Wow, "Gentlemen's Agreement" a stinker. Oh well, different strokes for different folks.
There are films I have not made it all the way through like Cameron's Titanic and Spielberg's E.T. but are those considered classics?
Really, you have to ask that question knowing their history?????There are films I have not made it all the way through like Cameron's Titanic and Spielberg's E.T. but are those considered classics?
Wow, "Gentlemen's Agreement" a stinker. Oh well, different strokes for different folks.
Is there a precise "cutoff" date as to what can be considered a "classic" film?
Or are we just arbitrarily choosing whatever cutoff date (or no date) we want to use?
I think there are times when you know a movie is going to be consider a classic right away without the passage of time. Take for instance, 1998, I knew right away that "Saving Private Ryan" would be long remembered than "Shakespeare in Love". What I didn't know is that "The Big Lebowski" would be too.Is there a precise "cutoff" date as to what can be considered a "classic" film?
Or are we just arbitrarily choosing whatever cutoff date (or no date) we want to use?
Hell yeah! Surprised you've even asking!
Really, you have to ask that question knowing their history?????
Whether I personally like a movie doesn't really matter, but I do know when a movie is going to be a classic whether I liked it or not.I don't know what people's cutoff line is with "classic film" so that's why I ask. I mean I know they are well loved films but I don't know how people define "classic" so I did not want to "assume" they were.
I have E.T. on Blu-ray but so far have not made it all the way through the film. I think I just came to it way too late. I skipped it when it was released in the 1980s and did not attempt to really sit through it sometime in the last 4 years or so. So, it has no "nostalgia" value for me because I did not see it way back when and it is not subject matter that really appeals to me. I will try again at some point.
Titanic I've tried a few times and fell asleep and on other occasions just shut it off because it just was not appealing to me. Not sure I'll try that one again as I tend not to like much of Cameron's work. Liked Terminator and the Abyss but beyond those it's been pretty much all miss for me.
Wow, "Gentlemen's Agreement" a stinker. Oh well, different strokes for different folks.
It was a very different time in 1947, and you need to watch these movies filmed in a different era with that clearly in mind. I've heard stories from my grandfather that would make your hair stand up and some of those stories involved white people suffering retributions because of their religion and/or ethnicity.Trust me, I was shocked I felt that way but I had to force myself to sit through the whole thing. I kept thinking "This has to get better." and I like the director and actors involved. Then I reached the end and thought, "Oh my god, that was awful."
It's probably that the material and approach to it was so dated and I think the only way to watch it is with the understanding that it is very much "of it's time" and that there were reasons why they approached it the way they did...but wow, I could not find a way into it.
Excellent point, many of the movies we're discussing, I first saw as a child during the 1960's so I have a different outlook on them than somebody that might see it today for the first time as an adult. There is a sequence in "Lost Weekend" that scared the crap out of me when I first viewed it in the mid-60's before my teenage years.Sometimes, part of the problem is that certain films are so influential that they're endlessly copied and ripped off, to the point where the original no longer seems that impressive. I remember being mostly unimpressed by Psycho when I saw it for the first time - but I was already familiar with the shower scene and the twists in the film. To an audience seeing that for the first time in 1960, it must have been shocking, but seeing it in the early-80s after already seeing numerous rip-offs left me cold.
I would think someone coming to something like Blade Runner today would feel the same way. I was totally blown away by that movie when it came out - I had never seen anything like it. But it's been copied so many times over the years that its power seems diluted now.
I think there are times when you know a movie is going to be consider a classic right away without the passage of time. Take for instance, 1998, I knew right away that "Saving Private Ryan" would be long remembered than "Shakespeare in Love". What I didn't know is that "The Big Lebowski" would be too.
Yeah, well, that's just like, your opinion, man.
Whether I personally like a movie doesn't really matter, but I do know when a movie is going to be a classic whether I liked it or not.
By the way, I'm surprise you never saw E.T. Weren't you a kid during its release?
I would say I am definitely not able to do this. Most of the time I think I have no idea if something will be a "classic" or not. I mean, there are films that are "classics" to me because I have seen and enjoyed them so many times but I think to others would likely not be considered classics.
I was in High School in 1982, a freshman. At that point I was sort of already being very selective about what I watched. So, I skipped E.T. and Conan the Barbarian back then because at the time they just did not seem like stuff I wanted to watch. I recall a group of friends going to see Conan and coming back telling me it was "The greatest movie of all time." which I was skeptical of. I only saw it on blu-ray many years later...and I loved it. My brother had pushed it at me for years and I just kept avoiding it, I guess because I thought it was some goofy "dungeons and dragons" thing. He kept saying "No, it's Milius man, it's amazing!"
I should have listened. With E.T. I can only recall the girls in High School talking about it and I think I sort of percieved it as some sort of children's or chick flick. It just was not on my radar.
There were three films I kept going back to the cinema to see that year, Blade Runner, The Thing, and Poltergeist.
High School boys, you know, that kind of thing was what I was into, ha.
We're virtually the same age and I don't recall any "it's a girls movie" or "it's a kiddie movie" attitude about "ET".
Seems like everybody saw it!
A Spielberg movie from that time period didn't have any designations to them as being a kid's or a woman's movie.