One of these was really old - Billy Wilder's 1945 classic, "The Lost Weekend." If you've never seen it, and this was the first time I had, it is a grim story about alcoholism, and despite being 66 years old, it is so well made, and the subject matter is treated so realistically, that it totally relevant in 2011.
Like "The King's Speech" this past year, "The Lost Weekend" took down the four big Oscars in 1945: Best Picture, Best Actor for Ray Milland, Best Director for Billy Wilder, and Best Screenplay for Wilder and Charles Brackett. Milland's performance is quite good and certainly Oscar worthy. Also, as I watched this I was struck by the thought that I don't think I've ever seen a Billy Wilder movie that wasn't great. (Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Double Indemnity, Stalag 17....you get the picture.)
The other oldie that I watched was Peter Bogdanovich's "The Last Picture Show" from 1971. I can remember seeing this in college and liking it so I was almost afraid to watch it again. Sometimes a fondly remembered movie of your youth can seem pretty lame many years later (prime example: "Easy Rider"). "The Last Picture Show" still holds up well as a period piece and a portrait of small time life in a tiny, dying Texas town in 1951. Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman won Supporting Actor Oscars for this movie, but it may be more notable for the early performances of a very young Jeff Bridges and Cybil Shepard. It was almost surreal to see the baby-faced Bridges in this movie after seeing him play the grizzled Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit" a few months ago.
There were also good pefromances by Timothy Bottoms, (and whatever became of him, by the way), Ellen Burstyn, and Randy Quaid.
It's still a good, if somewhat bleak movie to experience.
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