If These 6 Modern Movies Aren’t Classics in 100 Years, I’ll Eat My Hat

Image via Universal Pictures Published Aug 13, 2026, 5:45 PM EDT Jeremy has more than 2700 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows. His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings). When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account. He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author's 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas. Sign in to your Collider account Werner Herzog is a good role model. He is eccentric and has done some odd things in pursuit of his art, but he’s a man of his principles, and a short documentary called Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe emphasizes that quite clearly. He made a bet with fellow filmmaker/documentarian Errol Morris, said he’d eat his shoe if Morris won, and then Morris did, so he went through with the shoe-eating. It’s in the spirit of Herzog that I’m going to say I’ll eat my hat if I’m still around in 100 years and the following movies aren’t considered great ones at that time (“I’ll eat my hat” is the more common saying, but Herzog going with eating his shoe is kind of gutsier). I can get out of this due to the fact that I very likely will not live until I’m 130 years of age, so the claim’s a little cowardly, maybe, and maybe also, you’ve been baited a bit, but trying to guess what great movies of today will remain great movies of tomorrow is a fun and interesting exercise, in any event, even if most of us right now won’t really know for sure, in, like, a literal century. 6 'The Worst Person in the World' (2021) Image via SF Studios The Worst Person in the World was playing with fire, calling itself that, because the negative headlines would not be particularly hard to write, had this movie ended up being one of the worst in the world, or one of the worst in recent memory, or at least one of the worst movies from Norway. Joachim Trier pulled through, though, after having a pretty good track record thanks to earlier films like Reprise and Oslo, August 31st, yet The Worst Person in the World is still the best movie in his filmography. Sentimental Value can take a hike, because yikes… no, people do like that one, but the headline was in the first-person, so I’m going to come out and say I didn’t. With The Worst Person in the World, it hits harder emotionally, it’s funnier when it tries to be funny, and it also feels brutally honest in a way that never runs the risk of feeling pretentious, which is good, because Sentimental Value did keep brushing up against pretentiousness. The Worst Person in the World is like a coming-of-age movie for people in their late 20s and/or early 30s, which is maybe okay, because people live longer and that could be a factor in it taking longer to grow up. The Worst Person in the World gets a lot of things right, in terms of anxieties young people have, and while it might well feel like a very early 21st century time capsule early in the 22nd century, the core of what’s being gone for here will still likely resonate. 5 'Babylon' (2022) Image via Paramount Pictures There are various movies from history that were notably not as well-received upon release as they were many years later, including The Shining (somehow Razzie-nominated) and The Thing. Picking out more recent movies that this phenomenon might happen to is hard, sure, but still, it might well happen to Babylon. It’s only worth mentioning the whole notion of movies not well-liked upon release and then liked much later because of the movies here, Babylon was the least well-received. There is one other movie (it’s at #1, actually) that didn’t get nearly enough attention, though those who did see it had mostly good things to say about it. If you're interested in older movies, Babylon is an obvious must-watch, and if you appreciate a movie that can leave you feeling shaken up and conflicted in quite a few ways, Babylon is also easy to recommend. With Babylon, it was a mess in a bad way for some, and a mess in a deliberate and hugely compelling way for others. It’s a film about filmmaking, looking at the industry during the end of the silent era and the start of the talkie era, exploring how this impacted various fictional people whose lives sometimes reflect actual people from that era of history. If you're interested in older movies, Babylon is an obvious must-watch, and if you appreciate a movie that can leave you feeling shaken up and conflicted in quite a few ways, Babylon is also easy to recommend. It’s a massive technical accomplishment, too, and boasts one of the best film scores of the last few years, without a doubt. 