This may take a little salesmanship on your part, but * Schindler’s list* is very much worth the time.
I just came across The Dirty Dozen on TCM last night – had to watch it to the end even though it was past my bedtime.
Try that one!
It’s been a real adventure trying to find out, i tell you.
I mentally put older movies into 3 categories…
- he’s gonna love this
- he’s gonna hate this
- he’ll love this if only i can get him to watch
Although he often surprises me, i think my instincts for what he would like are better than his own. He forms an opinion instantly and it’s hard to change his mind and get him to watch something once he has decided he’s gonna hate it and the first 10 minutes of a movie are crucial. If it’s all sweeping vistas and meaningful glances at the start - as so many movies from 30+ years ago are - he’ll start reaching for the interwebs. So action movies have a natural headstart.
I’m struggling to think of a slow movie that he liked - but I keep trying!
I’m often surprised at how badly i misremembered old movies. B&C has more than it’s fair share of knowing looks and windswept prairies before they get in that car. It’s much slower that i remembered. So was first blood. But once first blood gets rolling, it really rolls right a long and i think that’s the necessary component to get past his meh filter.
Based on this thread, I JUST watched the movie for the first time via Netflix streaming and loved it. Despite knowing how it ended, the ending was still a “holy shit” moment despite having seen a bajillion violent movies in my time.
I have a handful of movies up my sleeve that i know he’ll enjoy if i pick my moment.
Schindler’s List is one. Apocolypse Now is another.
I scored big with Private Ryan but, with difficult movies, timing is everything. I was able to whip that one out after he learned something about the normandy landings at school. The holocaust is a tougher sell but i know the day will come when he is ready.
The most compelling holocaust movie for me is Life is Beautiful so we’ll be watching that first.
I don’t understand. What does that last word mean?
It’s presumedly the way Jack Warner pronounced homage.
It sounds like he’s good with action movies (though I can’t understand then why he didn’t like the spaghetti westerns you showed him—who doesn’t like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly?). How do you think he’d like something like Rashomon? Or do you think the relativism from the different POV is something that he’d need to be older to appreciate? (I saw it in college and, to this day, it honestly changed the way that I view the world.)
How about The Guns of Navarone for an older war movie that, IMO, aged well? River Kwai can be a little slow for an audience needing lots of action, though it’s just so lushly filmed, and I can say from unfortunate experience that Dr. Strangelove is not a movie that everyone will like (both of the other people I first saw it with were asleep by the first half hour.)
I agree with Maserschmidt that the most entertaining part of this thread is figuring out what he likes and doesn’t.
Yes, try The Dirty Dozen; if he likes, follow with The Devil’s Brigade.
::raises hand::
The spaghetti westerns never did it for me.
On the other hand, I think The Outlaw Josey Wales might be a winner with the kid.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest. Plus, if he likes it you can get him to read by pointing out that the book is better.
At least to my understanding (and I was born well after the film was released so I could have this wrong), at the time, The Graduate was this ultimate anti-establishment, Fuck The Man type film. You sympathy is supposed to be with Ben and his ennui about modern life. Viewed now, we can see that he’s just as full of shit, if not more so, than the establishment he’s rebelling against. Future events have proven his parents right, painting everything in a different context.
A question: did FF Coppola copy the death scene (for the murder of Sonny in the Godfather)? So many similarities…in B&C, it seems like Clyde is dancing like a puppet as the bullets rip into him.
Anyway, yes, B&C was a very violent movie, and it did not present the wo characters as heroic in any way-they were total dirtbags.
I rewatched B&C tonight. I’d forgotten how much they played up the Clyde is impotent storyline. Every time he’d start to romance Bonnie he’d pull away in disgust. She was pretty pissed too. 
Not sure that was accurate. I read several books on them. Clyde probably did get buggered in prison. Prison was so brutal he even chopped off a toe with an hoe or slingblade just to get into the hospital ward. I don’t recall anything in the books about him being impotent. I can’t see Bonnie hanging around if he had that problem.
There’s been a lot of speculation that Bonnie was a few months pregnant when she died. It was covered up because of her death. Shooting a pregnant lady wasn’t good for the law’s image. This was in the books too.
That’s funny!
I watched Rashomon a couple of months ago on my own and he walked in while i was watching it. Since then, it has come to represent all that is bad about my taste in movies in his eyes. When he is naughty i threaten to make him watch Rashomon 
the only movie that is worse - to him - was the recent gengis khan movie ( forget what is was called)
This was a huge success! He loved it. I didnt think he would. Its a counter-example for the “he only likes action movies” theory!
I just read the book recently too. Took my breath away. I was surprised how different it was from the movie. Having the indian as a narrator totally changes the tone and meaning IMO.
It’s fun for me too… But nerve wracking when i open that little red envelope and put the shiny little disc in the dvd player. Is he gonna like this one??
Its true that action movies are the safest bet but we’ve had success with sentimental italian movies like il postino and cinema paradiso. Even a few french movies or more exotic. But those are always a tough sell.
Heist movies have worked. Fight Club was a huge hit.
Of the suggestions in this thread, kelly’s heroes and the dirty dozen are in my queue.
I’m gonna risk Bridge Over the River Kwai too.
Another suggestion: The Man Who Would Be King
Just the opposite; that’s the way Warren Beatty (correctly) pronounced hommage.
It’s spelled homage and pronounced hom-ij in English, which apparently was the language Beatty and Warner were speaking in. If Beatty decided to use the French word hommage (pronounced o-mazh) you can see why Warner was confused (or why he pretended to be confused to mock Beatty).
To which Beatty undoubtedly responded, “Pretentious, moi?”