Assuming "science-fiction films of the 1970s" means ones actually from the decade so will not count Michael Crichton's overlooked Looker from 1981, which is the 70s-iest possible take on the AI-generated media landscape of the mid-2020s... while Crichton's Runaway's 1984 is just the 70s with robots!

After HBO's Westworld did not turn out to be their next Game of Thrones (I only got through the first season; 4/5 of its viewers had quit by the final one), the lean spareness of the original with just enough setup to establish the rules and stakes of the environment works even better in retrospect.

Westworld really holds up in 2025; the Museum of Arts and Design showed it in association with their "Barbie: A Cultural Icon" exhibit! The last time I'd seen it was around the time the HBO redo premiered in October 2016 which feels almost as remote as its widescreen home video debut in 1997 on VHS!

There must be a throughline I couldn't quite figure out on Reitman père leaving us the same month as both PJ O'Rourke and Gary North, the latter duo embodying the exact opposite cultural poles of Republican-libertarian fusionism down to being enthusiasts for very different forms of death by stoning!

I won't say any more about it since the very premise is already such a self-spoiler. For the best anyway that the Reitmans' libertarian streak is just pronounced enough that it usually gets overlooked unless it's sought out. (And an unsual one for a local-to-New York-specific cultural retrospective)

Since Bluesky happily encourages self-promotion of work on other sites, the most relevant of my recent writings argues that alternatives to seemingly inescapable services (I happened to be discussing Amazon) are far more feasible than it seemed a year or two ago:
thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/18005

...um, just realized that it was scheduled for a minute after noon yesterday rather than a minute after midnight today! But it hasn't gotten linked/quoted/reposted so today's the day for my writing to spread like the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace: thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/15641

(Kidding aside, Jason Reitman's recent feature film Saturday Night, in which a semi-fictionalized version of Chase features prominently, would be a decent pick for an anti-downer. And not just because it assumes the viewer knows that SNL isn't going to crash and burn before its 1st episode begins!!)

Hey, I can think of someone who can provide you with uppers as well as downers: youtube.com/watch?v=cXST...