irony, a great tool...

I went with the '70s. Cannon Ball Run and Smokey and the Bandit, need I say any more?

2000's.

I'm a little pissed about the amount of votes the 2000's are getting. We're only 4 years in, and there's still been many many great movies to come out, in my opinion anyway. Sure every decade has it's bad movies, but perhaps your just remember more of the more recent crap.

True, popular music will date any film. The only way to not date it is to have an orchestra sounding score (ie star wars). I think in 10-20 years the "new age" soundtracks will be the dated ones. But still, the 80's synthesyzer scores really get on my nerves :)

I agree, but welcome to the movie board mentality.

Logic or truth isn't welcomed.

I think it's no coincidence that almost every movie nominated and winning for Best Picture in the 80s was a historical film to some extent. The late 80s saw some change with Rain Man, but that was about it.

Or maybe in 4 years the 2000s just havent produced a classic film yet (Aside from maybe Kill Bill, Memento, or Muholland Drive)

Kill Bill a classic...errr...did I miss the memo on this...?

Not to piss on anybody's parade, but this is kind of a pointless discussion. We can all agree that there were great movies in every decade. We can also agree that with the good films, comes the real turds of cinema.

That being said...the 50's sucked!!!

If you consider it as one movie, then it is most definetly a classic IMO.

If EVERY SINGLE movie to come out from this point onward until the end of the decade were a solid piece of gold, it would still have a hard time overcoming the gigantic mountain of shit that has acculminated thusfar.

We're 50% of the way through the decade, and it's sucked so far. Why should things be diffrent through the back half?

I agree 100%. It should have probably been left off the poll.

Another reason it's getting a lot of votes is that most posters here haven't seen films from any of the other decade, so they have to vote for it by default.

Exactly!

I'm glad to see that the 1980's & 1950's are 1,2 in the voting, as that is the order I would put them in too.

The 1950's were a great decade for sci-fi, westerns & Hitchcock, but a lot of the other product was bland and watered down.

The early 60's weren't the greatest for film either, but the late 60's more than made up for this.

The 1930's, 40's & 70's were the best decades overall, with my vote going to the 70's as #1.

I think in terms of really great films in the 1980's, the pickings are not exactly great, to say the least.

You have to remember that the 1980's produced relatively few classic films, and only at the very end of the 1980's did Disney start its great animate feature revival.

I mean look at the list of memorable films that came out during the 1990's:

Beauty and the Beast
Aladdin
The Lion King
Toy Story
Toy Story 2
The Silence of the Lambs
Dances With Wolves
Forrest Gump
Pulp Fiction
Schlinder's List
Titanic
Shakespeare in Love (a woefully underrated film IMHO)
Saving Private Ryan
American Beauty

As far as being only four years into the 2000's go, we're already half way through this year (nearly). And I think I can safely assume that Spiderman 2 isn't going to be a timeless classic. (On a separate note, did anyone hear about the spiderwebs they are going to put on the bases in baseball for promoting the movie? Weird and shameless).

But taking a sampling of the nearly 5 years of the 2000's, it's pretty thin, IMHO.

I'd remove probably half the films from that list (Dead Poets Society? WTF?) and add maybe 5 more and that would be every great film from the '80s. That's pretty pathetic.

And yet somehow everyone has failed to post a list "timeless classics" from the 90s and aughts. It's almost like . . . there arent any.

Imagine that.

quote: "The 2000's so far have contained Mulholland Drive and The Pianist. Two very strong contenders. Even if this decade produces nothing else those two alone will make the decade shine."

but if that was true.. only TWO MOVIES in ten years? thats pretty sad..

i didnt vote for the 2000s, but i see trailers all the time that disgust me.. is this the decade of cameos and pop-culture-movie wannabes? paris hilton cameos, from justin to kelly (give them a movie just because they won the damn idol show?!?) jack ozzbourne with the olsen twins.. hey if the movie sucked, at least we got to see a minute or two of so and so.. then there's the model or pop-diva wannabe actors... talk about the ultimate marketing schemes (regardless of whether they work or not.. this parallels the CGI over story discussion. seems alot of studios want the buck not the bang)

i want to see more movies that showcase talented debut actors you've never heard of that really shine.. guy pearce in memento, great example IMO.. after watching: "man that was a fantastic movie, who was that guy again?" those are the movies that need to carry the 2000s.

i couldnt vote for the 80s either. regardless of all the crap, or oscars, alot of these films were memorable to some extent IMO. and i'd like to nominate two more for the realm of fantasy represting the 80s: labyrinth and dark crystal

Yes, you do...because you forgot about The Godfather 1, The Godfather 2, Rocky, Star Wars, Jaws, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Apocalypse Now, Alien, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, All The President's Men, The Deer Hunter, Annie Hall, The Exorcist, Patton, A Clockwork Orange, Deliverance, Mean Steets, The Conversation, Monty Python & The Holy Grail, and probably a dozen or so more I'm not thinking of...

Well, it's hard to tell if a movie is going to be a "timeless classic" a year after it's released. Even ten years.

Just one example: Duck Soup. Today, it's considered a classic film by just everybody. When released, it bombed horribly. Ten years later, you probably couldn't find somebody who had even heard of the movie. But it was rediscovered in the 1960's, at which time it quickly gained recognition.

From the looks of it, I'm guessing Catwoman will singlehandedly make this the worst CENTURY in movies ever.

If people are just looking at the mainstream product put out by Hollywood studios, then yes, the past few years have been pretty bad, but if you look beyond that, you will find many riches.

The independent & semi-independent films of today, were the mainstream product of Hollywood back in the late 60's & early 70's.

Ok, fair enough - even Citizen Kane took a while to come into it's own. Lets replace the words "timeless classics" with just the best movies of the decade thusfar. Someone come up with the Best of the Aughts list, and we can compare and contrast the two lists.

Now, I'm not going to go to the wall for the 2000's, since the jury's still waaay out. But, you asked for a list, so here's what I would start with:

Amelie
Finding Nemo
LOTR - FOTR/TTT/ROTK
Almost Famous
Memento
The Pianist
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Ghost World
Black Hawk Down
Kill Bill
Adaptation
Traffic
Best In Show
Lost in Translation
Requiem for a Dream
Pirates of the Caribbean
About Schmidt
Whale Rider
American Spendor
Moulin Rouge

And that doesn't include a whole boatload of movies that I haven't seen/don't care enough about to put on the "best" list, but that others might go to bat for, like:
City of God
Mystic River
Mulholland Dr.
Talk to Her
Seabiscuit
Donnie Darko
Gladiator
Spiderman
Love Actually
X2
Brotherhood of the Wolf
(and this list could go on for quite a while)

Or the recent batch of excellent documentaries, including:
Spellbound
Capturing the Friedmans
Comedian
Winged Migration
Lost in La Mancha
Gigantic - A Tale of Two Johns
Startup.com

So, for a five year span, I think that's pretty damn_good. I'm not going to try and predict which of these will stand the test of time, but I'll wager that a fair chunk of them do.

However, Rivero might be right - Catwoman may render all of this moot. :)