Oh hey, speaking of this, I know Koyaanisqatsi is technically a 1982 release, but I figure a lot of its scenes have got to have been filmed in the 70s. Especially the scenes of people in the cities. At the very least 70s fashions are still in full effect during the filming of this movie.
The movie is such a weird one to pin down. The first time I watched it, I just kept waiting for the actual film to start, for something to happen. Surely this can’t be a 90 minute music video, I kept asking. And yet, despite my impatience at times, I just couldn’t look away. The combination of Fricke’s cinematography and Glass’ music is just too mesmerizing.
Chinatown
Blazing Saddles
The Long Goodbye (Only rental on Vudu for some reason)
The Sting
Logan’s Run
I got a $2 coupon from Walmart for Vudu, so I was looking at renting one of these next. Possibly The Long Goodbye since that one was only available on Vudu.
Some special effects here look horrible in 2018, like the jetpack guys who melt bodies.
The model city “from the outside” looks so much like a model that I can’t imagine it being a real city. I don’t usually have this problem with most models, except on MST3K. This is MST3K level of models. :)
I really like the movie so far. I really love that there’s so much about this society that they just leave unexplained. If these people take something for granted and wouldn’t explain something to each other, it just gets left unexplained. I like that. It brings an air of mystery to this whole thing, like another layer to the movie above what we do know about.
When Logan and the girl get flooded with water, holy shit, they really get thrown around by the water. Surely this was stunt people, and boy did they do a great job. Really intense sequence.
Lack of gratuitous exposition, and leaving a sense of mystery in stories is a general theme of my I prefer 70s films, in large part, to today’s offerings.
The second half of Logan’s Run made the whole thing feel like a waste of time to me. Their interactions with the Old Man all felt like it was played for laughs, none of it felt authentic, the whole thing didn’t feel like a serious science fiction story anymore to me.
And another example of how movies then lacked endless exposition. “The Corporate Wars”? A whole lot happened in that world, and it is left to our imaginations.
What do you want books for? Look Johnny, if you wanna learn somethin’, just get a Corporate Teacher to come and teach it to ya’.
I saw The Mechanic today. Charles Bronson stars as a hitman/philosopher. He kills in a way that it always looks like an accident and no questions are raised. Remember Jan Michael Vincent? The star of the awesome Airwolf? He’s in this movie. The Mechanic takes the young character under his wing, to teach him the ways of those philosophically inclined to kill.
Watching the movie was equal parts fascinating and torture. The final sequence takes place in Naples, and as far as I know, this is the only time I’ve seen Naples in a movie, and it looks like a great setting for a video game! Come on video game developers. How come no one has made a game in Naples yet?
The end of the movie is abrupt and predictable. But it’s a nice journey. I just wish the director was more competent at filming car chase scenes and such. Not everyone can be a Spielberg, I suppose, and do such a great job with putting you in the action. But at the very least, they could have done such a better job with camera framing, and the editing. It was just so amateurish, I felt embarrassed for the director. He must have watched the car chase on the big screen and hung his head in shame.
Funny thing, except for The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and Once Upon a Time in the West (which is a big “except”, I know, three stellar giants…), I basically am bored (at best) with every other film I have seen with Bronson in it. To include Death Wish. Heck, especially Death Wish and it’s ilk. Heck, his whole action genre thing. Bores me to tears…
You guys brought up a memory of watching a movie at an inappropriate age. I mean, I’ve got a million of those, but the one that comes to mind was flipping channels and coming across some Bronson movie where he was a police detective, and some woman was slashed and murdered and they’re trying to figure out what happened, was the victim raped? And the medical examiner or someone says no, not raped. And Bronson says yeah, I knew that, then when people ask how he knew, he intones gravely, because his knife was his penis.
Now of course that’s a metaphor but I didn’t pick up on that back then, and it got my mind racing as a young kid. Wait, penises can be knives? Or some guys have a knife where their penis should be? How did he go pee?
