Some Of Your Favorite Movies Are Celebrating MAJOR Anniversaries This Year

Before writing this list, I couldn't tell you how old The Parent Trap was. After so many viewings and so many cultural references, that movie had acquired a sheen of timelessness for me. The knowledge that The Parent Trap is approaching its 20th anniversary comes as a shock — have I traveled so far from my first enraptured viewing of the movie, at age 5?

The movies haven't changed, but we have. These anniversaries give us older and wiser beings the opportunity to consider works as products of their historical era. For example, You've Got Mail, which will have its 20th anniversary in 2018, seems quaint. The movie was pitched as an exploration of modern love, and what happens when romance collides with the internet. In 2018, this a subject many of us are well versed in, after traversing the customs and habits of the ever-shifting online dating realm.

All of these movies are frozen in time. Some contain actors who are no longer with us (Alan Rickman in Die Hard). Some have spawned franchises, and seen storylines branch off from the original. Others are marred by our knowledge of misbehavior of the team behind the scenes. And some, believe it or not, were critically panned when they came out. Grease, for example, remains a relevant movie despite being 30 years old — but it was called "utterly without style" when it came out.

Over the years, these movies have acquired legendary status. With that in mind, let's travel back to the time to when they were just one of many movies out on a given weekend; back when critics couldn't fathom how famous they'd become, and their reviews may have been anything but fawning. Some of the Rotten Tomatoes scores for your favorite movies will surprise you.