Movies that hold up

I’m watching Die Hard right now, and it totally holds up. From the camerawork, to acting, to special effects, to the humor. Just a great script, acting and story all around. The ending is still awesome and I imagine a great twist if you see it for the first time.

Die hard was made in 1989, so is 21 years old.

What else holds up?

Jaws.

The French Connection.

The Godfather.

Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Ghostbusters.

Alien.

Aliens.

Etc…

Back to the future

Seven Samurai

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Apocalypse Now

Terminator 2, surprisingly, does not really hold out.

Blade Runner.

Not much else, IMO. Movies have come a long way in the past 30 years.

Casablanca is close to being nearly the perfect character and language driven movie, swiftly moving and energetic, as long as you see it’s farcical moments as endearing cinematic license. It really only drags, ironically enough, around the love affair.

Treasure of Sierra Madre is possibly the best “man’s man” movie ever made, and interesting because it’s completely devoid of romantic interests and almost has no women in it at all. There are a few scenes over the top, but it stays on target quite well, anchored by Tim Holt’s decent enough everyman around which Walter Houston and Bogart sometimes get a bit carried away in their parts.

I like Casino every time i see it, god knows why.

Hunt for Red October is still pretty good as well. Losing Alec Baldwin for Harrison Ford killed the “franchise”, but it preserved Hunt as the best of the Cold War era thrillers, helped immesurably by Poledouris’ score and effective performances by all the surrounding cast.

A Christmas Story, despite knowing that i’m sure to see it once a year for the rest of my life.

The Ten Commandments is great in a very bible school via Cecil B. DeMille way, and i like it better than Ben Hur despite Ben Hur seeming to be the better movie, and despite that outside of the top three or four actors everyone else is horrifyingly cheesy. But it’s cheese for a good cause!

The Day of the Jackal.

Lawrence of Arabia, with the added benefit of showing some of the origins of the problems in the Middle East.

I’m going to have to disagree. I just watched this about a month ago and I felt it really didn’t hold up. Certain parts did, but for whatever reason Rutger Hauer’s character really felt out of place. The acting and purpose for him and his group coming back to Earth just didn’t make sense. It really felt like a lousy script.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

I gotta say that I agree with you on Die Hard. That movie is awesome! It holds up so damn well.

As far as “holding up”, there are so many classics that I don’t think that’s what you are really asking for since you gave Die Hard as an example. Are you thinking of movies from 1970-1990?

All the President’s Men

The Road Warrior

The Thing

The special effects for The Thing don’t work for me any more.

The Conversation
Judgment at Nuremburg
Network

When I watched the original Star Wars trilogy after they came out on DVD in 2004, I was worried that they would be awful like other cheesy movies I had loved as a young teenager that did not hold up well on adult viewing. I was very happy to find that I loved them just as much in my 40s as I did in my teens. I think they hold up very well 30 years later.

The Goonies

Jason and the Argonauts (the harryhausen one)

good pick. I came in here to say just this, but you beat me to the punch

The thing about trying to figure out which movies still ‘hold up’ for me is that as time goes on I get a different type of enjoyment out of the movie than I might have the first time I saw it, how ever long ago. The movie The Wizard of Oz is still a wonderful film I can enjoy. The flying monkeys no longer scare me, the set pieces are obvious set pieces, and the make up and special effects are unquestionably antiquated, but the film still works despite these issues (if one were to consider them issues at all).

The thing about films like this is that they work because they were never trying to paint these visions of Wonderland as any sort of reality, the Scarecrow, the Lion and the Tin Man are all intentionally fantastical, as is the munckin city and the yellow brick road. This is a big part of why this film still works so well, when much more recent movies, especially those in the sci-fi/fantasy/horror genre’s don’t even come close, their special effects are often meant to look real.

Thoughts of the ‘uncanny valley’ pop into my mind when I think about why these newer films don’t work, but that doesn’t explain why they did once, even if they don’t now. Uncanny valley suggests they should have looked like crap, even back when they were released, but for some reason I, at least, accepted them for what they were and could still be razzled and dazzled by them.

I have a hard time selecting any more recent effect-heavy genre movie for a list like this, because almost without exception the effects are going to add a certain degree of sillyness I can’t overlook, unless the sillyness is intentional, or adds a certain specific type of charm.

I would say Ghostbusters still holds up, because the movie is a comedy, and some of the cheese of the effects works extremely well with the setting. The only real exception I have with that movie is Gozer’s make up and hair, and voice. The stop-animation for the gargoyle dogs is a bit off putting too, but it isn’t as bad as the stop animation in the 80’s version of Clash of the Titans.

Other movies that hold up for me would be:
The Shining (assuming you can stomach a slow building Kubrick movie)
Rocky (Though the pacing might feel a bit slow for younger viewers)
Top Gun (especially with the new gay sub plot revelations)
Misery (Jesus!!! I can’t believe it’s been 20 years!)
Grease (still works baby)
Ferris Beuler’s day Off
The Breakfast Club

52 minutes into my first viewing of Alien, and it’s pretty sweet. The puppet and set work has a physicality you don’t get with modern CGI, and I jumped when the facehugger dropped onto Ripley’s shoulder. (Unbelievable to see Sigourney Weaver that fresh faced. Woah.) Looking forward to the chestburster popping out of that guy who lead Norsefire in V for Vendetta.

The pace is also much different than modern sci-fi, which is refreshing.

Das Boot. This is one of the few movies I insist on watching in German with subtitles and I am a spoiled american who generally doesn’t care for subtitles. Also, the english voice over is a crime against the film.
The Battle of Algiers holds up well too until the end where it gets truncated and rushed. Considering when it came out it was certainly pushing the envelop.
I love many of the other films folks have posted here and wanted to included some anti-war war movies that I love.

Trainspotting also holds up well with me in an OMGWTF kinda way.