By skyforbes There's how great a movie is relative to when it was released, and how great it is viewed independent of that historical context today. For example, if an entirely original aspect of an old film has been copied so many times that it's become a tired trope, said aspect is great is the former sense and awful in the latter. I think a lot of confusion is caused by the conflation of these two frameworks, and a lot of arguments could be avoided by clarifying which framework one's using.
Edit: I didn't mean to imply that old movies can't be great today devoid of historical context, but rather that the historical context often makes them even greater. Citizen Kane is only one of the greatest films ever made in the first framework, but it's still a great movie in the second.