Meteor!

Meteor should be a solid 1970s disaster movie. Instead, it's horribly scripted and doesn't do any of the things a good disaster movie does – we should be following at least a dozen characters simultaneously and learning about their relationships as we go along. The eponymous disaster in this disaster movie is a series of meteor fragments that strike northern Canada, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and New York. Cool cool. But none of this happens until near to the end of the film, so we don't get much good disaster stuff at all. Instead, we spend most of the movie inside a bunker watching the Soviets and the Americans disagree with one another before they agree to blow up the meteor. In other words, Meteor fails to live up to its generic expectations, and so it is, unfortunately, boring.

10 (1979)

This isn't important at all, but I saw Blake Edwards' 10 a couple days ago, and I just don't understand. I think the reason I don't get it is that about a year and a half ago, I saw and disliked Edwards' 1986 film That's Life! and I was surprised to find that this is basically a very similar plot. 10 is about a very, very rich Hollywood songwriter, played by a hilarious Dudley Moore, who is going through male menopause – which is exactly what is happening to Jack Lemmon's character in That's Life! Indeed, both men in both films are both in romantic relationships with (Edwards' wife) Julie Andrews. Andrews is great in the 1986 film; she's totally miscast in the '79 film. 

Anyway, 10 is much funnier than its later, 1986 iteration (I think this is because Lemmon takes his role way too seriously, while Moore plays everything for laughs), but it's largely the same movie. 

The highlight for me was that Dudley Moore's best friend in this is a gay man who is about the same age as him. They talk frankly about him being gay, and it's rather delightful. He's only a gay best friend character, but he has some great moments, and I believe Dudley Moore even drops the word "faggotry"!

1941 (1979)

Steven Spielberg's 1941 is a broad farce about (among other things) the Zoot Suit Riots – not a funny topic. This is singularly unfunny. I laughed one single time the entire 150 minutes of this. Lots and lots of things explode in 1941, but that doesn't make this any less boring or bad. To be fair, there is a great dance sequence in act two, but this is widely understood to be Spielberg's worst film, and who am I to disagree?

Moonraker (1979)

Moonraker is one of the most tired Bond movies I've seen. This one claims to have been shot on location in Venice, Rio, the Amazon, and outer space, but I think they might be stretching the truth a bit. I have my doubts that Roger Moore and Lois Chiles went to space. The thing is, Moonraker has a boring villain, and the entire thing seems sort of a retread of the previous Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me. Moonraker's 1979 villain is very similar to the 1977 villain, and they even bring back the most interesting goon from the previous movie, Jaws, who bites through industrial cables and kills people by biting their necks. Most of all, I think Roger Moore was just a bit too long in the tooth for this – a crazy statement, I know, since he would make keep playing the spy for another six years and three more Bond movies.

Alexandria... Why? (1979)

Alexandrie Pourquoi? (إسكندرية..ليه؟) is very interesting, but it did feel a bit disjointed to me. There were rather a few more plots than I really knew what to do with, and some of them got away from me as a viewer. Extra points, though, for portraying a gay British–Egyptian romance in 1979. This is why I watched Youssef Chahine's film – he is a famous Arab filmmaker who often portrayed gay characters – and it didn't disappoint in that regard.

A Little Romance (1979)

I loved A Little Romance. It's a totally romantic and charming rom-com about two young teenagers in love. Diane Lane is adorable and her boyfriend, Thelonious Bernard, who only made two movies in his entire career, is just the cutest. I found the whole thing lovely. Broderick Crawford also has a delightful couple of scenes as himself – an actor making a movie in Paris; they call him "Brod" the whole time, and it's fun. George Roy Hill, who directed, has also made the main character into a movie fan who loves (why shouldn't he?) George Roy Hill movies like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. So nostalgic clips of these caper movies are peppered throughout for thematic purposes but also just for fun.

The only weird part of  A Little Romance is, ironically, Laurence Olivier, who is top billed and who gives an extremely strange, hammy performance that really does not jell with the rest of the picture. It really ought to have been Paul Newman or Robert Redford here, and I'm not sure why it wasn't. But, hey, it doesn't much matter. Olivier's character is not central here (top billed or no), and the rest of the movie is so cute that I'm happy to forgive.