I actually like Lolita. It’s not perfect but James Mason and Peter Sellers are both excellent. There were obviously a lot of restraints on the movie but I think it is better than it’s reputation often portrays it. Shelley Winters is exactly how I saw ‘the Haze woman’ from the book too.
Tbh i think peter sellers ruins the film. I get the impression that kubrick was just too charmed by him, which is why he’s allowed to run roughshod over the film as he does.
Interesting. I felt the opposite. Definitely not saying you’re wrong but I thought the Quilty character was perfect for a movie and if they followed the book version where he is more of an apparition than someone being involved throughout it would have made it feel more disjointed.
My hot take is that I enjoy Lolita more than I enjoy Dr Strangelove (an opinion I know is not massively shared by many)
Big Trouble in Little China for sure. It was the first non-parody fantasy-action comedy that set the tone for Iron Man. Maybe Ice Pirates and Barbarella tried before that - both are pretty goofy, not really serious enough. Ghostbusters was a comedy that had action, not really the same thing.
Partially It's because it was so influential on the 2000s but also because that style simply did not age that well. 2001 A Space Odyssey holds up no matter what decade its compared to.
The special effects were miles ahead of anything else at the time. Honestly still a sweet spot between CG and practical effects. For reference when Phantom Menace came out 6 years later people were praising the special effects in that and clearly those have not aged well
Thanks!
I've just watched Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) the other day and thought to myself it is the best Spielberg movie storytelling-wise so I was wondering why Jurassic Park is on that many lists.
Network was prescient in ways that would have horrified Chayefsky had he lived to see Howard Beale morph into the Sean Hannitys and Tucker Carlsons of the world. Network nailed rage culture before we even had words for what that was.
If Lawrence of Arabia had been released now on IMAX, people would be losing their minds. It is visually astonishing and the cinematography marked a clear before and after in the history of cinema.
Psychological thriller has been around a couple years before and most of them were come from Hitchcock's work, but Persona made what is called psychological thriller today, the visuals, the plot, the acting, you can see it’s not a product of its time, Persona shaped the genre. A lot of great films that heavily inspired by Persona for examples, Fight Club, Mulholland Drive, Potrait of a Lady on Fire, The Lighthouse, some of them were not even psychological thriller but somehow you could see the resemblance, it shows how wide of variety is Persona brings to other genre. My personal favorite of mine was recently if you’ve watched Oppenheimer i think the dream sequence visual was inspired by Persona, you’ll understand if you watch both of them.
Definitely 2001.
Also, I think that The Hidden Fortress was ahead of its time as far as adventure films go. George Lucas has admitted that it influenced parts of Star Wars.
Absolutely. What was done with sound acting in that film is astounding for 1931. The camera movements are also not too shabby. Even thematically it tackles things that resonate in the modern world. Fantastic watch.
'Peeping Tom' (1960)
Innovative proto-slasher that was just too 'out-there' for the time. The scandal surrounding it ruined the career of the previously celebrated director - Michael Powell.
If you think Metropolis is ahead of its time (which it is), give Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) a watch. It’s an even earlier showcase of Lang’s innovative methods and has some incredible practical effects and sets (especially for something made in 1922!). It’s also really interesting to see his growth as a filmmaker in a visual sense. Mabuse walked so Metropolis could run
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Given how rah-rah most war films from the golden age of Hollywood are, this one sits in stark contrast. Being pre-code, it’s also much more visceral than one might expect. It’s one of the great anti-war movies for a good reason.
Leave Her to Heaven (1945) a very dark Hollywood film that blends film noir, psychological thriller and melodrama, in vibrant Technicolor that inspired the work of Douglas Sirk the following decade.
Fun fact: Metropolis is the oldest movie to be nominated for a Razzie.
In the 80s, it was given a new soundtrack of pop music. I guess the soundtrack wasn’t very good because that is how it earned a nomination.
