Kind of a weird way to phrase the title, but here it is. What are movies that are set in the present, but simultaneously do their best to project another era through the music choice, costumes, sets and locations, and general sensibility?
All of Tarantino’s films fit this, but I’d say that Jackie Brown in particular, while set in the late nineties in which is was made, feels very “seventies” in almost every respect. “The Big Lebowski” is another good example - it’s set in the nineties, but the combination of the googie look to everything and the locations (like Jackie Treehorn’s beach house) just scream “sixties.”
“Twin Peaks,” though not a movie, was set in the eighties but definitely went out of its way to project a “fifties” vibe.
The movie that immediately comes to mind to me is Napoleon Dynamite. It has a very 1980’s look and feel…cassette tapes, top-loading VCR’s, Glamour Shots, side ponytails, moon boots. In fact, if Kip wasn’t meeting girls on the internet, you could make a very good case that the movie was indeed set in the 80’s.
The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, both directed by Wes Anderson, are–as far as I can tell–set primarily in the present. But they ‘feel’ like they take place in the seventies or early eighties.
When I saw Vincent Price’s first Dr. Phibes in 1971, I thought it was set in then-modern times but had a retro-feel to an earlier era. When I watched the DVD a friend got me for my birthday back in March, I realized- this damn movie is set in the 1920s!
I thought of another one–Edward Scissorhands. I haven’t seen that movie in forever, but I remember it had a very 1960’s vibe to me. At one point, I was surprised to hear that someone mention a “4-head VCR”…which definitely would put the movie in the then-present.
They lived in GermanTransylSwitzerland where it vasillated between 1880-1940! On the other side of town and up the mountains was Castle Dracula, while in the next town over was Talbot Manor.
Make that EngleGermanTransylSwitzerland. I forgot that The WolfMan was set in England, but apparently the Talbot family crypt was easily accessible to graverobbers in Franken-land. While the British whimsically refer to us Americans as “across the pond”, in EngleGermanTransylSwitzerland, the English Channel IS just a pond.
Except in Lugosi’s DRACULA, when the scooner Demeter actually had to cross a sea, but it shrunk soon after.
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and Straw Dogs, both Sam Peckinpah films set in present-day, were set in timeless rural milieus that evoked earlier eras (The Mexican badlands and the rural English countryside, respectively). Local Hero, The Coca Cola Kid, Archangel and An American Werewolf in London were all similar in this regard.
Some movies deal with subcultures that exist in–but have little in common with–modern society, like Witness, A Stranger Among Us and King of the Gypsies.
I want to work The Fisher King and Lair of the White Worm into this somehow.
The vastly under-rated Mousehunt was apparently set in the present day {OK, the late 90’s} but had that clipped 1930’s/40’s feel to the production design, which really helped evoke the Laurel and Hardy atmosphere it was aiming for.