Seeing Classic Movies for the First Time

A few months ago I got my first DVR, a Motorola box from Comcast. I am also an off and on user of Blockbuster online and Netflix (depending on the availability of free or cheap trials). But anyway, I am starting to watch a lot of classic movies for the first time. My girlfriend and I use Yahoo! Movies, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB's top 250, and previous Oscar winners to decide which films to watch.

Recently I have watched The Graduate, Schindler's List, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Raging Bull, Ed Wood, Pulp Fiction, Taxi Driver, and A Clockwork Orange just to name a few. Some them I liked. Some of them I didn't. And others...I just didn't get. Not that I didn't get the movies in and of themselves, but I didn't get the cultural impact that most of the movies had...and I hate that.

If a movie is lauded because of its cultural appeal and timing, then chances are that I am not going to get it if it was made before 1988. I know that one day movies like The Matrix, Children of Men, and Little Miss Sunshine (all of which are on IMDB's top 250) will be to future generations what Taxi Driver and A Clockwork Orange were to me.

I've got a few more classics yet to watch like The Godfather, Casablanca, It's A Wonderful Life, and others. Hopefully when I am finished with them I can say "I Get It".

For the record...
Movies I liked (Pulp Fiction, Schindler's List)
Movies I disliked (Ed Wood)
Movies I didn't get (Taxi Driver; A Clockwork Orange; Raging Bull; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; The Graduate)