Best Films of the '70s

by Erik, Karla and Scott

Part Three

Erik:

MASH - Robert Altman: Robert Altman is a filmmaker I’ve always admired. He always made the films he wanted to make, and fought for his vision. While I don’t necessarily love all of his films (my favorites: The Player, Short Cuts, and The Long Goodbye) I’m embarrassed to say this but I still need to see Nashville and McCabe and Mrs. Miller - both currently reside somewhere in the thirties in my Netflix queue. MASH is a film I saw long ago and only recently viewed for a second time, and boy has it aged well. Still relevant, hilarious, and filled with Altman’s typically fluid camerawork and overlapping, improvisational dialogue many film fans (me included) grew to love over the last 40 years. Those who love Paul Thomas Anderson (me again) owe a debt of gratitude to Altman. BEST SCENE: During the football game. “Oh my god! They’ve shot him.” “Hot Lips, you incredible nincompoop. It's the end of the quarter.” Priceless.

Clockwork Orange - Stanley Kubrick: Kubrick is the greatest filmmaker of all time, at least the best at using the visual medium to express ideas and thoughts. The genius that is Stanley Kubrick is on full display throughout Clockwork Orange (go to the trivia section for the film on IMDB for a great explanation of the title’s meaning), a film that is brilliant in every scene. Malcolm McDowell is amazing as Alex (on of my favorite performances of all time), doing what only great actors can do: he makes the audience both love and hate him. As great as McDowell is in the film, this is Kubrick’s show all the way. Using beautiful tracking, zoom and slow-motion shots, as well as raw handheld camerawork, all accompanied by Beethoven and Walter Carlo’s mind-blowing synthesized score. This was the time in Kubrick’s career - after making Dr. Strangelove and 2001 - where he really pulled ahead of everyone else making movies, as evidenced in the fantastic scene in the record store where you can see a copy of the 2001 soundtrack, a sly joke in which Kubrick references his own film. BEST SCENE: The opening. With the synthesized score beginning, title cards displayed and the opening shot of Alex’s eye (a reoccurring motif in many Kubrick films), all to his wonderfully colloquial narration. One of the best openings to a film I’ve ever seen.

French Connection - William Friedkin:

A classic cops-and-criminals movie that continues to inspire filmmakers today (Joe Carnahan’s 2002 feature Narc owes much to the gritty, street-tough filmmaking of William Friedkin’s Oscar-winner). The car chases are memorable (and still impressive today), the dialogue realistic, and the story thrilling. Gene Hackman (who won Best Actor for his performance) and Roy Scheider make a great pairing as detectives Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle and Buddy “Cloudy” Russo, on the hunt for a nefarious and smart drug dealer (Fernando Rey). BEST SCENE: As technically brilliant and exciting as those car chases are, I have always enjoyed the film’s quieter moments, when Popeye and Cloudy trail the villain throughout the streets of New York, giving us a glimpse at the frustrating and miserable work of an undercover detective.

Deliverance – John Boorman: This film did for camping and canoe trips what Jaws did for swimming in the ocean. Four words: “Squeal like a pig!” Gives me shivers just thinking about it. A camping trip goes horribly, nightmarishly bad when four friends (Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty) go on a canoe trip down the Cahulawassee River in the DEEP south, where they encounter some scary, um, mountain men. Survival instincts are tested as the city men (in a great clash of old and new civilizations) try to escape the hellish ordeal. BEST SCENE: The “Dueling Banjos” scene is memorable, as is the very disturbing sodomy scene (in which Beatty’s character is told to utter those nasty words).

The Exorcist - William Friedkin: Yes it’s scary, terrifying at times. But Friedkin’s direction of William Peter Blatty’s adaptation of his own novel also stands as a fantastic, intelligent drama, with a strong balance of storytelling and character development. Little Reagan (Linda Blair) is possessed by a nasty demon, so her mother (the great Ellen Burstyn) calls on the help of a priest (Jason Miller), who in turn calls on the help of the titular exorcist (the great Max von Sydow) to help rid the girl of the affliction. A classic, and classy, horror film. BEST SCENE: Father Karras has a nightmare about his mother, and if you pay attention during this sequence, when the mother is walking up from the subway, you will view the scariest image in film history: a demonic-looking face that smiles in two quick, subliminal shots.

