Originally Posted by
pablo
Cute gifs aside, I must take issue with the notion that classic movies "look very dated". What does that mean? If a film was done in the 1940s or 1950s, in black and white, it was done in the style and technical abilities of that time. So now in 2014 you have to take that into account.
That
is being taken account though; It looks dated in comparison with cinema today. I'm not sure what the misunderstanding is here...
And of course the idea that a undisputed classic like The Day the Earth Stood Still somehow does not "stand the test of time" is frankly laughable. It has a 94% critics rating on RT and is rated 7.9 on IMDB. The AFI list of the Top Ten Sci-Fi movies of all time has it at #5, with Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the original, of course) at #9:
http://www.afi.com/10top10/category.aspx?cat=7
No two groups - or websites in this case - can agree 100% on what defines "best".
I've noticed that dot com's tend to rank films through nostalgia colored lenses, they give precedence to films that did things first, or were the the inspirational genesis for other films and genres. The trend setters of their times, if you will. It's why films like
Citizen Kane and
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (both of which I love) almost always feature at the top of their lists even though there are thousands of objectively more 'impressive' films. Sentiment and the love of of the art of cinema and its history plays a huge role.
This conversation could probably be its own thread, in all honesty.