MOVIES THAT DONT HOLD UP WITH TIME

Agree with you totally on both Casablanca and The Third Man. Amazing thing about The Third Man is that every time I've seen it (maybe half a dozen times) I've caught something I missed before -- a nuance in dialogue, a particular and significant camera angle etc. etc.

But to your list of old movies that have easily stood the test of time, I'd have to add:
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles again)
The Maltese Falcon (Bogey again)
Sunset Boulevard
High Noon (the finest Western ever made for my money)

There may be others but these, I suspect, will stand the test of time for another hundred years.

All four of yours are frequently seen on such lists, and two in particular are favorites of mine - my standard being I would gladly watch them again at almost any time - they are High Noon and Maltese Falcon. Citizen Kane and Sunset Boulevard were similarly well made and equally hard to forget, though for some reasons I didn't like the subject matter as well.

I suspect that, for us all, our real timeless favorites have the quality of showing us something fresh and new with each viewing.

I'll add another I never tire of, though it didn't achive near the success of any of the others here listed. It was "The Wind and the Lion'" with Candice Bergin playing an American expatriate in Morrocco and Sean Connery playing an Arab with a brogue. It has a lyrical quality and some delicious irony which always pleases me.

And Brian Keith was Teddy Roosevelt. Connery was the Razouli-the Prince of Thieves. I remember this film--it is one I could rewatch.

Rap

Interestingly it was based on an a real historical episode involving the same characters. Teddy Roosevelt really did announce that "America wants Pederkaris alive or Raisouli dead". Although in the real story Pedercaris was a man. The film made an excellent pointed connection between the characters of Raisouli and Roosevelt. The wonderfully ironic interplay between Mrs Pederkaris & Raisouli in the film was all invention, but very entertaining.

. . . and how would you know that?

Okay, here I have to raise a point of order: Before we can say that a movie didn't hold up with time, doesn't it need to have been good once first? Has Plan Nine ever been a good movie, at all?

Plan Nine has become more and more popular over time. I'd say it has held up very well.

Agreed. Given how bad Plan Nine was in the first place, I'd say it has grown on us. Like a fungus.

I had never seen Plan Nine from Outer Space. After I finished reading this threads, I took a quick look at: www.imdb.com which gave it 3.8 stars. I make it a practice never to watch a movie which is rated below a 7 on IMDB. I will make an exception for a high six, if the film seems to have a particular interest for me.

This leads me to another thought. There are movies that are so bad, that they are good, if only as a goof. It is (sort of) the same concept as a dog that is so ugly that he is cute.

Anybody want to start another thread???

I LIKE Lincoln AND Star Troopers WHY people not see old movies l.. old is gold

tell me some intrusting movies please

Mars Attacks!:
Not sure exactly into which category this belongs, but it has not lost a thing over time (20 yrs?). I loved it to death and have seen it 6 times. It is NOT a bad movie at all with an all-star cast including Jack Nicholson, a young Sarah Jessica Parker, etc.

If it wasn't for the likes of Rocky Horror Picture Show, IMHO, this movie would rank as the campiest of all time.

As for campiness ranking, perhaps. Beetlejuice ranks just below Mars Attacks!

I liked Mars Attacks. Don't have an opinion if it still holds up, as I saw it just one time.

If you're able to watch it again, you'll laugh your ass off - especially when watching it with someone who likes campy movies. The unbelievably long list of known stars and celebrities in this movie would indicate that it might've been a labor of love or at least a vehicle for notoriety (or infamy).

Jack Nicholson
Glenn Close
Annette Bening
Pierce Brosnan
Danny DeVito
Martin Short
Sarah Jessica Parker
Michael J. Fox
Rod Steiger
Tom Jones
Jim Brown
Natalie Portman
Pam Grier
Lisa Marie
Sylvia Sidney
Jack Black
Paul Winfield

This is Tim Burton movie: "Burton takes the opportunity to spoof and laugh with almost every form of nowadays corruption...Politics, religion, the army, television, greed in Las Vegas and God knows what else. Mars Attacks! is the purest form of cinema anarchy I've seen so far"

Brings to my mind the likes of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" of the early-1960s.

I've mentioned before that A Touch of Evil, considered a masterpiece by some, is fatally flawed by the casting of Charlton Heston as a Mexican. If the movie were made today, it is inconceivable that a non-Hispanic would play that role. On that criterion, the movie doesn't stand the test of time. And that's true of a number of other films where white actors played non-white roles. Can anyone today really take Laurence Olivier seriously in the title role of Othello? Likewise, the Charlie Chan movies, with white guys Sidney Toler/Warner Oland playing the Chinese detective, are just embarrassing now. And the casting of a German actor as a Comanche chief isn't the worst thing about The Searchers, but it sure doesn't help.

I also want to nominate any movie in which Tony Curtis delivered the line:

My fadda, da king...

...or...

...my budda, da odda prince.

Of course, in that vein, there's Tony Curtis in Spartacus, cast as Antoninus, with his strong Brooklyn accent saying, "Spor-ti-cus, my friend!" What a mess!

I just read an interesting bit of movie triv from the movie Spartacus:

"During the arduous, long shoot, Tony Curtis allegedly asked Jean Simmons, "Who do I have to screw to get off this film?" Some alternative versions of the interaction include Simmons shouting back, "When you find out, let me know."

Campy, yes. But I loved Beetlejuice, and thought that it was a good one, but not very high on the scale of intellectuality.

In that case, shouldn't you have an upper IMDB rating limit for movies you're willing to watch? Say, no rating lower than 7, unless it's also lower than 4?