Films and cultural literacy for Generation W

Ashers wrote:

I'm young I guess. For those who have seen A Clockwork Orange, any words of why it's a classic and why everybody should watch it? I'm not disputing it's elevation to classic status, far from it, I've never seen it but I have the chance to at the moment.

Even though I'm not really squeamish watching even some of the harshest stuff in films I've heard about this films brutality and I'm wondering just what else it brings to the table? Seeing as it was mentioned in this topic I thought I'd ask. I have looked at reviews etc but again, given this topics title I thought asking here might prove to be a good idea.

I've also just got my hands on Citizen Kane so that'll be interesting. Just a while back one of my parents got me to watch Gone with the Wind, I became quite absorbed by it, even given my place in Generation W, I realised the excellence of that film. Highly Impressive.

Hiya Ashers, I don't think we've interacted before. I'm jes. Smile

Anyway, A Clockwork Orange -- personally, I find it really pushes my squeamishness buttons but at the same time it has an interesting use of language. Plus it's a highly stylized dystopian story. I guess I think dystopian stories are important. I mean, The Omega Man is not a great film but it does capture a particular mood. These are films ( .. Orange and Omega Man are both from '71, ) that really hit the angst that people were feeling as Vietnam was dragging on and on and on. Earlier films don't seem to do that, at least none that I can think of. And I mentioned Wild in the Streets, which is a lousy film, actually (it's from '68), because it definitely captures a time.

Dangit, I forgot The Graduate.

PS For more of a look at getting older, and less of an obsession with youth, there's Harold and Maude.

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Hey Jes, thanks for the input, what you said about dystopian stories sounds very interesting. I dread the rape scene in this film but maybe it'll be a film I watch just the once and consider for a life time, who knows.

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Hey, I hid under the seat during Raiders of the Lost Ark at the end there. I think my reaction confused my date (yes, I saw it in the theater, way back then).

You have to be careful as it can get sticky under there.

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Well that was pretty nasty, what with the melting and stuff Laughing

P.S Seen the Graduate, "Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?" - Classic.

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One reason this topic interests me is that, in conversations or communications with the young'ns (anyone younger than 35), I get the sense that I'm missing some of the film references. Now, I can be left totally aghast when someone doesn't get a reference to On the Waterfront ("I coulda' been a contendah") or Caddyshack ("So I got that goin' for me, which is nice"), but then I'll find myself scratching my head when someone makes a reference to The Matrix. I'm getting the sense that some recent movies are just as vital to current cultural literacy as Gone With the Wind and Dr. Strangelove were in the past. I'm thinking about films like:
Office Space
Fight Club
There's Something About Mary
Pulp Fiction
The Big Lebowski
Clerks
Memento
And, of course, the aforementioned Matrix trilogy.

I haven't seen all of these films, but I recently signed up for Netflix and I plan on expanding my cultural literacy to include some of these newer films (although I draw the line at watching anything with Adam Sandler -- self-improvement can only go so far).

So, what are the films for the culturally literate and "with it" person of today?

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Ah, come on, it was a bunch of Nazi's getting fried. IN The theater I first saw the film in, that scene elicited cheers from the audience. Yea! The dirty, scummy Nazi's got their just punishment!

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Recent films, Joe?

Dare I mention "Brokeback Mountain?"

But there are many others --

"A Beautiful Mind" for its examination of psychosis, even if the story was "cleaned up" for general audiences. I wonder how the film would be made now?

"Dirty Pretty Things" Exposing a hard-to-comprehend trafficing of a precious commodity.

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Lightwizard wrote:

"Rollerball" and "The Towering Inferno" certainly look strange on Schembri's list.

I think The Towering Inferno represents the apogee (or nadir) of a specific kind of genre: the disaster flick. It set the template for all subsequent disaster movies. After all, apart from the scope or setting of the disaster, it's not much different from The Day After or even Independence Day.

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"American History X"?

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Better disaster films have been made and the more recent ones have done an appreciably good box office so this generation has likely seen them. As far as vintage disaster, I would more likely recommend "A Night to Remember" or "San Francisco." Real disasters (well, not as movies), instead of made-up disasters showing people burning to death which became overtly sadistic, maybe even putting "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" to shame.

Made up disasters? The same director's "The Poseiden Adventure"

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Lightwizard wrote:

Better disaster films have been made and the more recent ones have done an appreciably good box office so this generation has likely seen them. As far as vintage disaster, I would more likely recommend "A Night to Remember" or "San Francisco."

Well, if you want some really vintage disaster movies, I'd suggest The Last Days of Pompeii (1935) or maybe even Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928). But I think your qualms regarding The Towering Inferno are well-placed: there really isn't much to recommend that film except as an archtype, and even then it may not be the best of its genre (Airport really started the "all-star disaster" movie genre, preceding The Poseidon Adventure by two years). In terms of cultural literacy, though, it is probably more important to know Die Hard than The Towering Inferno.

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How about The Battleship Potempkin for a "disaster" move?

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I don't know about classifying "Battleship Potemkin" as a disaster movie. I realize that some movies are a disaster no matter what they are about. Maybe the writer was thinking of "Rollerball" in that regard.

"The Last Days of Pompeii" I enjoyed as a kid but it's now rather kitschy and decidedly not literate. Historic (or hysterical) potboiler comes to mind.

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This thread prompted me to survey a bunch of
the "hip" kids I work with. None of them had ever
been to a Midnight Movie (not that there is any place to see them in NH, but we used to drive down to Boston to see them.
They didn't know the following films which when I was young you weren't considered cool unless you
had seen;
REPO MAN
DOWN BY LAW
DESPRATE LIVING
PINK FLAMINGOS
MAD MAX
MONTY PYTHON"S LIFE OF BRIAN
BLOW UP
FELLINI'S ROMA
THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN (O.K. this is a bit of a stretch, but my friends and I used to quote it alot)

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Great list, ToL, and great anthropological research there. I'm rather surprised to see Blow Up and Roma in that list: maybe you surveyed a rather remarkable bunch of hip kids.

And you might be the only person ever who has quoted The Ghost and Mr. Chicken -- I prefer The Incredible Mr. Limpet myself.

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"Roma" Yes. The arrival of the film crew in the downpour is an effective extension of ideas in "8-1/2" and I love the papel fashion show and the construction crew breaking through the wall into the Roman ruins.

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Just a comment on the original premise of this thread: I'm not sure I'd fault a kid for not getting a reference to Nico. She was somewhat of a cult figure even when she was famous.

On the other hand, a friend once told me that her teenaged daughter would never watch a b&w film. That's sad...

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TCM is having a day of Joan Crawford classics -- "Flamingo Road" and "Possessed" amonst them. Not technically in the film noir genre but the same nuances and atmosphere.

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Speaking of black & white, I quite like the old Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, hugely atmospheric and very well done.

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Films and cultural literacy for Generation W

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