13 Movies That Only IMPROVE With Age

11. Network

Sidney Lumet's 1976 Oscar-winner is one of the most mind-bogglingly ahead-of-its-time films ever made, a blackly comic drama about a newscaster (Peter Finch) driven insane by the ratings-grabbing demands of the network's higher-ups.

With mainstream news media slavishly chasing ratings in more insidious ways over the decades - usually through manufactured outrage and graphic depictions of violence - Network has proven itself a deep and shockingly insightful film about the forces powering world news (that is, money).

And though media satire isn't exactly a new trick in 2019, the film impressively still feels enormously relevant today, where the notion of "mainstream" media has evolved considerably, and the proliferation of online news has allowed the very word "news" to mean something completely different.

If the current era has proven both the democratic and the destructive powers of everyone having a voice online, Network cements how the much-cited "outrage cycle" of current news/fake news can stymie discourse and create an echo chamber of hatred.

Could anyone in 1976 have guessed how absurdly indicative Network would be of information dissemination some 40+ years later? Absolutely not, and that's the film's true genius.