I think this is a really interesting subject and shows something incredibly unique about the nature of movies that I don’t think music or even TV shows can really grasp. They can stand so out of time or so in time that, as you age, you’re watching a completely different movie.
Ebert has had this happen a couple times I’ve seen. The second review of The Graduate is much more sober and anti-Benjamin than the first. I see it now, too. Benjamin is a fucking bore and Elaine has no substance at all. Mrs. Robinson is the only cool character out of the lot.
Ebert’s love for La Dolce Vita as his secret favorite movie mainly stems from the fact that the movie has evolved as he’s evolved as a person.
Note: This isn’t a question of “this movie was overlooked at release” or “I now find funny in a kitsch way.” It’s more about maturity.
Actually, when I saw Star Wars 22 years after its original release, I was fully prepared to see Luke (who had been just a little older than me in 1977) as a young fellow (while he had been a peer in 1977) - but what really startled me was that Han Solo, who I thought of a hardened mature type was in 1999 a baby-faced fellow just slightly more mature than Luke.
I thought Kentucky Fried Movie was the most innovative and funniest movie ever made in all eternity when my aunt snuck me in when I was 10 (why is my computer telling me “snuck” isn’t a word?) but found it pretty sophomoric when I encountered it on cable many years later.
To answer my own question, I really wonder how history will treat American Beauty. In a way, I feel sad that the film will now be so inextricably linked with Kevin Spacey’s now-tainted legacy. But, in a way, it feels so poignant that it worked out that way.
I think The Social Network will be an interesting touchstone of an era/time/place. Even now, we’re reading into the movie to try to understand what makes Zuckerberg tick. While I don’t think it’ll even be Facebook itself, the creation of modern social media springs from that movie.
As far as i can tell history was very quickly unkind. It went from ‘this is kinda deep’ to ‘this is incredibly pretentious’ very quickly. But I will always defend the score.
When I first saw it, I thought Woody Allen’s What’s up, Tiger Lily? was incredibly funny. But the years haven’t been kind to it. I still think there’s a lot that’s hilarious in it, but an awful lot falls flat. And when I learned that the film isn’t so much a Japanese James Bond imitation as a parody itself, that took a lot of the edge off. It’s not hard to make fun of a movie being ludicrous if it’s supposed to be ludicrous to begin with.
(The two female leads – Akiko Wakabayashi (Suki Yaki) and Mie Hama (Teri Yaki) both went on to big roles in the next actual James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice)
The other day, BBC America showed two 1980s “nerd” movies back-to-back: Real Genius and Weird Science. Real Genius is still one of my favorite movies from that era, and I think that, for the most part, it holds up pretty well. Weird Science, on the other hand, now comes across to me as hugely exploitative and mean-spirited.
I don’t feel as strongly about these but I think they fit.
Ferris Bueller. I loved it when it was new, but now I go back and forth in my head whether Ferris is a hero or an asshole.
Say Anything. I’m not sure exactly what I thought when it was new, but now Lloyd Dobler just grates on me. He’s got that whole young person full of themselves “grown ups ruined the world so I’m not going to be like that” attitude. Plus his famous speech
Doesn’t that really eliminate just about everything? Except maybe art. And kickboxing. Maybe. I’d love to see a “where are they now” movie about him these years later. Think he’s selling insurance? Or did he get what he wanted?
I wish I could remember which ones, but I know there are movies where I root for the “adults”, the teachers, whatever, that I didn’t when they were new. Maybe they’ll come to me, or someone else will post them.
I remember an interview with Spielberg, maybe on the 30th anniversary of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, saying now that he was a father, he can’t imagine sending dad Richard Dreyfuss off with the aliens and leaving his children.
The Big Chill. I still love the movie as a whole, but my perspective on certain characters has def changed over the years from my late teens into middle age.
The confrontation between William Hurt and Kevin Kline: “Since when did you get so friendly with cops?” to “Is jail ‘something else you wanna try’? ‘See what that’s like?’” In my younger days my reaction was “Kevin Kline is such a sell-out!” Nowadays it’s more like “William Hurt is such a loser!”
It’s hard to blame Elaine as she’s just young, but Benjamin is a lot like Holden Caulfield in that he has a lot of negatives that you just don’t grow out of. I have a hard time seeing the maturity arc that would eventually make this person likeable.
I think I like it better now that I watch it as a movie about Cameron, not Ferris. Cameron goes thorough a journey in the movie, Ferris is essentially the same person at the end as in the beginning.
And speaking of John Hughes movies, I see Christmas Vacation in a different light not that I’m older and have a family of my own. I used to laugh at Clark, now I just feel bad for him.