Greetings Movie Advocate regulars! Today we continue off our special Christmas present to you, a series of 12 lists for the 12 days of Christmas. We're continuing today with lists of our 8 favorite movies that were ahead of their time. Agree? Disagree? Either way we'd love to hear about it!
Justin's List
8. The Rules of the Game
Was one of the first movies to have multiple things happening at different depths in the frame - also has people talking over each other. Like Robert Altman 40 years before him.
7. Aguirre: The Wrath of God
I can't exactly place my finger on the reason why... but it definitely is.
6. Orpheus
Jean Cocteau uses more tricks than Michel Gondry in a magic shop. The moody and magical tone this movie has as a product of very primitive special effects put most digital post-production work I've seen to shame.
5. Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
This movie is hardcore. It exudes crazy cool, it has a style that is often aped by modern directors but seldom replicated.
4. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Seems like most people don't know what to do with this or think about it yet. Give it a few years. This is midnight movie material at its best.
3. The French Connection
One of the first movies to use the documentary-style shaky cam approach that is so ubiquitous now.
2. Videodrome
A masterpiece by David Cronenberg that deals with the intersection of technology and human sexuality years before internet pornography. The special effects are incredible, but it's the ideas here that we're just now giving mainstream thought to.
1. The Birth of a Nation
Aside from the racist bullshit and KKK glorification, this is a really excellent movie and one that every American needs to see and come to terms with. This movie was shot in 1915 but if it weren't for the lack of sound, you wouldn't know it. This was the movie that more than any other set the narrative rules for movie. This was the first movie to have cross cutting, jump cuts, and multiple climaxes occurring simultaneously.
Ben's List
8. Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
This movie is “explotation on steroids” in a way that wouldn't be in vogue for another quarter century after its release. The godmother of mod pinup chic, Texas Chainsaw Massacre hillbillies, and Quentin Tarantino's entire career.
7. 24 Hour Party People
Every time I watch this movie, I lament the fact that none of us were paying attention to it when it came out. There is simply no other movie like it. 24 Hour Party People blurs documentary and fiction, fact and lie, omniscient and specific point of view. It breaks the fourth wall more seamlessly and less disruptively than any other movie I've seen. It's aesthetically fluid, while maintaining a singular voice. I think we're just starting to see other movies with that sort of disregard for The Rules. Unlike, say, the French New Wave, I think something in the style of 24 Hour Party People has a good shot at becoming the mainstream standard.
6. Scanners
David Cronenberg's Scanners predated the cinematic superhero craze by two decades. The Scanners universe is basically the X-Men universe with a fraction of the budget. In a way, it probably worked to Scanners' advantage to be out of time with it's more action-adventure oriented progeny. Because it's so cerebral and idea driven, it's probably my favorite superhero movie.
5. Foreign Correspondent
Though most of the movies on this list are included for being thematically ahead of their time, I have included Foreign Correspondent for meeting a different criterion. There is a plane crash sequence in this movie that is so visceral and realistic, I refuse to believe it was made in 1940. It just goes to show that Hitchcock really was the master. This movie is on Netflix Watch Instant, so check it out!
4. Jackie Brown
After Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Tarantino fans were clamoring for more of the same. Kudos to Tarantino for having the foresight to start changing his schtick up. Though it was considered a lesser movie at its time of release, everyday more and more people come around to the realization that Jackie Brown is probably Tarantino's best movie. His ability to throw a curve ball game changer at a pivotal point in his career is the reason I'm not too worried about his current genre cinema-worship rut. He'll change things up when the time is right, I think.
3. Splice
Splice's tepid critical and commercial reception is the movie travesty of the year. Splice is THE movie about the potentials and dangers of biotechnology. I hope against hope that this movie finds an audience on video. The moral questions and ambiguities broached here are exactly the sort of questions we will begin asking over the next century. I guarantee it.
2. Peeping Tom
Anybody getting sick of how there's a Michael Powell movie on almost every list so far? At it's time of release all critics could see was pointless perversion. With a little hindsight, Peeping Tom rings frighteningly true as a metaphor for film and watching. We are all Peeping Toms.
1. Speed Racer
Those who love Speed Racer love it with ferocity. Those who don't love it... probably never saw it. Fuck Star Wars, fuck Lord of the Rings, fuck Avatar. When I think about potential directions for movies in the digital age, I want to see more movies like Speed Racer. Whereas the bloated budget franchises I just mentioned use technology to create fantasy worlds that are more or less “realistic,” Speed Racer creates an entirely unique, all encompassing aesthetic experience that has no relation to reality whatsoever. All of those stuffy film professors who lament that the coming of sound film in the late 20s marked a loss of visual bravado and experimentation can shove it. Speed Racer, more than any other post-sound movie, continues that exploration and points the way toward more diverse, more specific, heightened visual realities in movies. Seriously, we laud James Cameron for the boundaries he's broken, while the Wachowski's get laughed out of Hollywood. We sure are an unimaginative bunch...