Serpico - Sidney Lumet:

Sidney Lumet had an incredibly strong decade in the seventies (with this, Network and Dog Day Afternoon especially). Serpico is another gritty cop film that only could have come out of the seventies era of bold, raw American filmmaking. Al Pacino gives a career performance (he did well with Lumet) as the real-life cop-turned whistle-blower Frank Serpico in this powerful story of justice and honesty. A fantastic film that was also hilariously referenced in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. BEST SCENE: Undercover cops are being passed joints around a classroom as they “study” the effects of marijuana on their bodies. “This is some good shit” replies Serpico’s partner in a hilarious scene.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Tobe Hooper: Another classic horror film and one of the better efforts in the Grindhouse genre. Tobe Hooper’s low-budget, documentary-style technique is used to great effect. Many of the frights, and there are many, come from the truly visceral feeling of the entire film. Using aspects of real-life serial killer Ed Gein’s nasty habits (using body parts of victims for decoration), Hooper and his small crew crafted a chilling and not-too-gory (the violence is actually pretty tame, it’s all in the imagination) that was banned for a time in the UK as part of the “Video Nasties” era of VHS. Skip the putrid remake, and get the real experience. BEST SCENE: The dinner scene, in which we meet Leatherface’s cannibal family. It’s the most disturbing scene, at least.

Jaws - Steven Spielberg: Still Spielberg’s best film to date (and that’s saying something), Jaws had such an effect on me as a kid that I was frightened to swim in the deep end of pools for fear that a shark would indefinitely swallow me up from below. A near-perfect film in my opinion, of course it’s responsible for the way summer films are made, distributed and marketed today. Yeah, most summer flicks suck nowadays, but don’t blame Spielberg for making a great film. BEST SCENE: Flawless from beginning to end. But I will say the opening is chilling and Robert Shaw gives one of the most terrifying, enthralling monologues in film history when he tells of his experience on the USS Indianapolis.

All the President's Men - Alan J. Pakula: I know it’s a little redundant, but this film helped inspire me in my chosen career path (journalism), and if a film has that kind of effect on me I have to acknowledge its power. Pakula, a master at paranoid filmmaking, delivers a strong film about Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) uncovering the Watergate scandal. BEST SCENE: All of the scenes that show the excitement of chasing a story are realistic and fascinating.

Last Waltz – Martin Scorsese: Not Scorsese’s best work of the decade (that would be either Mean Streets or Taxi Driver), but a fantastically realized concert film about the Band’s last performance. What’s not to like of the eclectic list of musicians on display in this documentary: Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Neil Young and more from that classic era of drugs and rock n’ roll. Scorsese’s elegiac filming and interviewing shows how multi-faceted his craft was at an early age. BEST SCENE: Anything with Neil Young, Clapton and Bob Dylan in it.

Animal House - John Landis: A classic comedy that is still hilarious, and though it’s spawned way too many copycats, it only reinforces the comedic brilliance on display. John Belushi is the highlight, but the entire cast is fantastic. The first indicator of Harold Ramis (who co-wrote the script) and John Landis’s wonderful comedic filmmaking is full of so many classic scenes that it feels like your watching a greatest hits collection of college films made in the last 30 years. Alas, nearly everything started with Animal House. And Kevin Bacon’s first role of his career (How old is he anyway?). BEST SCENE: “Do you mind if we dance wif yo dates?” or the part when the frat house is being taken down, and Bluto (Belushi) screams in terror as a box of booze is smashed accidentally on the street, only to be calmed by guzzling a liter of Jack Daniel’s in about ten seconds.

Karla

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore - Martin Scorsese: Like Stalag 17 and "Hogan's Heroes" before it, Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore bears only a nominal resemblance to its dippy, if marginally enjoyable progeny; those '80s sitcom fans expecting the screwball comedy of the Linda Lavin vehicle will be disappointed.  Which is sad, because the 1974 feature film is not only far superior, it's also one of Martin Scorcese's best works.  A coming-of-age story for grownups, the widowed Alice Hyatt (Ellen Burstyn) sets off for California in pursuit of a long-deferred dream with her precocious eleven-year-old son Tommy in tow; reality rears its ugly head in the form of an abusive married boyfriend (Harvey Keitel, surprise, surprise) and a series of dead-end waitressing jobs in Arizona.  Thankfully, no Important Lessons are learned along the way-Scorsese and his standout cast (which includes Kris Kristofferson as the farmer with whom Burstyn becomes romantically involved, Diane Ladd as the salty Flo, and a young Jodie Foster as Tommy's badass friend) are far too skillful and care too much about the material to drench the viewer in sap.  Critics have dismissed the ending as cheap wish fulfillment; it's up to you to decide if that's the case or if Scorsese isn't perhaps using the Hollywood ending to hint at something less upbeat.

