Dirty Harry's Filmmaking Is Ill-Suited For Such A Disposable Story

Look, let's get this out of the way first and foremost, yes, Dirty Harry is an exceedingly uncomfortable movie to watch. Not in an effective way either, like when you're watching a brazenly bold comedy or an intentionally upsetting drama. Harry is a wish-fulfillment fantasy for people who stamp Blue Lives Matter stickers to the back of their truck. Every white boy who feels that firing a gun off is the only way to solve any problem in the world has found their savior with the titular character of Dirty Harry. It's a character who was woefully out of date and uncomfortable back in 1972 and he's only even moreso in 2020.

Introspection Is The Best Feature of Some of My Best Friends Are...

The Stonewall Riots of 1969 were a gamechanger for the LGBTQA+ community in America. Thanks to the actions of people like Marsha P. Johnson, the eternal suffering of members of this community had become visible in a profound way. People had always turned a blind eye to this community but now these marginalized members of American society were making it clear they would make their voices heard. Some of My Best Friends Are... was released two years after the Stonewall Riots and though it only received a moderate theatrical release and remains relatively obscure even to this day, its very existence was another sign of how the queer perspective was making itself heard in an unprecedented manner.

The Camerawork In The French Connection Is Outstanding, The Characters Less So

Praise must be given to The French Connection for its boldly bleak ending. This 1971 feature from director William Friedkin has a gangbuster conclusion that dares to allow key plot points to go unresolved, for good to not triumph over evil and for our lead character to be sucked into his own mental abyss.  It's a daring way to close out the proceedings and its mighty well-executed, however, such a capper does not remove all the shortcomings previously seen in The French Connection, which ends up being a movie that's more successful in terms of camerawork than it is at character work.

Harold And Maude Uses Dark Comedy In Service Of A Soulful Exploration Of Its Lead Characters

In the vein of Bringing Up Baby and Citizen Kane, Harold and Maude was not well-liked upon its initial theatrical release. Critics and audiences alike were puzzled by this movie and it's easy to see why, this is certainly a strange movie, one with an unorthodox sense of humor that may not be for everyone. But just like those two aforementioned classics, Harold and Maude has managed to endure throughout the decades and hasn't just become an acclaimed classic but also a motion picture that holds a special place in the hearts of countless people. Count me in as one of those people because Hal Ashby's 1971 directorial effort is an outstanding piece of work with a macabre sense of humor and a thoughtful heart.

The Last Picture Show Fully Commits To A Melancholy Tone, Resulting In A Haunting Movie

Teenagers finally got to be widely recognized as a source of both revenue and storytelling in American pop culture in the 1950's which meant, because nostalgia is such a cornerstone of our pop culture. it was only a matter of time before art depicting teenagers inhabiting that specific pivotal era were created. The 1970's were bursting with pop culture that depicted teenager characters getting into adventures from Grease to Happy Days (American Graffiti was another 1970's pop culture entity that exploited nostalgia for teenage years, though that one was set in the 1960's). Most of these films were upbeat happy-go-lucky fare that looked back on 1950's teenagers with rose-colored glasses.

Steven Spielberg Kicked Off His Career In Thrilling Style With Duel

Before The Post, before Schindler's List, before even Jaws and The Sugarland Express, Steven Spielberg directed Duel, a TV movie of the week that got expanded into an 89-minute-long feature-length cut for theatrical exhibition domestically and abroad (that longer cut is the one reviewed here). Spielberg's earliest directorial credits were all television work (including a segment in a horror anthology TV movie that starred Joan Crawford!) but this was the first time he got to be behind the camera on a project that reached the runtime of a typical feature-length motion picture, setting the stage for his career in directing theatrical films that was yet to come.

Douglas Laman Gets A Tune-Up (Entry #5): Blue by Joni Mitchell

DOUGLAS LAMAN GETS A TUNE-UP

ENTRY #5: Blue by Joni Mitchell

Douglas Laman Gets A Tune-Up is a new weekly series wherein Douglas Laman listens to an album of music he's never fully listened to before (though he may have heard one or two songs from it) and writes up his brief thoughts on it.

Tonal versatility is a great tool for any musician to have, but sometimes, it's good to just have an album where an artist indulges a singular particular mood. After all, some singers are just so exceedingly good at capturing intensity, happiness, sadness or any sort of emotions that it feels like a dream come true to have them create music revolving around that particular emotion for the entirety of an album. Joni Mitchell was a woman known for her more somber tunes and the 1971 album Blue allows her to deliver ten tracks that predominately (though not exclusively) around a more melancholy atmosphere that prove why she became so well-known for more restrained and solemn pieces of music.

Douglas Laman Gets A Tune-Up (Entry #3): What's Going On by Marvin Gaye

DOUGLAS LAMAN GETS A TUNE-UP

ENTRY #3: What's Going On by Marvin Gaye

Douglas Laman Gets A Tune-Up is a new weekly series wherein Douglas Laman listens to an album of music he's never fully listened to before (though he may have heard one or two songs from it) and writes up his brief thoughts on it.

For the next entry in this series, we head only a few years after 1967 when The Velvet Underground & Nico was released but we do head into a different genre of music entirely. Marvin Gaye's 1971 album What's Going On clearly belongs to the world of soul music, a genre reliant on African-American culture and one that served as an artistic outlet for African-Americans in both the 20th and 21st century. While American music was still struggling to recognize African-American artists on a regular basis in the 1960's and 1970's, the terrain of soul and jazz music served as one of the few go-to avenues for African-American musicians looking to express themselves in an authentic way.

A Clockwork Orange Review (Classic Write-Up)

One of the numerous elements of Stanley Kubricks films that has endured as a staple of cinematic discussion is the lofty ideas and themes present in his motion pictures. 2011: A Space Odyssey charted out the history of mankind while taking the fears that many in the 1960's had of newfound technology and personifying those fears into HAL. Dr. Strangelove hinges its entire plot on Cold War paranoia, and then came his 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, which tackles ideas related to politics as well as the concept of free will.