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All-time classic films of recent years

Started by JayzusB.Christ, 29 September, 2020, 08:45:23 PM

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JayzusB.Christ

Just wracking my brains trying to think of any.  Films like Goodfellas, Apocalypse Now, On the Waterfront etc; the ones that will be remembered for years to come as classics.  Not cult classics or anything, much as I'd love Dredd to be remembered as groundbreaking cinema, but the ones that'll go down in history as being among the most important of their age.

I'm kind of stumped - I really liked Joker,  but I think it may be a wee bit too derivative of old Scorsese stuff to be considered a classic.  The Irishman maybe?  For me it was a great watch, but well, like Goodfellas but not as good. 

There's something staring me in the face that I'm not remembering.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

The Legendary Shark



Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Die Hard?
Mad Max II?
Alien?
The one with the farm boy and the wheezy guy?
Blade Runner?
12 Monkeys?
Jaws?
The Life of Brian?
Avatar?
The City of Lost Children?

We're slewed out with classics, I think.

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radiator

#2
I think there's a fairly broad consensus that Mad Max Fury Road is a landmark of action cinema, and I think a lot of The Dark Knight is pretty iconic - it's insane that that movie is over 12 years old at this point and is still pretty indelible in the popular discourse vs most other superhero type movies.

However, I just in general think those truly iconic, enduring kinds of 'grown up' movies you mention are pretty much a thing of the past nowadays due to the fragmentation of media and the death of the monoculture. You could make an argument that Pulp Fiction was maybe the last one?

It's the same reason we'll never again see a pop artist as big as Michael Jackson or Madonna at their peak, or an athlete as famous as Michael Jordan.

radiator

At a stretch possibly Get Out and There Will Be Blood? Maybe The Wolf of Wall Street?

The Legendary Shark


I guess there was a time when people knew all about gladiators; gladiatorial nerds. Now we've condensed all that knowledge, in the modern mind, to just two names; Spartacus and Gladiator. A few people know a great deal about them but still not what the original nerds knew - the rest of us don't really care.

It may be the same in two thousand years, with a few scholars knowing the most about them but none of them anywhere near as much as us. The rest will be much more interested in things we can't even imagine.

I wonder what would be the common Spartacus of that future. Instead of Gladiator and Spartacus, it might be Film and... what?

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TordelBack

#5
How recent, Jayzus? I always think of Children of Men as a recent classic, but it's about 15 years old now... Fury Road is the most recent complete gobsmacker that I can think of.

'Course both are genre flicks, but I'd argue that gangster movies are a genre too...

Funt Solo

Radiator got there before me, but Mad Max: Fury Road is on another plane of existence in terms of action movie awesomeness. (Americans notoriously overuse "awesome", to refer to things like hotdogs or nachos, but Fury Road actually engenders awe.)

Also mentioned was The Irishman, and you just have to watch the "You're late!" scene to skim the surface of genius. I had a friend who couldn't watch this because they found it too boring - and it just makes me question the friendship. It's like maybe they're a pod person or something.


Also plenty of very noteworthy movies that I'd argue will stand the test of time and belong in some top lists - Knives Out, Gravity, Moon, Midnight Special, The Shape of Water, Under the Skin, The Babadook & Ex Machina.


I love Moon. Sam Rockwell is my Hollywood boyfriend. (Michael Shannon is my Hollywood uncle. After Bill Paxton died, I felt bereft, but Shannon is stepping up.)


Special mention for classic television: Wolf Hall.
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TordelBack

If comedy is allowed, might offer up Hot Fuzz as a contender. A perfect piece of clockwork (I think World's End is actually the better film, but there's something about the precision of HF that makes me think 'modern marvel').

JOE SOAP

#8
No need to be parochial.

In the past few years there are plenty of what will be recognised as classics from Asia: Parasite, Train to Busan being obvious examples.

There are many others that show the art is as rich as it's ever been, often better.

radiator

#9
I took the OP to be asking about truly iconic movies - ones that really permeate the culture, become household names, spawn countless imitators and lines of dialogue that are referenced, homaged, quoted (and misquoted) ad nauseum "Make him an offer he can't refuse"/"I love the smell of napalm in the morning") and have these incredible stand out scenes that transcend the medium and will get parodied and meme-ified til the end of time.