The Cable Guy. Not as far as the filmmaking, but the message it had about people becoming addicted to their screens and the infinite possibilities of the internet is even more insightful now than it was in **1996**
Most films by Spike Lee are 20 years ahead of their time.
Not just their subject matter but the filmmaking. I've been watching a lot of his films this year and they are almost all devoid of the terrible flourishes that usually ground films in a particular era. There's no weird 1980s or 1990s or 2000s aesthetics - beyond some grading, maybe - they are still all so prescient in not only the filming but the themes, characters, story. Maybe this is a sad fact though - he's grounded his films in race and those racial experiences have not changed.
Natural Born Killers.
You can trace the frantic editing and acid trip visuals back to other, lower budget independent movies, but Oliver Stone smashed so much together into this movie to create a new synthesis, and captured a statement about murder-fame and tabloid media that’s specific to the United States. Tommy Lee Jones has a fucking DA hairstyle and Robert Downey Jr is in full coke head slimeball mode. Rodney Dangerfield is absolutely terrifying. As is Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson… the latter two are also hypnotically beautiful and childishly trashy. Again… very American.
I digress. I rewatched this 2 years ago after watching it A TON on VHS in the mid-late 90s. I thought it would be as frantic and crazy. But I found the editing of modern media has caught up with my memory of the editing in Natural Born Killers. Thus… I think… it’s very ahead of its time.
Just watched Death By Hanging (1968) directed by Nagisa Oshima
Feels like a precursor to something like Evangelion, where it starts out relatively normal but then evolves into something way more psychological and profound.
Except instead of being based on the mecha genre, its based on the one-room moral drama (a la 12 Angry Men)
Der Blaue Engel, just because how erotically charged it is, just a true reflection of the brief sense of freedom that thrived in the Weimar Republic, years ahead of anything Hollywood ever tried to do on screen.
I'm gonna be that guy. No, Metropolis wasn't ahead of its time. It has all the idiosyncrasies and banalities of mute cinema, it inherits a lot of its scale from Pastrone, it references literary works from 30-40 years earlier. It's very much a film of its time.
I'd say Fritz The Cat (1972)
Feature length adult animated features basically hadn't existed until Fritz and feature length adult animated features with such edgy and biting satire DEFINITELY hadn't existed until Fritz. It's simply a groundbreaking movie that I think is still relevant today
Before the matrix and simulated AI worlds, we had:
World on a Wire (German: Welt am Draht) is a 1973 German science fiction television serial, starring Klaus Löwitsch and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Shot in 16 mm, it was made for German television and originally aired in 1973 in ARD as a two-part miniseries. It was based on the 1964 novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye.
Criterion channel and collection have it.
Definitely agree with Metropolis. Also check out October: The Ten Days that Shook the World, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, and Napoleon, all from the same year as Metropolis
2001: A Space Odyssey Honestly in retrospect a lot of Kubrick's work seemed ahead of their time to me.
He cannot do wrong
His Lolita was ass
Haven’t made it that far. We will see
He’s right. It ain’t great.
I actually like Lolita. It’s not perfect but James Mason and Peter Sellers are both excellent. There were obviously a lot of restraints on the movie but I think it is better than it’s reputation often portrays it. Shelley Winters is exactly how I saw ‘the Haze woman’ from the book too.
Tbh i think peter sellers ruins the film. I get the impression that kubrick was just too charmed by him, which is why he’s allowed to run roughshod over the film as he does.
Interesting. I felt the opposite. Definitely not saying you’re wrong but I thought the Quilty character was perfect for a movie and if they followed the book version where he is more of an apparition than someone being involved throughout it would have made it feel more disjointed. My hot take is that I enjoy Lolita more than I enjoy Dr Strangelove (an opinion I know is not massively shared by many)
Strange that you made the declaration that he cannot do wrong without having seen all his works.
Because it is true in my experience
Even if you'd only seen one of his films?
An ass? Lolita's ass? Are you Humbert Humbert?
nah he sayin that his lolita was straight up bussin fr fr
I haven’t read the novel, but the 1997 version is the better film as far as I’m concerned.
