A possibly depressing exercise

I’ve written of this before, but the names change every year, so let’s do it again! For me, when I think of an ‘old movie’, my brain always defaults to Casablanca, which by the time of my awareness of its existence, had become a venerable classic movie. Now, when I was born, Casablanca was 29 years old. So here is a list of films that, as of this year, are as old as my brain’s canonical ‘old movie’.

Ghostbusters
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Splash
Gremlins
The Karate Kid
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Amadeus
Revenge of the Nerds
Romancing the Stone
Red Dawn

Lots more, obviously, but those are stand-outs. Not all in terms of quality, obviously — Red Dawn is trash, no matter how you slice it — but it’s interesting to note that of the ten movies I list here, all of them among that year’s twenty top-grossing films, two have been remade. (So has a third of the 1984 top twenty, actually — Footloose!)

Meanwhile, Casablanca has never been remade. Its story beats have been mined a lot, and the film has an enduring place in popular and wider culture, but no one has yet actually made a new version of the film. Will it happen? Who knows? Anyhow, all hail the newest Old Movies!

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3 Responses to A possibly depressing exercise

  1. Roger Owen Green says:

    mine is African Queen, which came out TWO years before I was born. So The Hurt Locker would be on the list; better pick an older film…

  2. New York Erratic says:

    2001 A Space Odyssey : Me :: The Matrix :: Somebody born 2 years ago

    Ick.

  3. Ben Varkentine says:

    God help us, there was a Casablanca TV show at one point…

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