The anime Perfect Blue. It was ahead of it’s time. 1997 but the parasocial aspect of society it explores was in it’s infancy compared to current time.
2001: A Space Odyssey.
Kubrick gave them fucking iPads. In 1968.
Jurassic Park 1
Blade runner 1
2001: a Space Odyssey
The Matrix 1
They all hold up so well and in particular their vfx. In the Matrix it’s probably more the plot than the vfx, even though it had merit coining that frozen up bullet time shot aesthetic. But in general every time I watch these I can’t help but marvel at how well put together they are and then I remember when they were released and then I compare them to the mediocre releases decades after that and yeah. I’m in awe.
“No Country for Old Men” feels like a movie from a previous era.
Metropolis might be the ultimate “ahead of its time” movie. It’s nearly 100 years old and still looks mind-blowing.
Holy crap yes, I watched it a few years back and couldn’t belive not only how good it looked but how good it was in general.
When I heard about megalopolis I thought Coppola was remaking this movie
“Mystery Men” seems to have a lot of themes on super hero fatigue in it that feels like it would be a better commentary in 2019 than 1999.
Clue is an interesting study. It’s a movie set in the 50’s, made in the 80’s, and it bombed in theaters in the 80’s, but the television cut became popular in the 90’s and 00’s. It definitely is a product of the 80’s, I don’t think they would have made it in 1995, but that’s when it landed.
One of my favorites
Josie and the Pussycats was lampooning our current celebrity obsessed, “influencer” obsessed, consumer lifestyle 20 years ago. Yes, there was certainly celebrity worship back then. But the way the movie portrayed it and the consumer greed that seeks to profit from it feels even more relevant today.
I still can’t believe The Matrix is from '99. The themes and the effects hold up incredibly well, it feels far more modern.
It was from the era when choreography mattered. You could roll through an entire fight scene and see what every punch was supposed to be doing. You had some situational awareness where everyone was.
Now we keep getting that stupid crap where they’re changing the scene every punch, with so many scenes per second that you can’t follow through, actually just like the fight scenes and matrix 4.
I strongly disagree, Matrix was very much a product of its time, if it had released a decade before or a decade after it would not have had the same impact.
In the 80s as a general rule people didn’t know of the internet nor were they very computer savvy.
In the late 00s cellphones started to be ubiquitous and people were using broadband almost exclusively.
So there was only a small period of time when people were familiar with the idea of telephone lines carrying data, which is a core concept of the movie (exiting the Matrix through your cellphone or laptop is a lot less cool and less prone to plot hooks).
Not to mention that the 90s were extremely gothic and grimdark about the future. I don’t think a movie that the base premise is in the future humans are enslaved to machines and hooked to a large simulation to keep them from realizing they’re slaves would work in any time period besides the 90s.
There was also that short sliver of the late 90s through early 2000s where the slick black trenchcoat and sunglasses look was considered unironically cool.
The Matrix, Blade, Underworld, and Equilibrium all being in this era. Any movie where characters dress like this to be cool and it isn’t treated with at least a wink to the audience probably either came from this time or is a sequel to something from this time.
That look become uncool 2-seconds after the Columbine shooting.
I’d think so too, but Columbine shooting was 1999. Movies still used it unironically for another few years. In media I think it mostly went away because it got parodied to death.
Agreed with all that, but still, don’t forget how mind blowing it was in 1999. One of the only movies I ever saw twice in the theaters, two nights in a row even.
Even the trailers were wild. First time we saw one in the theater my gf and I looked at each other like, “What the fuck was that all about?!”
The Matrix was to science fiction in 1999 about what Star Wars was in 1977, so far ahead of the game it was like nothing before it.
It’s for sure a product of its time, but it really doesn’t feel like a 1999 movie. Around that time we had
- Sixth sense
- American beauty
- Eyes wide shut
- Being John Malkovich
- Fight Club
Matrix has such a stark level of visual and thematic modernity compared to those. Maybe Fight Club comes near, but the other movies look like they’re from a different decade.
Matrix is a “work sucks” movie the same way that “American Beauty”, “Fight Club”, and “Office Space” was. It is a very 1999 movie.
You’re not gonna believe this but there were movies that are even older.
Surely not?
Napoleon Dynamite, but that’s intentional.
Napoleon Dynamite hits just right if you grew up at a certain time in a rural area. That movie is like watching my own childhood.
That movie is like watching my own childhood.
Hopefully without the intellectual impairments all the main characters have?
Day After Tomorrow was about two days before its time
Actually, I believe you’ll find, if you refer to the title, that it is a movie about two days after its time
¿Por qué no los dos? (a phrase that itself is both of the 2010s and also timeless)
Citizen Kane.
Yes it is circle jerked hard by film lovers… For good reason.
This is what I might consider the first movie shot in what would be recognized as a modern movie format.
It is told non sequentially, the composition of shots is absolutely incredible.
It’s a movie shot in 1941 that looks nothing like the other movies of the time. Literally decades ahead of its time. It looks like it could have been shot a few months ago as a period piece.
There’s good reason for it being one of the most acclaimed movies of all time.
While filming Citizen Kane, director and star Orson Welles likened making a movie to playing with a toy train set, and that playful inventive spirit shines all throughout the movie.
It’s hard to overstate how important the film is to cinema. It pretty much established what the modern movie is.
That said, based strictly off of entertainment value. IMO it is just absolutely terrible.
That’s interesting. I’m not a film guy at all, and it certainly never occurred to me that it pioneered some of the key stuff in modern movies (although that totally makes sense). But I remember enjoying it! The pacing felt quite good, there were some mysteries and character drama. Not a top movie for me personally, but pretty watchable for a B&W movie.
Howard the Duck. That movie is wonderful
Brazil - Made in 1985, feels like post 9/11.
Might be cheating to mention this but most/all Tarantino flicks are meant to feel like 70s movies