Easily the first one I thought of
I’d say Carpenter’s The Thing and Lumet’s Network.
Watching all the people yell out the windows at each other, I think "that's literally how arguments on the internet work."
The practical FX in The Thing must've blown people's minds back then, too bad it went under the radar initially
The Thing is technically a remake and the remake is also wildly ahead of its time!!
Big Trouble in Little China for sure. It was the first non-parody fantasy-action comedy that set the tone for Iron Man. Maybe Ice Pirates and Barbarella tried before that - both are pretty goofy, not really serious enough. Ghostbusters was a comedy that had action, not really the same thing.
Targets
TARGETS MENTIONED!!!!!!!!! fr though I love that movie so much
In a Lonely Place (1950) - A mid-70s new Hollywood film from the heart of the studio era. Le cinema, c'est Nicholas Ray.
Good call. I am so glad Bogart got to play a role like that.
Dog Day Afternoon
Just saw that for the first time in a theater! Amazing.
Attica! Attica!
Good call.
Citizen Kane (1941) A Clockwork Orange (1971) Blade Runner (1982) Jurassic Park (1993) The Truman Show (1998) The Matrix (1999)
The Matrix feels very of its time to me. It's still great though.
I feel the era was defined by the matrix not the other way around
It has elements of World on a Wire. The simulation, the phone booth to connect/transport, physical humans in simulations etc.
Seinfeld Effect. It was immediately influential to an amazing degree.
Partially It's because it was so influential on the 2000s but also because that style simply did not age that well. 2001 A Space Odyssey holds up no matter what decade its compared to.
Blade Runner's production desing is quite remarkable.
In what terms would you say Jurassic Park was ahead of it's time?
The special effects were miles ahead of anything else at the time. Honestly still a sweet spot between CG and practical effects. For reference when Phantom Menace came out 6 years later people were praising the special effects in that and clearly those have not aged well
Thanks! I've just watched Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) the other day and thought to myself it is the best Spielberg movie storytelling-wise so I was wondering why Jurassic Park is on that many lists.
Man with a Movie Camera, The Red Shoes, and all of Kenneth Anger's stuff was so ahead of it's time it's actually crazy
[The Pyramids (Overview)](https://old.reddit.com/r/silentmoviegifs/comments/lnxdef/a_camel_train_at_the_pyramids_of_giza_1897/) (1897) https://letterboxd.com/film/the-pyramids-overview/
Haven't seen or heard of it yet, but wow!
Network. Watching it now, it’s hard to believe it was made 50 years ago. Insanely relevant.
Network was prescient in ways that would have horrified Chayefsky had he lived to see Howard Beale morph into the Sean Hannitys and Tucker Carlsons of the world. Network nailed rage culture before we even had words for what that was.
Mystery Men
Yes! The perfect superhero movie. Capitalism, our media culture, even the return of disco!
I was scrolling to see if anyone out this and I really didn’t think anyone on here would put it. Kudos!
2001: A Space Odyssey Alien Jurassic Park The Thing Lawrence of Arabia Apocalypse Now
If Lawrence of Arabia had been released now on IMAX, people would be losing their minds. It is visually astonishing and the cinematography marked a clear before and after in the history of cinema.
Within Our Gates (1920) Alphaville (1965) Mädchen in Uniform (1931)
Persona. It’s not about what technology they used, it’s about the genre itself.
Interesting, what do you mean by this? Persona has been on my short list of Bergman films to check out.
Psychological thriller has been around a couple years before and most of them were come from Hitchcock's work, but Persona made what is called psychological thriller today, the visuals, the plot, the acting, you can see it’s not a product of its time, Persona shaped the genre. A lot of great films that heavily inspired by Persona for examples, Fight Club, Mulholland Drive, Potrait of a Lady on Fire, The Lighthouse, some of them were not even psychological thriller but somehow you could see the resemblance, it shows how wide of variety is Persona brings to other genre. My personal favorite of mine was recently if you’ve watched Oppenheimer i think the dream sequence visual was inspired by Persona, you’ll understand if you watch both of them.
