Superfly

It's 70s September, baby! This month I'm going to watch 70s movies near exclusively. Preferably ones set in New York. Why? Because it just might be one of the best decades of movie making.

Censorship was crumbling, but violence, drug use, and sex in movies hadn't become passe yet. You can feel the filmmakers' eagerness to be able to finally show these realities onscreen instead of just implying it. There's this gritty honesty to it.

Plus good Jesus, the music? The anti-heroes? The CARS?

And why not start off with one that embodies all this awesomeness, Super Fly.

My jukebox selection, two off this soundtrack. Because up until now I've been criminally ignorant of Curtis Mayfield. The soundtrack on this movie is unrelentingly fantastic, and ties it together so beautifully. It's obviously made on the cheap, but the combo of the music and the style (the movie that launched a thousand Cadillac pimpmobiles) just pushes it to be so much greater than the sum of its parts.

I don't really feel the need to talk about the plot here. It's incidental, and the less you know about it the better. But pretty much a drug dealer wants to try to go straight but his world and The Man don't want him to. And much wandering of desolate streets looking like a badass in some of the finest coats and hats available to mankind ensues.

Watching this, I see its stamp on so much that has come after it, blaxploitation and otherwise. I don't even know how many times I just sat their incredulous and thought "damn, now THAT'S style." Which one often does while watching 70s movies. Which is why it's 70s September.