ETA: Which isn’t to say that the original Ocean’s Eleven a great movie, necessarily. It isn’t, but that’s not because of how cool the main characters are or aren’t.
If it helps, I think you have that backwards. Remember the opening scene where John Spencer and Michael Madsen bicker about their feelings instead of turning the keys simultaneously, because fallible humans maybe can’t bring themselves to coldly release a plague of atomic hellfire o’er the land?
The answer therefore becomes clear: a computer with the power to direct actual attacks! What went unnoticed: the “run simulations” feature.
I see what you did there…
Well played!
I would like to add Billy Jack to the list of embarrassing “hip, happening '70s films.”
Oddly, I like the original BJ. Love the gratuitous violence on an otherwise pacifistic film. And loved the gratuitous nudity..except Loughlins wife…:eek:
I very much disagree with the notion that a film can be “too dated to be enjoyable”. Modern people aren’t any smarter or more artistic than the people of a few decades ago - they simply have better technology and different social attitudes.
Tell me about it. I watched The Ten Commandments the other day and it so drew me out of the movie when the Jews wandered in the desert for 40 years instead of checking Google Maps.
There was a whole genre of “witty, intellectual” movies that were huge hits with my parents’ generation in the early 1980s, and were well liked by critics too. These movies all revolved around the love lives of yuppies, professors, etc. and would deal with sexual pathologies in a very straightforward way. Many of them seemed to be remakes of French movies.
I tried watching some of them myself years later and they were pure embarrassing creepiness - I’m not sure if anyone could ever “like” this stuff if it wasn’t part of some brief cultural trend?
I’m talking about movies like: Blame it on Rio, “10” with Dudley Moore, some of Brian De Palma’s movies (ie., Dressed to Kill), some of Woody Allen’s movies (ie., Manhattan), Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Waiting for Mr Goodbar, 9 1/2 Weeks, etc. etc. I’d also add some of Ingmar Bergman’s early films, which might have started this whole trend.
I think there are a lot of movies from the early 1970s that utterly fail when watched today. (Just like there is a lot of cultural stuff in general from the 1970s that are epic fails when viewed by sane eyes.) The latter half and aftermath of the Sixties led to so many clueless experiments at big-budget levels… Candy. Need I say more? (Here is perhaps the funniest movie review ever written, scorching this film to bedrock.)
Although it’s from 1983, I’d class The Big Chill as being in the same group. As much as I liked it then, I can think of too many bits that would make me squirm now, and I’ve avoided rewatching it since it was new.
For me, I can enjoy most movies even if they are dated, if I’m in the mood for something from whichever decade. Being dated doesn’t = bad or unwatchable.
It’s usually individual scenes that reflect dated attitudes that keep me from enjoying something.
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Mickey Rooney playing an ugly Japanese stereotype in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is so cringe worthy it is difficult to sit through the rest of the movie.
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The rape scene in Revenge of the Nerds ruins an otherwise fun losers vs. jocks movie.
But then given any movie with adult protagonists–as long as the principal plot arc isn’t about financial duress or career-related adversity, the popularly imagined life of yuppies is pretty much the default setting. Or if not actual yuppies, then characters who lead obviously very comfortable and well funded lives even though they appear to be less than a decade out of college.
Well, those movies I was referring to weren’t a typical love story with yuppies - what made them jarring was that they had the sexual pathologies of the lead characters as the center of attention. (ick!) They also seemed to use college professors as a stock character for this purpose. (ick!)
Your disagreement is rather puzzling. I don’t think you need to posit that modern people are any smarter or more artistic than past generations to note that many, and indeed, probably the vast majority of the films of the early twentieth century that enjoyed popular acclaim at the time of their release would today be met with disgust, confusion and, above all, boredom from today’s audiences. There are “classics” from bygone eras that are regarded positively even today… but they are the rare exception, not the rule, and even they are not the crowdpleasers that they were when they were released; rather, they are works of art and to be able to “appreciate” them is considered something of a mark of cultural distinction.
It seems that you take it for granted that a great film is a great film no matter when it was made. This couldn’t be further from the truth: filmmaking technique, themes of resonance, directorial convention, and ideas of what constitutes good movie pacing are extremely variable from culture to culture and from era to era. Go to an African importer and buy some DVDs of popular films from Nigeria and you will see what I mean: not only are the storylines, themes, and underlying morals present in these films strikingly different from those used in Western films, the narrative conventions themselves are so divergent from those we are familiar with that it is often difficult to comprehend the nature of events that are being depicted on screen.
Of course, it is usually easier to understand old movies from our own culture, but nevertheless there are huge gulfs between what is considered entertaining today and what was considered entertaining in 1915. Have you ever sat through Birth of a Nation? The damn thing is over three hours long and if it weren’t for the fact that it is bracingly, offensively racist, it would be difficult to make it even halfway through without having to break for a nap. And yet in its time, it was considered absolutely riveting, an edge-of-your seat popcorn muncher that thrilled you, chilled you, and brought you to tears with its epic storyline and astonished you with D. W. Griffith’s mastery of the technical art of cinema, which admittedly was quite a bit more impressive than the skill of his contemporaries.
In summation, a movie absolutely can be so dated that it isn’t fun to watch.
So they used Apple Maps instead?
Not really; any more than a book can be do dated as to be not fun to read or a piece of music be so dated that its not fun toi listen to. Many people can adapt to the age/genre/style of whatever kind of work of art.
And many, many more people won’t. That’s kind of how “time” works.
But that is not ‘time working’; that is people refusing to work with time. 
Hey, you can learn to enjoy being kicked in the face if you try hard enough. However, we have limited time on this earth and I should think there are better ways to spend it then trying to learn to enjoy every type of entertainment that anyone has ever liked.
I’m fatalistic enough to assume that some of my old faves are unwatchably dated by now.
I’ve rented or bought classics and started watching them with my kids, only to realize along with them that what I thought was cool is now boring. (No, I didn’t try 2001 on them. I knew back then it was slowwwww…)
But one thing I’ve loved about Netflix is finding movies that I loved when they first came out…that are still great!
Again, the kids are a good barometer-- they love Ferris Bueller and Breakfast Club and Rear Window and A Hard Day’s Night. They call them “dated”, but it’s is a good thing to them-- daughter’s ‘Best Ever’ movie (okay, after “Mean Girls”) is Meet Me In St. Louis.
I’ll sit through any number of hoary old 30’s movies, even with their trifling, stage-bound (literally, many of them are adaptations of long forgotten plays) plots, just to look at the sets, the fashions, the gorgeous women. Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Constance Bennett, Loretta Young, Marlene Dietrich. Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, not technically gorgeous, but iconic actresses. All of them decked out in furs, feathers, spangles, sequins. Exquisite lace and chiffon tea gowns. Barely-there clinging tight satin halter gowns. The houses the idle rich lived in! The staircases, the art deco, marble floors, multiple enormous flower bouquets in ever room! The vast nightclubs, with little round tables where gents in tuxedos and their glamorous dates could see a Busby Berkley cast of 100’s putting on The Big Show that will help the hoofers survive the Depression. I could watch with the sound turned down and skip the convoluted, dopey screwball plots all together.