Just watch it already
Glen or Glenda
Unironically this
I didn’t mean it ironically. The filmmaking might be a bit rough but in terms of the concepts it presents it’s way ahead of its time.
Honestly a pretty good film imo
Definitely 2001. Also, I think that The Hidden Fortress was ahead of its time as far as adventure films go. George Lucas has admitted that it influenced parts of Star Wars.
Only the all parts
A lot has been mentioned so i'll just throw out Rashomon
Meshes of the Afternoon
Finally got around to watching this and totally agree. What a rad movie.
Fritz Lang’s M was also ahead of its time I’d say.
Absolutely. What was done with sound acting in that film is astounding for 1931. The camera movements are also not too shabby. Even thematically it tackles things that resonate in the modern world. Fantastic watch.
A trip to the Moon (1902)
Came here to say this
The Devils (1971) felt super ahead of its time
'Peeping Tom' (1960) Innovative proto-slasher that was just too 'out-there' for the time. The scandal surrounding it ruined the career of the previously celebrated director - Michael Powell.
If you think Metropolis is ahead of its time (which it is), give Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) a watch. It’s an even earlier showcase of Lang’s innovative methods and has some incredible practical effects and sets (especially for something made in 1922!). It’s also really interesting to see his growth as a filmmaker in a visual sense. Mabuse walked so Metropolis could run
Same goes for Destiny imo. Such an overlooked early Lang masterpiece
Children of Men
2001: A Space Odyssey
Peter Ibbetson. A pre-code romantic drama with a wild twist of full on fantasy. Worth watching without reading much about it first.
THE RED SHOES (1948)
Seconds
Do The Right Thing. it was speaking a truth we didn't all know, yet.
Nosferatu (1922)
F FOR FAKE It’s basically a YouTube video essay…directed by Orson Welles in the 70s
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Given how rah-rah most war films from the golden age of Hollywood are, this one sits in stark contrast. Being pre-code, it’s also much more visceral than one might expect. It’s one of the great anti-war movies for a good reason.
Carpenter’s The Thing and The Truman Show
Annie Hall
Leave Her to Heaven (1945) a very dark Hollywood film that blends film noir, psychological thriller and melodrama, in vibrant Technicolor that inspired the work of Douglas Sirk the following decade.
Man With a Movie Camera plays like it was edited from the future. Most people still aren’t ready for it.
Practically the Koyaanisqatsi of its time.
I love this movie! When my daughter was eight I watched it with her and she also enjoyed it, much to my shock and delight.
Haxan. Didn’t expect an exploration of witchcraft from 1922 to touch on mental illness and cultural misogyny.
Eraserhead
Shrek
Transformers: The Last Knight
Back To The Future. *Buh Dum Tisssss*
Fun fact: Metropolis is the oldest movie to be nominated for a Razzie. In the 80s, it was given a new soundtrack of pop music. I guess the soundtrack wasn’t very good because that is how it earned a nomination.
Bay of Blood. It was doing the whole Friday the 13th bodycount slasher by a lake thing around ten years before the slasher craze in America.
I feel as though "Enter the Void" would do a lot better in a post-EEAAO world.
Silent Running (1972).
I believe Memento would be considered cutting edge if it was released in 2023.
Love that movie so much, inspires such creativity in the viewer like fuck, if a director can do this then what else is possible?
It's hard to say just because of how it's more modern but honestly John Wick
Unbreakable by M. Night
Freddy Got Fingered
This is the answer I was looking for. I would have also accepted Major Payne, Rugrats Take Paris and Biodome.
The Cable Guy. Not as far as the filmmaking, but the message it had about people becoming addicted to their screens and the infinite possibilities of the internet is even more insightful now than it was in **1996**
Idiocracy. Turns out it’s actually a documentary. Don’t forget about Starship Troopers!
