r time.

Some that come to my mind are (in order of release):

- Hitchcock's stuff (everything about 'em)
- Charge at Feather River (because Wilhelm scream sampling)
- The Graduate (dat camerawork)
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (good Western that wasn't overbearingly preachy melodrama about "muh Old West, muh Industrial Revolution")
- A Clockwork Orange (dat cinematography, dat edginess, dat Malcolm McDowell)
- Terminator (dat special effect)

Though it looks pretty dated now, I'm going to go ahead and say Tron.

Baraka - it shows how mental ill the united states is

it also exposes the disgusting gun culture of violence for what it really is.

Deep Throat

Robocop... The remake still couldn't catch up to it.

Have to say The Truman Show given the worlds current fascination with reality television

straw dogs
miller's crossing

Jurassic Park
Terminator 2
Aliens
Empire Strikes Back
Starship Troopers

- Metropolis
- Modern Times
- Citizen Kane
- Birth of a Nation
- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
- The Truman Show
- The Breakfast Club
- A Clockwork Orange
- Psycho
- North by Northwest
- Dr. Strangelove

Really?? No one has yet said ....

Back to the Future

It was ahead of and behind and in the middle of its time all at the same time at different times.

Jurrasic Park and Armageddon because if you didn't know any better you'd swear they came out in the past couple years, not almost 20 years ago.

Even though I wasn't born until YEARS later, I believe Star Wars and Tron should be on this list as well.

Metropolis

boku no pico

Wages of Fear

More tension in this movie than anything I've seen from that time period, and even beats out the vast majority of today's thrillers.

I'd say the Alien series, though the 3rd one is kinda bad

Avatar, from what I've heard it's special effects are way ahead of their time, despite being released in 2009, judging from the many great reviews it got and the fact I've seen it once and I admit I liked it.

Funny, I just watched Starship Trooper on Netflix and read some stuff online about how the movie accurately predicted how the war on terror played out. I guess in some sort of prophetic manner, that movie was ahead of its time as well.

1988's They Live. It's a fantastic film that still has a lot of timely messages about the nature our culture and the effects that mass media can have. Plus, it's got "Rowdy" Roddy Piper shooting people in it, so that's cool.

A Clockwork Orange and the original Terminator. Both excellent films ahead of their time.

Shrek 1 & 2.

I find it a little unsettling that so many of you guys seem to be conflating "old movies that are good" with "ahead of their time," as if good movies are a recent invention. Anyway, a couple off the top of my head:

Zero for Conduct (Vigo, 1933) - An anarchic punk rock movie made decades before rock 'n roll itself even existed, a French New Wave film made before most New Wave directors were potty-trained, a movie that was banned for over a decade after it was released.

Sherlock, Jr. and The General (Keaton, 1924 and 1926) - Both poorly received at the time of their release, both incalculably huge influences on both comedy and action movies. Plus Sherlock, Jr. gets amazingly meta for a silent film from the '20s.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (Murnau, 1927) - Murnau's camera swoops and glides while most of his contemporaries' cameras were just learning to walk.

Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) - Duh. The deep compositions, the fragmented narrative, the low-key lighting, the low-angle shots, plus lots of people don't realize that Kane is actually a landmark special effects movie too. There's a reason why this is the most frequently cited "most influential movie of all time" and there's a reason why few people felt that way at the time of its release.

Johnny Guitar (Ray, 1954). A feminist lesbian psychosexual revisionist Western. From fucking 1954.

At 2/18/15 01:54 AM, 24901miles wrote: Aside from those hints in your descriptions of those films you listed, could you provide us with some more criteria for determining whether or not a film is truly ahead of its time?

Obviously it's a pretty nebulous and subjective term, but the way I see it a movie is "ahead of its time" if it marks a significant achievement or advancement in filmmaking that was not recognized or appreciated at the time of its release but is recognized and appreciated now.

Though sometimes there are films that I'd call "ahead of their time" that were recognized when they were released but really are distinctly more modern than their contemporaries. Things like The Birth of a Nation or my example of Sunrise or 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Definitely The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring. We tend to forget just how advanced the special effects were for this movie and the rest of the series. They invented computer battle programs to create massive fights involving hundreds of characters with advanced A.I. The practical effects were mind-fucking-blowing. I highly recommend watching the making of of the movies, they all last 4 to 6 hours, but every second is worth it :P

At 2/16/15 03:39 PM, Silverlee wrote: - Hitchcock's stuff (everything about 'em)

Very true. Rope comes to mind instantly. But Psycho, Rear Window and Birds were absolutely fantastic. The music, the characters, the unique story-telling. Plus, I love the set of Rear Window. I love it, it gives a "theater" feeling to the movie, and I just love movies that deal so well with limited room to shoot and tell a story.

- A Clockwork Orange (dat cinematography, dat edginess, dat Malcolm McDowell)

Definitely. Kubrick's movies were all-around great, at least it was the case for A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Dr. Strangelove, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. I especially liked the originality of the visual elements of story-telling, the cool cinematic and visual tricks, and the philosophical and politic comments of the movies.

- Terminator (dat special effect)

Great sci-fi flick, indeed! Special effects, of course. But great story two.

The Dark Crystal because of no use of CGI; just animatronics, and all the character creatures were original