Similarly, Five Easy Pieces is almost incomprehensible.
Don’t forget that Kirk defeats Khan by realizing that as a man of the 20th (21st?) Century, Khan is not really used to thinking in three dimensions, doesn’t realize the Enterprise can get above or below him – yet, Kirk still hasn’t outgrown the thinking that all starships in a vicinity have to be in the same relative plane-of-orientation, as if they were submarines. See Space Is An Ocean.
I dunno if it was ever considered a great movie, but Billy Jack once was shown in real walk-in theaters, and if you rent it you’ll wonder how that could have happened.
Heck, I wonder that about The Green Slime, which I saw in a real movie theater.
For that matter, I’m amazed that anyone paid money to see The Story of Mankind
I’ve thought about that before. I can’t think of any space battle I’ve seen in a movie where combatting ships meet each other upside down or sideways. Some bank, roll, or spin, sure. But there is a direction in space that is clearly “up.”
Even in Babylon 5 – where they at least had to sense to come up with the Starfury – obviously the result of some bright fellow asking, “Hey, it’s in free-fall and hard-vac, so why do we need a fighter shaped like an airplane, where the pilot has to sit down?”
In this vein, I suppose one could also fanwank the mullet. If I recall my Star Trek chronology correctly, I think the Eugenics Wars (of which Khan is a veteran) take place in the 1990s, which would have been at the tail-end of the mullet era.
Gentleman’s Agreement’s story is well out of date today. It’s not utterly incomprehensible if you watch it, since it’s easy to understand how a social structure that casually excludes certain members can exist. There’s no real lack of that today. But the movie seems specifically tailored to anti-Semitism as it was in the US then. It’s more of an interesting artifact than a timeless tale.
As an aside, I noticed this in the Wikipedia entry for Imitation of Life:
So that’s what happened to her.
Not a movie, but the new Battlestar Galactica had space battles in all dimensions.
The aforementioned 2001 is remarkable in that it at least attempted to depict space travel realistically.
I hear Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a good move, even a great one. I wouldn’t know as I always switch to something else when Mickey Rooney comes up.
Heck, long before that E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman novels had three-dimensional battle formations, like the “Cone of Attack”, treating space as the non-planar medium it is. Visual SF, as usual, is simply decades behind.
I watched The Gradudate about five years ago, but it felt to me like it must have been dated when it was released.
I thought it was :rolleyes: hokey, embarassingly trite and soft-pedaled the reall effects of anti-Semitic bigotry. I guess it should be remembered as ground-breaking for even bringing up the subject.
Any pre-WWII era Hitchcock movie does not for me stand the test of time, chief example being The Thirty-Nine Steps. Still a compelling novel, but a creaky and dull movie.
Lots of silent films look wretched now. A couple nights ago I saw the tail end of The Pagan with Ramon Navarro, and it’s difficult to imagine the audience in those days doing anything but laughing during the climactic fight scenes. The very best ones, though are still a gas (like Buster Keaton’s The General).
I can never hear of The Graduate without bringing up Roger Ebert’s astonishingly accurate 30th Anniversary review.
In short, Mrs. Robinson is the only real person in the entire thing.
Ironically I watched a movie over the weekend that made me think about starting a similar thread, *That Touch of Mink *with Cary Grant and Doris Day.
The pretext of the film is that a 58-year old Cary Grant only wants to have an affair with the 40-year old Doris Day (still feigning virginity). For 1962, it might have been a slightly relative story with 20-year olds in the part, but so hard to believe from these two stars. For 2010, it is beyond a joke.
It would make a good porno.
It’s spelled K-H-A-N, but pronounced “MacGyver”.
I’ll also say 2001 holds up, and the “dating” isn’t relevant. I mean, it’s obviously not our year 2001.
I strenuously disagree with that. It’s still very compelling with great setpieces, and a terrific ending. There was a BBC remake recently that wasn’t half as good (though, admittedly, the stage play is much better than either ).