems to stem from his mining of gritty 1970's Hollywood.

So why not go back and watch "Gold Diggers of 1937" for the "La La Land" stuff, or "Straw Dogs" (1971) to see what Tarantino is making homage to.

[zamadatix]

Without putting any assumption about whether new movies or old movies are more often better, wouldn't one expect a skew somewhat following the skew of rates of movies produced per year?