Hal Ashby’s Shampoo and the Blissful Ignorance of Sexual Politics: Review

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There was never a more perfect time for Shampoo to come out than the end of Richard Nixon’s time in America. But the dangers in what was set to come were a warning that Hal Ashby may have also tried to say we were also too late to listen to. This is a film all about how America was set to change as the times were moving forward, but we don’t exactly know if it’s the case that they would end up turning out for the better. But it’s weird enough how this film seems to have gone from being one of the hottest films of its own era to fading from that glory, which is a shame because like the rest of Ashby’s 1970’s oeuvre, it’s never anything less than impressive. It’s the sort of film that I’m amazed was even made in its own era, especially right after Richard Nixon’s era had ended in America, when people were unaware or outright unready for what was set to come in the years under his ruling. It’s a film that mixes together that raunchiness with scathing political commentary, and it’s rather stunning how much it still manages to bite after so long. If there’s anything that really does need to be said, you can watch a film like this as being proof that it’s the sort of film that only Hal Ashby could have made – and it sums up everything that made his films so wonderful.

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One of the Darkest and Most Beautiful Romantic Comedies Ever Made: Harold and Maude Review

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I’ve been on the verge of suicide at numerous points of my life. I keep trying to convince myself that everything is going to get better; yet nothing I find out of my life is set to really change that. Even my own peers seem to be of no use to me anymore, even when I feel like they’re supposed to be the ones I trust most. My whole life feels like I’m just stuck inside of a void that only digs a much deeper hole as it keeps going on, and I lose track even of what is supposedly happy in this world anymore. Sometimes I find myself watching a movie hoping that I can find myself escaping this void even if it lasts temporarily, but even as that feeling can provide temporary relief from the most painful moments in one’s life, we leave hoping it would last forever. Then there comes a film like Harold and Maude, which also has a lingering empathy for what brings people like myself to where we are right now, even amidst all the absurdity of what goes on – but perhaps that helps in ensuring the film’s own statement on life lasts on, it’s absurd, full of joys, with the inevitable sadness, that’s how we continually move forward.

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Being There – Review

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“I’m Chance, the Gardener,” says Peter Sellers inside his final noteworthy role. “Since I was a child, I worked in this garden.” He really was a gardener. “I like to watch TV.” What I said there to myself, “You know what, Chance, so do I.” In this final role, Peter Sellers is playing a man within a shelter, one that rings so perfectly with myself – maybe a reflection of myself in the mirror. Inside of a role as an innocent, simple-minded gardener oblivious to the many happenings around him only learning more from the glance at a screen, it is not only Peter Sellers to credit, but Hal Ashby as well, for creating one of the most resonant works of art ever made in Being There. One’s thoughtfulness inside of such a film only calls for a sense of self-reflection, but said process is already frustrating enough on my end.

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