With the early successes of the 1970s providing a template, many new voices started breaking out this year (Marty Scorcese, Terrence Malick, and George Lucas, for example. Great directors like Sydney Lumet start their new decade of stories they want to tell, and we get a nice year for foreign films with the great Ingmar Bergman making one of his classics, and Hong Kong Martial Arts hitting it’s Bruce Lee Peak in the USA.
This animated adaptation of EB White’s novel is a sweet kid’s story with some lovely longs, great voice work, and a sometimes magical story of a friendship between a pig and a spider that draws the attention of people all around the farm.
Bruce Lee’s last movie is a delight for audiences, watching the talented martial arts black belt kick some ass in the most elegant beautiful way possible. Surrounding the fights are a simple but effective spy story and interesting characters in the form of John Saxon and Jim Kelly, plus the iconic showdown in a room full of mirrors.
Ingmar Bergman has always been a perceptive director. With this film, he delves into the lives of a married couple (Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson) about see their marriage fall apart. Bergman said of this film, which you can see on display, it took a few months to make, but a lifetime to experience.
Paul Newman and Robert Redford team up and channel that Butch & Sundance charm. Basically The Sting is Butch and Sundance, the remix. Throw in a twisty turvy con game, some Robert Shaw, and you’ve got yourself a delightful Best Picture winner that’s still hella fun to watch today, with the delightful “The Entertainer” breezily putting a smile on your face.
Also channeling his past is Charlton Heston. Here he plays a cop investigating the murder of a man who works to create Soylent Green, the leading food in an overpopulated overrun New York City. Edward G. Robinson, in his last movie, is excellent as Heston’s roommate who has a wealth of knowledge, and the final moments sees Heston put in another Planet of the Apes scenario.
The career launcher for Scorcese, Harvey Keitel, and Robert de Niro. Without the budget and backing Francis Ford Coppola got for The Godfather, Scorcese focused on gangster life on the ground, but with similarly epic themes of penance for sins, consequences of actions, and compartmentalized morality. Goodfellas does not become the movie that it is without Scorcese succeeding with this film.
Robert Altman’s take on the LA Noir. Elliott Gould is a great lead, since he’s a master of Altman’s wry dialogue, and finding a complex mix of stuff in Philip Marlowe. In Altman’s hands the film has some ephemeral qualities, which mask something sinister or twisted underneath that he subtly unfurls to the audience while telling a fun surface level story on top of it.
I don’t know what cruelty happened to Sydney Lumet, but Serpico starts his incredible 70s run of cynical, engrossing studies of systemic injustice. Al Pacino is incredible playing Frank Serpico, an undercover beat cop who slowly becomes disillusioned by the practices of the police, a job he once dreamed of having. This disillusionment also envelops Frank, who becomes a single minded crusader, forsaking any others who try to love him along the way.
Before space operas, George Lucas focused on hot rodding high school graduates. Capturing that time of flux for youth as they enter a new phase of their lives, Lucas unleashes a crazy amount of acting talent (Richard Dreyfus, Ron Howard, Suzanne Somers, Harrison Ford), great music of the era, and an intimidating set of cars to capture the nostalgia of growing up, and how the high school experience can change for everyone over the course of one legendary night.
William Friedkin’s terrifying study of demonic possession will haunt your dreams. The power of Christ should compel you to see this film, starring poor Linda Blair who’s 13 year old Regan becomes the Devil’s plaything. Friedkin builds in the horror and scares to the point of exhaustion, climaxing with the chilling attempt to exorcise the demon from Regan’s body. You’ll be disgusted, and yet you can’t look away.
