One of this era’s more personal war movies is the William Wyler-directed 1946 drama The Best Years of Our Lives, which focuses on what happens to a group of soldiers and the women they love when the men return home. This poignant film draws attention to the challenges vets faced when re-adjusting to civilian life. It features a star-studded cast that includes Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo, and Fredric March.
It doesn’t shy away from difficult emotions like disappointment, ambivalence, and vulnerability, and it manages to tackle its material with an emotional honesty that lies just beneath its candy-coated outer shell. Part of the film’s charm might be that it legitimately doesn’t feel like anything else. It was made far outside Hollywood and shows almost no interest in more mainstream approaches to comedy, acting, or dialogue.
These femme fatales were a bridge between the virtuous but repressed Victorian-age heroines and the carefree protagonists who appeared in the following decade when audiences were more comfortable with the idea of women as sexual beings. “Menace II Society” deals unflinchingly with how the onslaught of drugs and violence, the weight of prejudice, and the constriction of limited options can all leave characters nihilistic enough to squander what few chances they’re given. As Owen Gleiberman wrote in Entertainment Weekly, the film is “bleak, brilliant, unsparing.” Crucially, however, while it’s a movie that will leave you in shreds, it’s far from a slog; in fact, it has energy and tension to spare. As The Huffington Post explains, the movie broke with 2004 comedy norms to use an ensemble cast and give them room to spark off each other to give rise to improv greatness. This story of a boy’s rise from the slums of Mumbai to quiz show success has, at its best, a beautiful kinetic energy and top 10 movies a fairy tale-like resonance. It’s witty, warm, and full of top-notch performances right down to supporting cast members like J.K.
The optimism and hope of the civil unrest and societal upheaval of the ’60s gave way to the truth that the next generation — Gen X — lived in a world where racism still permeated every facet of American life. “Do the Right Thing” was — and still is — a powerful lesson in anger and frustration with the status quo. It shows multiple generations butting heads, as it centers around the young black residents of a Brooklyn neighborhood feeling as though they’re being treated as outsiders by the Italian-Americans that share the neighborhood. As each generation starts to come into their own in their late-teens/young adult years, they inevitably begin to clash with the ideals of the generation that directly proceeded their own — in other words, their parents, teachers, bosses, or any figure of authority. “The Graduate is the classic 60s movie even though it doesn’t have most of the 1960s clichés like hippies, drugs, war, or protests,” said user ProfessorEggDrop.
It was the first movie to use computer animation start to finish, which made it look dramatically different from everything that had come before it (via Pixar). Essentially, “The Breakfast Club” is about five students who normally wouldn’t be caught dead hanging out, finding themselves stuck together one Saturday in detention. The five members of the titular detention group represent Gen X high school archetypes but they aren’t as broad-stroked as you’d expect them to be. They are very quickly shown to be more than they seem, for both better and worse. Writer/director Mike Judge masterfully captures that corporate hell of working in a dead-end office job with smug bosses that seem to outnumber actual employees. Anyone who has worked in an office has worked for a Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole) or Stan (Judge) or has had a cubicle near a Milton Waddams (Stephen Root) or Tom Smykowski (Richard Riehle).
Best Millennial Movies That Defined a Generation
But beyond the plot and the characters themselves, one of the most enduring legacies of “Trainspotting” is that introduced that loud, frenetic, music video style of filmmaking to the world that came to define movies on both sides of the pond for years to come. Garden State is synonymous with the angsty indie movie soundtracks of the early 2000s. Zach Braff explored the struggles of young love and life through music in his directorial debut, which helped the movie achieve cult status among millennials.
The one thing you can say about Napoleon is that he is, as they say, living his truth. As The Washington Post acknowledged, the film became “an instant classic, and not simply of the genre.” Subsequent franchises went on to borrow the movie’s snappy, self-referential style, but “Scream” still stands out as the one that started it all. Then along came “Scream,” directed by horror icon Wes Craven and scripted by “Dawson’s Creek” creator Kevin Williamson, and suddenly, this 1996 film reinvented and reinvigorated a worn-out genre. A year after her mother’s murder, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) faces a new horror in the form of a masked killer, who is targeting her classmates and coming for her next.
Top 10 Movies That Define Millennials
Millennials also grew up with some of the first openly gay theatrical releases, deeply dark and insidious characters, and among generation-defining millennial movies that birthed some of the most iconic characters of all time. There’s no shortage of legendary movies that define millennials and continue to influence popular culture to this day, with the upcoming Toy Story 5 and the new musical Mean Girls reboot just among the latest examples of the far-reaching impact these films have. Whether it’s through incorporating unique slang, influencing fashion choices, and, most importantly, capturing the times and the vibe that came with them, some movies just manage to sum up millennials as a generation.
If you assemble a list of classic millennial movies, you’ll see risk-taking independent films as well as huge Hollywood spectacles. Millennials got to witness the beginning of a much-needed boost in diversity in Hollywood, as well as the rise of ground-breaking technology and CGI, all of which helped tell new (and sometimes old) stories in new ways. With sharp wit and iconic fashion, it redefined what a coming-of-age movie could be.
“Fight Club […] personifies that time period. There was an acute, mainstream counterculture of rebelling against the status quo, and recognizing that (American) society is set up for most people to fail.,” said Redditor icedrift. “I think it speaks to the “end of history” feeling that existed in the ’90s. There was a fairly high level of economic prosperity, no existential threats after the Cold War ended, and people seemed to think, ‘Is this it? Is this our end goal?’,” said user charlie_ferrous. Much of the film’s authenticity is undoubtedly due to it being written by Helen Childress, in her 20s at the time, who gleaned inspiration from her own life. The story revolves around four friends trying to navigate their way through adulthood, each with their own personal or career challenges. One of them, Lelaina (Winona Ryder), a recent college grad who has just been fired as a production assistant on a morning show, decides to make a documentary about her friends and what they are going through.
These movies serve as a kind of time capsule, reminding the viewer of what it felt like to live through a given period. One of the biggest challenges Generation Z has had so far is establishing meaningful connections and developing social skills in the digital age. While people of all ages have sometimes struggled with maintaining personal relationships since the technology revolution began to change the world at the end of the last century, Gen Z has been most affected. A theory that took hold at the time that sexually uninhibited females weakened the men who were romantically involved with them caused society to be leery of so-called “vamps” while also being fascinated by them.
It reflects a kind of high school experience without the modern pressures of social media and gadgets, and transports millennials back to a time when they felt they were facing huge problems as teenagers (they weren’t). It also pushed the found-footage horror genre to the front seat of pop culture. If you are a millennial, the memories of The Blair Witch Project’s release are probably still burned into your mind. It was hard to escape the movie when it was marketed as a “true story” and one of the scariest movies ever made. If you want to determine a movie’s generational pop culture impact by how often people quote it, “Mean Girls” has an extremely good shot at the crown for millennials. The Guardian named it as one of the most quotable movies of all time, while MTV and USA Today have ranked the movie’s best quotes.
Cast
Where Gordon Gekko defined the baby boomer era, Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of Zuckerberg reveals how millennials have risen up as some of the most influential, powerful, and controversial people on the planet. Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay plays out in Shakespearean fashion, but with a millennial voice. Touching upon everything from the internet to entitlement, “The Social Network” captures a game-changing moment in time. This teen comedy derives its title and premise from “The Scarlet Letter,” although it arguably shares more in common with the works of John Hughes.