Pretty Baby - Louis Malle: The late, lamented Louis Malle (Au Revoir, Les Enfants) gave us this visually stunning period piece about the last days of legalized prostitution in New Orleans's Storyville; it's a testament to his ability that he's able to balance the cinematographic lushness with the screenplay's underlying grimness.  Brooke Shields' notorious debut as young Violet, daughter of the high-class prostitute Hattie (Susan Sarandon, in one of her most physically lovely roles), is a pleasant surprise for those expecting child-porn clichés; Shields handles the material, even the famous sequence in which her virginity is auctioned off to the highest bidder, with stoic matter-of-factness. The ostensibly happy occasion of Shields' marriage to the photographer Bellocq (David Carradine) is actually the film's most jarring reality check-the image of the preteen Violet, seated next to a groom twice her age, slaps us in the face with the proverbial admonition that all that glitters is not, sadly, gold.

The Godfather, Part II - Francis Ford Coppola, 1974: Better than the original? A matter of personal taste, certainly, and those who don't take kindly to extended flashbacks (I'm not sayin'-I'm just sayin') will cast their votes in favor of Part I.  Nonetheless, the second installment in this much-loved institution is still a lush, engrossing saga with a fine morality play at its core - family before crime, or crime before the family?  Coppola isn't subtle about telegraphing the answer - one need only witness the respective stories of Don Vito Corleone and his son Michael to know where he stands-but his masterful direction, coupled with Mario Puzo's excellent screenplay (Coppola co-wrote) and a uniformly strong cast generates such a strong film that the destination is almost secondary; the fun, so to speak, is in getting there.

Scenes from a Marriage - Ingmar Bergman:  Add this lovely, melancholy film starring Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson as Mariane and Johan, an academic Swedish couple who separate, divorce, find other partners, and ultimately reunite, to that list of reasons to repatriate to Sweden, along with universal healthcare and lingonberry vodka.  While the material itself is often painful, the pain is never gratuitous; anyone who's ever subjected herself to a Lifetime movie about spousal abuse will marvel at (and bow down in gratitude for) the way in which Bergman lets a similar scene between Mariane and Johan emerge without ever seeming to reach for effect.  By the film's end, if you feel as though you've run an emotional marathon, it's because you have, and again you'll bow down in gratitude that Bergman and his marvelous cast have managed to put you through the wringer in such a satisfying, never manipulative way.

10 - Blake Edwards: Ah, for those halcyon days when a lovable, pint-sized fellow like Dudley Moore could get a girl like Bo Derek-and you could actually buy it.  Perhaps it's Moore's (and director Edwards's) staunch refusal to treat such an ostensibly unequal union as par for the course; perhaps it's because the Derek character is so refreshingly likable and fleshed out (in more ways than the obvious); or perhaps it's because of that charmingly awkward-and, hello, almost realistic! -sex scene to Ravel's Bolero.  Whatever the case, this is one geeky guy/hot girl pairing that won't have you reaching for the wastebasket, unlike the current crop of inferior knockoffs.  Bonus points to Edwards for casting his wife Julie Andrews as Moore's equally lovely girlfriend.

Manhattan - Woody Allen: Woody Allen's unabashedly romantic paean to his hometown is another geeky guy/hot girl pairing made palatable and believable, thanks to Allen's self-deprecation and Mariel Hemingway's quiet maturity and intelligence. Refrain, please, from drawing parallels between this onscreen May-December romance and Allen's real-life one, and allow the goofball charm of the film's opening salvo-a blast of "Rhapsody in Blue" paired with Allen's signature nasal bleat ("He was…as tough and romantic as the city he loved.  Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat") -to suck you in, if for no other reason than to see Meryl Streep in a rare comic appearance as Allen's ex-wife, a recently averred lesbian writing a tell-all book about their marriage, and the ubiquitous but always welcome Wallace Shawn as a supposed stud.

