Before we depart one of the great decades of cinema, the 70s leaves us with another quality Top 10 list. Ridley Scott, George Miller, and Hayao Miyazaki got their starts this year; follow ups by great directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen, and one of the welcome but surprising top 5 entries into any movie year.
The first of many Mad Max entries onto my top 10 lists. We’re not quite crazy post apocalyptic yet, but the seeds of George Miller are totally present in the first film, with the unknown Mel Gibson taking center stage as a cop taking down groups of rogue gangs of bikers/drivers, and all around bad guys. This movie establishes the thrill ride Miller’s gonna take us on for 35 years.
Studio Ghibili never happens if Hayao Miyazaki didn’t do well with this animated gem from Japan. The premise is fun: good natured con artist saves princess from ephemeral foreboding castle, his spin on the Princess story. Because Miyazaki is involved, every character is multi faceted, and the story takes unexpected turns that make it richer. Unlike his normal films, this one’s also quite funny; I laughed out loud more than a few times.
Sexual politics aside (come on Woody, just make your student 18, geez), this might be my favorite Woody Allen movie. Apparently I’m a sucker for earnest Allen. His ability to write a fascinating movies about urban elites is 2nd to none, here finding more than a few great male and female characters, especially Mariel Hemingway. But the beauty of Manhattan is how Allen shoots New York, by far the most beautiful depiction of the city I’ve seen on film, composed to the swoon worthy George Gershwin.
A tense ride of a prison escape thriller, based on a true story. Clint Eastwood, steely and stoic as ever, stars as Frank Morris, a real life escape artist. Alcatraz proves to be a terrific setting, filled with claustrophobia and quiet tension as Frank and his buddies figure out how to escape a place deemed impossible to escape. The last 20 minutes or so will have you on the edge of your seat.
This movie sucks you in with its sports movie story, as well as the funny concept of an aspiring Italian cyclist (Dennis Christopher) from…Bloomington Indiana. But this movie becomes special when it uses racing as a study of 4 friends figuring out what to do with their lives after high school, probably because the brilliant casting director found young Jackie Earl Haley, Daniel Stern, and Dennis Quaid to play the lead’s friends and make the story pop.
In my opinion the best of the Python films. This one takes aim at religious zealots, doing it in the way the Python’s do best. They suck you in with silly voices or gags, but then really pepper in some pointed satire, like how the act of taking off a shoe can mean something more than that, or how two groups with similar goals can hate each other for seemingly minute reasons. It’s the Pythons firing on all cylinders.
The Muppets are wonderful entertainers because they straddle that tough line where the humor works for kids and parents alike. This first feature of theirs, is nothing special plot wise: Kermit dreams of Hollywood and meets his Muppet friends along the way, but in practice the Muppets inject all sorts of manic, smart, fun energy into the road trip movie, pack it with cameos, and write a single so catchy it actually charted on Billboard for a large chunk of the year.
The opposite of the Muppet Movie. Francis Ford Coppola exhausts Martin Sheen into submission as he plunges further and further into the Vietnamese jungle in search of Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). The making of this film is so legendary that there are documentaries about its release, as Coppola pulled all his directorial prowess to make this movie feel as big and important as he intended.
Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep are excellent playing a married couple with a child who decide to get a divorce. What follows is a smart, brutal study of how little mistakes by either parent can be used in court to obtain custody of a child. It’s a savage, heartbreaking system that Streep and Hoffman wear all over their faces as they fight for their son.
In space, no one can hear you scream. That all timer of a tag line is matched by the film it represents, Ridley Scott’s first. The spaceship Nostromo descends onto a planet and bring aboard an alien onto the ship. And not just any alien: HR Giger’s spectacularly terrifying grotesquely designed alien that haunts your nightmares as we see more and more of it. In addition to being hella scary, this movie has a really well conceived, twisty plot, and some really potent progressive storytelling bolstering our beloved xenomorph.
