What movies are just so much a product of their time that they just aren’t very enjoyable to a modern audience?
I nominate The Man With The Golden Arm, supposedly almost scandalous on release it is just a really turgid and tiring morality tale with no real drama. Characters like the dope dealer in the bar are pure cheese, eye waggling villain from a western.
It just isn’t that interesting to watch a guy struggle with staying off heroin, and when he goes back on we the audience are assured he went through withdrawal again quickly.:rolleyes: The movie just needs something more, a guy addicted to heroin isn’t enough to maintain my interest.
I really wanted to enjoy The Spiral Staircase… and it was actually a decent movie. But I get the feeling I would have loved it a lot more if I had been alive and saw it when it was first released.
In fact, a lot of old horror, suspense and thriller movies are just almost unwatchable today because of acting styles of the time.
I think that films that rely upon our attitudes towards some social situations definitely fall into this category. The tragic mulatto stories such as Imitation of Life 9especially the first version), Within Our Gates, and God’s Stepchildren wouldn’t get a lot of traction in a world where Halle Berry is a superstar. The idea is that someone who has both black and white ancestors, but who looks white, is always in danger of being revealed as partly black, or feels themselves somehow illegitimate or unworthy for mot being completely white. The attitude seems as foreign as reckoning whether someone is a *quatroon[/] or an octaroon (one-quarter black or one-eighth black). I’ll bet most people today would have trouble properly understanding the concept, let alone sympathizing with its “victims”
The Human Stain was a recent attempt to address this issue, and even though it’s based on a book by Philip Roth and directed by Ncholas Meyer (whose stuff I love), it went over like a lead balloon.
Rebel Without A Cause does nothing for me. I guess the “turmoil” is the kid mouths off on occasion to adults and such… but while that may have been shocking at the time, it’s hardly a big deal now.
Some 80s staples, like The Breakfast Club, are starting to show just how self-centered we can get at times… watch them and kinda wanna say “Get the hell OVER yourself”
I know people are going to hate/pity me for saying this, but at least to an audience used to more and more efficient encapsulation of information in movies, the pacing of **2001: A Space Odyssey **makes it hard to watch. I’m not even that young, but I’ve gotten used to quick pacing in newer movies and find myself saying, “OK, OK, I *got *it, move on” for movies made as recently as the 80s.
I also personally can’t get past the affected style of acting in a lot of old movies. I’m too annoyed and pushed out of suspension of disbelief to enjoy it.
In general the movies I enjoy the most are from the '30s and '40s, and have been declining ever since. Of course there are individual old movies that are clunkers, and some wonderful newer ones . . . but the best are around early- to mid-'30s to mid- to late-'40s.
So I guess my answer would be “silents.” Only because I tend to have a short attention span, and I lose concentration easily. I have to often go back and re-read things that didn’t sink in.
I think Philadelphia. Hollywood tried, but just failed, to capture the daunting prospect of life with HIV and being fired from a job because of it. It’s overly simplistic, weirdly asexual, and the ‘artistic’ scenes just aren’t. Nineteen years on, it’s nearly unwatchable. Furthermore, the people who made the movie seemed not to understand that Denzel Washington was the protagonist, not Tom Hanks.
Also the 1982 Paul Newman movie The Verdict. I think audiences have become more sophisticated about what passes muster and not in a courtroom. Maybe not - Anatomy of a Murder is twenty years older and pretty good for Hollywood courtroom. Anyway, The Verdict is yell-at-the-movie-screen frustrating.
I’m going to go with Dracula (w/ Bela Lugosi). I’m sure part of the problem was that I had just read the book and the story was changed and I didn’t think the movie was nearly as good. But I just can’t understand why people hold that movie in such high regard.
I understand that it was near the beginning of the history of film making and special effects were in their infancy and everything (the SFX as well as the acting techniques) had been adapted from the stage. But IMO, it just wasn’t good.
After watching it, it seems like one of those movies that actors say is their favorite movie to be ironic. Well, not to be ironic. It seems like they say it, because the actors they loved growing up said it as well.
I dunno, at the time, I’m sure it was amazing. At a time when vampires weren’t in every movie, book and website you turn to, I’m sure it was terrifying. But now, not so much. With the technology we have for special effects today, watching the 1931 version of Dracula (IMVHO) isn’t even worth the time.
Easy Rider - I hated the film when it first came out (and was the only one I knew my age back then who didn’t love it). I thought it was a pretentious mess and was thrilled when certain characters died at the end.
Recently there were some snippets shown on TV and I think it is safe to say a lot of the psychedelic mumbo jumbo is even lamer today than it was then. Actually, quite a few of those hip, happening 70’s films have lost their “cool” factor and are more of an embarrassing time capsule than good films.
Movies like “Lincoln” hey, c’mon that stuff happened 150 years ago, I know the ending already.
D-Mark - you were “thrilled” at the cold-blooded murders at the end of Easy Rider. I wouldn’t expect you to get the point of the movie or even to have enjoyed it…
Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper epitomized the type of asshole hippie stereotype that even I couldn’t tolerate back then…and yes, I too was the proverbial long hair, pot smoking, protesting college dude. They were just obnoxious and I didn’t find a single redeeming factor in either character. So yeah - when they bit the dust, no tears were shed on my part. Can’t say as I liked the evil rednecks…but if the two of them had ridden their motorcycles off a cliff instead - Thelma and Louise style - I would have been equally pleased.
I don’t have any specific example in mind, but the thing that I really dislike is when a movie or tv show makes reference to something costing a specific amount of money, especially in a context where people watching it when it first came out would be amazed or horrified in some way by the figure.
For example–“That restaurant was so expensive! We’re never going back there! A simple hamburger cost three dollars!”
I know much more about money than the average person, and I can do a quick and dirty calculation in my head to get an approximately equivalent figure in today’s money, but it strongly detracts from the viewing experience.
That sort of thing, more than anything else, makes a movie dated for me.
It would be far better to set prices and money in relative terms; for example, “That meal for both of us cost me a full day’s wages!”
Harold and Maude, IMO, is a bit of a cult classic. Personally I think it’s a great movie (I’m 32), but you also partially watch it for the soundtrack.
I haven’t seen Midnight Cowboy or Wait Until Dark in a few years, but I’m not sure what would make them dated. I can see not liking Midnight Cowboy if it didn’t live up to the hype, but I recall Wait Until Dark being a good movie.
I won’t hate or pity you, but I won’t agree with you either - because some people at the time the movie came out criticized its pacing. It isn’t, I think, a question of audiences then being more accepting and audiences now no longer being able to appreciate it.