Norma Rae - Martin Ritt: Don't make the mistake of marginalizing this film as a chick flick simply because the powers that be see fit to relegate it to the occasional token screening on the Oxygen channel-you don't need two X chromosomes to appreciate Sally Field in her breakthrough role as an Alabama textile worker who transforms from a pleasant, if aimless young mother into a firebrand union organizer after seeing her own father drop dead on the line.  Equally compelling are Beau Bridges and Ron Liebman as Field's husband, Sonny, and the New York labor organizer, Reuben, respectively, and it's to director Ritt's (and screenwriter Harriet Frank, Jr.'s) credit that this film doesn't disintegrate into a vapid love story, choosing instead to show Norma Rae embodying that long-forgotten, much-mocked promise of liberation.

Play Misty for Me - Clint Eastwood:

It's always a bit surprising to remember that the man behind Unforgiven and Letters from Iwo Jima - not to mention Dirty Harry -made his directorial debut with this Hitchcockian thriller about a small-town DJ and the woman (the brilliantly unnerving Jessica Walter) who stalks him through nightly requests for the titular jazz standard.  What is characteristically Eastwood, however, is the spareness of his approach - the film's eeriness is all the more effective for his refusal to waste one ounce of unnecessary emotion or energy until the very end.

The Paper Chase - James Bridges:  Once upon a time, it was possible to make a successful film about a first-year Harvard Law student who bore absolutely no resemblance to Reese Witherspoon.  With Timothy Bottoms in a refreshingly unmannered performance as Hart, the slightly out-of-place University of Minnesota graduate who becomes the protégé of the fearsome, brilliant contract law professor Kingsfield (John Houseman, in an Oscar-winning performance), The Paper Chase is an intelligent, non-gimmicky take on the do-or-die experience that is American law school; the very real emotions and suspense are enriched by an excellent supporting cast that includes Lindsay Wagner as Bottoms' love interest and James Naughton as the suicidal classmate with the photographic memory and a crippling lack of practical understanding.

An Unmarried Woman - Paul Mazursky:  A fairy tale for the intellectual Upper West Side set, this endearing, funny, and occasionally heartbreaking story of art gallery owner Erica (Jill Clayburgh) and her attempts to build a life of her own after her husband (Michael Murphy) leaves her for another woman is an underappreciated little gem.  With Alan Bates as the sexy, witty British artist with whom Erica falls in love over an unevenly hung painting and Paul Mazursky in a hilarious cameo as a boorish blind date, the film's poignancy is all the more apparent nearly thirty years later-it's not a little disheartening to view Erica's struggles to create her own identity as an independent woman, especially since the payoff doesn't appear to be anywhere on the horizon.

Harry and Tonto - Paul Mazursky:  If, unlike me, you are not a sucker for old men and/or cats, see this anyway for Art Carney's flawless performance as Harry, the septuagenarian retired schoolteacher who hits the road with his cat Tonto after a series of mishaps (a gutted apartment building, a slew of too-crazy-for-comfort relatives) force him out of house and home.  And while it's perhaps redundant to use the word "poignant" in yet another review of a Paul Mazursky film, there's really no other way to describe Harry and Tonto; it's to Carney and Mazursky's credit that they manage to make this material touching without bleaching it of wit or going for cheap effect.

Nashville - Robert Altman:

The late master of multiple plots studded with A-list celebrities gave us this chaotic, mostly improvised medley of a film featuring the intertwined lives of the reigning Queen of Nashville (Ronee Blakely), the parents of a handicapped child (Ned Beatty and Lily Tomlin), and a British journalist (Geraldine Chaplin) on the eve of the Bicentennial, in the wake of a political convention for the dubious, independent Replacement Party (to watch this now, one gets an eerie sense of foreshadowing Ross Perot).  At 159 minutes, with no linear plot or overarching message, it may take the average Gen Y-er a few viewings to fully embrace it, but it's well worth it for its edgy hilarity and Altman's steady observational hand.

Dog Day Afternoon - Sidney Lumet: From the vantage point of 2007, it's difficult to not think of the mess a director less gifted than the fellow who also gave us Network and the underrated Daniel could have made of this gritty, unrelenting story of the media circus surrounding three men's attempt to rob a bank to pay for a sex change operation.  Thankfully, Sidney Lumet keeps the sensationalism where it belongs-within the plot; even Al Pacino and Chris Sarandon's romance is handled with a matter-of-factness sorely lacking in today's bloated, supposedly edgy offerings.  They don't make them like this anymore, and that includes New York City itself-nostalgia trippers might well get misty-eyed at Lumet's uncompromising shots of 1970s rough-and-tumble Brooklyn.