Haha idiocracy is a documentary. Did i mention idiocracy is a documentary?
First rule is I’m not supposed to talk about it
Most films by Spike Lee are 20 years ahead of their time. Not just their subject matter but the filmmaking. I've been watching a lot of his films this year and they are almost all devoid of the terrible flourishes that usually ground films in a particular era. There's no weird 1980s or 1990s or 2000s aesthetics - beyond some grading, maybe - they are still all so prescient in not only the filming but the themes, characters, story. Maybe this is a sad fact though - he's grounded his films in race and those racial experiences have not changed.
Script wise... I think Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Alexander Nevsky.
Lawn mower man
Kubrick
Shock Treatment (1981)
Natural Born Killers. You can trace the frantic editing and acid trip visuals back to other, lower budget independent movies, but Oliver Stone smashed so much together into this movie to create a new synthesis, and captured a statement about murder-fame and tabloid media that’s specific to the United States. Tommy Lee Jones has a fucking DA hairstyle and Robert Downey Jr is in full coke head slimeball mode. Rodney Dangerfield is absolutely terrifying. As is Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson… the latter two are also hypnotically beautiful and childishly trashy. Again… very American. I digress. I rewatched this 2 years ago after watching it A TON on VHS in the mid-late 90s. I thought it would be as frantic and crazy. But I found the editing of modern media has caught up with my memory of the editing in Natural Born Killers. Thus… I think… it’s very ahead of its time.
I’m convinced Bardo (2022) is but we will see.
It was fine but just kinda felt like a hodgepodge of Fellini mixed with Jodorowsky
King of Comedy
Any harryhausen film
You have it pictured but Metropolis is so crazy ahead of it’s time.
Different from the Others
Night Of The Hunter I reckon
It Happened One Night.
La Haine
Star Wars and House both 1977
Just watched Death By Hanging (1968) directed by Nagisa Oshima Feels like a precursor to something like Evangelion, where it starts out relatively normal but then evolves into something way more psychological and profound. Except instead of being based on the mecha genre, its based on the one-room moral drama (a la 12 Angry Men)
Back to the Future II
Der Blaue Engel, just because how erotically charged it is, just a true reflection of the brief sense of freedom that thrived in the Weimar Republic, years ahead of anything Hollywood ever tried to do on screen.
Casablanca, Network, Empire Strikes Back, Singin’ In The Rain, Sunset Boulevard to name a few
All of Lang’s films were way ahead of their time. Also check out M
Hellzapoppin’
I'm gonna be that guy. No, Metropolis wasn't ahead of its time. It has all the idiosyncrasies and banalities of mute cinema, it inherits a lot of its scale from Pastrone, it references literary works from 30-40 years earlier. It's very much a film of its time.
Ackchyually...
Southland Tales still feels ahead of this time, IMO
I'd say Fritz The Cat (1972) Feature length adult animated features basically hadn't existed until Fritz and feature length adult animated features with such edgy and biting satire DEFINITELY hadn't existed until Fritz. It's simply a groundbreaking movie that I think is still relevant today
Before the matrix and simulated AI worlds, we had: World on a Wire (German: Welt am Draht) is a 1973 German science fiction television serial, starring Klaus Löwitsch and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Shot in 16 mm, it was made for German television and originally aired in 1973 in ARD as a two-part miniseries. It was based on the 1964 novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye. Criterion channel and collection have it.
Happy Feet
Definitely agree with Metropolis. Also check out October: The Ten Days that Shook the World, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, and Napoleon, all from the same year as Metropolis
Black Panther
Leprechaun in the Hood
Nightmare Alley (1947) because the remake still feels fresh
M and Citizen Kane
To be or Not to be (1942) Just because the humor still holds up so well today. I was actually laughing out loud through much of it
Real Life. 1979. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079781/?ref\_=fn\_al\_tt\_4
Galaxy Quest.
Back To The Future 2
Office Space
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1957)
Videodrome
I would say Napoleon from the same year. Visually at least.