What makes a movie a "classic"? | Scanners
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EW's Number One. With a bullet.
So, what else is new? That's the way it is, has always been, and always will be. My first reaction to EW's cover was that the whole idea is silly. Today's landmark is tomorrow's relic. But I had to admit there were movies I knew were "classics" the moment I saw them: "No Country for Old Men," "Brokeback Mountain," "Chinatown"... Others I loved but didn't anticipate how they would grow in stature and influence, as cult movies or mainstream classics: "Nashville," "Taxi Driver," "This is Spinal Tap," "Dazed and Confused," "Boogie Nights" -- even "The Big Lebowski" and "Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery" to some extent. And there are so many others that are waiting to take their rightful place in some official canon: "Night Moves," "Cutter's Way" -- and movies that I wouldn't discover within five or six years after their initial release, when they didn't seem they belonged to the past, like "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" or "Once Upon a Time in the West" or "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes"...
From the last quarter century, EW chose "Pulp Fiction" as its #1 classic, calling it "a time-warping, mind-bending work of movie-mad genius.... Its revolutionary structure (John Travolta dies... then lives!) opened a new universe of mainstream storytelling, but the eternal joy of 'Pulp Fiction' is that it recast the future of movies by living, so thrillingly, in the moment." I can't really argue with that, though it doesn't take into consideration what I see as the movie's flaws (I hate all the chewy, self-consciously pop-aware dialog), its negative influences (we're still suffering the "Tarantinian" fallout from wannabes far less talented than QT), and its overemphasized novelty (the structure wasn't really revolutionary -- it just didn't tell you the order in which its chapters were arranged, so you could be surprised to recounter characters in an unforseen context).
But I'm not going to begrudge "Pulp Fiction" the top slot. What nobody seems to remember anymore is that this little $7 million production was turned down by the Columbia/Sony subsidiary Tri-Star Pictures, and wound up grossing more than $100 million domestically, to the surprise of probably everybody except Quentin Tarantino.
No, the bizarre choices on the list for me (in addition to several of the ones cited in the third paragraph above) include "Moulin Rouge" (#10), "Pretty Woman" (#37), "Gladiator" (#43), "Rain Man" (#45), "Dirty Dancing" (#65), "All About My Mother" (#69), "Thelma and Louise" (#72)... but I detect my own gender bias in the selection. Some of these were hits, some of them won Oscars, some had star-making performances (Julia Roberts, Patrick Swayze, Brad Pitt)... but, even if you liked 'em at the time, do you feel like watching them anymore? Obviously I don't, but I'd like to hear what you think.
What's your definition of "classic"? Record-breaking? Precedent-setting? Influential? Enduring? How soon can such a status be determined? (Films have to be at least 25 years old to qualify for the National Film Registry; acts don't become eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame until 25 years after the release of their first record.) Are their films from the 1990s and 2000s that you would already consider worthy of classic status? Have at it.
See the full list here.
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