The Sting - George Roy Hill: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - Paul Newman and Robert Redford to you- team up again in this great-looking, entertaining tale of two con men out to even the score after a rival murder's Redford's one-time partner.  Set in 1930's Chicago, the film is as slick and dangerous as its stars' performances-those parents disdainful of the life-imitates-art threat still might want to keep the children away from this one until they graduate.  From med school.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Milos Forman: Yes, we know, we know, Jack Nicholson is a great actor.  And the best reminder of that ubiquity is in Milos Forman's adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel, starring Nicholson as the pathologically sane R.P. McMurphy, a convict who moves into an Oregon mental hospital and seizes control from the skin-crawlingly icy Nurse Ratched (a brilliant Louise Fletcher), until his final comeuppance.  Equally mesmerizing (and oft-forgotten) is the late Will Sampson's performance as deaf-mute Chief Bromden, McMurphy's friend and foil; the film is also noteworthy for launching the respective careers of Danny DeVito, Brad Dourif, and Vincent Schiavelli. (A bit of trivia: the Oregon State Mental Hospital, where the film was shot, is reputed to have once housed Utah murderer Gary Gilmore. Fun!)

Kramer vs. Kramer - Robert Benton: A too-pat description of this film would be to say it tackles the "issue" of single fathers seeking custody of their children, but the performances of Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, and Justin Henry as their son Billy are too human for that.  Perhaps the best evidence of the film's down-to-earth quality lies in the scene where Hoffman and Henry can be heard, one after the other, taking their morning pee; in director Robert Benson's capable hands, it's funny and somehow not cheap.  Hoffman and Streep both do excellent jobs embodying that decade's rocky transition from the traditional gender roles of their childhood; sadly, I suspect this was one of cinema's last grasps of consciousness before the banality of the '80s.

Scott:

Annie Hall and Sleeper - Woody Allen:

Annie Hall, like most films on my list, is a no brainer selection. If you want to go ahead and call it a romantic comedy, then it's easily the best one ever made and set a bar for all the others that has not, and probably will not, be reached. Seeing it for the first time more than 30 years after its release, I recall being struck by how fresh Allen's total disregard for the conventional rules of storytelling felt to me. Breaking the fourth wall can be tough to pull off, and I have yet to come across another film that does it any better. Filled to the brim with memorable moments (a young Christopher Walken as Annie's strange brother Duane, Woody acting nervous around a bunch of lobsters, etc. etc.) and lines (my favorite off the top of my head as I type this: "we use a large, vibrating egg"), Annie Hall will always be one of the great all-time film comedies. Earlier in his career, Woody made the screwball, Futurama-esque comedy Sleeper. The film finds Allen as a man much like himself (really??) who wakes up 200 years in the future after being accidentally frozen. You can tell it's early Woody, as he hadn't yet found his style and it is more or less a mishmash of funny one-liners and sight gags (a running joke featuring two guys trying to fire some kind of rocket launcher at Woody is particularly hysterical). But it's hard to deny the overall hilarity of Sleeper, and it's highly recommended if you're a fan of the director's "earlier, funny ones."

Day For Night and Love On The Run - Francois Truffaut: One of the best films ever made about filmmaking, Truffaut's Day For Night follows the goings on behind the scenes of a seemingly cheesy film called "Meet Pamela." The film within the film is of little to no importance, and most of the joy comes from the interactions between the characters and some of the memorable shooting moments. Two of the better examples include a cat that cannot hit its mark and a washed up, drunken diva who keeps flubbing lines and asks if she can just say numbers and dub it over later, like she does with "Federico." Day For Night also shows just how much goes into the making of a film and how outside factors can either ruin the whole thing or lead to various compromises. As someone who has made it through film school, I can relate. Truffaut himself plays the film's director, and sums it all up perfectly with the line: [paraphrasing] "Making a film is like a stagecoach ride in the old West. When you start, you are hoping for a pleasant trip. By the halfway point, you just hope to survive." Love On The Run is the conclusion to Truffaut's famous and brilliant Antoine Doinel saga, which followed the character throughout four features and one short film, each taking place at different key moments in his life. Even with flashbacks to moments from the previous films, it's hard to say if Love On The Run really works or not as a stand alone film. However, it does work as a fitting end to the Doinel cycle. Much like life itself, the cycle is rather loosely constructed and non-linear, but that is part of what makes it work so well. Obviously The 400 Blows is the best of the cycle and cannot be equaled, but Love On The Run is quite underrated and at least deserves mention for being a satisfying conclusion to a wonderful series of films – something that a lot of modern day trilogies and sagas seem to have a difficult time with.

