2. 2001: A Space Odyssey - (1968, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
The fact that Kubrick is the only director to feature twice on this list is typical of his pioneering style as a film-maker. Being a pioneer in any form of art can lead to under-appreciation in your own time; think Vincent van Gogh, Jeff Buckley and Franz Kafka. While this isn't necessarily true of Kubrick, it is of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which wasn't thought to be the classic it is today. The fact of the matter is that people weren't used to such a disregard for conventional plot progression, typified in the opening 40 minutes of the film lacking any dialogue. Such a loose narrative is far more popular with film-makers in contemporary cinema; indeed, seemingly in homage to 2001, even mainstream child-orientated studio Pixar eschewed the use of dialogue for the first half hour in their film Wall-E (2008). This inability to appreciate the trailblazing film was reflected by many of the critical responses of the time, for example in Stanley Kauffmann's review for The New Republic:
"A film that is so dull, it even dulls our interest in the technical ingenuity for the sake of which Kubrick has allowed it to become dull."
Nowadays opinions like this concerning Kubrick are all but extinct. Scholars of Stanley Kubrick have reasoned that the director boasted a precociously high IQ meaning not a single frame in his films was superfluous, making those who found it "dull" were just too lazy to adequately analyse. I recently watched a documentary about Kubrick, Room 237 (2012), which although mainly focusing on The Shining (1980) suggested that in 2001: A Space Odyssey Kubrick left a bread-crumb trail of clues to hint at his involvement in assisting NASA prepare the bogus moon landing clip they'd use a year later. Believable? If anyone could do it, Kubrick could've...