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.
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.
Napoleon Dynamite, but that’s intentional.
John Wayne’s ‘The Green Berets’ is an oddity. While it’s not out of its time, since the 1960s was packed with war movies, the fact that it’s a Vietnam movie rather than a WW2 movie gives it a surreal quality. It is filmed with the same tone, style, and music as something like ‘The Longest Day’ but it’s about Vietnam making it a million miles away from the style of most Vietnam movies.
Standout scenes include a green beret ranting at a strawman reporter, and the scene where John Wayne smashes an obviously toy rifle to pieces.
Might be cheating to mention this but most/all Tarantino flicks are meant to feel like 70s movies
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
The Love Witch is a bit of a cheat because it was literally designed to look like it was shot in the 70s (and does an amazing job of it)
Cube was ahead of its time for bizzare setting and body horror.
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.
Bladerunner and the sequel
Blade Runner was very much a product of its time (though Syd Mead’s visuals were outstanding).
There was something floating in the late seventies / early eighties zeitgeist that would become the cyberpunk genre, and it sort of condensed in several spots simultaneously.
William Gibson had just published Burning Chrome, and was finishing writing Neuromancer (which would be published in '84 and be considered a foundation of the genre).
Ridley Scott and Syd Mead independently adapted a (very different from the film) book by Philip K. Dick into a film that looked and felt like it was set in Gibson’s Sprawl.
In Japan, Kasuhiro Otomo had just begun publishing Akira.
Frank Miller was probably in the process of writing and conceptualising Rōnin, which DC would start publishing in '83.
Bruce Bethke had come up with the term cyberpunk in 1980, but that short story wouldn’t be published until '83.
Over the next few years many other authors would create other works clearly set in the same genre, though at this point they probably had some influence from Gibson and Blade Runner and each other.
Mike Pondsmith was drinking it all up and coming up with a role playing game with that title, to be published in '88.
And, all over the eighties and nineties, the genre exploded, and was everywhere.
I just rewatched both Bladerunner movies with my son and, the first movie, while aesthetically it still looks beautiful and has some great individual scenes, the action and the dialogue get kind of non-sensical at times, it’s become the weaker of the two movies for me. 2049 feels just a lot more coherent and looks brilliant, it’s just an overall better movie that surpasses the original.
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.
The Man From Earth. It’s always felt out of place to me. I’m not sure if it’s too early or too late, but it doesn’t feel of it’s time to me.
Same vibe for The Discovery of Heaven.
I think that the beauty of it is that it is very time-period agnostic
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