Apocalypse Now and The Conversation - Francis Ford Coppola: I miss 1970s Coppola, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Also known as the film that almost killed him, Apocalypse Now is probably Coppola's most ambitious effort – ya know, along with those 2 big gangster films he made in the 70s. But it was all worth it, and the end result is a film that is stunning, surreal, visceral, harrowing, and pretty much any other adjectives you'd like to use for "unique" and "good." The horror of war has rarely been captured in such an artistic manner. While most directors prefer to load their war films with overly elaborate battle scenes, Coppola is up to something different entirely and the end product is much more fascinating as a result. Also worth mentioning is Vittorio Storaro's spectacular cinematography and Walter Murch's groundbreaking sound design. Interestingly enough, sound is also a key element to Coppola's brilliant surveillance thriller The Conversation. Completed between the first two Godfather films, this one tends to get lost in the mix a bit, but is a masterpiece as well (that's four for the decade – how many others can say that?). Gene Hackman gives a typically top notch performance as Harry Caul, a surveillance expert who becomes obsessed with piecing together the information included in the recording from a recent job that he thinks might lead to an upcoming murder attempt. The film unravels in a deliberately slow and tense manner that is highly indicative of Coppola's masterful directing talents.

The Last Picture Show - Peter Bogdanovich: Bogdanovich's ode to the disillusionment of growing up in a small Texas town circa 1950s is something of a small masterpiece. The title refers to the closing of the local cinema, but really symbolizes the end of a simpler era, both for the characters and society itself, without feeling too forced. The film is shot in a wonderfully nostalgic black and white and manages to evoke a feeling of time and place unlike most other films. Also keep an eye out for a great performance by a young Cybil Shepard as the prettiest (and craziest) girl in town.

Days of Heaven - Terrence Malick: I've just recently been exposing myself to Malick's work, and having now seen half of his massive four film oeuvre, I can definitely see what all the hype is about. Days of Heaven tells the tale of a young man (Richard Gere) who brings along his girlfriend and younger sister to go to work for a rich farmer during the Depression. Things get a bit more complicated when the farmer falls in love with the girl, who he thinks is Gere's other sister. In a similar way to his debut film Badlands, he makes excellent use of voice over narration from the younger sister, who isn't really the main character, but a lot of the information is given to the audience through her. It works because the images and music that go along with it are so breathtaking and poetic. Nestor Almendros's legendary cinematography more or less serves as a perfect definition for the term "magic hour." Apparently, Criterion is set to release a version of this later on this year, and I can only assume it will shoot to the top of the list of most gorgeous looking DVD transfers.

Five Easy Pieces - Bob Rafelson:

A simple, effective road movie and character study in which Jack Nicholson plays a seemingly ordinary man working on an oil rig. However, he turns out to be a former piano prodigy that fled home for reasons that become clearer as the film progresses. The film takes a while to get going, but things start to pick up when Nicholson hits the road and heads for home with his girlfriend. Jack's performance is (not surprisingly) excellent, and the writing and directing are exceptional as well. Worth checking out just for its stellar concluding scene, which is just as simple and effective as the rest of the film.

The Conformist - Bernardo Bertolucci: Bertolucci's look at romance and fascism in 1930s Europe is one of those classic films that many people might tend to overlook. Perhaps it has something to do with the DVD being unavailable until late last year? Either way, The Conformist is an expertly crafted film that follows Marcello (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a fascist who is sent on a mission to assassinate his former college professor because, well, fascists killed people who didn't agree with them, I guess. There's plenty more to it and it would take a bit of time to explain, so this is really just one of those films you kind of have to see. Featuring a memorable score from frequent Truffaut collaborator Georges Delerue (one of the best) and absolutely amazing cinematography from Vittorio Storaro (also one of the best to work in his field). The manipulation of light and shadows along with the shot selections and camera movements are all sophisticated and breathtaking throughout.

Mean Streets - Martin Scorsese: The one that put Marty on the map is still one of the best in a pretty damn good decade. Mean Streets is still highly influential to this day, especially for its exceptional integration of rock music into the film and for being one of the first to capture the Italian-American New Yorker experience. I mean, really, how many films (or TV shows) can you think of that depict Italian American organized crime in New York City? They all owe a debt to Mean Streets. This is also when Scorsese more or less figured it all out and was still bringing a lot of European influence and experimentation into his directing, which is probably part of what gives the film its great energy and still helps it stand out today.