Movies that made a big pop culture splash but are now disporportionately forgotten

Hey, it was boring when I saw it 40 years ago, back during the heyday of Fellini and Truffaut and Bergman and them guys. (And I actually liked a lot of that shit back then. But not 8 1/2.)

Do you still like their movies, and what would you recommend now?

I’d agree with most of this list, but I’d disagree with Jerry Maguire. Sure, the phrase, “show me the money!” is still back there in our memories, but it’s dropped out of use. (No great loss.) And “You (choking pause) complete me” probably isn’t used by anyone anymore, even as a joke.

As best as I can tell, it’s totally dropped out of the culture. Gone, but not missed.

How long can you go on telling a joke when everyone is in on it? And where can you go from “up”? :confused:

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Surely you can’t be serious?

Add me to the voices that say Jerry McGwire has much less cultural impact today that some think. I can’t even remember the last time someone has said “Show me the money” and the last time I remember hearing someone saying “You… complete me” was in the early 2000s.

My nomination is Gladiator. The movie was HUGE in 2000. It’s barely remembered today (partially because I think people went back and watched it and realized it was pretty crappy).

Along the lines of Crocdile Dundee, I remember Yahoo Serious and ***Young Einstein ***being a thing for about a half hour… today I had to go and look it up because I had forgotten everything but a very vague image of the movie poster and it being Australian.

We as a nation said no to Yahoo Serious.

Agreed, but we did take an overly long look at him before saying nay.

He means Airport, not Airplane (and sequels Airport '75, '77…)

How about some Jack Nicholson movies?

Prizzi’s Honor. It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Leading Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and won for Best Supporting Actress. These days, it has a mediocre 6.8 rating on IMDb and nobody watches it.

Or going back a bit further,

Five Easy Pieces. Nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay, and it inspired a Mad Magazine parody, which was the marker of cultural significance for a movie back in the day. Who watches it today?

Yeah, it’s kind of funny that Airplane is better remembered than the movies it was parodying.

Oh, and another from the early 70s:

The French Connection. It was groundbreaking at the time, and the car chase scene was breathtaking to 1971 audiences. These days the movie just seems kind of…ordinary and dated, and has largely dropped out of cultural memory.

I’ve never seen the movie, but I have seen the diner scene multiple times. Similarly, I saw the whole, “She’s my sister.” [Slap] “She’s my daughter.” [Slap] “She’s my sister and my daughter.” multiple times before I ever saw Chinatown.

Oh because a classic has to be old? I am talking about movies that are more recent in origin but people now treat them as classics. Yes, I am using the term in a sense different than as applied to the Iliad and whatnot.

First let me repeat post #116:

I added it as a footnote that it had a phenomenal presence because everyone would watch it on the same bat channel at the same time and discuss it the next day. Of course, that applies to all shows but I thought it was worth a footnote because I think it particularly applies to this show which gained its status not in the original 1939 movie theater but in TV syndication.

And Dumb & Dumber, if you carefully read my original post :dubious:, was cited as a Jim Carrey movie with lasting cultural impact, as opposed to Liar Liar which people usually watch on TBS if at all. Dumb & Dumber remains hugely phenomenal.

Rocky still has a niche following, and gets referenced now and then, such as a spoof of the old guy and the chicken, but I lived through the 70s, and it wasn’t quite as big as Star Wars, but was hugely phenomenal. People talked about it and referenced it all the time.

Jaws was hugely phenomenal and the main attraction at the Hollywood studios, and I’m sure people still watch it once every five years, but I’m seeing much less of the duh duh duh duh, duh duh duh duh (such as the Caddyshack candy bar) these days. This one is debatable, but no reason to dismiss my list out of hand.

American Graffiti is now mainly remembered as the movie that spawned Happy Days, and doesn’t garner much attention. I still love it and the first Bad News Bears, and BNB still gets referenced now and then, but we used to watch these movies in syndication at local drive-in theaters.

Jerry Maguire and Sixth Sense. C’mon. Forget about it.

Caligula
What’s Up, Doc?
Risky Business
Smoky & the Bandit
Every Which Way But Loose
Cannonball Run
Benji
Deliverance
Prizzi’s Honor
Erin Brochovich
Three Men and a Baby

Disagree. “You had me at <hello>”, swapping whatever for <hello> is still used in current pop culture references.

There are a ton of films that could be talked about. Beaches, Heathers, Titanic, Terms of Endearment, The English Patient, Girl, Interrupted, Magnolia, Fargo, Ghandi, etc. So I’m going to limit myself to what is IMO the prototypical answer to the OP.

Ordinary People set the standard for late 70s/early 80’s dramas. Even more than Kramer vs Kramer or the Deer Hunter. Won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director for Robert Redford’s first film and Supporting Actor for Timothy Hutton in his first film even though he split the nomination with Judd Hirsch. and a Best Actress nomination for MTM and unbelievably Donald Sutherland was left out in the cold. From personal experience (many years later) it is brutally and unapologetically real - probably because of how real life of some actors was mirroring the movie. It could have defined an entire genre of films (realistic drama of the common man) and it was a commercial and critical success and is a 92% critic/88% viewer on Rotten Tomatoes.

Today it is merely an entry on a list of Best Picture winners.