Performance (1970), 6/10
This is a british drama about a mob(?) enforcer who screws up and ends up having to go on the run. He ends up shacking with a small group of bohemians, the (sort of) leader of whom is played by Mick Jagger. The best I can describe this movie is a sort of british cousin to Rocky Horror Picture Show sans the musical element, since it's about a straightforward (if massively amoral) bloke coming into contact with the counterculture of the day, and ending up having an identity shift of sorts. It's very weird. To be honest I'm having a bit of a tough time recalling large chunks of this movie, since it abides only loosely to a narrative structure, and spends a lot of its runtime on esoteric dialogue about identity, philosophies and all sorts of hippie stuff. The fact that it's also littered with very very english slang didn't help either, since I could hardly parse the meaning of a lot of the expressions. I guess the big draw here is seeing one of the biggest rock stars of the time in a movie role, and Jagger is sort of "ehh". He certainly draws your attention and I can't say he's bad in the role, but I feel this is a role written more around the actor than as a character in and of itself. He's not very expressive and he's not given a lot of showy moments, but he certainly captures the essence of a hippie weirdo artist.
Perhaps the biggest problem with this movie are roughly the first 20 minutes, before the main character has to go on the run. It's basically a bunch of gangsters being shitty, and we're given basically zero reason to root for or be interested in the protagonist. It's also quite messily edited (probably intentionally) with a lot of names and characters being thrown around, and it's very hard to follow or figure out who's supposed to be important. But once the protagonist shacks up with the bohemians the movie both gains focus and gets more interesting. Considering this movie's over half a century old, a lot of the themes around sexuality, identity and gender feel astoundingly ahead of their time. It's just that a lot of stuff feels kind of pointless. For example, there's a borderline pornographic (for the time) threesome scene between Mick Jagger's character and the two chicks he's living with. It doesn't really establish anything or teach us anything about the characters, but goes on for quite a bit regardless, and I'm just left wondering what the purpose of it was.
To be honest I think this is one of those movies that doesn't really open up on a single watch. Might have to watch it again to really get coherent thoughts on it.
Back to the Future, 10/10
I mean, what's there to even say? It's one of the greatest sci-fi comedies ever made, and one of the central pillars of 80s cinema. The script, pacing, editing, comedy, acting and music are all immaculate. It doesn't feel dated one bit despite closing in on 40 years. There's not a single thing I'd take out of it, everything fits just perfectly. It just oozes charm, wholesomeness and is genuinely romantic. Marty McFly is a perfect everyman protagonist. Genuinely not one single bad thing to say about it, and as a result there's not a whole lot to say or analyze. There's not a lot of big themes or having something to say, but that's fine when the movie is this fucking good. Like Die Hard, this is an all-time classic for a reason.
