Agreed. And while people talk about how bad films are today, a lot of the stuff from the 40s, 50s, and 60s is actually worse. Much of it had low production values, bad pacing, and cheesy, stilted, unintentionally hilarious acting, which always provided great fodder for MST3K. I think many movies from that time period are considered classics simply because of nostalgia. Movies didn't really start to get good for the most part until the 1970s when new hollywood replaced old hollywood. The Godfather and Taxi Driver were two of the first films that were really watchable and good by modern standards. Sure, there are exceptions like the ones I mentioned, but most movies prior to about 1970 suck ass.
Pardon me, but he wasn't simply saying "I didn't enjoy it". He was saying that they're overrated, which implies that other people's opinions are wrong and his is right. Considering that I rarely see anyone except AKS even talking about movies from earlier eras in this thread, I doubt cmdrmonkey spends much time watching older films. The focus on the acting style as a reason that the film is "overrated" is fairly shallow. AKS has mentioned Kurosawa films...the acting in those can be quite over the top at times, which isn't necessarily by mistake. Directors and actors were not necessarily focused on "realism" as the goal either. That's what I mean by taking a film appreciation course as a way to better understand older films.
Thus proving that you don't really know what you're talking about when it comes to the reasons WHY those older films are so highly rated by film experts.
Nostalgia mostly. Nostalgia does screwy things with peoples' perceptions. They start to remember things being much better than they actually were.
Nostalgia as cmdr says has to be a big part of it. I remember really enjoying stuff like journey to the center of the earth and the time machine as a kid. I watched them both recently and found them pretty dull, they just seemed old and tired.
The ratings of the classics has nothing to with nostalgia. It has to do with knowledge of the history of filmmaking and what the actors and directors of the eras were trying to accomplish. What was Akira Kurosawa trying to do with films like Rashomon and Seven Samurai? Was he trying to make an action blockbuster with Seven Samurai? Was the goal of Rashomon to have the most realistic acting performances possible? Or was he trying to do something else entirely?
Who knows. Seven Samurai sucked. It was boring with terrible pacing and godawful acting. I turned it off after about 20 minutes. I think it's a lot like anime where it gets overrated by fanboys of Japanese culture. Movies are meant to entertain and sometimes inform. When a movie fails in that task it's not a good movie. Sure if I were taking a film studies class, I could probably slog through Seven Samurai and write a paper about its historical significance to filmmaking. I could write about the mis en scene and how it was remade as a western. But I would be hating the movie the entire time because it's boring and bad. There's a difference between appreciating a film and enjoying a film. What you don't seem to understand is that a film can be artistically and historically significant, and still be a bad movie that fails to entertain. The Tree of Life is a pretty good recent example. It's the kind of experiment in filmmaking that pretentious hipster douchebags will jizz all over. But it doesn't have a coherent narrative, isn't entertaining, and isn't really watchable for a normal audience, so it fails as a film. The best films, the films that are true classics, are both artistically significant and entertaining. Pulp Fiction would be a good example. It's extremely entertaining and artistically significant for its out of sequence narrative.
What I understand is that you don't seem to be separating your own personal opinion ("I didn't like this movie") from the widely held consensus of film buffs, historians, and critics ("This movie is a classic"). You're starting to sound like a "tea partier" talking about socialism. You throw in a few catch phrases combined with plenty of attitude and consider that to be all that's required. And yet Quentin Tarantino appreciates the film eras you're dumping on. Some of his favorite films include: His Girl Friday (1940), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Rio Bravo (1959), Pandora's Box (1929), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), and Rififi (1955).
Shut your dirty whore mouth before I slap it shut! I have impeccable taste that's superior to that of most critics. Quentin Tarantino also loves Manos The Hands of Fate and owns rare prints of the film. Tarantino loves bad movies. He openly admits it.
Films from Kurosawa, Ozu, and Bergman from the same time period blow those movies into the weeds and are still very impressive now. Those American movies are overrated in the US because they are American movies. Period. Japan and Sweden were creating far superior movies at that time because they were home of some of the greatest directors in history. Seven Samurai, Tokyo Story, Ikiru, Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, ect. don't require any qualifications or classes to appreciate because they are that fantastic. And Kurosawa was schooling American directors and showing them how to make the movies they world make for the next several decades, but he usually did it far more impressively.
Definitely intentional. Mifune in Seven Samurai is most commonly cited as overacting; his character in Seven Samurai in particular was supposed to be transparently boastful, as he was overcompensating for his background as a poor peasant. The viewer is supposed to be suspicious of his hypermacho behavior.
Does anything need to be added to this quote? You watched 20 minutes of a 141 minute film. You aren't qualified to critique what you haven't seen.
Pulp Fiction is a made for video movie. The dialogue is waffly and overdone and the stupid dancing... Jesus. Methinks it's your rose tinted nostalgia goggles clouding your vision, monkey.
Well, you can argue with the rankings for a site like IMDB for many different valid reasons, but at the end of the day 12 Angry Men and Rebel Without a Cause are classic films with decades of consensus as to why they're considered classics. I'm not trying to argue relative value vs. Kurosawa or Bergman, or what American tastes tend to be when ranking classics, but only that those films have real merit to be considered classics. Dismissing them for acting style or lack of "realism" is totally missing the point. It's not a requirement, but even a general film history survey class can provide the context and background information that makes classic film seem less "old" and more interesting. You stop focusing on the superficial differences vs. contemporary film. It's like classic cars. Everything about classic cars is technically "dated" compared to today, yet car enthusiasts understand why they're interesting regardless of that.