My take is that while many magnificent films still come out every year, they just don't reach the kind of audience and cultural saturation as in the days when films could run in the cinema for an entire calendar year. I'd also hazard a guess that most people tend to rewatch movies a lot less these days, as there's always something new and shiny to dig into. Media is generally more disposable nowadays, and I'd speculate that cinema's days as the dominant form of media are on the way out.

I think the kind of thing the op is specifically asking about died out at the tail end of the 90s, with films like Titanic, The Shawshank Redemption, Good Will Hunting, Jerry Maguire, Pulp Fiction and The Usual Suspects being among the last few I can think of that really fall into this category. With the possible exception of Titanic, those kinds of films either wouldn't get made today or would be made as indie movies only seen by a tiny audience. Parasite was great no doubt - and a moderate box office hit - but I doubt the average man on the street would have even heard of it.

The closest modern phenomenon that comes the closest to that kind of pre death of monoculture cultural footprint would be something like Game of Thrones, and that isn't a movie.

Funt Solo

Looking for ones that might fit the brief as having reached a wider audience and being a cultural touchstone, I'd include Avatar - although it's not really one that gets quoted. There's always The Matrix. Trying to stretch into the last decade, there's Frozen. How about The Force Awakens?




++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Definitely Not Mister Pops

Quote from: radiator on 29 September, 2020, 09:04:30 PM
It's the same reason we'll never again see a pop artist as big as Michael Jackson or Madonna at their peak, or an athlete as famous as Michael Jordan.

I'd agree on the popstar front, but there have been several globally branded sporters since Jordan. I have no interest in Tennis, but I know Roger Federer is a Swiss man who is very good at it and that Serena Williams married that guy from Reddit. I actively dislike golf* but I know who Tiger Woods is.

I'd guess the majority of this forum don't really follow football, so you might not be aware that you can go almost anywhere in the world and spark a debate over whether Ronaldo or Messi is better**.

I agree on the Game of Thrones point. I think most classic entertainment of today will be TV shows.

Modern cinema is dominated by low risk super-franchises with solid brand recognition, committee designed to pull in as wide an audience as possible. Everything is PG12 now. A lot of the all time classics people are listing were rated hard 12 or 15. I remember constantly being frustrated in my early teens because all the movies I wanted to see were 15s.

*I understand that people like different things and that's fine, but fuck golf.

** I would argue that Ronaldo isn't even the best player called Ronaldo. If you knew football that would probably elicit a brief amused exhalation as you recall Fat Ronaldo
You may quote me on that.

JOE SOAP

#12
Quote from: radiator on 30 September, 2020, 03:35:10 AMParasite was great no doubt - and a moderate box office hit - but I doubt the average man on the street would have even heard of it.

I'd consider Parasite which won the top 4 Academy awards and was well recognised in the press as being an exceptional work fits the Jaysus criteria, not least for being the first foreign film to be so well regarded in the industry.

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 29 September, 2020, 08:45:23 PM
Not cult classics or anything, much as I'd love Dredd to be remembered as groundbreaking cinema, but the ones that'll go down in history as being among the most important of their age.

Iconic classics of monoculture are films like Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. They're the Raiders of the Lost Ark of the modern era.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: JOE SOAP on 30 September, 2020, 09:33:16 AM
Iconic classics of monoculture are films like Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. They're the Raiders of the Lost Ark of the modern era.

Yep. The cultural reach of the Marvel movies is startling. I took m'lovely wife to a nice little French restaurant not long after Endgame came out. A pretty young waitress was serving an older couple (well into their 60s) at the next table, so none of them what you'd call your classic nerd demographic.

As part of the general chat, the couple said that they'd just come from the cinema after watching Endgame but didn't want to spoil it for her, to which she replied "Oh, I've seen it but I can't talk about it — I'm still too upset about Tony."
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sheridan

Quote from: Funt Solo on 30 September, 2020, 04:55:36 AM
Looking for ones that might fit the brief as having reached a wider audience and being a cultural touchstone, I'd include Avatar - although it's not really one that gets quoted. There's always The Matrix. Trying to stretch into the last decade, there's Frozen. How about The Force Awakens?


I was trying to define 'recent' and decided that 'this century' would have to do, which is as shame as I also thought of the Matrix, but the one which spawned all the memes was released at the tail-end of last century.


As for pop cultural memeage, the only film I could think of from this century (just) was Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring...


Hopefully I'll think of more.