So I’ve recently had opposing experiences having rewatched a film or TV show I used to love, having not seen it in decades:
Abyss. The James Cameron underwater sci-fi. Just seen for the first time in decades (caveat: actually I didn’t see the end, as they took it off Paramount+ before I finished. boo!). And it held up very well, easily as good or better than other James Cameron classics (and definitely better than Avatar, which has similar themes, though I never like that).
Robin of Sherwood. 80s British fantasy take on Robinhood I used to love as a kid. The internet informed me it was 40 (four zero!) years old this week, so I rewatched on YouTube. To be honest I had zero expectations the show itself would hold up, and it didn’t, but the theme music (by the band Clannad) is engrained in my subconscious, I think I even had it on tape. In my memory it’s a haunting folk synth epic. Its really really not, its a pretty standard ITV theme song with some hippy singing over it: https://youtu.be/YrcxjJo-q2Q?si=EsqB7836w3GU_8Ae
What other films and shows have the assembled dopers had one or the other experience with?
If the Robin of Sherwood example is too obscure for the dope (surely an oxymoron ) I will fall back on, to me, the canonical example of “not holding up”: The Highlander. I really thought (having not seen in a couple of decades) this was a cheesy but solid 80s action in the same league as Running Man or Predator. It’s really not, it’s a really bad film, like B Movie quality.
Many Paul Newman movies have held up quite well, as they are considered classic like, The Hustler, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Cool Hand Luke. He is just a great actor and draws the best out of his supporting cast, most of who are ledgends in their own right.
Not so good is most of the original Planet of the Apes movies. I’ve tried rewatching them but they are (with maybe an exception to the first one) dated and not nearly as good at story telling than the recnt ones. I loved them as a kid, but adult me just can’t enjoy them anymore.
When I was a kid I loved The Time Machine, the George Pal from from 1960 (Yvette Mimieux…swooooon). I rented it again in my twenties, and oh man, the volcano scene looked exactly like what it was, namely a grade school level papier mâché model dumping food colouring and baking soda over a bunch of miniature toy cars. The effect was so unbearably awful, I could only wonder how much suspention of disbelief I’d had as a nine-year-old.
I recently took a run at the original V miniseries. Wow. Groundbreaking at the time, it’s got the absolute clunkiest dialogue over abysmal greenscreen effects.
As for a more recent one, I watched The Silence of the Lambs again a couple of months back as I had picked up the Criterion disc on BR. It’s still a good movie, but it was odd to watch after three intervening decades of crime procedurals that all owe plenty to it thematically. When Clarice Starling begins giving the profile, the scene plays as painful cliché. “We’re looking for a white male, yadda yadda…” When entire subgenres of TV procedurals–16-odd years of the awful Criminal Minds being the most notable, as well as the entire movie/TV Hannibal franchises, not to mention a show actually called Profiler that ran for four seasons–have spun hundreds of hours out of that sentence structure, what was once a solid prototype seems gruel-thin as it unspools.
I think the original series of Star Trek holds up well, but not all of the episodes. The movie Twelve O’Clock High holds up well, too. A friend of mine and recently watched a couple of episodes of Time Tunnel; I thought it was good, but he thought it was too dated. I watched Alien Nation when it first aired & I enjoyed it. I rewatched it back in the beginning of the pandemic; still enjoyed it.
Every time this topic comes up, I think of the movie Stripes. I thought it was hilarious as a kid, but when I watched it in the past decade it seemed like it was really thin on jokes and that you were supposed to be entertained by Bill Murray acting like Bill Murray. (And every time this topic comes up, someone will tell me that Stripes is still the funniest movie of all time and it totally holds up.)
And once again, the Walter Matthau/Robert Shaw The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Holds up incredibly well — almost timeless IMHO. The ransom amount is about the only dated thing in the film; if they could dub in $10M over $1M in the soundtrack, you’d never suspect a thing (beyond the dub, that is).
Again, IMHO, it’s the best black comedy ever; better than even Dr. Strangelove. There, I said it.
Yeah there’s whole other discussion of “movies that are so influential they now seem cliched as everything since has copied them” (in fact IIRC a thread on that might exist already)
I wouldn’t say Silence of the Lambs has suffered too much from that. It’s definitely still awesome. Its true the basic setup (FBI agent tries to build psychological profile of serial killer before they kill again) has become the modern equivalent of “detective brings all the suspects together in a mansion to work out which is the killer”. But the actual complexities of the plot and characters have rarely been emulated IMO.
I watched the entire run of TOS during the pandemic and was surprised how well a lot of it still works, conceptually. The worst stuff (“HERBERT!!!”) was very much a product of the late 60s. TNG holds up for the most part as solid, heady SF, but is still hamstrung by incredibly stiff late-80s direction and overly clean production design.
I suspect that the current crop of Trek shows will hold up better in the long run. Not just because of the amazing production values (say what you will about the varying quality of the shows, they look freaking great) but because they also acknowledge pop culture of centuries past in the way that the first few series in the franchise didn’t. TNG almost seemed afraid to admit that culture outside of detective fiction, string quartets and New Orleans jazz existed in their timeline. When the crew of DISCO blasted rock music during a party it felt to me like the show was acknowledging it was part of our world, if that makes any sense, and that’ll carry it through into future generations of Trek fans.
Films from the 1970s that take place in the 1970s are extremely watchable 50 years later. Historical films (especially westerns and war movies) from that decade are almost laughable in the anachronistic fashions and attitudes.
I didn’t realize until just now (Thanks for pointing it out) that Pelham is 50 YO! The two hostage boys will be collecting Social Security soon! I gotta go lie down.
I’ve watched vaguely recently and it’s held up well IMO. The twists that were I’m sure utterly unexpected at the time were a lot more predictable (because it set the standard for plot twists by movie conmen that has been replicated many times since), but it’s still a good movie.
Wow. In high school, The Taking Of Pelham and The Eiger Sanction were my two favorite movies, the first that I saw more than once. They’ve held up well.
Pink Floyd The Wall was another favorite. I rewatched it a few years ago and was hugely disappointed.
I largely concur. Though only for the first half of the movie. As for the 2nd half ( after they finally graduate basic training ), it was unwatchable then, even more unwatchable now.
Last week went to the gym, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest had just started on one of the TV’s. I sat on a recumbent exercise bike for over 2 hours and watched the whole movie. The movie made me think how thin that line is between sane or mentally ill. I don’t think I got into watching a movie that way in years.
I think I talked about this in a similar thread a couple of years ago, but there was this weird period in American comedy in which no one seemed to do or say anything funny, but the films were huge successes. Your mention of Bill Murray reminded me of Tootsie: to this day, I see people in the Criterion Closet videos pulling that movie off the shelf and gushing about what a classic it is. Except for the argument between Pollack and Hoffman, are there any actual laughs in that film? in 1982, did anyone think that Hoffman was even remotely convincing as a woman? Did soap operas ever actually do live episodes as big network events, enough that one could hang the climax of a movie off of the conceit? I’m not planning on revisiting the movie…I suspect I’d just get mad at it.
That falls under the category of “stuff I thought was freaking awesome as a youth who was stoned all the time, I am unimpressed with as a non-stoned middle aged man”
) I will fall back on, to me, the canonical example of “not holding up”: The Highlander. I really thought (having not seen in a couple of decades) this was a cheesy but solid 80s action in the same league as Running Man or Predator. It’s really not, it’s a really bad film, like B Movie quality.
The two hostage boys will be collecting Social Security soon! I gotta go lie down.