Old roller coasters, with their rickety wooden slats and rusty iron tracks, and cars that shake you like a rag doll, are much scarier than new roller coasters, no matter how high or fast those swooshing new coasters go with their latest technological tricks. Only the old coasters, like the one I grew up going to in Ocean View Amusement Park in Norfolk, or the still existing Cyclone in Coney Island, make you feel like you are about to die, that you have joined yourself to an enterprise truly unstable and reckless.

That thought came to mind after seeing Ron Howard’s new movie, Rush, which is a movie treatment of the real life competition between the Formula One race car drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda in 1975-76. It’s being naturally compared to the last great movie made about Formula One racing, Grand Prix in 1966. Which I first saw when I was ten years old or so, with my dad, who was a big car guy. In a big old movie theater with a big old screen. In 70 mm.

The original Grand Prix, which starred James Garner and a few other folks, was that old time roller coaster. Watching it, you felt one, like you were sitting in the seat of a Formula One race car, and two, that you were going to die. It was terrifying. And gripping.

Ron Howard’s movie, in contrast, is a sleek affair. Nothing wrong with it. It’s a good character study. But thoroughly safe for the viewer.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Childhood memories will never compare with grown up ones. But here’s the thing. I re-watched Grand Prix 13 years ago, at the ripe old age of 40, on a small television set, and was thoroughly gripped by the three-hour plus movie. I had not expected to be. Thinking back on Grand Prix right now, I realize that its story mirrors the real-life drama to come between Hunt and Lauda ten years later.

In Rush, Howard seldom put the camera in the car. I wonder why? Maybe he didn’t want to be compared to Grand Prix, which he knew he couldn’t beat on its terms, even with all the computers at his disposal. Maybe that was a wise choice even though I’d pick Grand Prix any day, if I had a choice as to which to see.

Now About Breaking Bad

The Roman Empire, according to legend, went bad in its final centuries, indulging in orgies, gladiator games and strange amusements like eating a hundred humming bird tongues and so on.

I have heard less discussion lately as to whether we Americans have joined the Romans in its decline into decadence, and maybe it’s because we have. We have torture porn shows like Homeland and 24. And we have Breaking Bad.

Let me be clear. I loved this show, or at least was profoundly wrapped up in it, as were half of the thinking classes around the country. My partner would hold my hand as we watched. She would worry as she felt me shake and tremble by the intensity of the show. The moral choices of Walter White, played incredible well by Bryan Cranston, really did move me, and sadden me, as they were intended to do.

But the context of those decisions horrified me, and still does. The show passed lines that used to be immutable, time and time again. Children were shot or killed, not just once, but repeatedly. Torture cropped up toward the end. Of course the true horror was seeing Walt, once clearly mostly a good man, choose to kill innocent people, or mostly innocent. Isn’t there something contemptible about us, who choose to watch such fare, as there is in the fictional character Walt, who makes these decisions?

I sense I’m not convincing. It’s true that I’ve long had less tolerance for violence in shows, going back, (seriously), to when I cringed at the Three Stooges hitting each other on television when I was a kid. I wanted them to stop. As I get older, I have even less appetite for such things. But maybe also there are lines that are better off not crossed. Can anyone tell me where to find a good drawing room comedy with some nice witty dialogue? I’ll sign on.