You can really see the pull between present and past in the best of 1968. Two sci-fi films came out during the space race, including America’s first sci-fi epic. There’s also some great old fashioned musicals and Westerns, that were slowly fading from the mainstream. Also, for you Steve McQueen fans, big year for that guy!
Dick Van Dyke just has this way of every musical he takes part in just a little bit sillier and funnier. Here he stars in a lavish musical about an inventor who creates a vehicle to take his family on amazing adventures far and wide. It’s got no stakes whatsoever, but for a wholesome family with 7 or 8 year old LEGO building dreamers, it’ll be a gas, my fine four fendered friend.
John Cassavetes Faces hits like a silenced pistol bullet. Cassavetes sure hand of shaky cam cinema verite takes the melodramatic situation (middle aged couple falls out of love and cheats on one another) and finds the emotions and humanity underneath it. The writing is so fascinating at time it makes up for the pure audacity the movie presents.
One of Steve McQueen’s most famous roles. This movie is a no nonsense detective action flick where McQueen uncovers conspiracies in an effort to take down the mob. If you like car chases, this one’s got a great one, using the San Francisco location to great thrills and jumps.
Neil Simon adapted his own Broadway play that works in any era: put two great actors with irreconcilable differences into a forced living situation and let the jokes happen. Here, the movie basically tells Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, go, and they do their thing they were born to do: make em laugh.
Steve McQueen played the good guy, now he plays the bad one. The mastermind of a heist netting a hefty payoff, Thomas Crown gets hunted by Faye Dunaway’s insurance investigator, who slowly gets lured in by a movie that shows the joys of how rich, suave people live.
Sergio Leone and Enrico Morricone prove their talent for crafting westerns is great without Clint Eastwood. This one has lots of stillness. When it doesn’t work it can be long, but oh man when it does? Those scenes drip with tension. Also, casting Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, and Jason Robards against type helps also keep the movie on tilt as well.
The title speaks for itself. But the Charlton Heston vehicle is more than it’s iconic twist ending. By simply inverting apes and humans in the evolution department, the movie can study society through a fresh allegorical lens that works more often than it doesnt.
Stanley Kubrick brought space into the movies. Nothing like this had ever been attempted in movie history, so for that this movie’s pretty special to even look at. Douglas Rain’s HAL 9000 is also pretty special, giving a soothing, menacing voice to artificial intelligence. Plus the third act will blow your mind the first time it happens.
Zombies simply were not a thing until George A. Romero came along. He utilizes his brilliant premise – the dead rise again – to also create a template for social commentary while scaring the bejeezus out of us with creature effects.
An innocent woman (Mia Farrow) and her husband (John Cassavetes) move into a New York apartment, with your standard strange neighbor (Ruth Gordon, amazing in this movie). From there, Roman Polanski heaps on the paranoia and dread for poor Rosemary as the base fears of malevolent friends, and pregnancy ruining lives get taken to a supernatural extreme.
