I spent a large proportion of the past Bank Holiday Monday listening to a BBC Radio2 poll ranking their Top 100 Favourite Albums. Basically what they did was take their Top 100 Most Played Albums (limited to one per artist) and asked listeners to rank them. The results were often surprising with a top five consisting of:
- Coldplay – A Rush Of Blood To The Head
- Keane – Hopes & Fears
- Duran Duran – Rio
- Pink Floyd – The Dark Side Of The Moon (the only one a lot of people expected)
- Dido – No Angel
Ahead of what a lot of people expected including in the top five:
The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers
The Beatles – Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Queen – A Night At The Opera
Fleetwood Mac – Rumours
Led Zeppelin – Untitled fourth album
One of my thoughts were that different records live longer in the mind and memory, and possibly the heart than others. For example, I bought No Angel when it first came out (before the Eminem sample made it a hit), I listened to it a lot but haven’t listened to it in about five years. I first heard Rumours and Zeppelin’s fourth album when I was a kid and still listen to them all the time and see no reason why I won’t continue to for the foreseeable future. The conclusion, if they re-do this list in fifteen or twenty years time No Angel and A Rush Of Blood To The Head may not make the top 10 or even the top 100, but Rumours, The Dark Side Of The Moon, Sgt Pepper, Born to Run, Bridge Over Troubled Water and countless other classic albums will still be there.
This got me thinking about the current and recent movies that will be heralded as classics in the future and which will be forgotten. Skyfall will be watched a lot and may prove to be the best Bond ever but will be dismissed as just another Bond movie. The Dark Knight Rises will survive as part of, one of the best movie trilogies ever, but possibly the weakest link of the trilogy. The Artist may be considered a gimmick. Stoker, Cloud Atlas, We Need to Talk About Kevin and some great foreign language movies like Amour, Rust and Bone, The Skin I live In and In the House may be too obscure for the masses. Moonrise Kingdom is going to age well as is Argo so could be up there in popular opinion. I can’t make my mind up about Drive and Black Swan but hope I love them as much in years to come as I do now after two or three viewings and hope others feel the same about them. Margin Call and Zero Dark Thirty will possibly stand as testaments to the time but possibly not a time we will want to look back on too often or very fondly.
The conclusion, there hasn’t been a 12 Angry Men, The Godfather, Goodfellas or even Star Wars in recent years, the two closest are probably The Dark Knight and Inception. I’m not saying it is a bad time for film, in fact the opposite, while, the occasional all time classics seem a little few and far between the number of really good movies being made is greater than ever. I just long for a Citizen Kane, The Searchers or Casablanca, we are about due one. Or am I being cynical and some of the movies I have mentioned will find their way to the upper reaches of the IMDB top 250?
Update:
Want to read more on the subject? Check out THIS ARTICLE that picks up the baton from where I left off.
Fandango Groovers Movie Blog 
I’m gonna go ahead and bet that Drive becomes a classic somewhere down the road and that The Tree of Life will be looked back on as one of this decade’s best. Nice, thought-provoking article!
If not a classic Drive will certainly be a cult classic. I can’t make my mind up about Tree of Life. Its stunning and beautiful but is it profound allegory or an esoteric rant?
I really liked this post, I agree that there’s very few movies right now that will eb certified classics, probably because unlike before (with films like Star Wars, Casablanca, The Godfather etc) theres a huge divide between the films that are popular and get seen by everyone and become certified as good films, and the sort of films like Drive and Black Swan which are mostly just popular to film fans. I don’t think The Dark Knight films will be remembered, I think they will age quite badly, but I think that Inception has a good chance though. I can’t think of many other right now, but I think The royal Tenebaums will become a classic as well, its reputation has been growing a lot since it came out.
Inception has proved that films can be good and popular, so I have hope!
Good call on The royal Tenebaums, I liked it when I first saw it, but it just keeps getting better with age.
Reblogged this on That's so true! and commented:
What would be future classic movies? If you consider Star Wars classic (and many do), then will Episode VII be considered a classic as well? Will the new The Hobbit-trilogy be considered a classic? I don’t think the entire Dark Knight-trilogy will qualify, but maybe just The Dark Knight? What about Brokeback Mountain? I do agree though, that I find it difficult to think of anything really recent that would withstand the test of time. On the other hand. I don’t believe IMDb is always the measure for everything, and I don’t think Cristopher Nolan is the only director who can create a classic. I guess we’ll just have to try not to die too soon and find out!
Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie but I think only Star Wars can be considered a classic, if that makes sense?
I agree on The Dark Knight.
Good point about IMDB, but it is a good starting point as it is so inclusive and widely know.
Yeah, the scope of IMDb and the areas it covers really makes it the only thing of its sort out there. And here’s a confession: I have never ever watched a complete Star Wars movie…
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