In Finland cars are considered classics if they are at least 25 years old. Following that same rule, I have arbitrarily decided that a movie needs to be of a same age to qualify as a classic. However, not all movies of that age are classics.

In order to be a classic, a movie has to have stood the test of time. It still needs to hold up and be worth a watch despite potentially having been usurped by numerous other movies in the same genre. Also, since I have my limitations in this regard, I need to have seen the movie. Also, this is the chance for movies that specifically 25 years old meaning that they were released in the year 2000. Nothing else is to be considered.

I’m planning on doing this annually, but we’ll see if I remember or whether I’m interested in redoing this next year.

Movies of note that did not make it: Gladiator, Requiem for a Dream, Snatch., Unbreakable, Almost Famous, Traffic, Mission Impossible 2, Cast Away, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Meet the Parents, X-Men, Amores Perros, Erin Brockovich, High Fidelity, In Vanda’s Room, As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, The Gleaners and I, and others I didn’t come to think of right now.

So, I am hereby promoting the following movies to the status of “classic”. May they be found new life in the Criterion Collection or something. Some of them very well might have already. I didn’t bother to check.

Batoru rowaiaru or Battle Royale

There is something incredibly stupid about the setup of this movie. “The youth are unruly. Let’s take a class of them and have them kill each other.” There’s just no logic there. However, does that matter? No. We understand why the teens are on the island hunting each other and that’s what matters. Also, the main couple are kind of boring, but that doesn’t really matter either, because so many of the people around them are so much more interesting. The main couple are there just the veggies and the potatoes, while everyone else brings the meat and the spice.

The director’s cut is also a good addition. Some of the characters get a lot more depth and it works, because again, they are the meat and the spice, so they get to be meatier and spicier this way.

Memento

I did not remember that Christopher Nolan and his brother, Jonathan, got an Oscar nomination for this movie for the script. Not sure they should have since Guy Pearce just improvised a lot of the narration, but I guess the uniqueness of the idea is enough and of course the Academy doesn’t know who did what.

And it is quite a unique movie. Nolan has, of course, become known for his non-linear storytelling, which culminated in his least liked movie (Tenet), but this movie just utilizes that non-linearity magnificently and there is no other way of doing this story. At least with the same impact.

It is also noteworthy that this is Nolan’s second movie. The Batman Trilogy, The Prestige, Interstellar, and, obviously, Oppenheimer are still way in the future.

Wo hu cang long or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

While it didn’t last, this movie did bring a whole new interest in foreign movies in the US. It might still be easily the highest grossing Foreign language film in the US (it made more what Life Is Beautiful and Godzilla Minus One made together and those are the second and the third on the list, although these lists seem to have left out Passion of Christ, which I’m fine with).

You might think this is just a wuxia film, but there is depth here and it looks very beautiful. What else could you want? Well, you do also get a great cast, including the legend that is Michelle Yeoh.

Fa yeung nin wah or In a Mood for Love

This is a top ten movie in the Sight & Sound poll, so that’s a big plus for this movie.

It would be easy to argue that this movie is a complete dud, since basically nothing happens. It’s just two very beautiful people longing for each other, but never taking any steps to do anything about it, since they are hopelessly devoted to their cheating spouses despite everything pointing to that they shouldn’t be. Yet, it is a great movie. We can feel for the two main characters in ways that no other director has been able to accomplish. It is a unique look at human nature.

Ginger Snaps

This is a movie where becoming a werewolf is a metaphor for becoming a female adult. This could have been handled horribly, but it works. It’s fun, it doesn’t feel misogynistic (at least to me, but I shouldn’t be the judge here) and the concept does work nicely.

Sånger från andra våningen or Songs from the Second Floor

Roy Andersson returned after 25 years of just making commercials. This is the first of four very similar movies that he also took his time to make (the others being released in 2007, 2014 and 2019). There is no overall story here, just themes of lack of human connection. Static cameras capture different situations in a very grey urban environment you can only achieve in the Nordics.

It is just fascinating. However, there is a strike against it: I can’t really remember what each of these movies actually contain, because they are so scrambled in my brain.

I don’t know whether this movie just hits the Finnish mindset in some way or whether more Finnish people have seen this movie, but quite a few Finnish voters in the Sight & Sound poll voted for this movie.

Otesánek or Little Otik

This one always had an inside track. While I haven’t seen his last film, Insects, every other feature length movie directed by Svankmajer falls easily into the category of a classic.

There is a timeless feel to Svankmajer’s movies, mostly because he seems to use ancient cameras. You wouldn’t know this is from 2000 upon seeing it. It’s about a couple who really want a baby and when they can’t concieve, the husband makes a baby out of a log for the wife, but the wife embraces it as her own, even concocting complicated plots to explain how they got the kid. However, Otik is more then it seems at first and is happy to eat everything given to it.

There is one quite disturbing sequence in the movie where a small girl entices the local pedophile into getting eaten by Otik. It’s so creepy in the worst possible ways.

Werckmeister harmóniák or Werckmeister Harmonies

Again, a movie that received both critic and director attention in the Sight & Sound poll. It feels like something specifically made for that crowd being black and white as well as having only 39 shots in a 145 minute runtime and referencing obscure musical theory right there in the name. (Although I don’t know if that musical theory is obscure for people who actually work in theory of music.) Yet, it works, as Bela Tarr’s films always do.

American Psycho

The weird thing about this movie is that it isn’t subtle about what it’s trying to say. These people are so superficial in their attempts to seem cool that it kills anything cool about them, but yet there is an audience who keeps quoting this movie as if the main character was some kind of a sigma legend (with the whole idea of a ‘sigma’ being very stupid).

This is the only movie by a woman on the list. Sadly, I haven’t seen any of her other work (except the one episode of Oz she directed).