If you could show someone from the 1950s a movie today to show them what movies could be like in 50 years, which one would you show?
Forest Gump.
Dogma
Lord of the Rings. Always Lord of the Rings.
Men in Black might be an entertaining way to show how special effects change but movies stay the same.
Far from Heaven, maybe, to show them what we think of their life and how things have changed.
Either that or Fight Club because I’d love to see the expression on his/her face when the fighting commences…
Toy Story. Or maybe Spiderman.
Pulp Fiction
My mother has never seen Pulp Fiction because she’s a Church of Chirst fundamentalist type and thinks it’s evil. Every time I see that scene in the apartment where Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta kill those white kids I wonder what my mom would think about it. I wafffle between trying to show it to her just to watch the look on her face or not showing it to her because her head would explode. The truth of the matter is that she would probably just get up and walk out because of all of the cussing.
Me, I like the cussing.
Grease.
Naw, just kiddin’.
I’d show them The Phantom Menace, mostly to see if it makes any sense whatsoever to somebody with absolutely no cultural references or preconceptions as to what the plot’s going to be.
I’d wait until after the movie was over to tell them that Jar Jar was CGI, and ask them how they liked the rubber suit guy.
Interesting…I was raised going to the Church of Christ (still consider myself a member although I haven’t really attended regularly in a few years) and enjoyed Pulp Fiction, although I think it loses some of the charm the more I watch it, but that’s mostly just because Tarrantino isn’t all that talented a film-maker…he pretty much just lucked out on this one, as his later films demonstrate painfully. Yeesh, long sentence… Anyway, why does she think it’s “evil”? I can see an older individual being put off by the language or upset that violence is “glorified” (although everyone who dies in it dies a very messy, painful death…not much glory there), but “evil”? Has she actually made this pronouncement to you, or are you predicting her reaction?
Anyway, I’d either show them “Lord of the Rings” (to show how wonderful and imaginitive movies have become) or go for the total culture-shock meltdown and show them “Eyes Wide Shut”. Just to watch the look of horror and confusion - no story, weird shit happening everywhere, and lots of nekkid women - 1950s man would probably have an aneurism.
Back to the Future.
Blade Runner, because it’s futuristic even for us - it would blow them away.
Then maybe Forest Gump - a nice movie, and they would know some of the cultural references, right?* Might find it cute.
What about Pleasantville? It would be interesting to see what they think - it’d be like two groups looking at the same thing from opposite ends.* I think good discussions would arise.
** I am a young punk - if I got the wrong decade, please flog me with a wet noodle.*
LOL “Blast from the Past”. Wasn’t that family hiding our since the 50s? Or was it the 70s? I don’t remember it all that well, but it would be somewhat appropriate, I think!
What got me thinking about this was watching one of the extra discs on LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring, and it talked about how it was a timeless story and it showed clips of Hitler to show what the people living at that time associated with evil in the world.
Anyway I was thinking about how different everything was then, when the story came out, but how it was still relevant then as it is now.
I think it would be interesting to show them a LOTR film because that could show how well such a fantasy land like Middle Earth could be realized amazingly on film now a days whereas then it would have to be all in their mind and something like a LOTR film just wasn’t possible.
Superman (1979)
I’d show them one of the Star Trek movies and tell 'em it was a documentary! 
Had to go out to the garage and hunt through old SF magazines, but in the mid-winter 1984 issue of Analog, Eric Iverson had a story, “Hindsight” in which an SF author and editor (thinly disguised Poul Anderson and John Campbell) investigate in the 1950s a mysterious author who has been turning in top notch SF stories to the magazine. Problem comes about when the editor gets a submission from the Anderson character with exactly the same story that has just been submitted by the mysterious author. Campbell character flies out to California, meets Anderson character and they investigate.
Mysterious author turns out to be a lady from the future who brought back with her a number of SF books and is trying to reprogram the culture by submitting selected stories earlier than they would have appeared otherwise. She also brought back a color TV and VCR, and plays **Star Wars ** for them. In the mid-50s, they have never seen color TV, much less higher definition, much less the effects of even the first Star Wars film. They are mightily impressed with effects (though not scoring the plot that highly.)
Great little story, which catches the mood of the 50s perfectly, and well worth looking up.
Totally The Matrix.
Aliens and Evil Dead II
heh
The Exorcist
Holy Moses, Wombat! You wanna kill’em?
Anyway, I’ve actually thoought about this for a couple years now and I long ago decided on a film that fits into the “monster movie” genre and is modern, but with a great story and more than enough believability to totally freak them out.
Jurassic Park.