'The type of movies that become classics'

the only movie i've seen recently that made me think "classic" is Spring Breakers.

Movies that become classics have little to do with their subject matter or tone or 'size' and everything to do with excellent execution of the material and making a strong connection with large numbers of its viewers, so they feel like they'd like to see it again and have the exact same experience more than once.

also helps if they've got big cartoon robots punching big cartoon monsters in the face

xp to aimless, i think that's half-true. truly great films transcend genre definitions because above all they succeed in being unmistakably, very much themselves. there is another kind of classic though, which is seen as a window onto a specific cultural moment, and is appreciated mostly in terms of how well it speaks to a zeitgeist that has now passed. the graduate is this kind of movie. apocalypse now. the matrix will probably be remembered in this way, as a symptom of anxieties about the digital age at the turn of the century. the reason i think spring breakers is a classic, or will be a classic, is that in addition to being great it feels very timely -- like someday people will say that it is emblematic of something.

basically, i think that movies that can fit into people's facile narratives about cultural trends tend to make their way into the canon.

Yes they do. Uncle Boonmee, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Mysteries of Lisbon, Closed Curtains. Tons of classics this decade.

La Vie d'Adèle's timing alone makes it a classic.

Inception, prometheus, the dark knight overthinks it

Leviathan, Turin Horse, Holy Motors, My Joy, Harmony Lessons, Melancholia, Post Tenebras Lux. This has been a really good decade so far.

Melancholia totally. And Antichrist too.

It was on the last S&S poll, a year after release. Along with Tree of Life and Turin Horse.

Frederik B, a good portions of those films you are listing are closer to the concept of 'masterpiece' than 'classic'. I agree for Leviathan, Melancholia, Holy Motors and Turin Horse but not for a film like Anatolia, which is one my favorite films these past years don't get me wrong.

I am interested to see how much the Matrix's classic rep is going to be damamged by the sequels.

Hee hee

basically, i think that movies that can fit into people's facile narratives about cultural trends tend to make their way into the canon.

What's disorienting though is that one generation's facile narrative about their cultural trends can be completely upended by the next generation's facile etc.

oh yeah, absolutely. that's why i think spring breakers is interesting... there was a whole new inquiry pdf issue about it, and it definitely seems like the kind of thing writers feel compelled to write about, but the discourse about this movie has nevertheless been eclectic and mixed, and critics haven't really settled on their pet reductionist explanation for what it is supposed to *mean* yet. idk. "the graduate" is interesting in this way because it is a very different movie today than in 1967 owing to the fact that the "youth" movement it apparently was seen to champion no longer exists, and that generation today is seen to have a conflicted, rather than purely emancipatory legacy.

i think a serious man is a classic

Superbad is a total classic.