Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/09/how-to-have-an-existential-cri.html
…
4 Likes
This movie is highly underrated and needs to get more attention.
20 Likes
I’m having an existential crisis right now
20 Likes
17 Likes
This is such a good film. The casting is perfect. Some of Paul Dooley’s best work. “Refund!?!”
12 Likes
and a great cast - on my all time top 10 list
3 Likes
REFUND!?
11 Likes
…
What’s the fun in that?
7 Likes
I don’t know.
First, don’t have that cigarette. Who said that was a good thing.
Second, Where are the women in this film? What role do they have?
Third, they still have to “proove” themselves. Having and fulfilling ambition is something to deal with, but the options in this are very conservative. The forces in this film seem to be inevitable “truths.”
Fourth, this is not an underrated film by any stretch.It won Best Writing, nominated Best Picture. Golden Globe: Best Picture. Old grizzled dudes still get teary when they talk about it.
It might be forgotten, but in the last 20 years a lot of films of the 20th century are being forgotten…there’s this thing called The Internet and 500 Gazigabillion hours of content.)
(A truly underrated film was The Omega Man, with the only award being an NAACP Image Award nominee for Rosalind Cash. Everyone talks about Soylent Green, but Omega is the real gem.)
I bet the MRM really loves this film. This and Porky’s.
3 Likes
Are those necessarily bad qualities in a film?
Cyril: I was sure I was going to get that scholarship. My dad of course was sure I wasn’t. When I didn’t, he was real understanding, you know. He loves to do that. He loves to be understanding when I fail.
6 Likes
Coach woulda put me in fourth quarter, we would’ve been state champions. No doubt. No doubt in my mind.
3 Likes
I love Breaking Away. Daniel Stern spoke at my high school graduation. I guess he had gone to my high school?
(Omega Man? With Charleton “Eats the Scenery for Breakfast” Heston? I thought that movie was fun. But a great, overlooked gem?)
4 Likes
When they’re presented as universal truths it sure is problematic.
Any film is valuable for the critique that can be extracted from it. Much more interesting than the drama presented in this film is the longing for this film by dudes my age who grew-up with it. I liked it too when it came out, or a year after it came out. I never saw it in the theater. But I also like Animal House.
2 Likes
I always loved The Omega Man as a kid for obvious sci-fi kinda reasons.
They showed it last week at the Arclight in Hollywood 35mm print.
Amazing. The non-heston performances are great. It’s a just a feast for sub-text and interesting shit that we don’t realize from that time period.
He’s the last guy on eath and goes to a movie theater to watch a movie over and over again. The movie is Woodstock and he quotes hippy dialog from it. He watches it because, inferred, it’s a movie with thousands of people and the quotes from Country Joe about how “we all just need to get along” are what he’s quoting.
I used to joke that Heston sleeps with a black woman in the film, only because she’s the last woman on earth. But I didn’t realize that they actually make a joke, or point that out in the film itself.
The whole Mathias cult leader = Fox News is great.
It doesn’t over stay it’s welcome. Shots of vacant DTLA. It’s got a lot going for it. More than Soylent Green or Silent Running or any of that period stuff back then.
Check it out. 100% entertainment.
2 Likes
Hmmm, I’m not so sure that I agree that a film trying to say something about a “universal truth” is problematic. Isn’t good art supposed to be saying something about ourselves on a fundamental level?
In any event, I think we may have taken some different messages from this movie if the two comparisons that come to mind for you are Porkys and Animal House. That’s not saying you’re wrong, of course, because your experience is your own, but to me those movies definitely speak about young men differently.
3 Likes
Yeah. That father figure stuff. I get it. I’m not that interested in it for some reason.
Hmm. Seems there’s this libertarian through line. Prepping us for “anti-Nanny State” shit. Which is fine. Right, I was 13 and loved the Gor books, Dune. Porky’s.
Ugh, guess I have to watch it again to see how much of this is there.
Omega Man kicks Breaking Away’s ass
7 Likes
I’m gonna like your reply AND gtmac’s. You make good points (and Omega Man is awesome), but there are some pretty funny bits in Breaking Away and a satisfying underdog story.
1 Like
