Notice something different about the title? With the country changing from the free love 60s to the jaded 70s, movies also are in flux, trying to keep up with the times. What results is a strange, pretty crappy year of trying stuff that simply doesn’t work, sadly. I couldn’t even get to 10 films! The lasting movies of the year are war films, one spawning one of the 4 greatest TV shows ever created and one spawning a legendary character from a legendary man.
The only reason this is even on my list is because I saw it. It’s really mediocre Disney using a familiar formula: bourgeois lady meets poor but charming cat from the streets. In this case “cat” is literal, not figurative. At least the jazzy tunes are catchy.
It says it in the effing title. This movie wants you to swoon and cry. It wants it so much, it throws every cliche, plot device, and manipulation in the book at you to make it happen. If you’re not eye rolling, you’re probably telling your date that love means never having to say you’re sorry as you steal their popcorn..and their heart.
It’s a fine enough adaptation of Charles Dickens’s classic novel, mostly cause Albert Finney is winning playing all ages of Ebenezer Scrooge, which helps emotional payoffs from the spiritual visits pay off.
Proving he’s not just the greatest movie critic that will ever exist, Roger Ebert actually wrote this insane movie, using the free love movement to tell a ludicrous story about a group of ladies trying to make it in showbusiness.
A more condescending Forrest Gump, Dustin Hoffman plays Jack Crabbe, a guy who seemingly played a part in every big event in the Western United States. Hoffman’s performance makes this thing fun and loopy, with seeds of doubt spread all over the unreliable narrator.
Helping set the tone for the 70s was Robert Altman’s look at the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in the Korean War. Altman signifiers are all there: crazy good and sprawling cast (Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould and Sally Kellerman at the top), gigantic epic shots, and a dark, dry and funny sense of humor, usually targeted at authority figures.
Clearly war was on America’s minds in 1970. This Mike Nichols product mocks war management, and the crazy bureaucracy surrounding Air Force pilots during WWII. It’s about as black of a comedy as can be, but it hits those highs that Dr. Strangelove hit a few years earlier about the inconsistencies and cruelty of the military industrial complex.
George C. Scott, gives a career defining performance as America’s greatest general. The minute Scott steps in front of that American flag, he has you at attention while he takes you on the larger that life story of the general as he wins all sorts of campaigns in WWII, but also consistently lets his public anger get the best of him.
