3 recent movies from the 50s and the 70s

I’ve been doing some flying, which gives me the opportunity to see various movies on that little seat-back screen. And some of these movies have been pretty good:

Logan Lucky. Pure 70s. Kinda like how Stravinsky did those remakes of Tchaikovsky etc. that were cleaner than the original, so did Soderbergh in Logan Lucky, and earlier in The Limey, recreate that Seventies look and feel. The Limey had the visual style, the washed-out look of the L.A. scenes in all those old movies. Logan Lucky had the 70s-style populist thing going, Burt Reynolds, Caddyshack, the whole deal.

La La Land. I half-watched it—I guess I should say, I half-listened to it, on the overnight flight. I turned it on, plugged myself in, and put on the blindfold so I could sleep. A couple times I woke up in the middle of the night and restarted it. Between these three blind viewings, I pretty much heard the whole thing. On the return flight I actually watched the damn thing and then the plot all made sense. It was excellent, just beautiful. The actual tunes were forgettable, but maybe that was part of the design. Like Logan Lucky, this was a retro movie—in this case, from the Fifties—but better than the originals on which it was modeled.

Good Time. I’d never heard of this one. This was the most intense movie I’ve ever seen. Also pure 70s, but not like Logan Lucky, more like a cross between The French Connection and Dog Day Afternoon. Almost all the action takes place in Queens. Really intense—did I say that already?

10 thoughts on “3 recent movies from the 50s and the 70s

  1. You’re about 10 years off on La La Land. It’s a straight up homage, close to a rip off of Jacques Demy’s Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). The plots are similar but twisted together: Umbrellas has the pregnant fiancée run off with a wealthy diamond merchant, her version of fame and fortune – while her love is being wounded fighting in Algeria – and Rochefort has a young musician struggling to bring out her art. Umbrellas uses more of a jazz palate, though both scores are by Michel Legrand. Umbrellas is highly intimate while Rochefort has some larger scale public music numbers. Both star Catherine Deneuve. Rochefort also stars her actual sister who was killed in a car accident around the time the movie was released. In Rochefort, George Chakiris, who played Bernardo in West Side Story, is a traveling carny guy, and Gene Kelly appears in what I believe may be his last on screen singing role.

  2. I loved Logan Lucky, which I think is one of the best caper films I’ve seen. I’m not sure why it wasn’t more of a hit…or, actually I guess it wasn’t a hit at all. It had just the amount of light-hearted zaniness you want in a caper film. I think it’s better than Ocean’s Eleven, to which it has been unfavorably compared (Steven Soderberg directed both).

  3. Off topic:

    This site has been progressively breaking for me. As others mentioned, the Name field is no longer saved (probably some GDPR thing). Now the comment feed on the right is apparently updated before I can see actual comments since the link leads to the blog page without the comment I clicked. This is in firefox/waterfox.

    I just tried vivaldi and it worked… but now firefox is working too for the most recent comment (Daniel Lakeland’s on “Old School”). However now it shows a different newest comment on from the “old school” page (“Richard D. Morey on The “80% power” lie”) than the home page. That latter comment is not showing up in any of the browsers.

    So, something is up.

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