4 'The Odyssey' (2026) There’s a comparable runtime here, and maybe a similar sense of ambition, too, to Babylon, but The Odyssey feels like a much safer pick if you want to single out movies that might well be compelling – and considered classics – a century from now. Part of that comes down to this being a take on The Odyssey, which is one of the most enduring stories in human history, since it’s estimated to be about 3000 years old, and it was told and spread at a time that pre-dated books, really. It’s a text now, and there are translations that can be either read or listened to, though it arguably remains inaccurate to call The Odyssey a book in the traditional sense, because it’s just that old. So, if this story was, in one way or another, compelling thousands of years ago, then that strengthens the chances of this particular interpretation of that story remaining interesting decades from now, too. Technically, it’s hard to imagine The Odyssey (2026) looking hugely dated in the years to come, and maybe only some of the sequences that rely more on CGI will run the risk of looking less than amazing eventually (contrary to popular belief, Christopher Nolan does not mind CGI, but uses it carefully, and usually alongside those beloved and often talked about practical effects). This movie’s also paced so amazingly well, to the extent that attention spans in the future would have to be absolutely fried/cooked/beyond repair if most people found themselves entirely unable to feel invested in at least a good chunk of what’s going on here, narratively, visually, and thematically. 3 'Aftersun' (2022) Image via A24 If you're a particularly big fan of “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie, and don’t want to have intense feelings of sadness whenever you hear the song, then maybe it’s best to stay away from Aftersun. The way the movie does eventually use that track is phenomenal, yet maybe even too much so, because it then becomes hard to separate one from the other. Before you hear it, though, Aftersun doesn’t really hit you, and feels pretty slow, all things considered. It’s about a young girl and her father on vacation, but gradually reveals itself to be more about that girl, now an adult, looking back on that experience, and eventually seeing certain things differently. The result is devastating, albeit in a way that’s hard to describe without giving away too much. Aftersun is about something very specific, and it explores it with patience. It’s heavy on restraint, and is probably classifiable as an arthouse film, albeit one of the most emotional art films in recent memory. Aftersun is perfect, as a singular psychological drama of sorts, and the less said about much of it, the better. So that’s all that’s going to be said. Moving on… 2 'All of Us Strangers' (2023) Image via Searchlight Pictures Well, sort of moving on, because All of Us Strangers is also uniquely devastating, a film that waits a while to play all its cards, stars Paul Mescal, and memorably uses some songs that are hard to divorce from the scenes they're featured in, once the movie’s been seen. The premise here is more outwardly about grief, at least at first, because it’s centered on a man who lost his parents when he was young, but then he seems to meet them again, and they're at the age they were when they died (which is approximately his current age). While this is going on, he also seems to find a connection in another area of his life, with both threads making him less lonely, at least for a while. Loneliness does pervade throughout All of Us Strangers regardless, though, and if the movie can be said to have plot twists, then they're up there among the most emotionally impactful plot twists in recent cinema history. What this movie deals with, in terms of emotions, feels timeless and inherently human, so that’s the main factor in this one probably being just as great in the 2120s as it is right now, in the 2020s (should humanity make it that long... that’s the other big question). Visually and technically, it’s also impressive, though in ways that are a bit harder to put into words. You just feel what the movie’s putting down, in that regard, in the moment. 1 'Better Man' (2024) Image via Paramount Pictures That one movie alluded to before, when talking about Babylon, that wasn’t very popular but did receive quite a bit of praise from the few who did see it? It’s Better Man, which… well, one question related to musicals is “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” And another that’s just as likely to induce chin-scratching and furrowed brows is “How do you explain a movie like Better Man?” Actually, you can explain it, but the real challenge is explaining it in a way that doesn’t send people running away in fear, or running away laughing at you for genuinely recommending it. But it is a musical, like that one other movie about Maria and the apparent problem that she is. People love that musical. People did not really turn out in the same way to see this musical, which is about Robbie Williams. It’s technically a biopic about the English singer, and a musical at the same time, and one that makes the decision to depict Williams as an anthropomorphic chimpanzee for the entire film, which proved hugely costly, but it was worth it in an artistic sense, if not a financial one. Better Man has special effects that rival the more recent Planet of the Apes movies, but seeing those kinds of spectacular effects within the confines of a more grounded and non-blockbuster film proves super interesting. Also, you don’t need to have any kind of attachment to Robbie Williams or his music to find what Better Man has to say about fame, loneliness, addiction, and countless other relevant/broad topics engaging. People in 100 years will almost certainly be even less likely to know who Robbie Williams is, but he – in chimpanzee form – is a mere vessel here, to tell a much bigger (and ultimately timeless) story. Better Man Release Date December 25, 2024 Runtime 136 minutes