[ghaff]

There are a number of films: The Matrix, the original Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Avatar, I’m sure many others that were just so different and jaw-dropping in many ways when they first came out—in those cases because of effects of various types mostly—that it can be hard to appreciate their novelty at the time.

Some stand up better than others.

[ethbr1]

Citizen Kane, Casablanca

Appreciating "modern" before modern times requires taking the production date into context and being aware of what contemporary media was doing.

Unfortunately, the entire reason you're watching famous media decades later is because contemporary media is comparatively boring.

F.ex. How many people who have seen Citizen Kane have seen Louisiana Purchase? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1941_in_film

[ghaff]

Those are two of my favorite films. But Citizen Kane was largely unique as opposed to a precursor of a type. And Casablanca just put everything together in a package that really wasn’t that distinct from plenty of other love stories set against a WWII backdrop on the surface.

[ethbr1]

To me, both Citizen Kane and Casablanca feel pretty revolutionary in editing, compared to what was prevalent at the time. But this has intrigued me to do some '41/42 comparisons.

[troupo]

In comparison to many of the lazy movies of today I find The Matrix still as jaw-dropping. Even the two sequels tried to push the envelope.

But the original one was just so brilliantly made

[rvba]

The matrix to some degree is inspired by Ghost in the shell .