This is to accompany the "movies that age well" thread.

Some movies are timeless, others are hopelessly stuck in the year or decade they were made. What are your best picks?

Satuday Night Fever is a bit locked into its time
Love Story is so rutted in a certain transitional time in America that, while a hit then, is almost trivial now.

It occurs to me that most comedies age poorly. Because of that, really good ones (Bringing Up Baby, Some Like It Hot, Dr. Strangelove, Annie Hall) are real gems.

But maybe it's because I don't like comedies much...

Star Wars... and mainly because of the clean look that TPM & AOTC has, it really makes the original look dated.

I guess you're right. For example M.A.S.H. I am wondering what's so funny about this film.

Beastmaster & Clash of the Titans. I used to love these movies. I bought both within the past year, and could'nt even get through Clash.

"Saturday the 14th" springs to mind...liked it as a kid, couldn't even pass go as an adult...

Oh, and "Terminator 2." I now find the dialogue real sappy/corny.

Making Love. Oooh, aren't we daring. In reality: bad TV movie of the week.

Basically every movie that wasn't covered on your other thread.

Any movie that uses pop culture references. I can't stand those.

xXx will age badly. I liked it but think that later on people will find it corny.

Many old war movies don't age well because now when we have ultra-realistic, ultra-voilent war movies its hard to watch John Wayne kill a million Japanes/Germans with a pistol without getting his clothes dirty.

Those films hold up because they are good and have great scripts. They aren't video games like to today's ilk

UHF
Caddyshack (still enjoyable, but dated)

Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid. Period pieces usually age better than other films...unless you fill the film with pop music from the time it was made and "hip" dialogue. Ditto the first Young Guns (the sequel was pretty good).

There are two kinds of dated. One kind makes you go, "Boy this is stupid, what were they thinking?" The other kind makes you think, "Wow, this really captures the feeling of the era well." I think that, say, Saturday Night Fever and Annie Hall fall into category number 2.

Easy Rider falls into both categories--time has shown that it's not a very good movie, but oh boy does it capture the feeling of the late 60s.

In a later viewing, I thought "Young Guns" to be terrible. When it first came out, it was great!

This may sound like a foolishly simple answer, but it’s still what I’m going with. Any sub par movie will age badly and any great movie will go on as a gem. The stuff in between can go either way.

I guess what I’m saying in part, is that even a dated movie, which may seem hokey by today’s standards may still be funny, interesting or fun. Thus such a film can go on as being entertaining while others do not.

For example, Grand Hotel (1932) is a gem of a movie. Yet it’s very dated in it’s dramatics. Still, I have no problem watching that movie over and over. On the other hand a more modern movie such as Mr. Deeds (2002) is just plain horrible. It doesn’t need to age to become bad. It just stinks from day one. It will never be good.

Then we have some movies like the ones previously listed in this thread, which are so wonderful they will forever be immortal. Of these, the vast majority comes from the 30’s, 40’s and even 50’s. There are just too many of these to list, yet they have names like It Happened One Night (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936), You Can't Take It with You (1938), Ninotchka (1939) and Wuthering Heights (1939) to name but five which have not yet been mentioned.

One of the great motion picture falsehoods of this modern day, that a movie suddenly becomes “better” if there are better special effects. To me this is garbage and shows the extreme decrease in moviegoer sophistication over the past decades. This is the ongoing push to present effects and graphic violence, language and sex as being more important than great and witty dialogue with superior direction.

Let’s take for example In Old Chicago (1938). This is a drama and certainly a disaster flick if I ever saw one. The effects were amazing by 1938 standards but are nothing like what can be produced today. Yet, can someone actually claim that Earthquake (1974) with all its superior effects can be even considered in a class near as great as In Old Chicago (1938)? I would seriously question the movie taste of anyone who would suggest such an absurdity. However, knowing today’s general audience, I wouldn’t be surprised to find many who would do just that.

Well….I guess I could go on about this for an eternity. Yet, I’ll stop here for now. This thread brought up a much more complex topic than just “movies that age badly”. For that Pants, you again have my complements for again posting a quality thread


On last food for thought: Can someone explain why sooooo many silent movies are still so wonderful? They are as old as you can get and the effects are primitive..........Yet there are an amazing number which are still far and above many made today.......Just another thought on the subject

This will probably make alot of people mad, but I saw Scarface for the first time last year andit was kinda cheezy in an 80's sorta way as well for Pacino whos accent was too fake.

My only problem with "Scarface" was that Tony Montana had zero redeeming qualities. Pacino plays him as a total scumbag, and that's fine, I guess (a great performance) but I could have cared less that he died at the end.

I did, however, care about his friend/partner who he wound up killing. Towards the end, I couldn't wait for Montana to be blown away.

SCARY MOVIE 2

You think someone (In 5 years) is going to remember the NIKE ad commercial spoof?

The action films that come to mind that I think have just worn out their novelty are Speed & Lethal Weapon Series. For some reason, except for True Lies and other Cameron actioners, most action movies out of the 80s and early 90s just don't hold up as well.

Vampyr:

The thing about silent movies is correct only apparently (or partially). I think studios were churning movies every week during that period, and very few have survived. In all honesty, all we know today as "silent movies" are the tip of the iceberg.

On the other hand, I believe that, since the artists (meaning everyone involved in making the film) were limited to visuals, they had to convey a full range of emotions using a "crippled" (read "incomplete") medium. The same goes for the special effects of the time. And yet, when they succeeded ("Caligari" and "Vampyr" actually come to mind), the result was very powerful, indeed.

By the way - to the horror of many, I guess - I invite those who enjoy silent movies to play them accompanied by some good music of personal choice. The result is akin to reading a good book while having your favorite music in the background. Sometimes (I personally use electronica) it even seems that the music is extremely well-synchronized with the action, and some elements are emphasized to the point where you wonder "gee, I saw this so many times, but never caught THAT detail".

Silent movies are a different cultural medium altogether. Sometimes I regret not having a parallel movie industry focused on silent cinema. I bet the results would be fascinating.

Heathers

Oh come on, what's your damage?

I just wanted to say that I enjoyed reading your response. It's well stated and very constructive. That's an interesting idea about the music and silents too.

Well done