As long as we’re dumping on Jack Nicholson’s early work, I’ll join the dogpile with Five Easy Pieces and Carnal Knowledge. The scene in Pieces where he tells a waitress to “hold it between [her] legs” may have struck people at the time as Sticking It To Tha Man, but basically he went postal on an underpaid elderly waitress. And Carnal Knowledge has not aged well, it’s just an extended “Bernard and Huey” cartoon from Playboy (also by Jules Feiffer).
1970 film, “The Boys In The Band”, by William Friedkin, based on Mart Crowley’s play. It was an eye-opener for a lot of people. Though today it seems positively quaint, it was the first ‘gay cinema’ produced for mass consumption, according to what I’ve read.
Born in 1976, adored the movie when I was in my early teens. I had no problem with the punks being rather…dated.
I haven’t watched it in years, though. I hope it’d hold up.
I think an audience today would get Network just as well as a 70s audience. Network at the time was a cautionary tale of where media was headed. Now we are there… and Network was right.
And your telling me the 2000s haven’t been also filled with the same malaise? 9/11, two wars, housing bust, etc etc etc.
I saw it for the first time a few years ago and I agree with you. It just seemed so angsty and (if you’ll excuse the phrase) emo.
The Graduate was only tolerable because I thought the ending made it clear that Benjamin was going to grow up and stop being such a jackass. Charlie Webb wrote a sequel called Home School that actually says that’s how they ended up.
Stand-up comedy is afflicted by this. In particular, Eddie Murphy Delirious and Raw no longer come across as raucous or subversive, but now sound more like that embarrassing bigoted uncle at the picnic who’s had too much to drink. I rewatched them recently and found myself more often analyzing and discussing the humor in context of the period, rather than actually smiling or laughing.
I was born after Network was made. I saw it a few years ago - knowing nothing about it, my dad was on some kind of mission to show me every movie he thought was important, and he got it from Netflix - and I loved it. I thought it was really brilliant.
I’m thinking of High Time, with Bing Crosby. A 51 year old widower goes back to college. That’s bad enough, but he meets a female French teacher, and they have a dilemma: She wants to get married, but, is he too old?
best wishes,
handsomeharry
Raw is a great example. I saw this when it was new, and only remembered how rebellious and screamingly funny it was. Then it was on Cable a couple months ago and I thought I would rewatch it. I could only watch 10 minutes before I gave up in embarrassment for Eddie, and shame for myself.
I had parallel experiences with Eddie. Not so Richard Pryor. One was a genius, the other funny for a while and now a joke himself.
A sense of entitlement. No sense of direction. Lounging around in his parent’s pool when he should have been working.
Sounds like he was the 60s version of today’s slacker minus the Emo clothes and music…
Yebbut dude, you’re hardly one to come stomping in complaining about dated plots. Denmark’s a constitutional monarchy these days, your uncle hasn’t achieved shit, don’t worry about it! Yeesh. Four hundred years ago called, they want their power-play politics back. Sorry about your dad, that’s a bummer, but have you tried phoning the police?
Since *West Side Story *is a 1960s version of Romeo and Juliet, I would fault the parents and the schools for not making these kids read more.
Yes, gangs don’t snap their fingers and chant “cool it”, but they also don’t sing before the big fight. It was a musical, and something that yo need to explain to the teens. They will get it, just like they will get the theme:
Boy and Girl from two warring cultures fall in love.
Montagues and Capulets. Hatfields and McCoys. Jets and Sharks.
Why not remake it with a Crips and Bloods theme? You could have some serious Gangster Rap for the background tracks, and in then end, everyone dies.
I’m thinking Spike Lee, John Singleton, and Quentin Taratino need to get on this now…
As a test, I will show WSS to my 13 year old and see if he gets it.
I find the whole Vixen Slut Nurses series since #29 to be shallow and pedantic.
Gone with the Wind
Blow Up. I knew this film by reputation. When I finally saw it, I was so freaking let down. Really didn’t make much sense.
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. I was five when this came out, and while I’ve done a little research and understand the context of Thatcher’s Britain that the film allegorically excoriates, I think a lot of people these days view it as just a sumptuous and shocking art film while overlooking its political content.
Yeah, it’s embarrassing that this is Antonioni’s best-known film, and I can’t imagine but that he himself might be a little ashamed of it in the context of a career that also includes work like L’Avventura and L’Eclisse.
On the other hand, with a lot of films of that era, with the existential vibe and deliberate longueurs, it seems hard for modern audiences to get a handle on their uniqueness. I’ve seen people going on about how boring and stilted Last Year at Marienbad is, or how shallow early Godard films are - yeah, all that was kinda the point. Modern art-house directors aren’t as immune to humor and lightness as some of the best filmmakers of that era were.
I’d add some of Peter Sellers’s older comedies to this list, especially What’s New Pussycat and I Love You Alice B. Toklas! I laughed at some parts, but I think both films are too full of 60’s kitsch and camp for me to understand.
Peter O’Toole was pretty awesome in Pussycat, though. How is he still alive?
Clean living?
I actually saw it in the theater when it was first released in 1989*, and also apparently missed the political content. :smack:
I just thought it was an art film with a memorable soundtrack.
*Crap–has it really been 20 years since I saw that film in college? :eek: